Active Unit News

Loyalists die in bid to retrieve arms cache
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
TIKRIT, Iraq — U.S. Apache attack helicopters killed at least two Iraqi paramilitary fighters gathering mortars from a bunker filled with Republican Guard munitions Thursday night as U.S. troops try to dissuade lingering regime loyalists from engaging coalition forces. Top Stories It is no surprise to U.S. troops that with Saddam Hussein's regime ousted and his army either demolished or dissolved that the heaps of weapons left behind may present problems. "You can draw your own conclusions about Tikrit, Republican Guard and guns," said Lt. Col. Russell E. Stinger, of the 4th Infantry's Aviation Brigade. Last night, two explosions near a 4th Infantry Division encampment may have been mortar rounds lobbed at the encampment. Military officials were investigating what caused the explosions. No injuries were reported. Tikrit, about 90 miles north of Baghdad, is Saddam's birthplace and a pocket of his most avid supporters. Military officials believe that before U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq, Republican Guard units stored rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small arms around the city. On several occasions this week, bullets believed to have been fired by paramilitary forces have whizzed past Apache attack helicopters operating north of Baghdad. Still, Apache pilots are "extremely sensitive" about when and at whom to unload the 30mm cannons attached to their helicopters, said Chief Warrant Officer Michael L. Reese, one of the 4th Infantry's more experienced pilots. Apache attack helicopters are the Army's most lethal. In addition to the 30mm cannons, the two-man helicopters are equipped with Hellfire missiles. Military officials said Thursday that Chief Warrant Officer Reese's Apache was flying over an area where about 10 men were seen loading mortar shells from a bunker into trucks. The Apache fired several bursts of 30mm cannon fire at the ground a few hundred yards from the men as a warning and as an attempt to make them flee in the direction of several 4th Infantry Bradley Fighting Vehicles approaching the bunker at a distance. At first, the warning shots appeared to work. The men dropped the ammunition and left the bunker. Some were detained, and a tube used for firing mortar rounds was found in at least one of their trucks, military officials said. Chief Warrant Officer Reese said he flew his Apache away from the scene, believing that the situation was at least temporarily resolved. Later Thursday night, however, 4th Infantry aviators received intelligence from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flying over the former Republican Guard bunker that one truck had returned and that several men were attempting to steal ammunition under the cover of darkness. "As we were flying back, we were talking to the ground-force commander who actually had direct access to the video feed from the UAV," Chief Warrant Officer Reese said. With Lt. Travis Landriph as the gunner in Chief Warrant Officer Reese's Apache and another Apache flying tandem, word came over the radio that in addition to the truck at the bunker, a second vehicle was bounding at about 45 mph down a dirt road nearby. After scanning to make sure their gun sights were trained on the same vehicle being picked up by the UAV, Lt. Landriph and Chief Warrant Officer Reese were given the command to fire at the vehicle as it drove along. Lt. Landriph shot at the vehicle's hood in an attempt to make it stop with one burst of fire from the 30mm cannon, a super-sized machine-gun that fires about 625 rounds per minute. "We know one guy got out and ran," Chief Warrant Officer Reese said. Then commanders watching the UAV video feed "told us to go ahead and shoot him, too." "Three to four bursts with the 30mm and we got the guy," he said, adding that bullets then began to zing past the Apache from the ground. Flying swiftly, with its lights off, the Apache returned to the truck initially spotted at the bunker and destroyed it.
Ed Timms: How to make missiles tip over, not go boom? 04/25/2003 By ED TIMMS / The Dallas Morning News Ed Timms works as a reporter for The Dallas Morning News. He is embedded with G Troop, 10th Cavalry of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division. TIKRIT, Iraq – Here's the conundrum: You've got six really big missiles, and the bosses want to make sure they don't get used. You don't know what's inside, and you don't want to find out that it's a chemical or biological weapon. That rules out tried and true methods of firing a few rounds from a .50-caliber machine gun or an automatic grenade launcher, or taking care of business with a chunk of plastic explosive. The solution: a variation on an old prank played on unsuspecting cattle. Instead of tipping cows, however, soldiers with G Troop, 10th Cavalry tipped SA-2 surface-to-air missiles that were deployed in a barren field east of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's ancestral home. In short order, soldiers slung a cable around the nose of each missile, engaged the winch on their Humvee, and stood back. The missiles teetered on their launch platforms and then thumped into the ground, twisting metal and scrunching fins. The missiles were recently discovered as the light reconnaissance unit began probing a large area east of Tikrit this week that is accessible only by a bomb-damaged bridge over the flooded Tigris River. Patrols into the area already have uncovered vast caches of weapons and ammunition, operable missiles and armored vehicles. And several times each day, muffled booms and a pillar of smoke announce the destruction of large stockpiles. The six SA-2 missiles were discovered on the first day of operations east of the Tigris, after a column of Humvees creaked past two gaping holes in the bridge over the Tigris. After reporting the find, "basically we were told to destroy them – but we couldn't use any kind of explosive means to do so," said Capt. Timothy Jacobsen, who commands G Troop. "So we had to get kind of creative." And that led to Capt. Jacobsen's brainstorm to tip them over with a winch cable. At another location, hundreds of artillery rounds were found in crudely dug emplacements. G Troop soldiers spent several hours consolidating the ammunition in a large storage pit, about four or five feet deep. After warning the residents of a nearby house to leave for a few hours, the pile was destroyed with plastic explosives. Another patrol this week ranged northwards and uncovered a secluded airstrip, more than two dozen airplanes and helicopters, and vast quantities of munitions. "It was a very rudimentary airfield, just hard dirt," said Capt. John McClusky, 27, of Twin Falls, Idaho, who led the patrol. "When we first rolled up, we thought they were civilian crop dusters." A closer examination identified seven Russian-made Mi-8/17 military transport helicopters, and several piston-powered aircraft with Iraqi military markings. Capt. McClusky said the planes were equipped to fire missiles, rockets and guns. His soldiers rendered the aircraft useless by pulling their tail structures off with cargo straps connected to their Humvee's tie-down hooks. Another patrol headed to an airport complex to the southeast of Tikrit and found dozens of surface-to-air missiles hidden behind revetments in a large field, missile components in small buildings, and more large caches of artillery munitions. The soldiers in the patrol also stumbled across an Iraqi variation of swords being beaten into plowshares. At one weapons cache, several Iraqis were busy removing 57 mm antitank rounds from their brass casings by pounding them against large rocks and dumping the large-grain powder charge on the ground. The Iraqi civilians were briefly detained as the soldiers of G Troop tried to figure out what they were up to. Eventually, the Iraqis were able to communicate that all they wanted was the brass casings, either to sell or use for more peaceful purposes. Sgt. Chris Clingempell, 24, of Augusta, Ga., was a bit taken aback by the Iraqis' method of disassembling the tank rounds. "It was a sobering experience," he said. "With all the constraints that they put on us, as far as handling ammunition carefully ... and then you see people banging it on rocks ..." U.S. forces in the area have standing orders to crack down on looting. But 1st Lt. Brian Sweigart, 26, of San Antonio, who led the patrol, wasn't displeased with the outcome of the bizarre encounter between his troops and the Iraqis who were collecting brass casings. E-mail egtimms@yahoo.com