U.S. Launches Major Air Campaign in Iraq
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By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The United States launched a long-awaited massive aerial campaign against Iraq (news - web sites) on Friday, U.S. officials said.
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Hundreds of bombing runs were planned to target sites in Iraq, as part of a Pentagon (news - web sites) strategy to invoke "shock and awe" among Iraqi troops. Some officials termed the bombardment "A-Day," meaning Aerial Day.
The officials, involved in military planning, spoke on condition of anonymity.
Another senior U.S. official said the aerial campaign might not be as intense as originally planned because U.S. surrender talks with senior Iraqi officials were continuing.
This official said Gen. Tommy Franks, the war's top commander, would "scale" the intensity of the bombardment in accordance with progress in the surrender talks. Within hours, however, it would be too late to reach a successful conclusion to the talks, and then, without such a conclusion, the bombing would go full-throttle, the official said.
One U.S. official said the assault was ordered after U.S. forces met some resistance earlier in the day, raising concerns that the Iraqi high command was regaining control. In the first hours of the war, administration officials had detected evidence that the Iraqi leadership was in disarray.
The United States has an enormous fleet of Navy and Air Force warplanes primed for the aerial bombardment, including B-52, B-1 and B-2 stealth bombers and a full array of fighter-bombers.
There are roughly 250 strike aircraft on five Navy aircraft carriers — three in the Gulf and two in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. These include F/A-18 Hornets and F-14 Tomcats. The Air Force's fighters are based mainly in Kuwait and Qatar, but there are many others in the region.
All of these aircraft are capable of launching precision-guided bombs and missiles.
American and British troops encountered both hostile fire and white flags in their sprint across the desert Friday. Iraqi defenders offered stiff resistance in some pockets, firing intense artillery barrages that were answered in kind.
The war's first casualties were reported.
A U.S. Marine with the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in a gunfight as his unit advanced on the oil field. Hours earlier, eight British and four American soldiers died in a U.S. Marine helicopter crash that a British military spokesman said was an accident.
Troops seized two airfields in far western Iraq, known as H-2 and H-3, without much resistance from Iraqi troops, defense officials said. But they called control of the installations "tentative."
They are important partly because Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) is believed to have Scud missiles there. The H-3 airfield has been one of Iraq's primary air-defense installations.
