In another life I was an ALQ-99 avionics tech on the EA-6B.  It was a bitch to maintain.  I always wondered if it was any more reliable on the EF-111.

During Operation Linebacker II my first squadron flew some missions with the B-52s, trying to keep the SA-2 SAMs off of them.

Similar stuff happened for us in Europe. Multiple bomb threats, riots and protests outside the bases we lived at and terrorist plots foiled. (I was 7)

There is a lot about DS that only Vet's that were there know about. I never saw a mention of our unit in books etc for atleast 10 years after if not even longer, that map they showed a few pages back, IIRC isn't very accurate, again IIRC.

Story time, so we showed up at the port and setup in a huge fkn warehouse, cots 2ft apart....it was a waiting game for our tanks and equipment.....

Let's backup a bit....sorry so long....

So our entire unit (3rd ACR) was in the field running exercises for weeks before the call, we were doing a force on force to contact when the radio came alive (I was driving W1, 2nd platoons command tank) this is probably paraphrased some, been a long time.

"Guidons, Guidons, Guidons....index,index,index.....all 1 elements report to 1234 5678, I repeat all 1 elements report to 1234 5678...." we head there and there is a GP large setup in the middle of the TX desert...we were like wtf? Lt. Says maybe some folks died and we are stopping the exercises???

I stop the tank, Lt. Heads to the tent.....gunner traverses over the side, I pull the bitch plate and check oil....me and the gunner sit on the front slope leaning against the turret and he turned on a portable radio......

News flash....Sadam just invaded Kuwait....it was maybe 13:00 on August 2nd....we looked at each other...fuck!

Lt. Came back, he tossed me his can of Copenhagen and leaned on the front slope...I put a dip in....he says we are heading back to Bliss now, we will be railheading in a day or 2....to port to load our vehicles up, we are going to Iraq....

We fired up the tank, grabbed our platoon and drive back to Donna Anna base camp....the HETS were waiting, we loaded and strapped down faster than I ever remember could be done.

We Drivers jumped in a CUCV and headed to Bliss with some driver....it was a sight to see for sure...we are running 45/60mph down interstate, all lanes closed to civilian traffic, HETS are hauling ass, 2 wide at times....every on ramp and off ramp and intersection was blocked by police military and civilian.

We got to the motor pool and unloaded....park them and get back into CUCV, back to Donna Anna base camp and repeat....all night long....most of us had a license for everything, fuel hermmit? No problem.

A deadlined Tank,113, 577 or Bradley dead? Winch or pulled onto HET....get to the motor pool....,drop trailer ramps, unchain vehicle, driver jumps in and HET into reverse...combat offloaded...a M88 or Bradley or 113 was waiting to hook up and move it.

Rinse and Repeat, the entire unit was moved 35 miles back to Bliss in 24hrs!!!!!

Damn that was a long 24 hrs.

ETA...I hope you all want to hear different types of stories...mine read like William Shatner, it's me...okay.

I enjoyed reading it.  Was a kid then and I was playing with GI joes and talking about bombing Russia.  Mom said, bomb Iraq.  I was confused for a min.

The map on page 4 is generally accurate.  3rd ACR was assigned to guard the eastern then southern flank of the 24th ID.  We all ended up in the Rumaila oil fields near Basra after taking down the Tallil and Jalibah airfields.  This is where the battles of the Rumaila Oilfields and Medina Ridge took place.
We moved farther and faster than any mechanized force in history while destroying an Iraqi brigade, and 6 divisions, including 4 Republican Guard divisions.

Based

I was long out of the army when this happened. Thanks for the stories

The ALQ-99E was very reliable.  I can't think of a time I aborted a mission for it not being FMC.

Its funny, there is a AF EWO guy that pretty much called BS on that story in a very public podcast.

It was...quick and fierce, poor bastereds didn't have a chance...we hid during the day under camo nets, and hunted at night, we had TIS with a toggle flip....maybe they had IR?...lol...KIA....before the IR light came on....most were t54/t55....with NO NIGHT VISION!! .

Most of his tanks could not shoot on the move (t54/55)...we could ....gunner...."identify tank, right front"...we already have sabot loaded (battle carried)...loader yells "UP!"..TC says "gunner, sabot tank!...gunner..."identified"....TC...."fire"...."track"..."track"..."lase"..."track"..."track"..."lase".... confirm range..."on the way"...." 2890 meter....soft black and green glow.....then, it looks like an acetylene torch...is glowing...you see the "oxygen " triggered...a blast of melted steel sprays.....then nothing...until secondaries...1 second later...


Fuck, hadn't thought that deep in 33 years...going to bed, gnight...

While training up, it was 1200 M1a1s against 5000 Iraqi tanks....we all said fuck them and trained harder...




eta...found post on tablet I left open!

@jsnappa

I nearly quoted it to give you one of these

Wish I had, it was a great post.

That's AWESOME.  Thank you for sharing.

Also, I've always been curious. Did any of the more 'elite' enemy do anything on the camo / deception front that actually did confuse our sensors of the day or fake out the operators?

Thanks! Amazing read and I rated it too

I have that poster rolled up in a tube.  Step dad gave it to me.

I was just born during it. Dad was there on a RC-135.

That's awesome!

Thanks for sharing.

No worries,
Not much out there about the ground force roles, day to day.

He'll no, they were too ignorant to think of that....not to mention,they didn't have shit for equipment and supplies. We came into this hearing how awesome and high-speed they were....I guess Intel told us this so we would train hard and take this serious...or they were just wrong

We knew we were out numbered like 4 to 1, thank you guys and gals flying around destroying shit...much better odds

Of the iirc three, maybe just two Iraqi Republican Guard Divisions, that we reached out and touched some part of, they were a ragtag bunch of homeless people living in tarp/sheet covered holes about 3 to 4 ft deep. As someone posted a picture of an entrance earlier.

By ragtag I mean for example the red triangle elite republican guard patches were simply clothe cut with craft scissors,  remember the craft ones that left the crooked edges?

I will try to find the uniform and patches I brought back.

They never knew we were there, by we, I mean, never knew the USA was there before their fellow soldiers blew up or were shot by 240's.

We could see them and engage before they knew it, we only dealt with t54/55 tanks tho'

I won't speak of the engagements other units had with t62/72s. Hopefully someone from 73 easting will chime in.

Remember the tanks literally buried up to the turrets, you could walk onto the tanks? That was a waste of time for them to do IMHO. They had buried them on the corners of AO, they lived behind very small bermed areas, like a litter box or sandbox.

The holes we had to clear the next day were disgusting, bags of insects/rice...and the fucking sand fleas

Find the tank signature in thermals, laze the exposed turret, drop to bottom of turret, fire....watch it burn for a second to verify a hit, dump your lead (release Cadillacs to "reset" lead to 0 computer impute) and return to scanning.

Our tank only got 1 tank kill, probably only 50/75% of the units shot one at all(pure guess from me,if anyone has stats please add them) the artie and fly guys and gals, killed wayyyyy more.thank you

I'll add that on next post.

Several of our units kills were through berms,if only top of turret visible, laze berm and drop down, fire.(we noticed that following morning during cleanup/clearing/inventory of equipment and parts of)

I was in college at the time and my professors all let me skip their classes to stay at home to watch it unfold on CNN.  

Step dad was at the time the 1st SOW Commander.  When contemplating how to start the air war, Step dad convinced Schwartzkoph to allow his MH-53s to escort and bunch of Army Apaches to a couple of radar sites at the border.  Pave Lows would drop a bundle of chem lights onto the ground when the radar sites were within Apache range so the Apaches knew where to hover and fire their Hellfires at the sites.  And that is just how the air war started.  

Later.....

One if his enlisted people was a female who had hooked up with another enlisted puke.  Sure enough they were banging away on their time off.  Problem was, she was a screamer and as the two of them were getting laid, all the other enlisted crew were getting pissed that they were left holding their dicks.  So, said split tail was called before step dad and his XO to discuss the matter.  All well and good they were fucking around on their own time but her screaming during the act was adversely effecting the moral of the unit.  Said fucking sessions needed to end immediately.  Female goes off, ranting about how they are in a war zone and she could die any day.  If she wanted to fuck on her time off then she was going to fuck whoever she wanted.  Step dad said, fine if that's your priority then you need to service all the enlisted males or none at all for the good of unit cohesion.  Peace and quiet reigned from that moment on. (step dad's story, not mine.  I make no vouchers for veracity on this one).  

During the war, the 1st SOW started dropping BLU-82s out of their MC-130E Combat Talons.  Some Brit observers thought we were nuking the Iriaquis when the bombs went off.  

All I got that I can remember.

Amazing, the whole 5 or degrees of separation thing, cool story

10 PERCENT TRUE does great interviews with plenty of guys who were there.



Aircrew Interview has good ones too.



Can't forget Fighter Pilot Podcast



I do wanna find more on ground war stuff.

Ordnance

And just like that the Fighter Pilot Podcast had dropped a long episode about flying F-111s during Desert Storm.



Another for the increasingly thick file labled amusing coincidences.

Awesome thread, thanks for sharing your stories.

Awesome of you DS guys to share.
It was both the most televised and least well-documented war up to that time.

I have an air raid story about the reason why we didn't like staying at the "village" in Riyadh. During the height of the SCUD attacks (like 2-3 or 4 a night). We'd have to don our MOPP4 while running up 4-5 flights of stairs to the roof. Why the roof you ask? Well, if it was a chemical weapon, you really didn't want to be on the ground or in the basement garage. One particular night, we all sat there and watched the patriots take out the SCUD's, as one fairly close overhead was was taken out, the debris landed in our motorpool (and well, everybody's motorpool). Lots of scrap metal, but no real damage. Some EOD guys had taped it off early in the AM and we were allowed to go to our vehicles later that morning. Soon after that, we moved up north and enjoyed the peace and quiet. And less gas mask wearing sprint runs up several flights of stairs.

During Desert shield,  the chaplain had a new plastic kiddie pool outside of iirc the squadron hq mess tent, I got baptized there.

We never went to the squadron hq. Unless on kp duty (we did wtf-ever the cook folks wanted, oh yes all them have people ate alot fucking better than us guys sitting on the perimeter in Tanks and Bradleys) also did the burn pile shit duties there....

One of our guys Sloan, dropped his gas mask into the burn pit...we all 3 got smoked that day when we got back to the platoon AO

The 4 of us volunteered for mess duty on Thanksgiving ...oh my God, the food was awesome....we had a real spread...not all the boiled and slimy shit our platoon had.......E4 Mafia Bitch

Thanks so much for sharing this.