Special Ops: Four Accounts of the Military's Elite Forces

by Orr Kelly

  The army action officers, hopeful of avoiding damage to the boats so they could be used by the new Panamanian government, came up with a variation. Instead of blowing up the boats, they suggested, why not have the swimmers wrap cables around their propeller shafts and thus disable them without damage?

  Carley agreed that that, too, was feasible. But he pointed out that troop aircraft carrying thousands of men would be passing over that very point during the invasion. Disabling the vessels in that way would do nothing to prevent the crews from firing at the troop transports as they passed overhead.

  By this time, Carley was dealing with senior officers and they quickly agreed that the boats should be destroyed, not just disabled. The issue never got to the point of a direct confrontation, as it did with Lt. Tom Coulter when he resisted taking his SEALs onto the beach at Tang Island behind a white flag at the time of the seizure of the Mayaguez by the Cambodians.

  Thus, several months before Just Cause was set in motion, members of SEAL Team Two began rehearsing for a classic ship-attack operation in which SEALs would approach stealthily underwater, attach explosives to the boats, and swim off while the crew members remained blissfully unaware of their impending doom. It was a tactic that the SEALs, and the UDTs before them, had often practiced but seldom had the chance to carry out.

  As planning progressed, this seemed a textbook case of a limpet attack. In this type of attack, the swimmer wears a harness with a sheet of metal attached. A circular limpet mine is secured to the metal by a strong magnet. When the swimmer gets to the ship, his swim buddy jerks the mine free and slaps it up against the side of the ship, where the magnet holds it tight. In this case, however, the patrol boats, built in Louisiana by Swiftships, Inc., had hulls made of aluminum. The magnet wouldn’t stick to the aluminum hull. Limpets can also be attached with epoxy, but that is not always reliable. And they can be attached by a special gun that shoots a fastener into the hull. That makes noise and could alert the crew.

  To attack the Panamanian boats, the SEALs went back to the Hagensen pack, the same kind of haversack used in World War II to destroy underwater obstacles. The plan called for four swimmers, each pair carrying a twenty-pound pack of C-4 plastic explosive, to attack each boat, strapping their packs of explosive in front of the V struts that support the two propeller shafts. That way, even if the boat moved, the packs would remain in place.

  Carley worried about the standard mechanical clock that would normally be used to set off the explosive. He had heard it was sometimes unreliable. He wanted a very accurate clock. He didn’t want the blast to go off prematurely, while the swimmers were nearby. And he didn’t want it delayed, giving the ship’s crew time to shoot at the aircraft overhead. He found a prototype clock that had been developed for another mission and adapted it to set off the explosives under the boats.

  Meanwhile, in a neighboring building at Little Creek, members of SEAL Team Four, under Comdr. Tom McGrath, concentrated on the Paitilla operation. McGrath was the same officer who had been involved in the ill-fated attempt to rescue prisoners of war from Vietnam nearly two decades earlier.

  Originally, when the military began to give serious thought to a takeover in Panama, more than two years before the actual operation, army planners thought in conventional terms. Mortars and artillery would lay down a barrage on the field and helicopter gunships would swoop in to knock out any defenders who survived. Then would come the assault by parachutists or soldiers in helicopters. As more men poured in, they would create an “expanding doughnut” that would eventually encompass the entire airfield. Such an assault would involve at least three hundred soldiers; in Grenada, twice that number were used.

  But such a large-scale operation would create a violent military firestorm in a heavily populated part of the city, endangering the lives and property of thousands of Panamanians, with whom the United States had no quarrel. Wasn’t it possible to have a small unit sneak in and take the airfield by surprise? Since the south end of the field juts out into the Bay of Panama, it seemed a logical assignment for the SEALs.

  Over the months, officers and men came and went, and platoons rotated in and out of Little Creek. And the plans for Team Four’s part of Blue Spoon changed constantly. Looking back, one participant viewed the many different plans as “hilarious.”

  Throughout, the precise purpose of the operation remained blurry. Was it to seize and hold the airfield? Was it simply to prevent its use by General Noriega, the Panamanian ruler, to escape the country? Could the SEALs shoot down a jet or helicopter carrying Noriega, or would they have to disable his aircraft and capture him unharmed?

  A month after the invasion of Panama, General Lindsay, head of the Special Operations Command, reflected the uncertainty about just what the SEALs were supposed to do. He said, “The … mission was to seize Paitilla … not seize … to prevent anyone from taking off or landing at Paitilla—that’s where Noriega’s aircraft was based—and to disable his aircraft.”

  Under one proposal the SEALs considered, they would not actually enter the field. Instead, a platoon or more of snipers—perhaps twenty shooters—would take down the defense from a distance. Another plan was almost the opposite: CQB (close-quarter battle) teams would go in and clear out every hangar. Another plan considered—and this is the one most SEALs instinctively favor when they tell how they would have carried out the assignment at Paitilla—was to station a sniper in one of the tall buildings overlooking the field. He would be armed with a powerful .50-cal. sniper rifle firing an explosive bullet. The shell, known as a rufus round, could easily disable Noriega’s Lear jet by putting a hole through an engine.

  The SEALs found themselves under increasingly restrictive rules of engagement that seemed to be based almost entirely on a desire to avoid so-called collateral damage to residents of Panama. Firing by long-distance snipers was ruled out for this reason. One rumor heard often after the operation was that the planners were anxious to avoid damage to Noriega’s expensive jet, that the rules of engagement were set for economic reasons. Actually, that rumor was probably a distortion of what had happened during rehearsals for the operation. McGrath, the team commander, owned a small plane, and the men used it to practice approaching and moving an aircraft, in case they had to do that. McGrath constantly urged them to be careful. He was worrying a lot more about his plane than the safety of Noriega’s jet.

  As the plans evolved, it became apparent that the SEALs would not be permitted to control the airfield by firing from a distance, that they would not be allowed to use naval gunfire to soften up the target, and that they would actually have to set foot on the airfield, approach and disable Noriega’s jet, and remain in position to prevent him from using the field to escape by helicopter. Although SEALs have never thought of their mission as the seizure of airfields, that was what these SEALs found themselves preparing to do.

  Intelligence reports said the SEALs would find twenty to thirty defenders. In an assault, the attackers should have a three-to-one advantage. That meant a force of at least sixty SEALs. Except for a few occasions in Vietnam, where several platoons combined to attack suspected prisoner of war camps, SEALs have never gone into combat in such large numbers. Neither their officers nor their men are trained for multiplatoon tactics.

  Chosen to lead this assault force as the on-scene commander was Lt. Pat Toohey. Like many SEALs, he had served as an enlisted man before qualifying as an officer. He did not have experience in leading men in actual combat, although he had been involved in the ill-fated parachute drop during the Grenada operation. But he did have one advantage that prepared him for this assignment. He had served in SEAL Team Six, where the officers are trained to command units of forty men or more.

  During the planning, a good deal of thought was given to the best way to approach the airfield. Although the SEALs had been brought into the act because of their expertise in using a water approach, serious consideration was given to a land approach. Perhaps the SEALs could simply dash dow
n one of the city streets that dead-ends at the airfield fence, cut through the fence, and suddenly emerge on the field. But this was ruled out for fear of running into one of the Panamanian units known to be roaming the city. The SEALs could find themselves in a firefight before they ever reached the field.

  The conclusion was that the SEALs would approach the field from the water in rubber boats and creep ashore. One platoon would take the lead, advancing up the runway toward the hangar area. The SEALs would then shoot into the hangar to disable the jet. Two platoons would move up on the flanks, trailing the lead platoon. A headquarters platoon would form a defensive perimeter about halfway up the runway. From there, Toohey would command the operation. He had a mortar squad in case fire support was needed. And he had two air force communications experts to keep in touch with an AC-130 gunship circling overhead.

  When the individual teams had completed the plans, they went to Capt. John Sandoz, the commodore of Naval Special Warfare Group Two, for review. In hindsight, it appears that this is the point at which questions should have been raised. Had the SEALs, as they adapted to the very restrictive rules of engagement, gotten themselves into an impossible situation, preparing to assault an airfield with sixty men—a task to which the army would have assigned three hundred? But by that time, whatever the individual misgivings, the SEALs were eager to participate in the operation. As one of them said, “We all pray for peace, but if there is a war, we want a piece.” Sandoz signed off on the plans.

  Sandoz prepared to command the overall naval special warfare phase of the operation from Rodman Naval Station, site of a permanent SEAL base, on the western side of the canal near Panama City. McGrath would remain in a boat offshore, backing up Toohey from there. In the other major SEAL involvement in Just Cause, Carley would insert his swimmers and then stand by in his boat, prepared to pick them up when they emerged after planting the explosives. This arrangement contrasts with the myth of the fearless commander leading his troops in combat. Sound military doctrine calls for the commander to remain in a position where he can react to events or call in reinforcements rather than getting himself tied down in a firefight.

  All was in readiness, and yet none of the SEALs believed they would actually be sent into action. They had been planning and rehearsing for months, and there had been one false alarm after another.

  In mid-December 1989, a major rehearsal of the special operations forces part of the attack—which would involve some 4,100 troops and 71 special operations aircraft, plus another 103 aircraft in support—was held in the United States. General Lindsay, commander of the Special Operations Command, had been concerned about the complexity of the assault, especially controlling the air traffic as planes slipped in with the special operations forces in the hours before the full-scale offensive began. He was so pleased with the results of the rehearsal that he declared his men ready to go.

  In the following week, Noriega’s government declared a state of war with the United States, and Panamanian forces killed a U.S. Marine and brutalized a navy officer and his wife. President Bush gave the go-ahead for Operation Just Cause, with the SEALs and the other special operations forces slated to pave the way. H hour was set for early on the morning of 20 December.

  As they boarded the plane for the flight to Panama, Carley and his men received disturbing news. None of the three Panamanian patrol boats targeted by the team was in Balboa Harbor. Perhaps they would have to sit this war out.

  When they arrived in Panama, the news had changed. The Presidente Porras, one of the three gunboats, was tied up at a floating concrete dock perpendicular to Pier 18, the main pier jutting into Balboa Harbor. Next to the boat was a docking area for boats of the Panama Canal Control Commission.

  Carley and his men set out from Rodman, across the canal from their target, in two rubber boats powered by outboard motors. In addition to Carley there were four swimmers, two in each boat, along with a coxswain and an M-60 machine gunner. Chances of detection would have been decreased if the swimmers had crossed the canal on their own. But if a canal lock had been opened during the transit, they would have been swept away in the twelve-knot current.

  The two boats moved as slowly as possible so as to avoid leaving a wake. It was only a mile across the canal, but they zigzagged constantly so they would not be spotted by the crew members of control commission craft. One radio report of “something funny out here” could blow the whole thing. Their goal was a mangrove swamp just north of Pier 18. For half an hour, the frogmen hid in their gently rocking boats in the swamp. Swarms of mosquitoes were a nuisance, despite the protection provided by their camouflage paint and insect repellent.

  By the time they had reached the mangroves, the engine on one of the boats had quit because it was not designed to run so slowly. They had brought along a spare, but Carley elected not to change engines because of the noise associated with getting the new one going.

  When time came to get started, he took two swimmers in one boat and moved to within about 150 yards of Pier 18. That was closer than he had planned, but he saw no one on the pier, and there was no backlight from the swamp, so he considered it a reasonable risk. The swimmers slipped into the water, and Carley then returned to the other boat and towed it, with its two swimmers, out to join the first pair.

  Carley returned to the swamp to try once more to get the motor going, without success. So he set off across the canal, with one boat in tow, to Rodman to replace the ailing motor.

  The two pairs of swimmers—Engineman Third Class Timothy K. Eppley, Photographer’s Mate Second Class Christopher Dye, Lt. Edward Coughlin and Chief Electronics Technician Randy L. Beausoleil—swam underwater to Pier 18, dragging the twenty-pound haversacks of explosive. Surfacing under the pier, they worked their way through the pilings to the other side and then submerged again. Their Draeger rebreathing units gave off no bubbles, but the swimmers had to watch their depth gauges carefully to avoid oxygen poisoning.

  As they neared the Presidente Porras, they did what the frogmen call a shallow-water peek. Coming almost to the surface, they could see well enough in the ambient light to identify the sixty-five-foot-long target. It would not do to set their explosives on one of the control commission craft or a tuna boat tied up nearby.

  As the swimmers reached the patrol boat and moved in to place their charges, the engines suddenly started up. Explosions in the water nearby hammered at their eardrums. They were sure their presence had been detected. But they carefully attached the two packs with their forty pounds of explosives, set the timers for forty-five minutes, and swam away. They were able to come to the surface under a nearby pier and work their way out into the canal, using the pilings to shield themselves from the explosion of grenades in the water.

  Although the swimmers assumed they were the center of all this attention, they almost certainly remained undetected. Instead, an American unit had become engaged in a firefight with the Panamanians on the shore near the pier, and grenades and rockets from that fight were falling into the water.

  By the time the explosives attached to the boat went off, the swimmers were far enough away to be safe, but they were still shaken by the powerful blast. To be on the safe side, Carley had used at least twice as much C-4 as was needed for the job. When divers took a look at the sunken craft after the fighting stopped, they found that both of the boat’s 1,020-horsepower diesel engines had been hurled completely out of the boat.

  The swimmers’ next task was to swim a dogleg—to “box out,” using their compasses—around a string of piers. As they swam out into the canal, they sensed the powerful engines of an approaching ship. They dove toward the bottom, chancing oxygen sickness, as the ship churned by overhead.

  Once clear of the ship and the piers, they swam southward, aided by a strong current, toward the pickup point, a fuel pier near the Bridge of the Americas. Carley and the two boats were waiting there, as promised. But the swimmers were not pleased, when they reached what they thought was a safe haven, to sti
ck their heads out of the water and see tracer bullets flashing overhead from a nearby firefight.

  The four men were uninjured, but they were exhausted. One reason, in addition to the strenuous job they had just completed, was that they were overheated because they had elected to wear wet suits. The water in the canal was warm enough that they could have done without the suits. But they had worn them in rehearsal, and they felt that, the closer the real thing was to the rehearsal, the greater the chance of success.

  In contrast, the men of Team Four, after all their planning and rehearsals for the assault on the Paitilla Airfield, were to find their plans changed at the last moment.

  When they left Little Creek, they assumed Murphy’s Law would be in full sway: if anything could go wrong, it would go wrong. So they allowed extra time at each stage: time for the flight, time to get the boats out of the plane and into the water, time to make sure all the engines started. But almost everything went perfectly. By nine P.M., they were in the water, with H hour not scheduled until one A.M.

  The SEALs, bobbing around in sixteen boats, sat out there for more than three hours. Even for men who train constantly for combat, it was a strange sensation. Little more than twenty-four hours before, they had been at home, having dinner with their wives, helping their children with the homework. And now here they were, sitting in the darkness preparing to go to war.

  About midnight, the radio traffic picked up, and Toohey began moving around from one boat to another, passing on a change in orders he had just received from a command plane. There were two changes: H hour was moved up to 12:45 A.M., and more important, the method for dealing with Noriega’s jet was changed. Instead of moving up to the hangar and using their night-vision scopes to aim at the plane’s nose gear and fuel tanks, the new order required the SEALs to enter the hangar and disable the plane by slashing its tires. As one of the participants says, “That was a major change in the rules of engagement. A little pickup basketball. Not a real good time to tell your troops.”