The Battle of 73 Easting In The Gulf War | Greatest Tank Battles | War Stories

The bleak and foreboding desert of southern Iraq is a place of sudden and violent sandstorms, but today we will see it torn apart by a different kind of storm. They attack them with

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bullets. You see the explosions. I dropped inside. Look. Through my commander site I was finally impressed with the enemy, the US 2nd Armored Cavalry is on a collision course with the Iraqi Republican Guard Taaka Division. They see themselves as great warriors who are expected to stand and fight and even die so that others can live. two

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armies clash in a remote stretch of desert this is the Battle of '73 Eastern Armored War at its most intense this was probably the last major tank

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of the 20th century February 24, 1991 American tanks cross the desert of Saudi Arabia towards the border with Iraq are part of a multinational force with a clear and simple mission to expel Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army from Kuwait exiting Iraq's war with Iran Saddam has two problems, he has a large army with nothing to do actually, the other.

The problem he has is that he has devastated Iraq's economy as a result of the Iran-Iraq war, so when you're Saddam Hussein and you need money, when you need it, you do what comes naturally to you: rob the piggy bank next door. and, in this case, that piggy bank was waiting Iraqi armor and infantry invaded the oil-rich Emirate in just 36 hours Saddam ignores UN demand for an immediate withdrawal and UN sends US-led coalition of 620,000 United to show him that they are serious Saddam realized that he was a little in over his head, but in Saddam's mind the great weakness of the United States was in its inability to suffer casualties, he assumed that it would be very similar to the Iran-Iraq war, it would be a hit fest between these two sides and in the end, the Americans would shout "Uncle" first, so the strategy being presented is designed to cause the most casualties to the United States and at the same time absorb the slightest damage to their own forces.

He dug out the bulk of the Iraqi army, 51 of 66 divisions. and buried them deeply Saddam deploys 16 infantry divisions and two armored cores along the Saudi border to absorb the brunt of the Coalition attack keeps his best fighters in reserve eight divisions of the Republican guard 1,000 tanks and 120,000 men are prepared to attack counterattack massively and inflict devastating casualties on the advancing Coalition, the plan to defend Kuwait that they actually employed was actually the only one available to them and the problem they had was that the Coalition was not going to play by their rules. I do not think it is possible for the coalition to advance further west;

There is a desert out there without roads and the Iraqis did not believe that the Americans could advance further to the West because the Iraqis themselves whenever they tried to operate in that desert they got terribly lost. There were no terrain features, there were no roads, it was impossible to maneuver there and the only thing What the Iraqis did not know was that at that time there was a new technology called the global positioning system, it is the The first GPS warfare satellite technology allows the coalition to cross into Iraq well west of the main Iraqi defensive line, setting the stage for an attack on his unprotected right flank.

At 1:00 p.m., the US 7th Corps breaks the sandy area that marks the border between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Arabia, we had a platoon of scops with us with these 25,000 watt speakers on top of Humvees. They were there to broadcast calls for surrender but I made them play Ride of the VES as we crossed the Burm towards a rock, it's great to see. but there was nothing our unit was moving north and east and it didn't really hit much, I mean, yeah, we did. We had some reconnaissance units that we ran into, but after a couple of shots fired at us they gave up. there was an Iraqi army that was desperately unhappy and really just wanted to get home, these weren't top-notch troops from Iraq, they were mostly Shiite recruits, uh, who were recruited during the Iran-Iraq war and kept in the army since they were. desperate to get out of the army and massive American formations would run into these small Iraqi units, these forces would fire on you, you would quickly overwhelm them and then you would see the white flags come out and take a large number of prisoners, this is what the main armored force of the Coalition found on the first day of its climactic turn around the Iraqi army's right flank: Seventh Core armor is pushing deeper and deeper into Iraq, but at a snail's pace, cautious Force commanders order rolling shutdowns and what basically they made.

It was said, do you know what happens if we go east? We'll simply use the east lines and all the north-south grid lines as our methods of controlling your rate of progress. It was almost like we were crawling. It was not so. lightning fast was very slow, ok we moved a few clicks and then stopped, I mean a 50 ton vehicle, all this ammo, I can drive 40 and 50 something thousand an hour and you're telling me to stop you. I know the enemy is that way. I need to move forward. There was no one ahead to see anything to make a personal assessment.

There were no patent, uh, raml, Garian guys stopping by my tank and saying, "Well, major, what do you think?" By the end of the second day, the initial surprise and strategic advantage of the flanking maneuver is lost and the Iraqis realize that the American Seventh Core is about to isolate and surround their forces in Kuwait. It is at this point that the Iraqi general staff actually demonstrates a degree of competence, they recognize what is going on, and what's more, they realize how easily American formations have been destroying Iraqi formations throughout the country. the theater of operations, that if they are going to stop the US 7th Corps they will not be able to throw ashes. and smash some weak formations in front of it and allow their best units to escape, instead they will have to put their best formations in front of those American divisions.

The Iraqis hold firm in a defensive line that extends 90 kilometers along Kuwait's northwestern border. Two infantry divisions and two armored divisions of the Republican Guard will defend the northern half of the line in the south and directly on the road. of the American advance are the cream of Saddam's armored forces the southern half of the Iraqi Republican Guard line is manned by the taak Allah Allah division, which means an Arab in God whom we trust and see themselves like great warriors. Warriors who defended their nation for 8 years and finally defeated Iran, the Persian threat, and saw themselves as Republican Guards as the best of the best in Iraq.

Elite professional warriors, not recruits who were expected to fight and even die so that others could live. We respected them, we knew they were capable of serious destruction and we knew there were a lot of them, they received tons and tons of equipment which we respect, we are really worried about their armored vehicles and of course our biggest fear was the t72 tank. The Soviet t72 known in Iraq as the Lion of Babylon is the backbone of the Iraqi armored core. Its 125mm main cannon can destroy. targets over 1,800 M away, it is a 41-ton monster covered in armor that is 300 mm thick in some places, but can reach a speed of 60 kmph, making the T72 one of the heavy tanks fastest and deadliest in the world and sedam has more than 1,000 of them deployed along the republican guard defensive line supported by hundreds of armored vehicles including the soviet designed BMP the republican guard appears ready To confront all those heading straight for them is the seventh core of the American Le with hundreds of M2 Bradley Fighting vehicles and more than 1,000 tanks, the most powerful of which is the M1 A1 Abrams main

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The ab rooms are armed with a 120mm high velocity cannon and protected by composite armor that is as strong as 60cm of pure steel. It is 1 and 1/2 times heavier than the t72 but just as fast, making it the most powerful tank on the battlefield at the end of the day February 25, these two armored forces are only 14 km apart On the morning of the 26th, very early, maybe at 4:30 5:00 I don't remember precisely, we suddenly received a change of orders and essentially found and destroyed the Republican Guard for all intents and purposes. It got to a point in the late morning and early afternoon where you couldn't see more than maybe 20 30 yards, suddenly we're about to go into combat against the only real enemy we had practiced defeating and suddenly our visibility is terrible, but the Abrams is up to the job, it has a thermal imaging system that can identify the heat signatures of potential targets even in the worst conditions, so we are moving with this very limited visibility and we begin to identify some hot spots as mcmaster's platoon approaches the 73rd, east of a longitude line on the map, and encounters a taala division ahead.

The outpost is manned by infantry with anti-tank guns and rocket-propelled grenades and it was at this point that we received enemy fire for the first time. We realized that we were parallel to a road running east, right in the enemy's position, the Battle of 73 East of the last great tank battle of the 20th century is about to take place on February 26, 1991. It has been 2 days since the US-led International Coalition invades southern Iraq in an attempt to outflank Iraqi forces and drive them out of nearby Kuwait in response to the Iraqis establishing a defensive screen deploying five Republican Guard divisions from Saddam Hussein's elite, including the fully mechanized Taala division, just west of the map, reference 73, to the east, the US 2nd Armored Cavalry, the spearhead, the Forward Coalition makes contact with the Republican Guard and was At this point I first received fire from the enemy.

Then I raise our nine tanks in a line, we are all oriented in this village. I give this troop fire command of the village. Direct front to front one round. Heat at my command. Report ready, which means everyone load up a heat round. Look at that. Village chooses your aiming points on enemy positions and when they are ready we will fire nine simultaneous rounds from the main gun in the center. I fire one round before marking the center with a tank warm-up round. Green says Done and white says ready. I say fire nine rounds from the tank's main cannon that hit simultaneously.

Now we receive the order to continue their movement towards the East and it is at that point that I have this feeling, you know, I have this feeling that we are about to make contact, you know. with the defending enemy force and made the decision to enter a tank lead formation, which means positioning the Abrams tanks in a rolling wedge with the more vulnerable Bradley fighting vehicles hidden behind for protection. This formation places Mcmaster's big guns forward ready for whatever comes. Then my tank approaches that ridge and again I remember that it is a sand storm, true, you can't see very far, but it is if the sand storm has just lifted.

I mean, as soon as we got to that ridge, there was some strange environmental factor, but it was like the curtain went up and what I faced Fred was the enemy defensive position, they were deployed in a reverse slope position, which is designed to minimize the amount of time and distance an attacking Force actually has before it can begin firing. Unfortunately, the defenders did not have the sophisticated optical and fire control systems of the US M1 tanks, making their thinking completely obsolete. I could see eight enemy tanks in defensive positions and I said shoot, shoot Sabo, which means we had a heat round in and that means the next round with that gun will be a Sabo tank, you know, armored that defeats the Abrams tank that It carries two types of high-velocity munitions, the Sabo, an armor-piercing dart made with high-density depleted uranium, and the anti-high explosive. -tank around a shaped charge projectile that can penetrate heavy armor, but we attack that first tank with a fireball that ejects the tank commander and then finally there is a secondary explosion that blows up the turret of that tank which my gunner crosses to the left.

Additionally, we can destroy three tanks when our tank hits the first leading edge of the minefield. I looked to the right and saw what looked like explosions to the left, in front of the mcm tank and I couldn't tell ifIt was minutes or game of artillery fire and my gunner Dewey Jones speaks up and says "Holy crap, look at this and I dropped in. I looked through my commander site and said, oh yeah, I was finally impressed with the enemy, here where you meet Rose, literally 10". 15 tanks spread out to the front and you could see the guns on the tanks moving and I imagine that since they were manual T-72s, the poor Republican Guard was there busy turning to point the guns at us and suddenly, My tank went into a minefield and this thing shook the 70 ton tank, a fireball went by and knocked me to the floor of the turret and luckily my driver was very tenacious so what the hell was that? and I said, don't worry about it.

I kept driving as we left the minefield, we had a couple of tanks in front, it was sir. I have tanks in front and I'm looking at the damn tank we're about to take. Under fire and the gunner hesitated. Sir, I can shoot, I can shoot soon, for God's sake, we fired, we moved on to the next shot and meanwhile I could see that the eagle troop was taking a huge number of vehicles under fire. Initially there was great disorientation on the Iraqi side. because they just assumed that it couldn't be American tanks attacking them, it had to be a plane, but even after they realized that, they still had a hard time getting into their vehicle in time because they didn't realize how fast the Americans were closing in on them. they.

The American armored forces charged using speed to simply try to disorient the Iraqis and it worked, the Iraqis could not imagine such large and powerful armored forces moving towards them as fast as they were. It is a tactic developed by General Irwin Raml, the great German tank commander of World War III and the M1 A1 Abrams is ideal for this type of warfare, the weapon stays pointed at the target, it has a stabilized geost system and, I mean , you could be moving at 40 or 50 km per hour, going over bumps, shooting and then impact. effect of a 70-ton machine throwing an obstacle at you.

I believe this is the blow from which the enemy could never recover. We were now at the top of their command post and entered their Reserve position and as in typical Soviet doctrine, they had put their Tank Reserve as a coil, but we moved too fast, they couldn't get out of their coil in time , they were just starting their engines. I looked at an enemy tank commander, he looked over his shoulder at me. I could see the expression on his face and and. We engaged that tank at very close range and you couldn't tell the difference between the enemy tank being hit and our gun being fired and just big chunks of metal BL Sparks appeared over our heads again and then the rest of our tanks appeared. and we destroyed these tanks in their assembly the Iraqis, you know, had established a pretty solid defense, I mean, it was a reverse slope defense, I had a reserve, I had a counterattack plan, I had a minefield to disrupt our movement, but the fatal flaw was that we were surprised despite the best efforts of the Iraqis Eagle tro ravages the position killing hundreds of Iraqis and destroying over 50 tanks and armored vehicles it is the first round of a furious tank battle that will soon be fought in A much larger front of 8 km to the north, the ghost troops of the 2nd Armored Cavalry slowly make their way through the blinding sandstorm in the reduced visibility, they have lost contact with the ghost troops of the Eagle troop.

The commander sends two lightning bolts to the Bradley armored reconnaissance vehicles to reestablish contact. I tell the driver to start slowing down because I'm starting to see these little objects, but what could they be? I mean, you're in the middle of the desert, so I immediately thought these are vehicles, but my main concern, of course, is whether I'm going to go. connect with Eagle, that maybe it's Eagle, maybe it's not and I see all these people coming out of nowhere from the ground and then you see this plume of diesel and immediately followed by this BMF John, a t72 tank backing out of a hole, Ah.

That must be the enemy. Now I'm seeing a lot of activity. The tourists start moving around and I think, "Oh, where's Eagle?" February 26, 1991, 4:00 p.m. The Eagle and Ghost troops of the 2nd US Armored Cavalry have become separated in a sandstorm. Two Bradley fighting vehicles. Ghost troops have been sent to reestablish visual contact between the two tank units, but they run into a platoon of Iraqi T72 tanks, so I tell the driver to stop at this small hill and as soon as he reaches the stop , he says: front Roger understood thank you and uh he says no there is no tank in our immediate front he says I see it no no you don't understand that there is a tank in our front and I just get up, I push myself out of that turret and I look down, I'm going, I'll be down, well what happened is I didn't realize that the little mound of dirt I told him to stop from was a T72.

I just grabbed the commander and mounted Max, deflected the 25mm Canon and then told him: I know we're scouts, we don't go toe-to-toe with tanks. We need to back up a little. Now I see all these busy turrets starting to move and I'm like, "Oh, where is it?" going back I'm going back where am I going to go? Okay, I lift the missile up, so I put it on this t72 which shows me this beautiful right profile. The Wonder Gunner missile tank is right in front and I can. I don't identify this is this, this could be Eagle Tru and I'm just saying, how could you miss it?

It's bigger than a barn door, what do you mean you can't see this? I said, go to Clear Channel, he goes, turns around, takes it off, thermals, identifies t72 tank a fire the toone missile is Bradley's most powerful and accurate weapon. It is guided by cables that allow the gunner to direct it towards the target even at distances up to 3000 M. Now I realize that there are like eight of them in this immediate vicinity in This time I'm thinking, okay, all these guys know I'm here and they're probably a little mad about it, so I go to the Gunner missile tank, it's marked and I say F and I see this missile come out of the launcher.

It passes right by my weapon and you fall to the desert floor. I'm like H mhm mhm um uh misfire misfire at that moment my partner opens a missile and it flies at this thing that was lighting up, then it occurred to me that we both have fired our two missiles and we both have in front at least eight T72 tanks. Mayweather says: Hey, I need to reload the drill, so I told Rog we've got you covered and told him to get started. I wonder, okay, whatever we do, we're going to keep going. shooting and shooting until we can't shoot anymore he starts firing a 25mm cannon at him it's bouncing off the turret I had my gunner he's like sir bouncing it's bouncing off you we're just pissing him off and my intention was to look better. that my partner who stays there, you know, basically naked.

I'm thinking right. I wonder how long it will take for that gunner in Commander to shoot me while I'm sitting there aiming a 25mm cannon at him. The M2 Bradley is a reconnaissance vehicle. Designed for mobility rather than heavy combat, it is equipped with a 25mm main cannon capable of firing high-explosive rounds, but to increase its speed and range, it protects Ed with only 25mm of armor. The Bradley is no match for the powerful t72. At that moment my partner reported almost instantly that he checked that tank with a missile that probably saved my life, so out of the sand storm and a large amount of smoke now on the battlefield emerged a pair of Bradleys from the Eagle troop slowly approach me from the right and stop. next to me and shouts at the top of his lungs there are tanks there I come I know in just a few minutes Haynes and his partner destroy no less than five T-72s, but this is just one strong point in an Iraqi defensive line that extends along a 90 km front that is in places 10 km deep to the north, the ghost troop continues through the sandstorm without realizing that they are moments from coming into contact with the main line of Iraqi defense, we are advancing slowly and when I say slowly I mean almost as fast as a man can walk and when you're in a tank you have tracking pads, we were going slow enough that you could really feel the individual track trails hitting the ground, we have a uh, a little bit of wind.

We change and we can see something in front of us, we saw heads come out and we thought what it was, they were in a bunker and they felt the movement of the armored vehicle, the bunker is barely recognizable because it is cold, but when the bodies come out. of that, they're red hot, they're glowing, they're so white in your background and so they're running from one lump to another, but I can tell if they're coming out of something running towards something that's probably a vehicle when the cloth the soldiers finally realize there is a major attack on them, they leave Le to his tanks, get into their tanks and armored fighting vehicles and fight the problem they have to begin with as best they can. is that the Americans are shooting at them at distances they cannot respond to.

I told the gunner to shoot the vehicle immediately, followed about a second later by a G six heat round, so we shot it and this thing. It exploded and then the next thing I know, you know, my other tank platoon has seen things similar to what I was seeing and they started attacking now you have the dark or black smoke mixed in from the vehicle that was just destroyed, it's hot. , you can see people. and things moving behind it, so I called my real commander and said, Hey sir, there's something beyond that smoke that wasn't a single vehicle.

I want permission to go up and poke my nose through the smoke. He said yes, okay. Roger makes sense, so these. Four tanks of andies just disappear through the black smoke and then it's just absolute armageddon. I can see gunshots throughout the entire process. I don't know if he's friendly. I don't know if you know they're being attacked and I. I'm trying to talk to Andy on the net and as I watch this, you know he's fine Captain, what are you going to do now? On February 26, 1991, the remote desert of southern Iraq erupts in a fierce tank battle between the US Second Armored Cavalry and the taaka mechanized division of the Iraqi Republican Guard Captain H.R.

McMaster the men of the Eagle Troop They have destroyed an entire company of Iraqi t72 tanks now Lt. Andy Kilgore and the ghost troop are about to experience their own baptism of fire at that moment the seventh core was for M1 Abram tanks there were 110,000 soldiers behind me there was no one in front of me he I'm Pok through the smoke we realized we had the ACC company defense spread out in front I was he was in them he was in their assembly area I mean he was in and between these guys I mean basically it's like you know he opened the front door and started shooting.

The t72 is a pretty good tank by the time it is developed, but it was developed in the 1970s, it has good armor, but it is very very outclassed by the M1 ABS tank, which is superior in every category imaginable, its armor can withstand whatever the t72 has to throw at it, while the t72 opens up, uh, like a hot knife through butter. The Soviets had a different theory about storage. of ammo than the Americans, they basically have the ammo stored around their hull, so if you make the ammo explode on a t72 or any Russian tank, all that explosive force is funneled through the turret, the ghost troop fires repeatedly until the Iraqi tank company is nearly destroyed, but the men of the TOA division will not surrender.

They saw themselves as the best of Iraq's best elite. They handled their doctors. They drove their vehicles. They fought hard. They did not surrender and died fighting in many. In some cases, the Americans had to kill every member of an Iraqi squad or platoon to get these guys to stop fighting. I'm looking and I can see past my partner to my platoon sergeant and I see an acki jump in front of him. with an RPG, Rocky is probably 50m in front of the tank, he turned the gun towards the top. Aim at the gunner, very excited to see a guy aiming an RPG at him directly instead of turning the coax, he just pulls the trigger and goes into what it looked like. to me over Center Mass with a hot 120mm projectile or so in the center of the guy's chest it looked like he had imploded.

The guy's body is simply picked up and thrown away like a leaf in just a few minutes. Tenant Kilgore's platoon kills dozens. of Iraqis and destroyed four tanks and nine armored vehicles when I finally destroyed all the vehicles we could see I went back up to a network of troops called in a report to the troop commander who was not very happy with Lieutenant Kilgore at that time since there had been compromised state duringa few minutes and I didn't report. I said do you ever do something like that. You know I'll put a bullet in you myself, but it turned out that, in retrospect, that was absolutely the right thing to do.

Move that smoke forward because it basically took the initiative away from the enemy, despite heavy losses, the Iraqis will not give up and will launch a counterattack in an attempt to stop the advance of the ghost troops. We got to the point where we were on 73 east, where we started. When engaging, we're moving and I'm so focused on what's happening, I'm in the moment and all of a sudden I'm thrown moving, I'm thrown into the turret of my vehicle and I'm like, Damn it just happened and what I'm looking at is that. I look at my gunner and he's yelling at me and I can't hear him because I have headphones on and I finally put him on the interc.

Why did you do that? He says sir, there is our rudder Landing right next to our vehicle and you didn't even notice, you were sticking your head completely out of the vehicle, you said you didn't see those rounds. I told him I had no idea what that was. It happened because I was so focused on what was happening on the radio, what was happening with all the other things, that's how intense it is, just go, go, go, they saw that we were attacking from their flank, so they tried to move. Go out and go around our flank, but what that ended up doing was it gave us a lot of silhouettes moving along our front and the crazy thing is that when we go to Artillery we practice with moving targets to look like that when that happened.

What I did was mix two tanks and give them to the scalp platoon and the scalp plon would give two Bradleys and give it to the tank by mixing the Bradley and Abrams tanks into combined combat units. Sartiano creates a lethal sea and fires a Bradley combination with his superior targeting systems pinpoint targets for the tanks, which then open fire with their 120mm high-velocity cannons, capable of firing a deadly accurate round every 4 seconds. Can you imagine putting something as round as a grapefruit from 2 thousand away on something as big as you? I know it's a little bigger than a truck, that's amazing, we're a tank shooting at over 2 miles and taking the hits, it was absolutely amazing, I suddenly remember it was Jeff Garwick in Sard M.

He got hit and all of a sudden , the entire troop. The network simply went silent on February 26, 1991, the US 2nd Armored Cavalry Eagle and Ghost Troops have dealt a crushing blow to the cter tower mechanized division, but just when it looks like they will come out Unscathed from the battle, one of the Bradley Fighting Vehicles ghost troops takes a direct hit. and we noticed at six that he is on the far right of the scal platoon to our left, he stopped on a small rise, he was probably hit by one of the vehicles we had shot at, so I don't think there was anything left out there unhooked , so I'm probably willing to bet that BMP had been shot with the Sable bullet it was abandoned because it didn't explode and burned people went back into it the BMP is a lightly armored fighting vehicle like the Bradley a high velocity Sabo bullet could punch through it leaving it still operational armed with a 76mm cannon Semi-automatic cannon the BMP has more than enough firepower to penetrate AB Brad's baton Espada and chaffy Commander Bradley said Andy turned and looked at him and said what was that in that moment the second bullet hit and decapitated sord Muller it really hurt the morale of the troop is knowing that that damn Muller Di, the whole troop was basically able to recover from the situation, you know one of our guys just got hit, but I have a work to do, this fight is not over, you are in the middle of this, you can't worry about this guy, you have to move on.

Many thanks to anyone who has a copy, come in, come in, Battle of '73, this one ends in just 90 minutes. The American casualties are remarkably light: one dead and 12 wounded for the Iraqis, however the number of victims is enormous. The Talna was annihilated in the fighting against the US 7th Corps. Thousands of members of the Taaka division died began. the battle with about two 200 tanks and barely two dozen were able to retreat Later, you know, after the attack, we ran out and then captured some additional enemy prisoners. We put them in the back of our squadron's tactical command post, Bradley, and when they closed the shield door, there was a photo of Irwin.

Raml, who you know we had admired and sort of modeled our El in terms of his tactics, so this Brigade Commander says in perfect English, do you know why you have a photo of your World War II adversary on your Bradley and a? of our soldiers in the back of the Bradley said listen why don't you shut up if you had read a little more about raml you wouldn't be sitting in the back of my track the reason not only for the American victory, but also the overwhelming nature of That victory lay in the fact that the United States had practically every advantage one could imagine over Iraq, but there was the position of the Taaka and several other divisions of the Republican Guard that slowed the advance.

The American advance gave other Iraqi units time to withdraw from the Kuwait theater of operations. It is a great tragedy because it set the stage for the intervention in 2003. Three it was the survival of the Republican Guard Corps that finally preserved what Saddam Hussein's regime could have had. fell at that very moment in 1991 and saved the Iraqis, the United States and the entire Middle East from another bloody war.