Anatomy of a Target

By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer | Tuesday, March 25, 2003

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How Ellsworth might be fighting the war

Last week, U.S. and British special forces captured strategically important airfields in western Iraq, but only after B-1B Lancer bombers hit the sites.

On Friday, March 14, at 7:20 a.m. MST — five days before the official start of the war — two B-1B bombers struck the H3 airfield complex about 250 miles west of Baghdad. The bombers also hit another airfield complex nearby, according to the Associated Press.

The Air Force did not say where the B-1Bs were based. Ellsworth Air Force Base has two squadrons of B-1Bs — or 26 aircraft. The other 34 aircraft in the nation's B-1B fleet are based at Dyess AFB, Texas.

Nearly 1,000 Ellsworth personnel and an undisclosed number of Ellsworth B-1Bs are deployed overseas for the war against Iraq.

The Pentagon has not released much information about B-1B missions over Iraq. Reports from wire services, from Internet sites and from the Air Force itself, however, offer a glimpse into the role Ellsworth personnel may be playing in the current war.

Both airfield complexes that B-1Bs hit on March 14 are in a northern no-fly zone. An Air Force photo from around March 14 shows an Ellsworth B-1B taking off from an undisclosed location in southwest Asia. Ellsworth personnel and aircraft are among those assigned to the 405th Air Expeditionary Wing at that base.

The March 14 targets included a mobile early-warning radar and an air-defense command center that the Iraqis recently had moved into a northern no-fly zone, U.S. Central Command said.

B-1Bs can drop satellite-guided 2,000-pound bombs, cluster bombs or 500-pound bombs.

The air attacks apparently also helped pave the way for the assault by the British and American troops who captured H3 and the nearby H2 complex.

Jane's Defence Weekly, an independent publication that reports on military issues, said the assault was by two British Army Special Air Service squadrons, as well as 45 Commando Royal Marines, elements of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division, and a U.S. Delta Force detachment. Helicopters from the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command supported the forces.

H3 originally was built to support an oil-pumping station, but airfields have long histories as military targets, going back to the 1967 Six Day War with Israel.

During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Iraqis stored chemical ammunition in bunkers at the H3 airfield, according U.S. intelligence reports cited by GlobalSecurity.org, a defense think tank often cited by national media.

Coalition aircraft destroyed those bunkers during Operation Desert Storm, but, according to GlobalSecurity.org, U.S. intelligence does not know what happened to the chemical weapons.

Now, another coalition has returned to capture the bases that could be used by U.S. and British forces.

Israelis were particularly relieved this weekend that coalition ground forces had captured H3 and H2, the AP reported. During the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Iraqis launched scuds into Israel from those locations, known then as "the Scud box." After news that the sites had been captured, many Israelis stopped carrying their gas masks, the AP said.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com