Tacair IRL : Data for CM:SF?

[John Kettler]

I didn't catch the whole program, so it may've been either Desert Storm or OIF. In any event, an 8-man Green Beret team deep inside Iraq was somehow compromised and in short order was under attack by a platoon of Iraqi motorized (truck) infantry, which itself was being rapidly reinforced to company strength. The Berets barely had time to cache most of their heavier gear and set a C4 charge on it before di diing down an irrigation ditch in an otherwise fairly exposed plain. With only 200 rounds of rifle ammo per man and 45 pistol rounds, plus maybe 20 40mm grenades for the M203s, these guys were in trouble, for sunset was many hours out, and it was only then, given the size of the force opposing them, that they could hope to break contact. There was literally nowhere to go in daylight.

An urgent attempt to whistle up air support ran into big trouble when it was discovered that they had the transmitter but had inadvertently left behind the antenna! Pursuit was so close that Iraqis were hit when the cache blew a minute after the Berets split.

Luckily, one of the guys had an Air Force type survival radio on which he started calling Mayday! Mayday! Wonder of wonders, someone answered. That someone had a four ship of F-16s armed with CBU 87s. From 10K feet the F-16s couldn't even see where the Berets, by now moved to an L-bend in the ditch, were, but they could see the road and the trucks nearby. The first passes took out the trucks and some nearby infantry. Bingo and Winchester, that flight cleared out. Meanwhile, the lead Iraqi platoon kept coming and had brought an HMG with it, intending to set it up on ground above the Berets. All strikes had to be talked in by relative direction, with no GPS apparent on either end. If you can believe it, the Berets had no smoke grenades to mark their position.

Another flight arrived, and things got exciting in a hurry, for it was now danger close--with CBUs, and the pilots couldn't see where to bomb. Among other things, a signal mirror helped show the pilots where the Berets were. So help me, the guy on the ground literally walked the cluster bomb drop, made one CBU at a time, to where he needed it by multiples of hundreds of meters relative to last impact, in a given direction or directions.

The pilots were freaking out, trapped between men in dire danger of being overwhelmed by the foe and the fear of blowing their own sky high. The CBU which saved the Berets' bacon was so close that it was a minute or more before the strike controller even came back on the air, leading the pilots to fear the worst. The drop was so close that before it was made the men in the trench waved goodbye to each other, figuring they wouldn't survive. After that last CBU went off, silence reigned. Breaking contact, the team exfiltrated to the pickup point,

where two Blackhawks appeared almost instantly and got the team out. Incredibly, no one got as much as a scratch! The pilots were thrilled that things worked out so well.

Am posting this because it beautifully depicts Murphy's law at work in CAS. They almost didn't get it, almost couldn't use it when they did get it because the F-16s, on perch at 10K feet, didn't know where they were and were armed with CBUs rather than guided munitions, had terrible commo issues, and after all that, were nearly blown apart to a man by their own CAS. Had they not been under the dirt in the bottom of the ditch, it's doubtful they would've survived at all.

Regards,

John Kettler

[YankeeDog]

Ya, intresting show.

FYI, it was GW I, along highway 7, between Kuwait and Baghdad.

[John Kettler]

Yankee Dog,

Appreciate the additional info. That would also explain the signal absence of GPS from the story.

OTOH, if anyone would have one, the Green Berets and their SpecOps bretheren would lead the list.

Regards,

John Kettler

[civdiv]

A Special Forces team was compromised. They did get evacuated by a very brave Blackhawk pilot that actually flew UNDER some power lines. IIRC, the rest sounds pretty fishy.

I didn't see the show; did they say how they got compromised?

[Nidan1]

Sounds like a good movie script.

[YankeeDog]

They got compromised due to some very bad luck; their blind was stumbled upon by some Iraqi kids playing.

The show included a lot of interview footage with members of the actual team. If anything in the program was conflated, the team members would have had to taken part.