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HEADLINE: Two Stryker vehicles being flown directly to 'hot zone'; Backups: First time they've been airlifted to combat area
BYLINE: EIJIRO KAWADA, The News Tribune
BODY:
As thick fog began clearing above McChord Air Force Base, a dew-covered Stryker combat vehicle appeared on the tarmac and approached a C-17 cargo plane for a lift.
Though famous for its durability and speed, the 19-ton Stryker showed its nimble side Monday. Like a commuter showing off his parallel-parking skills, the driver backed it into the belly of the C-17 while lining up its tires within inches of the plane's metal tie-down plates.
This Army-Air Force duet wouldn't be complete without the cargo plane and its crew. If called upon, the C-17 can land in a combat area, unload as many as three Strykers and take off, all in 20 minutes, said Tech. Sgt. Mark Riekena of the 97th Airlift Squadron, Air Force Reserve.
On Monday, Fort Lewis and McChord joined in sending the Army's first pair of backup Strykers to the Middle East since the brigade's 300-plus vehicles shipped out from the Port of Tacoma in October.
This is the first time U.S. forces are transporting Strykers by air to a hostile zone.
The $ 2 million Strykers have seen a wide range of action in Iraq and sustained all kinds of damage: from rocket-propelled grenades and roadside bombs to taking a tumble into an irrigation canal. Most of the eight-wheeled troop carriers have returned to service.
The Stryker brigade commander, Col. Mike Rounds, requested the extra vehicles, said Capt. Tim Beninato, a Fort Lewis spokesman. One of the two, a reconnaissance vehicle, is set to replace another Stryker that was destroyed about 1 1/2 months ago after a loose hose in the engine compartment started a fire. The other Stryker, a medical vehicle, will be held in reserve as a "floater."
Before the aircraft took off Monday, Army officials spoke of their confidence in the Strykers, which are being battle-tested for the first time in Iraq.
"They are performing at their expectations," said Maj. Shawn Phelps, the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division rear detachment commander.
He noted how Strykers in the last few weeks withstood rocket-propelled grenade attacks as they were designed to. On Jan. 30, a round struck above a vehicle's improvised slat armor cage, cutting a hose. Crew members received only minor injures and drove the vehicle out of danger. Two days later, another Stryker was hit by an RPG in its slat armor on the right front side and kept moving under its own power.
Two Strykers that accidentally overturned in a canal on Dec. 8, killing three infantrymen inside, will be refurbished after replacement of electrical equipment, Phelps said.
Staff Sgt. Matt Conover was one of three soldiers who waited in a large, empty warehouse before flying out with the Strykers on Monday. He's with the brigade's 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment.
"I've driven Humvees and Bradleys (Bradley Fighting Vehicles), and this is by far the best vehicle," said Conover, who's been training to drive since October 2002. "It's a lot quieter and (more) maneuverable."
Conover said he was ready to deploy with the rest of the brigade in November but was held back for health reasons.
The C-17 will fly into an unspecified location in the Middle East after stopping in Germany to swap crews. The two Strykers will be unloaded directly into the combat theater, which is a new way of doing business, said Maj. Anna Sullivan, an Air Force Reserve spokeswoman.
She said the Air Force used to airlift combat vehicles into bases at so-called strategic areas, such as Germany. The vehicles then would be reloaded onto another cargo plane, which would take them wherever they were needed.
Nowadays, "C-17s and Strykers can go directly into the hot zone," Sullivan said.
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HEADLINE: Truck's armor proves it can take a punch; Direct hits: Four rocket-propelled grenade attacks, and one minor injury
BYLINE: MICHAEL GILBERT, The News Tribune
BODY:
MOSUL, Iraq - For a while, Capt. A.J. Newtson considered removing the slat armor cages from his company's Stryker infantry carriers. The big steel cages make it tough to maneuver the vehicles through some of Mosul's narrow streets.
Then two of his trucks got hit by rocket-propelled grenades.
"We're going to keep it," said Newtson, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment's Charger Company.
The cages, so far, are working as advertised. Strykers have come through four RPG hits with no major damage. One soldier was injured - a small shrapnel cut on his face.
Soldiers on board say they were able to absorb the shock of the blast, quickly recover their senses and keep on fighting.
Spc. Steven Bentz was driving his vehicle, Charlie 2-2, the morning of Jan. 30 when it was hit in the Domiz neighborhood in southeast Mosul. The round came in from close range - less than 100 yards.
"It was too fast. I didn't even have time to tell anyone it was coming," Bentz said. The explosion slammed his head against the bulkhead inside his driver's compartment, but it didn't knock him out.
It was a direct hit, right in front of him.
Officials at first believed the grenade skipped over the slat armor, but now they're convinced it detonated when it hit the cage.
The blast sent shards of shrapnel flying across the angled front of the vehicle, knocking out both headlights and penetrating a seam just above the engine compartment, Newtson said.
The metal cut a coolant hose, but Bentz and others on his vehicle didn't realize that until 90 minutes or so later, after they'd joined the other three Strykers in their platoon as they tried to find the shooter.
Charlie 2-2 vehicle commander Sgt. Brent Benjamin had a shot at the attacker's getaway car, but his Mk 19 grenade launcher malfunctioned three times.
"It ka-chinked," said Sgt. David Rudge, one of 2nd squad's two team leaders.
Newtson attributed the weapon's failure to the fact there is no local range where soldiers can test-fire the grenade launcher. The weapon occasionally produces a dud round, and Army commanders in Mosul haven't yet built a firing range where they're willing to risk adding to the already large volume of unexploded munitions in the fields around the city.
After the smoke cleared, the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Francisco Pinedo, fired his M-4 rifle at men he saw running from the end of the alley where the RPG was fired. The shooters got away.
Pinedo was standing in the squad leader's hatch, just to the left of the grenade launcher, and got hit with a small piece of shrapnel just left of his nose.
He bled like he cut himself shaving, Newtson said, but doctors later determined it would do more harm than good trying to remove the metal from his cheek.
For his trouble he was awarded the Purple Heart on Sunday and was among the first batch of Stryker brigade soldiers heading home for midtour leave.
Rudge was standing in one of the rear hatches.
"I heard this big bang - it happened so fast - and there was debris flying over my head," he said. "I felt the vehicle shake, and the next thing I know Sgt. Pinedo was firing. I didn't really know what happened."
Benjamin felt the shake from his position in the vehicle commander's seat next to Pinedo.
"There was a cloud of smoke covering me. I determined the driver was OK, the smoke cleared and we moved out," he said.
Bentz said that about an hour and a half later the vehicle's temperature gauge started to rise. Newtson decided to have the vehicle towed back to the company's base camp rather than risk any damage to the engine.
Bentz said he doesn't have bad dreams about his close encounter, although he had a pretty good headache for the next day or so. He said he's lucky he had his driver's hatch closed. He often drives with it open because it's easier to see that way.
But the periscopes that circle the hatch - they're a series of small but thick glass windows - were specked by shrapnel that would have hit him had he not had the hatch down, he said.
The Army added the 5,200-pound slat armor cages to the vehicles after the brigade arrived in Kuwait in November to enhance their protection against RPGs, the most common anti-armor weapon in the world. They are widespread throughout Iraq.
Newtson said RPGs typically contain a shape charge that blows a hole in its target when it makes contact with a solid surface, such as the side of a vehicle. When the nose of the round hits the target, it starts a secondary motor inside the round that shoots a hot metal core through the hole created by the shape charge.
The slat armor defeats the shape charge by detonating it against the rails of the cage, rather than the wall of the vehicle, and stops it from creating the hole for the hot rocket-powered core to penetrate.
The slats also apparently stopped the RPG that hit Charlie 1-2 three days later.
The crew from Charger Company's 1st Platoon was just wrapping up a security detail near Mosul's southernmost bridge after deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz's walking tour on the other side of the Tigris River.
The three other vehicles had all made U-turns and were ready to roll out when the RPG hit Charlie 1-2 at the front right side, said the squad leader, Staff Sgt. Chris Maxwell. He was in the left forward hatch.
Traffic was heavy and there were a lot of people in the streets, he and other crew members said.
The blast hit Maxwell hard, he said, ripping his communications helmet off his head and sending him falling down into the hatch.
"I got the hell knocked out of me," he said. But it lasted only a few seconds, and then he was back up in the hatch with his weapon, looking for the guys who did it.
"All the vehicles around were flooring it forward and in reverse, people were down and running in every direction," he said. "There were too many people, too many vehicles - no way of telling who to shoot at."
Spc. Adam Rawson was in the left rear hatch, farthest from the explosion. It knocked him backward, but he got down in the hatch and then popped back up looking for the shooters.
Sgt. Jeff Kissler was in the right rear hatch watching the crowd, checking to make sure the vehicle didn't hit any elderly Iraqi women as it backed up. They tend to not be afraid of the military, he said, and will walk right up close to the Strykers as they pass by.
"My eyes were just coming back to the direction where the round came from," he said. "It tore up the vehicle's drip pan (mounted on the side), because there was plastic flying everywhere.
"At first I thought it was an IED (improvised explosive device) because there was debris all over me. But I saw the puff of smoke where it was fired from."
The round was fired from about 100 to 150 yards away, from an alley across the busy street.
There's a bend in the slats where the RPG hit and part of it passed through. It hit the steel tab where the vehicle's tow bar is mounted for storage, then followed along the side of the truck until it stopped in a cargo rack.
And as was the case with Charlie 2-2, the vehicle had been stationary for some time before it was attacked.
"They had to be watching us for at least a half-hour," Kissler said.
In one of the other two RPG hits, a round apparently put a fist-sized dent in one of the rear gas tanks of a B Company, 2-3 Stryker on Feb. 6 but did no further damage. Officials think it must have been a dud.
And Lt. Col. Gordie Flowers, the 2-3 battalion commander, said one more of his vehicles was hit in a wheel but sustained only a bent rim.
Spc. Joseph Horton, the Charlie 2-2 driver, was part of the work detail back at Camp Udairi in Kuwait that had to help contractors install the slat armor. It was a pain in the neck - the armor's heavy, and the job took nearly all day working in the garage.
These days he figures it was time well-spent.
"It did its job," he said. "Keep it on."
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HEADLINE: With gunman's help, Geraldo again becomes subject of story; Mosul: Fox News celebrity's convoy shot up, with about 11 rounds hitting his vehicle
BYLINE: MICHAEL GILBERT, The News Tribune
BODY:
MOSUL, Iraq - Geraldo Rivera arrived at the Task Force Olympia and Stryker brigade headquarters Saturday.
His first broadcast was about himself.
The Fox News celebrity went live to tell viewers how his convoy was shot up by a gunman who stepped out of a white Volkswagen Passat and opened fire with an AK-47. The attack occurred shortly before 3 p.m. local time just as Rivera's group was nearing the task force headquarters at the Mosul presidential palace.
One of Rivera's drivers, Hussein Ali Fahjar, was grazed on the upper left arm and suffered glass shrapnel in his right wrist. He was treated at an Army hospital at the Mosul airfield and rejoined his colleagues a couple of hours later.
The convoy of three sport utility vehicles and a minibus all appeared to have been struck. Rivera said at least 11 rounds hit his white Toyota Landcruiser, which was the second in line.
He said he was seated behind the driver. One round shattered the side panel window behind him and hit a bullet-resistant panel inside - 12 inches or so from his head.
"This one would've got me but you can see here it's bullet-proof," Rivera said.
Fahjar was driving the lead vehicle, a blue Suburban. The driver's door window was shattered and there were several bullet holes in the windshield.
The attack occurred not long after another drive-by shooting at the front gate to the palace compound. About 2:45 p.m. a gunman fired at the gate from the partially rolled-down window of a blue Opel.
The rounds flew high over the gate, some of them striking a four-story building on the compound about 200 yards from the gate.
Stryker brigade soldiers at the gate fired on the Opel, striking the front passenger-side door at least three times before the car drove off. Officials said they don't know if the rounds hit anyone inside the car. Rivera's team of technicians, assistants and security men apparently did not return fire on their attacker.
Task force and brigade officials had been awaiting Rivera's visit with some trepidation. Nobody in the Army has forgotten about his "lines-in-the-sand" broadcast last spring when he was traveling with the 101st Airborne Division as it fought its way across southern Iraq.
Rivera agreed to leave Iraq rather than have the Army kick him out for revealing operational details when he sketched a rough map in the dirt of the 101st's position and avenues of attack on live TV.
But that was then.
On Saturday, the brigade parked a Stryker outside the palace headquarters that Rivera used as the opening backdrop for his live shot. And somebody put out handbills promoting his one-hour live broadcast scheduled for 6 a.m. today.
Fahjar was taken to the aid station and his wounds assessed. Stryker brigade surgeon Maj. John Glorioso recommended that he be taken to the hospital at the airfield for X-rays, and offered to arrange for security forces to accompany the vehicle in Rivera's party that would make the trip.
But Rivera's team didn't want to move any of its bullet-riddled vehicles - they were going to be in the live shot.
So Glorioso, a bit exasperated, arranged for Fahjar to be driven the six miles to the hospital in an armored Hum-vee with two escort vehicles for security.
"If he has glass fragments in his joint it could get infected and he could lose his hand," Glorioso said.
Meantime, as the 5:30 p.m. live broadcast neared, Rivera and his producer put out the word to the soldiers who'd gathered to watch the spectacle and take pictures: no funny business when he's on live.
"Those cameras are going to have to be out of sight when we come over there," Rivera told the soldiers.
"And no smiling," said his producer. "No mugging for the camera, please!"
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HEADLINE: Lots of firepower allows Wolfowitz to stroll Mosul safely; No attacks: Fort Lewis troops protect deputy defense boss
BYLINE: MICHAEL GILBERT, The News Tribune
BODY:
MOSUL, Iraq - The last time Paul Wolfowitz ventured to Iraq, the guerrillas rocketed his Baghdad hotel.
For the deputy defense secretary's visit to Mosul on Monday, it fell to the Stryker brigade's 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment to make sure there was no repeat of the Oct. 26 rocket attack that killed an American officer and injured 15 others.
Mission accomplished. With nearly a company of Stryker infantrymen watching his back (and front and sides), Wolfowitz strolled along several blocks downtown, stopping in to say hello to local leaders at police headquarters, city hall and the courthouse.
But just across the Tigris River, insurgents struck another Stryker vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade. And for the second time in three days, the vehicle took the hit with little damage and no serious injuries.
"On this side of the river we're out in force and there's no trouble," said Lt. Col. Buck James, the 1-23 commander. "Across the river, 500 meters away, a smaller element gets ambushed with small-arms and RPG fire.
"It's still a dangerous, dangerous place."
The attack occurred about 10:45 a.m. as a convoy from C Company of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment patrolled its eastern half of the city.
The vehicle was along a main road leading to the second-southernmost of the city's five spans across the Tigris when it was struck by the RPG in the right front side.
Brigade officials said the grenade struck the heavy metal "slat armor" fence installed around the vehicle as protection against this very threat. It worked, taking the sting out of the round before it could penetrate the vehicle's hull and injure the soldiers inside, officials said.
The Stryker continued moving under its own power. Initial reports were that the RPG was fired by a man who fled with others in a small red sedan. The vehicle and gunmen got away.
The attack occurred out of sight and out of earshot of the Wolfowitz party, which included the deputy secretary and his aides, his security team and a contingent from the news media. On the ground, they followed a script the 1-23 had sketched out over the previous couple of days.
Sketched out, that is, with suggestions from higher bosses at the brigade and the 101st Airborne Division, which for a few days more is still the boss in northern Iraq.
The 101st insisted that the brigade's noisy OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopters not hover directly over the area where Wolfowitz would be walking the town.
Orchestrating the battalion's movements behind the scenes was Maj. Adam Rocke, the 1-23's operations officer, at its riverfront command center in the middle of downtown Mosul. They've named it Camp Blickenstaff, after Spc. Joseph Blickenstaff, one of three battalion soldiers killed Dec. 8 when two Strykers fell into an irrigation canal near Duluiyah.
Rocke and his team monitored five radio channels and tracked progress on a checklist of 37 distinct events in the operation.
Once he received word that Comanche Company had loaded up all the VIPs at the Mosul presidential palace compound, Rocke scratched the item - code name Bunny - off his list.
When the convoy crossed the river, he checked code name Christina. And so it went right on through Chloe, Daisy, Daria, Demi, Dixie and Ellen.
Rocke said they give the events code names so that commanders don't have to repeat a whole lot of information that can easily be confused on the radio.
"Instead, they can just say, 'you, this is me, we're at Betty,' and everybody knows what you're talking about," Rocke said.
Out on the street, soldiers from Comanche Company cordoned off several square blocks where Wolfowitz went during his roughly hourlong visit. They allowed traffic through on some routes but saturated the area with well over 100 infantrymen.
They emplaced snipers and kept the Kiowas hovering - discreetly - just a few minutes away.
"This is easy compared to our regular daily mission," said the Comanche commander, Capt. Duane Patin. "I think we did a good job of keeping it under wraps that he was coming this time.
"But we've got a lot of firepower here on the ground if anybody was going to try anything."
After their walk, the deputy secretary and his entourage boarded a half-dozen UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters at the 1-23's headquarters for the short hop over to the next stop: Village of Hope, a new residential area for Iraqis displaced by the war.
The battalion's Apache Company picked up the security mission from there.
Afterward, Apache turned to its next job: recovering a fairly large cache of weapons and ammunition found within the outer perimeter of a U.S. base camp. Local children led them to the find. They recovered a 60 mm mortar tube with a brand new sight and more than 50 rounds, plus another 21 83 mm mortars, 69 grenades, five mines, three battery-operated detonators and other weapons, brigade officials said.
Insurgents fire a mortar or two every few days or so at the base camp, known as Camp Strike, and the U.S. forces at nearby Mosul Airfield.
Wolfowitz's choice of days to visit made things a little easier on the security forces. The streets were a bit quieter than usual as many Muslims stayed at home to celebrate the Eid al-Adha, or feast of sacrifice.
And quieter, for sure, than on Saturday, when a car bomb exploded outside a Mosul police station, killing nine Iraqi police. Or than Friday, when insurgents fired RPGs at Strykers four times, hitting one. That Stryker sustained minor damage to a coolant hose and the vehicle commander suffered a superficial cut on his cheek from flying debris.
"There are days when it's quiet," said James, the 1-23 commander, "and there are days when all hell breaks loose."
Edited by - viperttb on Feb 29 2004 7:14 PM
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