Caution! Men working.
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San Diego Union-Tribune
June 27, 2003
By James W. Crawley, Staff Writer
Dodging a web of high-voltage power lines, Air Force special-operations
helicopters hovered over the hydroelectric dam, 57 miles northeast of
Baghdad, as crewmen kicked thick ropes out the doors.
Under a moonless April night, dark figures quickly rappelled to the ground.
Several dozen Navy SEALs and Polish Grom commandos split into small groups
and sprinted to predetermined locations on Mukarayin Dam, an adjacent power
station and several buildings.
Within minutes, they located and held the dam's watchmen and power-plant
operators, but it would take hours to search the massive structure for
explosives and potential saboteurs.
"They were sort of startled" by the commandos' sudden appearance, recalled
Cmdr. Tom Schibler, a San Diego-based SEAL who was operations officer for
the Navy commandos in Iraq. However, the Iraqis didn't resist and no enemy
troops or bombs were found, so the commandos let the dam operators continue
their work.
For five days, the commandos guarded the isolated dam site to prevent
Fedayeen Saddam irregulars or Baathist loyalists from damaging or destroying
the dam and possibly flooding Baghdad downstream.
For the first time, Schibler and others this week described several missions
that local SEALs and special-warfare boat crews conducted during Operation
Iraqi Freedom.
They cracked open the door on their world of covert operations, disclosing
in general terms the dam occupation in April, the capture of offshore oil
terminals and the clearing of Iraq's only deep-water estuary in March.
They also touched on other wartime missions - sniper-vs.-sniper duels with
Fedayeen Saddam loyalists in Baghdad, saving Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch,
behind-the-lines reconnaissance and searching for weapons of mass
destruction - but declined to give details, saying those missions are still
classified.
The Iraq war, coming on the heels of the special-operations-dominated
Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, showed how the Navy's
special-warfare units could become key players in a full-scale war, said
Cmdr. Kerry Metz, who planned many of the SEALs' Iraq missions.
In Operation Desert Storm, the first war with Iraq, the SEALs were
peripheral to the main action, said Schibler, who served in that conflict.
This time, "we were very central" to the war effort, he said.
Nearly 250 SEALs were deployed in and around Iraq - the largest single
deployment since Vietnam.
In all, about 500 naval special-warfare personnel, including special crewmen
who operated high-speed boats that transport commandos, intelligence and
communications specialists and even a public-affairs officer, were sent to
Kuwait and Iraq.
"The missions were such that they required more forces than we customarily
were used to operating with, and having more forces gave us ... the ability
to sustain operations and conduct multiple operations simultaneously,"
Schibler said.
In the past, special-operations forces have supported conventional troops,
undertaking unusual or dangerous missions with little or no assistance from
regular troops.
However, in Iraq, conventional forces assisted the SEALs, Schibler said.
"We had incredible support from the regular, big Navy, from ships,
helicopters, planes, other support aircraft, even a (British) Royal Marine
commando group, surveillance platforms," he said.
The capture of a northern Iraq dam brought together a mixed group of forces,
including U.S. Air Force aircraft and Polish commandos, under the SEALs'
command.
Military commanders worried that Mukarayin Dam could be sabotaged.
"There was no burning activity at the dam, but you have this big, fat
target," Schibler said. "It was just sitting there until someone decides to
blow it up or opens up the floodgates, flooding Baghdad."
After planning and rehearsing the takeover for several days, the commandos
crammed inside several Pave Low special-operations helicopters for a nearly
five-hour flight from their Kuwait base to the dam. On the way, each
helicopter had to be refueled in midair by a KC-130 tanker.
It was during the rappel that the commandos' only casualty of the war
occurred. A Polish soldier fell, breaking his leg.
While the dam seizure was one of the final acts during the major combat
phase of the war, the SEALs and their Polish allies also participated in one
of the first actions of the war.
In simultaneous attacks on the war's first night, using helicopters and
high-speed boats crewed by sailors from Coronado's Naval Amphibious Base,
SEALs and Groms captured Iraq's two offshore oil terminals in the northern
Persian Gulf, two valve stations, and a pipeline and pumping facility
onshore.
The operation prevented the Iraqis from blowing up the critical oil
structures, which would have polluted the Persian Gulf and slowed
reconstruction.
After the oil terminals were taken, the SEALs and boat crews switched jobs,
clearing a path for warships and cargo vessels into Iraq.
Lt. Jake Heller said that for eight days, he led a small flotilla of
high-speed Mark 5 craft and 35-foot-long, rigid-hulled inflatable boats in
the narrow Khawr Az Zubayr waterway that connects Umm Qasr, Iraq's only
deep-water port, to the Persian Gulf.
"Our mission was the clearance of the waterway," Heller said.
It wasn't an easy task.
The SEALs captured several vessels loaded with mines, including
hard-to-detect Italian Mantra mines that could have sunk U.S. or British
warships.
The estuary was a graveyard of derelict hulls - about 100 vessels, many
rusted and partially submerged. Each vessel, whether a manned fishing dhow
or a rusted hulk, had to be searched, Heller said.
Tides rose and fell a dozen feet, exposing dangerous shoals. Tall reeds
concealed the shoreline.
Then, while a giant dust storm blanketed Iraq, forcing the ground war to a
standstill, gale-force winds of 55 knots buffeted the SEALs' small, open
craft.
"Those guys were getting battered," Heller said. "We were in enemy territory
with death squads taking shots at us and with limited or no visibility. A
little bad luck either way and things could have been ugly."
The special-boat crewmen, who were recognized only 18 months ago as a
separate Navy specialty, showed their worth in Iraq, Heller said.
"The special-boat-team community is young, and we're still growing and
developing and becoming more professional," he said. "I think we took some
leaps and bounds."
The larger SEAL community also got a boost from the war, the officers said,
because more special operators are now combat veterans.
"It provided our guys with experience in this sort of very, very fuzzy
situation," Schibler said.
The conflict "showed a lot of our younger operators that (warfare) is not
all black-and-white. The bad guys aren't all black-and-white. The missions aren't all black-and-white." |
