by Tom Clancy
All crews involved in the combat operation would wear night-vision goggles. All troop-carrying aircraft, including heavy equipment drop operations, would fly blached-out, and were to be AWADS-equipped (technology for all weather conditions). All crews flying special operations forces would be SOLL-11 qualified (able to make blacked-out landings in total darkness).
D DAY FIXEL
THE first call from a commander came at about 6:00 P.M., an hour before the 82nd’s scheduled takeoff time, from Major General Jim Johnson, Commander of the 82nd Airborne Division: A severe ice storm had hit Pope Air Force Base and it would be impossible to launch all his troops as scheduled. The twenty-eight C-141 heavy drop aircraft had been loaded and pre-positioned at Charleston. No problem as far as they were concerned. The problem was with the troop-carrying C-141s. There was not enough de-icing equipment to launch the twenty personnel birds at one time. At this point, he had only eight ready to launch, and it would be three to four hours before he could launch the rest of the force.
I was not surprised when he asked for a delay, but I denied it. “Send those eight on, ” I told him, “and send the rest as soon as the others can be de-iced.”
Of course, I knew there was no getting around a delay, which would mean that three key targets—Panama Viejo, Tinajitas, and Fort Cimarron—could not all be taken before daylight. Two of them, probably Tinajitas and Fort Cimarron, would have to be taken in the morning, which would likely mean more casualties. You have to adjust for the unforeseen in any complex operation.
MEANWHILE, a thick fog had moved in at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, where the tanker aircraft had been assembled. Though it was so thick that a truck had to lead each plane to the end of the runway for takeoff, all the aircraft launched on time.
Delaying H-hour for the entire operation would have resulted in serious consequences, as I well knew. Commanders are trained and entrusted to wake these kinds of judgments, and to develop alternative plans.
Accordingly, I called Johnson back ten minutes after his call. “Your first priority,” I told him, “is to take Panama Viejo, and if possible Tinajitas, before daylight. Fort Cimarron,” which was farther from Panama City, “can be taken later in the day. I’ll take responsibility for containing Tinajitas and Fort Cimarron by keeping AC-130s nearby until you can conduct your air assaults.”
We knew in advance that the PDF had established a nest of sixteen heavy mortars near Tinajitas, which could range all of Panama City and Howard Air Force Base. For that reason, they had already been targeted for AC-130 strikes at H-hour, and afterward if required.
THOSE mortars had given us other concerns: Since the nineteen C-130s carrying Rangers to Rio Hato and Torrijos would have been in the air for seven hours, they’d be practically running on fumes when they made their drop. Because they were not air-refuelable, we had to have fuel for them in Panama; the plan was to land them at Howard—about forty miles from Rio Hato. But, because the PDF mortars might be firing on Howard, an alternative plan had to be developed. We therefore planned to land two C-5s ou the civilian runway at Torrijos-Tocumen, where they could serve as “wet wing filling stations” for the C-130s, if nesessary. The C-5s were to land immediately after the Rangers had secured the field and cleared the runway of obstacles.
As it turned out, we had no problem using Howard, but still used the C-5s for refueling helicopters, particularly those supporting the 82nd’s three air assaults.
As we got closer to H-hour, Downing and I monitored PDF command nets to determine if they had any inkling of our operation.
And then we got a kick in the gut.
At 1830 I got a call from Bragg: Dan Rather had just announced on the CBS Evening News, “U.S. military transport planes have left Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of the Army’s elite 82nd Airborne paratroopers. The Pentagon declines to say whether or not they are bound for Panama. It will say only that the Bragg-based XVIII Corps has been conducting what the Army calls an airborne readiness exercise.” And on the NBC Evening News, Ed Rabel reported, “United States C-141 Starlifters flew into Panama this afternoon, one landing every ten minutes. At the same time these aircraft were arriving, security was tightened around the air base. U.S. soldiers could be seen in full combat gear on roads around the base.” At the end of his brief report, Rabel noted, “No one here could confirm that these aircraft were part of a U. S. invasion group, but tensions on both sides are high this evening over the possibility of a U.S. strike.”
Washington had also received a report that a PDF soldier had overheard U.S. soldiers discussing H-hour, and had sent this information up the chain to Noriega; but I didn’t believe it for a minute. All U. S. servicemen were locked up and preparing for the attack at the time when this was alleged to have happened.
However they got it—from reports in our media or otherwise—t he PDF apparently picked up word of the operation, now only three hours away. At 10:00 P.M., our listeners began hearing conversations among PDF commanders that indicated they knew something was up. One PDF commander told another: “Tonight is the night, the ball game starts at one o’clock”; others called in their troops and ordered weapons to be issued. There were enough such indicators to convince me to recommend to Thurman that we should advance H-hour. My plan was to attach earlier with the troops already in Panama, to gain as much advantage as possible. The Rangers and the 82nd would just have to attach as scheduled.
1 had first hoped to move H-hour ahead by thirty minutes, and Thurman approved that. But after checking again with Wayne Downing, who’d be running the three concurrent critical actions—rescue Kurt Muse, attack the Comandancia, and neutralize Patilla Airfield, Noriega’s jet, and the presidential yacht—he and I realized that a thirty-minute advance might be pushing the envelope a bit. So we settled for fifteen minutes, which Thurman approved.
H-hour for all units in Panama was therefore set for 12:45 A.M.
TWENTY-SEVEN MINUTES TO GO
Now everything was on track. Most of the facilities that had to be protected had already been clandestinely secured. Special Forces reconnaissance teams had been covertly inserted in the vicinity of the major targets where they could report the latest information. Units were loaded and ready to move. Communications hot lines had long since been established to the major supporting commands—LANTCOM, SOCOM, the Air Mobility Command, and of course our parent headquarters, SOUTHCOM, only a short distance away in the tunnel at Quarry Heights, where General Thurman would remain the first night.
Though sporadic gunfire could be heard throughout Panama City, by then that was usually the case on any night.
As all troops well know, “Shit happens.”
We didn’t expect airliners at Torrijos-Tocumen after midnight. This night turned out to be an exception. At 12:40 A.M., a Brazilian wide-body landed, with more than three hundred people on board. At 0100 hours, when the Rangers dropped, these people would either be inside the terminal getting fleeced by the PDF and the customs agents or still unloading. Either way, we had problems.
I called Downing to tell him to prepare for a mass hostage situation at the airport.
“We’ll be standing by,” he answered. “But remember, we have four rifle companies in that battalion, and one has responsibility for securing the terminal and the control tower. They should be able to handle the situation.”
“Let’s hope so,” I said.
WITH only minutes remaining, combat was fast approaching. The AC-130 gunships and Apaches were airborne and ready to start preparatory fires on key objectives. The four Sheridan tanks brought in on October- 15 were now approaching firing positions on Anton Hill. They’d engage the Comandancia with their main guns at precisely 0045 hours. Twenty-five Special Forces soldiers from Task Force Black were aboard three Blackhawk helicopters en route to secure the Pacora River bridge, which was critical in keeping Battalion 2000 out of the fight at the airport.
During the planning phase, we had ruled out destroying the bridge. It was the only way for
people in much of eastern Panama to get to Panama City. That meant the bridge had to be secured and protected.
All units in Panama were “locked and loaded” (rounds chambered and weapons cocleed) and moving to their assault objectives. Once again, men had to resort to a barbaric way of settling differences. Hopefully, the dying would last no longer than about four hours.
During the final minutes before H-hour, I learned from Thurman that the name of the operation had been changed to Operation JUST CAUSE. General Jim Lindsay of USSOCOM had called General Kelley: “Do you want your grandchildren to ask you, ‘What were things like back there in BLUE SPOON?’ ”And Kelley had agreed: BLUE SPOON didn’t sound like anything anybody would ever want to be proud of.
“I sure am glad Jim Lindsay made that call,” I told Thurman, “because what we’re about to spill blood over certainly is a just cause. ’ ”
XI
PANAMA: OPERATION JUST CAUSE
At precisely 0045 hours, two EF-111 aircraft jammed PDF tactical communications, special operations EC-130s began to override Panamanian radio and TV stations and broadcast the U.S. message to the Panamanian people, and all units began engaging their targets.
Special Forces snipers, who had painstakingly worked their way into strategic ovcrwatch positions, also began systematically to eliminate PDF sentries with highly accurate sniping. The sniper teams were led by Sergeant Major Pat Hurley (later killed in the Gulf War in a nighttime helicopter crash during a raging sandstorm as he was returning from a behind-the-lines mission in Iraq).
At the Modelo Prison (part of the fifteen-building Comandancia compound), the assault was under way to rescue Kurt Muse. Six operators from Task Force Green (the Army special mission unit), supported by AH-6 Little Bird gunships and OH-6 lift ships, made the short jump from the pods of their helicopters down to the rooftop. During their approach to the prison, the gunships cleaned off four .50-caliber machine guns from the roof of a high-rise in the compound that housed one of Noriega’s Dignity Battalions. An AC-130 gunship blasted the Comandancia with its 105mm howitzer. Green tracers from PDF guns were flying everywhere.
The operators entered from the roof and moved through the totally dark building down to the second floor, neutralized the guards as they went, blew the cell door, and were back on the roof ready to lift off with their “precious cargo” (now outfitted with a flak vest and Kevlar helmet)—all within six minutes.
A few moments later, Wayne Downing called Stiner on the hot line. “We got our man,” Downing said, “but the helicopter may have been shot down as it was lifting off the roof.”
“When you get it sorted out, let me know what the situation is.”
Downing called back in less than five minutes. “Don’t know whether the helicopter was shot down or whether it just had too much weight to lift off the building. It appears that it sort of fell off the building and came down on the street. I am arranging a rescue operation now, and will keep you posted.”
Downing had been both an armor brigade and a Ranger Regiment Commander, and brought some unique skills to the mission. As a Ranger, he emphasized surprise, agility, and cunning, but he also appreciated the speed and overwhelming firepower of armor. During the planning, he’d been assigned the mechanized infantry battalion for the assault on the Comandancia and Carcelo Modelo, and for that mission received the platoon of Sheridan light tanks and the Marine Corps LAVs. From this force, he tailored a quick-reaction element; LAVs and armored personnel carriers would carry his highly trained special mission forces—some of whom had never been in an armored vehicle. No problem, they were Special Forces and adaptable. Major Howard Humble, a former mechanized infantry company commander in Germany, and now an SF officer, got the force organized and moving into the streets of Panama City that night and led them with distinction for the next five days.
Downing called this force his “Panzer Gruppe” and positioned it as a reaction force at various places in the city. It could go faster than helicopters, hit places they couldn’t, and could be broken up into several elements for greater flexibility (to find their way around Panama City, they used a map they got from a gas station). The APCs’ .50-caliber and 20mm machine guns were small beer in a major war, but in fights against lightly armed forces inside a city, they provided tremendous firepower.
One of the Panzer Gruppe elements was sent to rescue Muse and his rescuers. Once they’d picked them up, they first took them to a junior high school for transloading to a helicopter, and then on to the field hospital at Howard Air Force Base for treatment. Here it was learned what had happened : The helicopter carrying Muse and his rescuers had been overloaded and caught a skid on a power line, causing it to crash in the street. Once down, the pilot had been able to move the helo to a parking lot, from where he’d attempted to take off. The hclo had gotten about thirty feet off the ground when it was shot down, landing on its side. Three operators had been injured in the crash, including one already shot in the leg. They’d formed a perimeter to protect Muse and had been engaged in an intense firefight until they’d been rescued.
At about the same time all this was happening, heavy fire at the Comandancia brought down a second special operations helicopter, which crash-landed inside the compound and slid up against the security fence surrounding the Comandancia headquarters. Though neither pilot was injured, they knew they couldn’t last long in the withering fire. They jumped out of what was left of the aircraft, threw their flight vests on the fence, climbed over, and crawled beneath a portico that covered an entranceway.
As they huddled there, a PDF soldier—perhaps the first prisoner of the war—came crawling out of the grass with his hands over his head. “I want to go with you,” he called out in broken English. They took him in.
A Panzer Gruppe squad rescued all three.
The following morning, a third light observation helicopter was shot down and went into the Canal on the Atlantic side. Unfortunately the crew was lost.
AT H-hour, the four Sheridan tanks and an AC-130 pounded the Comandancia’s main headquarters and the PDF barracks, while the lead hattalion of the 193rd Brigade moved down Fourth of July Avenue, turned left into a street dominated by high-rise buildings, and began its assault into the compound. The way ahead of them was blocked by heavy trucks and other obstacles, and most of the PDF they could see were wearing civilian clothes—mainly Levis. It was clear they’d been alerted in advance—they planned to fight for a while and then fade into the populace in civilian clothes when the going got tough.
Some of the heaviest fighting of the operation followed.
The lead battalion pushing through with their APCs instantly came under very heavy fire from windows, ledges, and rooftops, and from civilian vehicles sandbagged as fighting positions. For the next two hours, heavy fighting continued. By 3:00 A.M., the Comandancia was on fire, with smoke so thick the Sheridans could not see their targets, but the 193rd had formed a cordon around the compound and begun operations to clear each building.
As a result of a PSYOPs broadcast that designated a local street for safe passage, six truckloads of PDF had surrendered; but the three security companies remaining inside the compound were still putting up stiff resistance.
Since he had no idea what to expect once his troops got inside the Comandancia, Stiner decided to bring in a Ranger company the following afternoon to do the detailed search of the building. The company was from 3rd Ranger Battalion and had jumped the night before with the 1st Ranger Battalion for the H-hour assault on Torrijos-Tocumen International Airport.
As PDF and Dignity Battalions fled the area outside the cordoned compound, they set fire to the nearby slum of Chorillo to slow the advance of the U.S. troops.
AT H-hour, another Task Force Bayonet battalion, the 1st Battalion, 508th airborne infantry, launched an assault against Fort Amador less than two miles away, with the aim of neutralizing the PDF’s 5th Infantry Company. Since Fort Amador was a treaty-designated “joint use” post—with both Panam
anians and Americans living or working there—this would be a delicate operation. The PDF occupied all the buildings on the south side of the facility, near the Canal, while American military families lived directly across the golf course fairway—among them, Marc Cisneros and his family. Cisneros was well-known and respected by most Panamanians, and for this reason Noriega hated him. Cisneros played a large part in the coming action.
“This was the first time in my military career,” Carl Stiner recalls, “that family members of U.S. servicemen would find themselves without warning right in the middle of a combat environment.”
Because it was the Christmas holiday season, the PDF had set up life-size nativity scenes near their barracks—but nativity scenes with a difference, with machine-gun positions established directly beneath each of them. The guns pointed directly across the fairway at the quarters of the U.S. military families.
The battalion commander’s attack plan called for infiltrating most of his headquarters company onto the installation before H-hour. At H-hour, two rifle companies, augmented by a 105mm howitzer, would conduct an air assault directly behind the quarters area occupied by U.S. families. As they landed, they would immediately establish a security perimeter around the U.S. housing area and then attack the PDF barracks less than a hundred yards away, one company from the north, and the other from the south.
OPERATION JUST CAUSE
20 DECEMBER 1989-31 JANUARY 1990
Another company from the battalion would secure the Balboa Yacht Club on the south side of the peninsula and directly behind the PDF barracks. The Club was a frequent gathering place for PDF officers, and several boats of the PDF Navy were usually docked nearby.