KUWAIT DESERT, 9 March 2003 — A day after President Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein to disarm, infantry paratroopers with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division prepared their armored Humvees for an airdrop inside Iraq’s borders, a possible sign that the first strike is imminent.
The 82nd “will be on the first aircraft and the first out the door,” said Division commander Maj. Gen. Chuck Swannack. The Division, based at Fort Bragg, NC, made its name in World War II through a series of jumps behind enemy lines.
“From standing start, with all our equipment ready to go ... 18 hours,” Swannack said. “They are going to give me a few days warning. But we’re going to posture. It’s just like you’ve got a gun loaded with ammunition, and we’ve got the hammer cocked back. We’re cocking back that hammer a little more every time, every day, to go ahead and rig our equipment for parachute assault.” The division is ready for an airdrop inside Iraq. Entering behind enemy lines “is what this division is all about,” Swannack said. “In the first stage of any parachute assault, we jump out at 800 feet and you come down in about 15 seconds, 16 seconds in an air drop. And everybody’s a rifleman, right away. But everything in the 82nd Airborne Division — from anti-tank weapons systems to engineering equipment, artillery pieces, all of that’s air dropped.”
Swannack said the assault would be a coordinated effort with the Air Force to take out enemy air defenses, but that the division enters knowing there “probably are some enemy folks down there with small arms weapons.” Thirty days ago this forward base in the Kuwait Desert didn’t exist, said Army Sgt. Phil Estes, 21, a 325th Infantry Regiment paratrooper from Norfolk, Va. He arrived a month ago with his armored Humvee. Since then, the 82nd Airborne has assembled a sea of black and tan tents, a mess hall and sprawling parking lot of armored jeeps, trucks and other artillery.
On Friday, Estes and hundreds of other members of the 82nd spent the day disassembling the weaponry on their vehicles to prep them for airdrop. Outside, scores of artillery vehicles — gun jeeps, Humvees armed with 40 mm anti-tank grenade launchers and Mark 19 auto-grenade launchers — got prepped for parachutes. Inside a massive hangar, riggers with the 82nd wedged layers of cardboard honeycomb underneath the axles of five-ton trucks and secured parachute lines to the vehicles’ skeletons. The honeycomb — layers and layers of corrugated cardboard — flatten like an accordion when the vehicle hits the ground and cushions its fall.
For every 5,000 pounds a vehicle weighs, another 100-foot parachute is rigged up to slow its fall. Each armored Humvee weighs about 15,000 pounds. The goal is to create enough drag so that the heavy equipment lands evenly on the ground.
“Hopefully when it hits the Earth it’ll only make about a one foot crater,” said Army Pfc. Terry McKnight, 22, from Lamar, Texas.
The Humvees weren’t the only vehicles prepped Friday. Large trucks that will carry and flatten cement were also rigged with parachutes. After the paratroopers secure a site like an airstrip, they’ll use the equipment to rebuild and render it usable for Army helicopters and Air Force C-130s and C-17s.
Mother nature will play a role in the timing, as wind is a big factor on any parachute assault. On Thursday night a sandstorm with 70 mph winds ripped base tents from their anchors and knocked out a large spotlight under the hangar roof. At Fort Bragg, the paratroopers don’t jump if the wind tops 15 mph because it increases the chances of serious injuries, Swannack said.
Sand storms also zero out visibility, which can complicate an assault. But the paratroopers have some training jumping in fog.
“I jumped in fog. You seem a lot closer to the ground than you really are,” said Durand, Mich., paratrooper 2nd Pvt. Andrew Mitchell, 21.
In the first wave, each soldier could have up to 110 pounds of equipment on his back, including machine guns, the parachute, ammunition, water and hand grenades.
If an assault is launched, it will likely take place in the middle of the night, Swannack said. “We do our best business jumping overnight. Jumping down at night, the enemy can’t see us if they do have those weapons systems to shoot us. So we come floating down at night, the aircraft are all blacked out so you can’t see them. Normally around here at night the winds die down, and that’s probably the best opportunity for us to begin an airborne assault.”
