VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

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01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 297 Viking Hammer (and the Ugly Baby) close U.S. ally and opponent of Saddam, had not yet agreed to allow its territory to be used to invade a fellow Muslim country. Its greatest fear was that the Kurds in northern Iraq would rise up and declare statehood, and ignite Turkey’s own restive Kurdish population. U.S. officials were convinced that their ally would bend if enough aid was offered and pressure applied. But as Cleveland and other officers shuttled to and from Turkey for closed-door meetings with its generals and special forces, he saw how high sensitivities were running in the country’s unsettled electoral climate. If Turkey did not budge, then the entire conventional plan for the north would collapse. There was no other way to get heavy armored forces into northern Iraq. If conventional forces could not make it in, then the Special Forces would have to handle the theater on their own. Few people believed that it was even possible for a Special Forces task force to do the job of some 60,000 U.S. troops—the size of the entire 4th Infantry Division that was slated for the north. The colonel, a curious blend of personal modesty and intellectual boldness, might blush at the drop of a hat, but he never doubted that he could find a way to do it— just as he had as a young captain when entrusted with planning the Special Forces’ missions in Panama. Cleveland’s first task was to figure out how to get his troops into Iraq. He drew a circle around Iraq that represented the range of the U.S. MC–130 Combat Talon planes; somewhere within that circle he needed a staging base. By February, Cleveland had moved to Constanta, Romania, and set up the joint special operations task force. His staff chose the name Task Force Viking to reflect 10th Group’s European roots. As the clock ticked down toward war, the 4th Infantry Division and its state-of-the-art digitized tanks bobbed offshore in the Mediterranean, waiting for a vote in the Turkish parliament. Policymakers in Washington were still banking on a yes vote. But even if approval finally came, Cleveland knew the poor condition of the road that spanned the length of Turkey, and that the tanks and armored vehicles could not traverse it in time. In the end, the parliament voted no. Even permission for troops to 297
01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 298 298 M asters of C haos overfly Turkey—something Cleveland had believed would be granted— began to look doubtful. Every day for five days, the men piled into their planes in Romania, only to be told that Turkey still had not granted overflight rights. Cleveland had managed by various stratagems to infiltrate an advance force into northern Iraq, but he had to get the main body there, and soon. The task force staff cobbled together a circuitous route that would take two days and two intermediate stops in countries that requested that their roles remain secret. When the new flight plan was posted at the operations center in Romania, one of Cleveland’s noncommissioned officers commented: “Damn, that’s an ugly baby.” The name stuck. When the ground war in the south kicked off a day early, Cleveland could wait no longer to implement Operation Ugly Baby. He collected 280 operators and some other task force members and they boarded six Combat Talons for the long and cumbersome flight around Turkey. On the final leg of the flight, they entered Iraqi airspace, which was still guarded by one of the densest air defense networks in the world. The Iraqi regime loosed every antiaircraft battery in its arsenal upon them. The Combat Talon pilots, flying with nods and no running lights, bobbed, weaved, and banked; threw out chaff; and activated electronic countermeasures, all in a desperate bid to avoid ground fire. The men in the hold were tossed around like rag dolls. Up they went, then down— their packs crashing down on them. A few men who had not fastened their nylon harnesses to the floor were thrown clear out of their webbed seats. Despite the pilots’ acrobatics, three of the planes were hit, one of them so badly that it could not go on. Fuel streamed down its fuselage, the windshield was shattered, and bullets had punctured one engine. The pilots had no choice but to request permission to make an emergency landing in Turkey. Turkey relented and allowed the plane to land. The other planes continued on their flight path to Bashur airfield in northern Iraq, just outside Irbil. They had completed the longest infiltration by Combat Talons into enemy territory in special operations history: fifteen hours total flight time, four and a half at low level over Iraq.
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VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

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