12 November: Broken Arrow....or Something Like It
Something to jog your memory
I looked at my crew and recalled, “You know something. I remember being back in Vilseck in the freezing snow in January. We were standing in the parking lot in front of Company. And SGT Meadows was giving that stupid IRT(individual readiness training) with the mine probe.” The mine probe was this fiberglass rod with a rubber handle. And if you were ever stuck in a minefield, you were supposed to poke gently at the ground at a 45 degree angle about 30 times per square foot. Make sure there were no mines in the ground. And then you could take a step forward.
“And they handed us those mine probes and said ‘Go ahead and stick this in the ground about 4 million times with each step you take, and maybe in about 2 years, you’ll work your way out of a minefield.’ And I thought to myself, when the HELL am I gonna be in a goddamn minefield. I mean, what is this, Vietnam? The Cold War? Give me a friggin break-“
PEWWWWWW. A bullet rushed right by our heads, cutting me off in mid-sentence.
“Oh shit, EVERYBODY get down! Sniper!” We all jumped off the tank and got on the broad lee side. The city was somewhere between 500 and 800 meters away from us. The sniper had a ton of houses to hide in unmolested. The task force had pulled back because of the ambush we received this morning.
ZEWWWWW. ZEWWWW.
“Jesus Christ. This guy is actually good!” We found out in Iraq that the term “sniper” is used pretty loosely. If a guy has a rusty AK-47 with no trigger guard, no front sight post, and no buttstock, but you can’t see where he’s shooting from, then all of a sudden he’s a sniper. That never would have flown in Vietnam. I am pretty sure there were actually decent snipers among the enemy in Vietnam. But these guys were mostly crap. Unfortunately for us, this one guy in particular was coming close to our heads. This was my second encounter with an accurate sniper in Fallujah. The other one had been on the bridge on Day 2 when the bullets kept snapping on the surface of my turret around my crotch.
Mewborn was still in the driver’s hole safe. SGT P, Langford, Dawes, Stoker and I were all huddled up against the right skirts just trying to keep a low profile on the lee side of the tank. The bullets had stopped now for a few minutes.
“This is ridiculous!” SGT P screamed at the sky, laughing,” You gotta be kidding me!!”
We all laughed. It was too funny because this was happening to us in real life and not in some movie.
SSG Terry had made it to the M88 without a mine strike. He turned around and headed towards us. The M88 roared and jostled itself as it made its way carefully in SSG Terry's tracks.
“Finally, we can get this shit hooked up and get the hell out of here.”
As SSG Terry approached us, we could see his wood yellow teeth and globs of white spit shoot from his mouth as he screamed at us.
“Does anyone know what he’s saying?” I asked.
“No,” SGT P said. “I can’t make it out over all the noise.”
SSG Terry was too far away and was being washed out by the M88 behind him. He started flailing his arms. It seemed like he was gesturing, What the hell are you doing? Slowly, he started become more audible.
“Goddam-sons-a-bitches-what-thefuck-are-you-dumbfucks-doing.GET-THE-FUCK-OUT-OF-THE-WAY. NEVER STAND IN FRONT OF THE GODDAMN MINE PLOW WHEN I’M GODDAMN PLOWING! MINES ARE COMING UP. YOU WANNA GET BLOWN UP GODDAMMIT?!?” He had his nasty scowl on his face. He was beet red from screaming at us.
“OH SHIT! THE MINES!!! Everyone get to the other side of the tank!” We all made a mad dash for the left side of the tank and crouched down.
PEWWWW PEWWWW.
“OH SHIT, the sniper!”
Ooohhh right. The sniper. We scrunched up our faces in revelation and slapped our foreheads. It was exactly out of that scene in The Simpsons Season 5 episode “Cape Feare.” Bart is being chased by Sideshow Bob so he runs to one end of the houseboat and peers over the edge and there are alligators in the water. So he runs to the other end and there are electric eels. So he sprints to the front again and peers over and sees the alligators and says, “Oh yeah.”
The sniper still had his bead on us. We ran back around to the lee side of the tank and climbed up on the turret.
“But SSG Terry, there’s a sniper!” SGT P hollered in a mock pouting voice as he pointed dramatically with his arm and index finger in the direction of the city.
The five of us dove into the two hatches and climbed inside the turret which was meant for three personnel. Once safely inside, we all laughed our asses off over how we were scrambling around the tank in circles screaming about mines and snipers.
“This is fucking outrageous!” Someone hollered.
“I never thought in a million years that I would be stuck in a minefield AND pinned down by a sniper,” I said. I climbed out and hollered for SSG Terry to position his tank to the left of my tank and slightly forward of it. That would shield us from the sniper while we worked on getting the towbar hooked up between the tank and the M88.
We were vulnerable to sniper fire and enemy indirect fire being out here in the open desert with no terrain to hide behind. And that’s when the Air Force showed up. The close air support went balls to the wall like something out of We Were Soldiers. The first thing that came in was either an F-15 or F-16. The jet flew almost straight down and then strafed horizontally above the city. Unlike the sound of the AC-130 Spectre gunship’s machine guns, I can not and will not ever come close to putting these sounds into words. But I will try. For those of you who have heard this sound, please back me up or elaborate for me in the comments. The machine guns on the jets sounded like a panther in a blender, followed by a jackhammer, and then a nuclear bomb. Now what I really think is going on is that the jet is coming in, firing the guns, the rounds are impacting, and the last sound is the jet blasting the afterburners and high-tailing it out of there. But I’m not really sure. But it was the funniest, yet fierciest machine gun coming out of the sky. It was fast, violent, and relentless. And it didn’t stop with the machine guns. One jet flew straight across and dropped a JDAM. I never actually saw a bomb get dropped live like this before. From where we were, it looked like the jet pooped out a little hamster shit. It went straight for a second and curved and went straight down. The ground shook and the air was reverberating. My guys and I just started laughing at the shellacking that the city was getting. Ahhh, eat shit you fucks.
The jets continued to drop 2,000lbs and 5,000lbs bombs on run after run. Every jet from BIAP and Balad must have made a trip out here to drop their payload. I would love to hear from some pilots about this moment. As I found out weeks later at the AAR, things had gone south this morning for the task force. Simply put, what had happened to SSG Terry in the backyard with the insurgent and the RPG is what had happened at a macroscopic level to the entire task force. The Brads and tanks had moved too quickly through the houses and the enemy actually demonstrated some patience for once. Vehicles had gotten ahead of one another and main gun rounds were actually firing right by tanks from behind. Once the tanks had gotten too far ahead, the enemy came out from the underground bunkers, the rooftops and from within the houses and shot the task force from behind. The enemy had managed to inflict some painful casualties on TF2-2 that morning.
What the task force commander needed to do was regain control. His only option was to pull the task force back, bomb the insurgents back to the Stone Age, and try the assault again a little more methodically.
I looked at my crew and recalled, “You know something. I remember being back in Vilseck in the freezing snow in January. We were standing in the parking lot in front of Company. And SGT Meadows was giving that stupid IRT(individual readiness training) with the mine probe.” The mine probe was this fiberglass rod with a rubber handle. And if you were ever stuck in a minefield, you were supposed to poke gently at the ground at a 45 degree angle about 30 times per square foot. Make sure there were no mines in the ground. And then you could take a step forward.
“And they handed us those mine probes and said ‘Go ahead and stick this in the ground about 4 million times with each step you take, and maybe in about 2 years, you’ll work your way out of a minefield.’ And I thought to myself, when the HELL am I gonna be in a goddamn minefield. I mean, what is this, Vietnam? The Cold War? Give me a friggin break-“
PEWWWWWW. A bullet rushed right by our heads, cutting me off in mid-sentence.
“Oh shit, EVERYBODY get down! Sniper!” We all jumped off the tank and got on the broad lee side. The city was somewhere between 500 and 800 meters away from us. The sniper had a ton of houses to hide in unmolested. The task force had pulled back because of the ambush we received this morning.
ZEWWWWW. ZEWWWW.
“Jesus Christ. This guy is actually good!” We found out in Iraq that the term “sniper” is used pretty loosely. If a guy has a rusty AK-47 with no trigger guard, no front sight post, and no buttstock, but you can’t see where he’s shooting from, then all of a sudden he’s a sniper. That never would have flown in Vietnam. I am pretty sure there were actually decent snipers among the enemy in Vietnam. But these guys were mostly crap. Unfortunately for us, this one guy in particular was coming close to our heads. This was my second encounter with an accurate sniper in Fallujah. The other one had been on the bridge on Day 2 when the bullets kept snapping on the surface of my turret around my crotch.
Mewborn was still in the driver’s hole safe. SGT P, Langford, Dawes, Stoker and I were all huddled up against the right skirts just trying to keep a low profile on the lee side of the tank. The bullets had stopped now for a few minutes.
“This is ridiculous!” SGT P screamed at the sky, laughing,” You gotta be kidding me!!”
We all laughed. It was too funny because this was happening to us in real life and not in some movie.
SSG Terry had made it to the M88 without a mine strike. He turned around and headed towards us. The M88 roared and jostled itself as it made its way carefully in SSG Terry's tracks.
“Finally, we can get this shit hooked up and get the hell out of here.”
As SSG Terry approached us, we could see his wood yellow teeth and globs of white spit shoot from his mouth as he screamed at us.
“Does anyone know what he’s saying?” I asked.
“No,” SGT P said. “I can’t make it out over all the noise.”
SSG Terry was too far away and was being washed out by the M88 behind him. He started flailing his arms. It seemed like he was gesturing, What the hell are you doing? Slowly, he started become more audible.
“Goddam-sons-a-bitches-what-thefuck-are-you-dumbfucks-doing.GET-THE-FUCK-OUT-OF-THE-WAY. NEVER STAND IN FRONT OF THE GODDAMN MINE PLOW WHEN I’M GODDAMN PLOWING! MINES ARE COMING UP. YOU WANNA GET BLOWN UP GODDAMMIT?!?” He had his nasty scowl on his face. He was beet red from screaming at us.
“OH SHIT! THE MINES!!! Everyone get to the other side of the tank!” We all made a mad dash for the left side of the tank and crouched down.
PEWWWW PEWWWW.
“OH SHIT, the sniper!”
Ooohhh right. The sniper. We scrunched up our faces in revelation and slapped our foreheads. It was exactly out of that scene in The Simpsons Season 5 episode “Cape Feare.” Bart is being chased by Sideshow Bob so he runs to one end of the houseboat and peers over the edge and there are alligators in the water. So he runs to the other end and there are electric eels. So he sprints to the front again and peers over and sees the alligators and says, “Oh yeah.”
The sniper still had his bead on us. We ran back around to the lee side of the tank and climbed up on the turret.
“But SSG Terry, there’s a sniper!” SGT P hollered in a mock pouting voice as he pointed dramatically with his arm and index finger in the direction of the city.
The five of us dove into the two hatches and climbed inside the turret which was meant for three personnel. Once safely inside, we all laughed our asses off over how we were scrambling around the tank in circles screaming about mines and snipers.
“This is fucking outrageous!” Someone hollered.
“I never thought in a million years that I would be stuck in a minefield AND pinned down by a sniper,” I said. I climbed out and hollered for SSG Terry to position his tank to the left of my tank and slightly forward of it. That would shield us from the sniper while we worked on getting the towbar hooked up between the tank and the M88.
We were vulnerable to sniper fire and enemy indirect fire being out here in the open desert with no terrain to hide behind. And that’s when the Air Force showed up. The close air support went balls to the wall like something out of We Were Soldiers. The first thing that came in was either an F-15 or F-16. The jet flew almost straight down and then strafed horizontally above the city. Unlike the sound of the AC-130 Spectre gunship’s machine guns, I can not and will not ever come close to putting these sounds into words. But I will try. For those of you who have heard this sound, please back me up or elaborate for me in the comments. The machine guns on the jets sounded like a panther in a blender, followed by a jackhammer, and then a nuclear bomb. Now what I really think is going on is that the jet is coming in, firing the guns, the rounds are impacting, and the last sound is the jet blasting the afterburners and high-tailing it out of there. But I’m not really sure. But it was the funniest, yet fierciest machine gun coming out of the sky. It was fast, violent, and relentless. And it didn’t stop with the machine guns. One jet flew straight across and dropped a JDAM. I never actually saw a bomb get dropped live like this before. From where we were, it looked like the jet pooped out a little hamster shit. It went straight for a second and curved and went straight down. The ground shook and the air was reverberating. My guys and I just started laughing at the shellacking that the city was getting. Ahhh, eat shit you fucks.
The jets continued to drop 2,000lbs and 5,000lbs bombs on run after run. Every jet from BIAP and Balad must have made a trip out here to drop their payload. I would love to hear from some pilots about this moment. As I found out weeks later at the AAR, things had gone south this morning for the task force. Simply put, what had happened to SSG Terry in the backyard with the insurgent and the RPG is what had happened at a macroscopic level to the entire task force. The Brads and tanks had moved too quickly through the houses and the enemy actually demonstrated some patience for once. Vehicles had gotten ahead of one another and main gun rounds were actually firing right by tanks from behind. Once the tanks had gotten too far ahead, the enemy came out from the underground bunkers, the rooftops and from within the houses and shot the task force from behind. The enemy had managed to inflict some painful casualties on TF2-2 that morning.
What the task force commander needed to do was regain control. His only option was to pull the task force back, bomb the insurgents back to the Stone Age, and try the assault again a little more methodically.
posted by REDSIX at 10:51 PM
23 Comments:
Tim, of course I remember you. Please tell Jimmy my old suitemate I send my regards. The song at the end of the video is from Gone in 60 Seconds with Nick Cage. That's all I know. These movies were made with Windows MovieMaker on a PC. Yeah, that RPG video is old, but like I've said before, I personally cannot show anything like that since it is against the Geneva Conventions. But I'm glad you've all seen it. That guy is an idiot and after facing about 150 guys like him in that ambush in Baqubah, I find it amusing to be able to watch something like that on video. Imagine that guy only 30 meters from my tank and getting hit in the chest with a 120mm HEAT round.
I've heard that ripping tearing sound before too...kinda burrrrr...BLAAAAPPPP. Bullets going through the air then you hear the muzzle blast. At least that's what I remember hearing F-14's and F/A-18's strafing practice targets in the ocean.
JDAM is an awsome weapon...we tested those where I work (Navy weapons test range) JSOW is pretty cool too.
Thanks for all your doing over there. You guys and gals are doing an awsome job and it's appreciated.
Rob
Retired Squid
Ridgecrest Ca.
I know that sound as well. I spent 9 years in the Amphibious Navy, and have been up close and personal to the shore on more than one occasion.
Granted harriers and cobras do not have afterburners... the firepower involved is kick@ss. My favorite sound was always a tossup between the CIWS
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/weaps/mk-15.htm
and the 25mm Mk 38 guns.
I appreciate what you did and are still doing. I know my being less than 9 miles from the coast during the war in 2003 for 6 months can never compare with the ground forces. I was just happy to help out and provide weather support during the operations. I did weather for Close Air Support and the Marine forces in Southern and Central Iraq.
Thank you Neil... thank you.
The noise from a jet cannon is a complex combination of a lot of different sounds. You first have the deep chain saw kind of sound from the cannon fire itself. You then get a kind of booming, tearing noise as each round goes supersonic and creates it's own little sonic boom. Then, if the jet is loaded with HEI (High Explosve Incindiary) you get the sound of hand grenades going off at the rate of 6600 rounds per minute on impact.
That is for a mere M61 Vulcan 20mm cannon like I used to carry on the F-4 Phantom, and is currently carried on F-15/16/18's. If you hear a 30mm Gau-8 carried on the A-10, double the noise volume at least, and drop the pitch a couple of octives.
It's impressive...
Hey guys,
thanks to all of you for your service and for your input on that sound. it's so unbelievable that i really wanted some others to vouch what the heck i was talking about. and i appreciate your postings, especially Bugz. those technical details about the sonic boom and such kick ass. i love it. yeah the Marines in the next sector over had the A-10s. I never saw them because we were on the east side of the city and my sky looked like a hornet's nest of F-15s and F-16s, but I heard others talk about the A-10 strafing runs being spectacular on the west side in the Jolan district.
redsix,
I've had F-16s at least, strafe above me and it sounds like......no.....feels like......a vibrating, ripping, growl in your chest and head. BrrrrzzzzzZap!
I am glad you guys can look back and laugh and that the sniper didnt get one of you.
I was trying to plot your location of the minefield using google earth. I put you at the south end of town about 300 meters from the lower part of town or were you further north?
Think we're all glad.
Anyway the end of your story sounded like a standard Chechen Ambush.
LT,
I've heard and witnessed first hand the sound and effects you mention.
Heard/saw it during the first Gulf War and I was like "wow!" when I saw it.
F-16's, A-10's (sounds like a truck grinding gears), Apaches and Cobras...
The RG column they worked over looked like so much shredded metal that day.
But yeah... they are some interesting sounds.
Keep on posting- it is interesting to read perspectives on incidents most only read about in the paper... if they even make the paper in any fashion at all.
-John T.
former 11C
HHC 2/67 AR, 3rd Armored
An A-10 sounds like God farting.
"bullets kept snapping on the surface of my turret around my crotch." With due respect sir, what part of nametag defilade do you not understand? Be safe.
...The comparison of the minefield/sniper situation to the Bart Simpson alligator/ electric eel scenario had me in tears and rolling on the floor! It takes a (ahem) truly eclectic and self-deprecating (read twisted, like me) mind to arrive at such a simile. With the air force showing up, it reminded me of the CALFEX (combined arms live fire exercise) we used to do at Graf in the late 80's....only with appropriate targets on the receiving end. Keep up the good work! Grey Lion 5/68 Tanker (8th ID Mannheim, FRG 1985-87)
Hey Anonymous, that was just about right where we were. I would say the six-digit grid was 887 888. We were along the 33 degrees, 20 minutes, 0 seconds N latitude. The part about nametag defilade that I don't understand is manuevering a tank through the a city. I totally agree with safety and force protection, but in a city with dismounts everywhere, I'm more concerned with situational awareness. This battle was 3 dimensional. Baqubah on June 24th was pretty much a linear ambush with a tank column. It's a lot easier to own the battle space when you are all in tanks and can button up. But when dismounts and friendlies are in 360 degrees of direction, you can't maintain situational awareness at nametape defilade. I do appreciate the concern for my welfare though. Thanks for reading and writing.
This is rich. This is Movie matertial. The Simpsons reference was spot on. Keep it coming.
--The Game Guy
Thank you all for everything you are doing. Great site....
Semi-relatedly, congrats on the article in Wired! I was so pleased to see you get the recognition you so mightily deserve. There are MANY great war bloggers but your ability to tell the story sets you far above them in my opinion.
Keep up the great work and take care! (And my former tanker beau loves the vids)
I read about your site in Forbes, I think. It is great. Thanks for what you are doing over there. If it is okay, I set you up in my links.
It's been some time since I heard the sound of a mini-gun but at Irwin during live fire we used to hear the 20mm PIVADS working out up by Drinkwater lake. It made me think that if dragons were real that is what they would sound like when they roared, or burped.
Hi Neil,
as an Indian (as in I am from India) I am really proud of you and what you are doing. you are doing your duty in an exemplery fashion. I dont agree with the views of the US govt many times (including the war in Iraq), but I just wanted to pass on my good wishes to you and your colleagues who do their duty in such hardships. also reading your blog gives me a new perspective on how things are in Iraq.
regards
~Indian
Yeah, A-10s sound ridiculous. Keep your head down. Semper.
Whew.
Thank you Neil!
The A-10 sounds like when your crazy uncle tried to belch the entire alphabet as loud as he could, then got you to pull his finger.
i guess you should equip some old M60 tanks with flame throwers and send them into iraqi strongholds, covered by .5cal HMGs and M249s. Roast them little cockroaches. Set a few houses on fire and watch yousef come running out into a hail of .223 rounds.....and for those hidden iraqi bunkers, see if they can jump out if the entrance is on fire. Or just flame some streets to cut off the enemies escape routes and prevent flanking.
But forget not what you can do with Mk-77's, drop a few here and there, and imagine a few B-52 loads of them dropped on a city....
Great information on your site folks. I also am working on a bead earring site. I'll bookmark yours if you bookmark mine. You can find it at bead earring.
Again, nice site folks...I'll be baak...:)
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