by Tom Clancy
TASK FORCE ATLANTIC
Task Force Atlantic, on the Caribbean side of the Canal, was commanded by Colonel Keith Kellogg, and consisted of two infantry battalions, a two-hundred-man aviation section with Huey helos and Cobra gunships, a Vulcan air defense weapons section, an MP company, and an engineer company. One of the battalions — the 3rd Battalion, 504th Infantry — was actually from the 82nd Airborne Division. It had arrived on December 10 to attend the Jungle Operations Training Center as part of a normal training rotation, which it was scheduled to complete before Christmas. The battalion was not aware that its graduation exercise would involve combat.
Task Force Atlantic had several complex missions, to: isolate and clear Colon; neutralize the PDF 8th Infantry Company, stationed at Fort Espinar in Colon; neutralize the PDF 1st Marine Battalion at the Coco Solo Naval Station, cast of Colon; disable the multiengine aircraft on France Field, just south of Coco Solo; capture the PDF patrol boats at the ports; protect the Madden Dam; seize the electrical distribution center at Cerro Tigrc; secure the vital Gatun Locks; and free political prisoners, including Americans, now held in El Renacer prison, midway across the isthmus.
None of these was easy. Fort Espinar and Coco Solo were both joint-use facilities, with U.S. military dependents living next to PDF soldiers. Coco Solo had once housed the School of the Americas and was a particularly complex target, because the Cristobal High School and the Coco Solo Hospital were also located there. The PDF force at Coco Solo, the Panamanian Naval Infantry Battalion, was noted for arrogance.
At H-hour, loudspeakers from C Company, 4th Battalion, 17th Infantry broadcast surrender messages to the PDF Naval Infantry Battalion at Coco Solo; the offer was refused, and the PDF countered with a heavy volume of fire from their barracks area. Their defiance did not last long. After they were given the chance to observe the total destruction of their headquarters buildings by the Vulcan weapons systems and realized their barracks was next, the white flag began waving.
After this demonstration of U.S. firepower, clearing Colon turned out to be far easier than expected. Instead of stiff resistance, the 3rd Brigade entered the city of 60,000 on December 22 with the majority of its two battalions and was met by thousands of cheering Panamanians. Four hundred PDF soldiers, mainly from the 8th Infantry Company, surrendered during the clearing operation.
The Renacer prison, located on a peninsula in the Canal, consisted of an outer layer of buildings, guard towers, and Cyclone fences; and an inner layer — the actual prison — consisting of two large concrete block buildings within an inner fence. This was guarded by twenty to twenty-five troops from Battalion 2000, intermixed with the prisoners and living in the same buildings — which made the prisoner rescue even more difficult.
The rescue mission was assigned to C Company of the 82nd's 3rd Battalion, 504th Infantry: An amphibious force of two rifle platoons would come down the Canal in a pair of Army landing craft — a two-hour ride from Fort Sherman, near Colon — and neutralize the prison's outer ring of defense and provide fire support for the platoon that was to be landed inside the prison compound. Cobra helicopters would take out the guard towers, while another rifle platoon in Huey helicopters landed inside the prison compound.
Although the plan worked perfectly, it was not easy. The defenders put up a strong fight, using CS (tear) gas as well as light weapons, but by 6:00 A.M., the prison was in U.S. hands, and the prisoners — two American journalists, five political prisoners from the March '88 coup attempt, and fifty-seven actual criminals — were unharmed.
Task Force Atlantic now controlled all its assigned objectives. Elements of the Task Force handled their other assignments as planned.
TASK FORCE SEMPER FI
Task Force Semper Fi, under Colonel Charles E. Richardson, had a very broad mission, all in the areas just west of the Canal, to: secure and protect Howard Air Force Base, the U.S. Navy ammunition depot, Rodman Naval Station, and the Arraijan tank farm; secure and defend the Bridge of the Americas; block PDF reinforcements from the southwest, and neutralize the PDF and Dignity Battalions in zone; capture the PDF stations at Vera Cruz and Arraijan; and neutralize the headquarters of the 10th Military Zone in La Chorrera, fifteen miles west of Panama City. The task force accomplished all its missions.
TORRIJOS-TOCUMEN AIRPORT
On the military — Torrijos — side of the airfield were stationed approximately two hundred soldiers of the PDF 2nd Rifle Company, armed with three.50-caliber machine guns and a ZPU-4 antiaircraft gun, 150 men of the Panamanian Air Force, and thirty airport security guards.
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Wagner and the 1st Battalion, 75th Rangers, had the mission to neutralize these forces and secure the Ceremi PDF military recreation center at the La Siesta Military Resort hotel, a quarter mile away. Meanwhile, C Company of the 3rd Ranger Battalion would secure the civilian terminal. Because the 82nd Airborne Division brigade was jumping forty-five minutes behind them, and Battalion 2000 was only forty-live minutes up the road (if they could successfully cross the Pacora River bridge), the Rangers had a very brief time window. They had to work fast.
At precisely 0100 hours — even as the Brazilian airliner was unloading at the main terminal — an AC-130 gunship engaged the 2nd Infantry Company's machine-gun and antiaircraft positions, and an AH-6 gunship began firing at the company compound's guard shack and another guard shack in front of the civilian terminal, eliminating the PDF guards.
Five minutes earlier, five C-141s from the States had heavy-dropped twelve jeeps, twelve motorcycles, and two HMMWVs on the Tocumen drop zone. Three minutes after the AC-130 began firing, seven more C- 141s dropped Wagner and his battalion, followed immediately by C Company of the 3rd Ranger Battalion, dropping from four C-130s. More than seven hundred Rangers had landed in minutes, 150 of them on the tarmac by the main terminal. Many passengers from the Brazilian jet were welcomed to Panama by their "privileged" view of parachutes falling all around their airplane.
The Ranger battalion assembled, moved on foot out to their objectives, and quickly overwhelmed the resistance offered by the 2nd Infantry Company. The psychological impact of the AC-130 was too much for the PDF defenders; most tried to escape, including forty helicopter pilots in a barracks at Torrijos. When they looked out their windows and saw parachuting Rangers, they took off to the hills. They surrendered five days later, on Christmas Day.
C Company's plan was to move three platoons into the terminal from different directions, then each platoon would cover one of the floors; their frequent rehearsals had not, however, prepared them for an airliner unloading 376 passengers. That meant their immediate priority was the passengers' safety.
The Rangers entering the building found most of the passengers in the terminal waiting area — and no PDF. The building was dark. Power was knocked out by a grenade thrown into the terminal's generator by the Rangers. The Rangers continued clearing operations wearing night-vision goggles.
Most of the doors on the first floor were locked, and the Ranger squad moved on until they found a steel door that opened. The lead clement stepped inside, somebody fired a shot, and a woman started screaming in English, "Don't shoot!"
The Rangers pulled back to take stock. There were obviously hostages and PDF inside, but it was hard to tell how many.
A Ranger sergeant wearing night-vision goggles slipped back inside and saw what looked to be four hostages — two American women and a Panamanian woman and her baby — and maybe a dozen PDF soldiers.
The sergeant came out to report, just as the company commander was arriving, prepared to talk sense to the PDF, but when that didn't work, he made an ultimatum, "Come out or you'll all be killed," at which point the PDF put down their weapons and came out. None of the hostages was hurt.
As the 3rd Platoon approached the terminal, PDF fired at them through a plateglass window. The platoon raced into the building and isolated the PDF in a men's room. The squad leader moved inside to take a look, but PDF hiding in the stalls s
hot him three times. His troops dragged him out and tossed in two hand grenades, but the PDF were protected by the metal stall doors. The Rangers then made a concerted assault. As they entered the room, a PDF shot one of them three times in the head (his Kevlar helmet saved him); the Rangers then killed two PDF; another PDF soldier jumped out of a stall and tried to snatch a Ranger weapon; another Ranger shot him in the head and killed him; another PDF jumped out and grabbed a Ranger around the neck; they slammed each other up against the wall and fought hand to hand. The Ranger kicked the PDF through a window, and he landed one floor down in front of a Ranger private who had just taken up a firing position with an M-60 machine gun. Caught by surprise, he cut the PDF soldier in half as he tried to pull a pistol.
Two and a half hours after the jump, Torrijos Tocumen airport was secured.
Inside the terminal, the Rangers separated detainees — civilian passengers from the Brazilian airliner — from the prisoners, and flex-cuffed (using flexible plastic handcuffs) the prisoners. The detainces were asked to wait in the terminal until order was restored. When some of the children became hungry a few hours later, the Rangers arranged a meal with the restaurant manager and paid for it themselves.
At 2:08 A.M., the first 82nd Airborne troopers began dropping on their drop zones — twenty-three minutes late because of the ice storm at Fort Bragg. The rest of the drop was also delayed by the storm, but the entire 82nd was finally on the ground by 5:15 A.M.
By 10:00 A.M., the 82nd had assumed responsibility for the security of the airfield.
Later, it was learned from one of Noriega's bodyguards that a Ranger roadblock near Torrijos-Tocumen had narrowly missed capturing the dictator — and saving the United States a lot of trouble. Here is how it happened:
The day before, after Noriega's entourage from Colon had split and a decoy had gone on to the Comandancia, Noriega had been taken to the rest camp at Ceremi for a date with a prostitute. By the time he got there, he was reportedly in less than total control, having consumed about two fifths of scotch by then.
The first inklings that his country was being invaded came when he heard the AC-130 and attack helicopters firing on Torrijos-Tocumen, soon followed by the roar of transports dropping Rangers.
Moments after the firing started, Noriega ran out of the hotel, wearing nothing but his red bikini underwear, and jumped into the back of his car. "The Americans are after me!" he cried. "Let's get out of here."
Down the road, they ran into the Ranger roadblock.
"My God," he screamed, "they know where I am! They dropped these guys right on top of me!"
When a car ahead of them hit the roadblock and began drawing fire from the Rangers, Noriega's car made a quick 180-degree turnaround and took a back road into Panama City. Afterward, Noriega was so "shook," it took a day to get him calmed down.
At one time that first night, the JSOTF had 171 aircraft in the skies over Panama City. No one had a midair collision, and no one ran out of fuel. The AC-130 gunships kept twenty-four-hour coverage for ninety-six straight hours, using their sensors, weapons, and searchlights to intimidate the PDF and support the SF, Rangers, SEALs, and the conventional forces.
USAF special operations forces in Panama — the 1st Special Operations Wing (SOW) — were commanded by Colonel (later Major General) George Gray and composed of MH-53J Pave Low helos, AC-130 gunships, MH- 60G Blackhawks with refuel probes, MC-13 °Combat Talon aircraft for air-drop and penetration of heavily defended airspace, and EC-130 aircraft used for PSYOPs, radio, and TV.
RIO HATO
While the 1st Ranger Battalion was parachuting down on Torrijos-Tocumen, the other two battalions of the 75th Regiment were making a parachute assault at Rio Hato, west of Panama City.
They had launched seven hours earlier from Fort Benning, Georgia, in seventeen C-130s of the 317th airlift wing, stationed at Pope Air Force Base. Each of the first fifteen aircraft was crammed with sixty-five Rangers (C-130s normally carried fifty-two fully loaded troops), jammed tighter than rush-hour subways. Forget about moving. Forget about walking down the aisle to a "toilet." Five-gallon cans were passed around under people's legs. Because there wasn't room to rig, everyone had donned their equipment before boarding. Each Ranger carried on his lap a sixty-to-one-hundred-pound rucksack loaded with ammunition and supplies — including at least one 66mm light antitank weapon (LAW). As it turned out, the LAWs came in very handy.
At H-hour, F-117 stealth bombers dropped two 2,000-pound bombs, with time-delay fuses, 150 meters from the 6th and 7th Company barracks. For the next three minutes, Apache helicopters, AH-6 helicopter gunships, and an AC-130 gunship fired on antiaircraft weapons positions around the airfield.
At H+3 minutes, the lead C-130 crossed the drop zone at 500 feet, trailed immediately by the C-130s dropping the Rangers, followed shortly by two C-130s dropping four jeeps and four motorcycles.
As the Rangers started their descent, they could see green machine gun tracers crossing the drop zone — or worse, whizzing up toward them. Thirteen of the fifteen C-130s received multiple hits. And a few Rangers were also hit as they descended. The bombs and the preparatory fire had had an effect — two hundred cadets were later found hiding under their bunks — but not enough. Most of the PDF 6th and 7th Companies had managed to deploy around the airfield, and were coming at the landing Rangers in CG-150 armored cars and other military vehicles with machine guns blasting; a.50-caliber machine gun on the rock archway at the main gate raked the drop zone.
From all indications, they had been alerted before the attack, and they were good soldiers. They did what good soldiers do.
The Rangers did not take this quietly; Rangers arc as passive as blow-torches. As they slipped out of their chutes and assembled for their assaults, they fired at the PDF vehicles with their LAWs, and knocked several out even before moving on to their assigned assault objectives. They knocked out three trucks this way, one of them a fuel tanker that burned for hours.
In one of the stranger moments of that night, a Ranger's parachute was snagged by a fleeing PDF two-and-a-half-ton truck, which dragged him across the drop zone, with the Ranger yelling for help. His call was answered when a comrade coolly put a LAW rocket into the truck cab at 150 meters — a long shot for a moving target.
While all this was happening, Colonel Buck Kernan, the Ranger regimental commander, was single-handedly shutting down power at the airfield — though not exactly on purpose.
During his descent, he'd passed through the field's power lines. When he landed, his parachute was tangled in the lines and in flames. As he pulled the chute free, he dragged a light pole onto the power lines supplying the camp — shorting out the entire airfield complex. He quickly detached from his parachute harness, and found himself on the edge of the bullfighting ring in the center of the camp.
Meanwhile, the regimental sergeant major, Chief Sergeant Major Leon Guerrero, who had jumped after Kernan, was floating down above him watching all of this, worried that the colonel was badly injured. But when he saw Kernan climb out of the ring and had determined his boss was okay, the only thing he could do was break into laughter. Kernan instantly took charge and rallied his troops.
Colonel Kernan's plan for the takedown for Rio Hato called for two AC- 130 gunships, one Army Apache, and two AH-6 helicopter gunships to be orbiting near Rio Hato before the troop-carrying C-130s arrived. At precisely 0100 hours, they engaged known antiaircraft weapons positions and other preselected targets in the Rio Hato complex, with great results. The Rangers started dropping at precisely 0103 hours.
Once on the ground, 2nd/75th Ranger Battalion had the mission of neutralizing the 6th and 7th PDF Companies, while 3rd/75th Ranger isolated the airfield, cleared the NCO Academy, the camp headquarters, the communications center, the motor pool, and the airfield operating complex.
Although the complex was defended by some of Noriega's elite, these were no match for Rangers. Once on the ground, the Rangers attacking assigned objectives with plat
oon- and squad-size elements quickly overwhelmed the PDF, killing 34 and capturing 278, along with thousands of weapons.
After an hour and fifty-three minutes of tough, close-quarters fighting, Rio Hato was secured, resistance had ceased, and supply aircraft had started landing.
One Ranger mission was to search Noriega's "Farralon" beach house on the airfield's southern approach to the airfield. It was unoccupied. Rangers from Lieutenant Colonel Al Maestas' 2d Ranger Battalion found the large double-glass door locked. The Rangers debated how to enter the luxurious home. Their solution? They backed off and shot a LAW rocket into the door, shattering it into nano-pieces. (Troops in the JSOTF later called LAWs "the Ranger key.")
Again, vast quantities of pornography were found.
Turning LAWs into an entry device is typical of Rangers. They are not subtle. Several days later, the Rangers moved into Panama City and began establishing checkpoints and traffic control.
About 10:30 one night, a Ranger squad was manning a major intersection. This checkpoint had been set up with typical Ranger efficiency, and in depth. The block was manned by three Rangers, supported in overwatch by a 90mm recoilless rifle and an M-60 machine gun.
A car approached, slowed, then accelerated and burst through the barriers.
No screwing around with the Rangers. The 90mm immediately engaged, the sedan exploded with a direct hit, and the M-60 hosed down the flaming wreck just to make sure. Inside were PDF soldiers, all dead, and several open bottles of whiskey. They'd been drunk when they ran the block.
The story quickly made the rounds of the JSOTF. Somebody drew a cartoon poster of a Ranger gunner destroying a sedan; its caption read: "RADD! — Rangers Against Drunk Drivers."