The Road to Safwan: The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the 1991 ...

100 The Road to Safwan
At 0055 hours, an on-board alarm warned Hayles that unknown
radar had momentarily acquired his aircraft. It is possible
that this signal came from one of the American ground surveillance
radars that had not yet been turned off. Later, the
division discovered that these radars actually reflected the
same warning profile as a Soviet-built ZSU 23-4 anti-aircraft
system. Hayles continued on his mission, now concerned about
his flight receiving enemy fire. Moments later he reported
sighting two vehicles about a half-mile north of the troop line.
Weisman immediately ordered them taken out. The aviation
battalion commander hesitated as he attempted to positively
identify the targets. A moment later, with more emphasis, Weisman
again ordered Hayles to destroy the target. The aviation
commander drew a bead on the vehicles and at 0059 hours,
tried to engage one of them with his 30-mm cannon, hoping to
test the target vehicle’s reaction. In the back of his mind was the
concern that they might turn out to be American troops. The
weapon jammed. With even more emphasis, Weisman again ordered
Hayles to destroy the targets he had acquired. At 0059, remarking,
“Boy, I’m going to tell you its hard to pull this trigger,”
he personally fired a Hellfire at each of the two vehicles. 20
Listening to the radio nets of both the infantry battalion and
the division, Rhame realized that Hayles’s targets were 1st Infantry
Division vehicles. The infantry’s scouts immediately reported
on the battalion net that two of its radar vehicles had just
been destroyed. Troopers from the 1st Cavalry Division also
sent the same report over the corps’s radio net. Rhame ordered
the engagement broken off, sent the Apaches back to base, and
later directed a formal investigation into the incident. 21
The division commander had told all unit commanders to
let their soldiers do their job and not get personally involved in
the battle. Hayles had violated Rhame’s instructions and,
within forty-eight hours, the general relieved him of his command
and returned him to the United States. The discussion
and recriminations over the killing of two soldiers and wounding
of six others would last long after the division returned to
Fort Riley. 22 The stress of Task Force Iron’s night across the border
did not end with that engagement and for the next two
hours, enemy operations continued. An Iraqi mortar position