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    Delta Force: Tango Uniform
    Delta Force: Tango Uniform
    Delta Force: Tango Uniform
    Ebook132 pages2 hours

    Delta Force: Tango Uniform

    By Steve Stone

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    Carson had the targets painted, whilst I scanned the horizon with NVGs, spotting a couple of Iraqi soldiers standing close to the Scud. Activity around the Scuds suddenly intensified as Iraqi vehicles begin to scatter in all directions. A single dual 30mm anti-aircraft gun, elevated its guns and began to pump 30mm green tracer shells into the sky. More anti-aircraft guns begin to spew out shells into the air at an alarming rate with deadly green tracer rounds crisscrossing the sky. This meant the allied jets were not far out. Carson could hear all the radio chatter from the jets. “Honey 1, 40 seconds, Honey 1 ten seconds, Honey 1, laser on, spot, Honey 1, lock launch, sixty seconds to laser designator switch on, Ten seconds to switch on. Laser spot acquired, target locked-on and ordnance fired.” A double explosion lit up the dark night sky with a large plume of orange and yellow hues as the ground to air bomb found its mark and exploded. Totally destroying the Scud, which was just about to be launched...

    Delta Force Scud Boulevard follows a Delta team deep behind Iraqi enemy lines during the first Gulf War on a mission every bit as eventful as the famed SAS Bravo Two Zero patrol. One squadron from Delta arrived in Saudi Arabia in early February 1991 as part of the Joint Special Operations Task Force. Following a period of concentrated planning, teams infiltrated western Iraq by a variety of methods, often working with the pilots and crews of MH-60 Black Hawks and MH-47E Chinooks from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. Delta was assigned as its hunting ground in Iraq, an area northwest of Highway 10 near Al Qaim known as Scud Boulevard.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigital Dreams Publishing
    Release dateMay 21, 2015
    ISBN9781310343674
    Delta Force: Tango Uniform

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      Book preview

      Delta Force - Steve Stone

      DELTA FORCE

      TANGO UNIFORM

      STEVE STONE

      © Steve Stone 2016

      Steve Stone has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

      Published by Digital Dream Publishing 2016

      Chapter One – SCUD Hunting Part 1

      Iraq February 1991, 0600 hours

      I was crouched down low, making good use of the ink-black desert night as cover, while gripping my cold M16 rifle with a gloved hand. My fingers poised ready, to open fire if necessary. Even with gloves the cold had seeped in and my hands felt numb, as did the rest of my body from the bitter chilly night. As the temperature plummeted in the early hours of the morning. I was tired and very cold as I held my rifle rock-steady with the butt buried tightly into my right shoulder. I had spent nearly two hours on watch in the bitter cold after arriving at our LUP just after 0500 hours. All I could do was lay prone and stare into the dark abyss trying to stop my heavy eyelids from closing. To stay alert I scanned arcs and starred down the freezing barrel of my M16. Everything about the Iraqi desert at night was featureless under the dark moonless night. You could barely tell where the desert ended and the sky began. The odd star high above in the heavens was the only reference to any form of light. The light intensity at ground level was no more than 10 millilux.

      The night was clear and chilly. I could see my breath as a fine mist every time I exhaled. The desert was colder than I thought it would be. As soon as we landed in the desert, I had needed my eyes to adjust to the darkness which can take anything around 30 to 40 minutes. Normally the cones in your eyes pick out colour and perception. In the dark rods at the edge of your iris angled at 45 degrees due to the convex shape of your eye take over. To see properly you must look above or around an object to line your rods up. We had NVGs - I preferred MK1 eyeball. NVGs required their own adjustment, I found that if I wore them for too long I got a blinding headache.

      I was sure the Iraqis knew that we had forces operating deep in Iraq. It was highly probable that they were out there somewhere hunting us down. The Iraqis had hunter forces poised ready to track us down at the slightest whiff. Outnumbering and outgunning us. The vastness of Iraq, more than anything else was our saving grace. With such low visibility, it was impossible to make out any features and it was just a dark, featureless void that spread out in front of me. The deathly quiet of the night was all around me. My senses had become heightened to the quietness the slightest noise could sign movement – was it hostile or simply a creature on its own night ops? I was awaiting first light, when I could stand down and grab a drink and some breakfast. As first light came, with a slight glint that steadily got brighter as if someone was slowly pulling back the curtains to reveal the bright morning sunshine. I could not wait to be rid of the cold and feel the warmth of the early morning sunshine. The local animals knew this too, as the sun crept up they all began to pop their heads out from their various burrows. The desert went from a dark and almost arid moon like surface, to one that had hues of red and orange against a clear blue sky, giving it a primeval beauty. It was 0710 hours when I was finally relived by Christian Brown. Brown, was one of the newer Delta operators having only just completed his operator course. This was his first operation as a Delta Operator. Brown had come from the Rangers like me and 70% of all Delta operators. I knew first hand that life in the Rangers was tough. If there were two ways of accomplishing a given task, we always took the hard way. We never took shortcuts and we never spared any effort. We spent at least three weeks of every month in the field, and deployed on extended training to the Arctic, the desert, and the jungle, three times a year. We were also subject to two ‘no-notice’ exercises annually and participated in major Army or NATO programs every year. Life in the Rangers was so difficult that most men failed to complete a full two-year tour with the unit, and injuries were a regular occurrence. However, it gave us a good grounding and prepared us well for life as a Delta Operator. It is tough to get through selection but just as tuff to stay in the ‘Unit’ and keep yourself mentally and physically in top condition like an athlete preparing for the Olympics.

      We had landed in the Iraqi desert just a few hours ago, after landing, we moved to the nearest depression to use as cover in an extremely flat landscape. Iraq is quite diverse and falls into four main regions. The desert (west of the Euphrates), Upper Mesopotamia (between the upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers), the northern highlands of Iraqi Kurdistan, and Lower Mesopotamia, the alluvial plain extending from around Tikrit to the Persian Gulf. The mountains in the northeast are an extension of the alpine system that runs eastward from the Balkans through southern Turkey, northern Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, eventually reaching the Himalayas. The desert is in the southwest and central provinces along the borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan and geographically belongs with the Arabian Peninsula. The desert zone, an area lying west and southwest of the Euphrates River, is a part of the Syrian Desert and Arabian Desert, which covers sections of Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and most of the Arabian Peninsula. The region, is inhabited by only a few pastoral Bedouins and consists of a wide stony plain interspersed with rare sandy stretches. A widely ramified pattern of wadis–watercourses that are dry most of the year–runs from the border to the Euphrates. Some wadis are over 250 miles long and carry brief but torrential floods during the winter rains. Western and southern Iraq is a vast desert region covering some 64,900 square miles, which equates to almost two-fifths of the country. The western desert, is an extension of the Syrian Desert, rises to elevations above 1,600 feet. The southern desert is known as Al-Hajarah in the western part and as Al-Dibdibah in the east. Both deserts are part of the Arabian Desert. Al Hajarah has a complex topography of rocky desert, wadis, ridges, and depressions. Al-Dibdibah is a sandier region with a covering of scrub vegetation. The deep Wadi Al-Batin runs 45 miles in a northeast-southwest direction through Al-Dibdibah. It has been recognized since 1913 as the boundary between western Kuwait and Iraq. As soon as we had landed in the desert our vigilance had to be raised to its highest possible level. After landing, half the team were on perimeter guard while the other half of us took off our jumpsuits, along with our parachutes. These needed to be rolled up and then buried in the sand. Once everyone was ready, we prepared to move out checking ourselves and each other that we had all our kit. In the distance, I could hear the faint noise of vehicles drifting towards us along with small red car tail lights to our south. Staff Sergeant Anderson was the point man for the mission he had recently found religion and become a Christian, although his new-found faith tended to be rammed down our throats a little too much. Anderson moved off silently giving hand signals to follow and stay low. Our team leader Chief Warrant Officer Simkin at the same time checked his compass and used a handheld GPS device to pinpoint our exact location. His tanned leathery face now lathered in cam cream had seen years of foreign sunshine, he was the most experienced of all us and had joined not long after Delta Force had become an operational unit. A firm family man with two teenage sons, he was not far from retirement. His tone was often sharp, and barked out his orders, but we trusted him completely. At the same time Sergeant First Class Stone sent out the team’s initial entry report over a secure communication system known as SATCOM back to our MSS. The initial report stated our location and that we have arrived safely. By now our black balaclavas have been replaced with floppy hats and we had applied camouflage cream of black and yellow to break up the shape and reduce the shine of our faces. We were all carrying canteens, first aid kit, powerful mini flashlight, Beretta pistol as well as food and water, distributed around our bodies. Due to the very real fear of the Iraqis using gas, we also carried gas masks. I was carrying an M16, but a couple of my team had A 203s. We had a total of 290 rounds each and just under 200lbs of kit the weight of a fully-grown man on our backs. As well as a rifle, I had a single fire disposable LAW 66. Designed for anti-armor. These are two feet long and have two tubes inside each other which fold out and Asti folds out the sights pop up. The inner tube has the rocket ready to fire. It is simple and effective with a shaped charge to punch through armor. The rocket arms itself after 9 meters and will explode with little contact. We headed off towards a large rocky outcrop making use of our AN/ PVS-7 night vision goggles. These 1.5lb goggles fit against your forehead and illuminate the darkness with an eerie green hue. They work so well that they could allow you to see human sized objects at 100 yards on all but the darkest of nights. The downside of NVGs is that they limit peripheral vision. Also, if they picked up any bright lights such as car headlights, they tended to suffer a white-out due to the high light levels and you were effectively blinded. We moved towards our observation post and it was not long

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