|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bravo Two Zero |
Bravo Two Zero (B20) was the callsign of an eight-man British Army Special Air Service (SAS) patrol during the 1991 Gulf War. It was tasked with observing the Main Supply Route (MSR) between Baghdad and north-west Iraq, and finding and destroying Scud missile launchers and their fibre optic communication lines. The abandoned patrol is famous for one member, Chris Ryan, walking 300 km (almost 200 miles) over eight days to reach the safety of Syria. He is said to have lost over 36 lbs (16 kg) of body weight during this escape. The patrol is the subject of several books and two television movies. However, the accounts given by three members of the team, Ryan and the team leader Andy McNab and Mike Coburn, do not always correspond, leading to accusations of lying. The names of the team members are changed to protect their identity. For his conduct in the mission, McNab was decorated with the Distinguished Conduct Medal and Military Medal.
Contents |
Of the eight who deployed into Iraq, only five returned. Dropped into the infamous "Scud Alley" carrying 210 pound (almost 100 kilo) packs, McNab and his men soon found themselves surrounded by the enemy. Their radios failed to work; the weather was brutally cold; they had been spotted, resulting in the mission being compromised. The heavy 150 lb (50 kg) 319 Satcom radios, said to work over a distance of 500 km, needed to be relayed to an AWAC within 200 km; what the patrol did not know was that the closest AWAC was over the Greek seacitation needed, about 700 km away. The Bergens they carried had two full water bottles, enough ready to eat, boil in the bag rations to last the duration of the patrol and medical kits, as well as their assault rifles and light machine guns (ArmaLite Colt Commando M230'ss featuring an M203 Grenade launchers and FN Minimi LMGs), "66" Anti Tank launchers. Three patrol members died, and four of the rest were tortured and interrogated, because of the lack of adequate equipment and misinformation about geographical terrain and target locations.
After staging out a forward base in Saudi Arabia, the eight man team known as Bravo Two Zero was inserted into Iraq by a Chinook helicopter on the night of January 22, 1991. Sergeant Andy McNab, the patrol leader, claims the team moved across 20 km (over 12 miles) of Iraqi desert and stumbled across a wadi (dry river bed) in which to hide during the day, but eye witness accounts and later re-creations suggests a distance of only 2 km. Mike Coburn's account also suggests that the patrol was dropped far closer to their intended location due to a navigational error by the Royal Air Force. Asher's account says that the local Bedouin heard the Chinook helicopter landing as it deployed Bravo Two Zero - such was its proximity - something which Coburn highlights as a particular concern to the patrol.
Soon after they were in position the patrol realised that they had severe communications problems. Repeated attempts on the patrol radio and later on satellite communication (equipment whose use was intended to be extremely limited due to the perceived skills of direction finding by Iraqi forces) failed to make any reliable contact. It would later transpire that they had been issued with the incorrect radio frequencies for the area (the ones they were supplied were for Kuwait City) due to an error. Former SAS Regimental Sergeant Major Peter Ratcliffe lays the blame for the incorrect frequencies on patrol leader McNab as it was ultimately his responsibility to confirm that they had the correct frequencies before leaving on patrol.
The patrol believed that it was stumbled upon by a young goatherd who escaped and then reported their position to the Iraqi authorities. Believing themselves thus compromised the patrol decided to exfiltrate, leaving behind excess kit. As they were preparing to leave they heard what they at first thought was a tank begin to approach their wadi position. The patrol took up defensive positions as best they could (preparing M72 LAW anti-tank rockets) and waited for it to come into sight. Once it did it became clear that the 'tank' in fact was a bulldozer, driven by a local man, which reversed rapidly and clumsily away from the patrol once it had sight of them. Realising that they now had definitely been compromised the patrol quickly withdrew from their position, following the course of the wadi away from their position. Shortly afterwards, as they were exfiltrating, a firefight with Iraqi armoured vehicles and other forces developed, although the nature and size of this contact is hotly disputed.
Michael Asher interviewed the Bedouin family that said they discovered the patrol. They claimed that the young shepherd (not goatherd, as they only have sheep not goats) was near the patrol, but never saw them and that they were in fact only spotted a short while later by one of the men on the bulldozer. The family weren't sure who the men were and followed them a short distance, eventually firing several warning shots on the patrol - whereupon the SAS team returned fire and evacuated. For Asher, the terrain and position of the Iraqi military would seem to support this version of events and excludes an attack by Iraqi soldiers and/or armoured personnel carriers as claimed by McNab. However, Coburn at least partly supports some of McNab's details, specifically the presence of one Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC), and describes coming under fire from a 12.7 mm DShK heavy machine gun and numerous Iraqi soldiers, additionally describing the presence of two white, Toyota-style pick-up trucks. In regard to the presence of Iraqi armour, Ryan's account says 'Somehow, I missed that.' but also suggests a sizeable and intense firefight in which he estimated that he'd fired some 70 rounds.
According to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). in the case of emergency or no radio contact, known as a 'Lost Comms Procedure' the patrol return to the original infiltration point where a helicopter would again pick them up 24 hours after the original insertion. This was complicated by the apparently incorrect location of the initial landing site. The team reached the designated emergency pickup point, but the helicopter never appeared. Sergeant Major Ratcliffe later revealed that this was due to an illness the pilot suffered en route.
Meanwhile, allied aircraft were aware of the patrol's dilemma and unable to raise them, but flew many sorties in the last known position of the team and expected exfiltration route in attempt to locate them and hinder attempts by Iraqi troops trying to capture them.
Before any mission the teams decide upon an exfiltration route should something go wrong. Such plans are filed before the mission so that rescue efforts can later be coordinated along this route. The plans filed by the team indicated a southerly route to Saudi Arabia. Instead the lightly-equipped patrol began a gruelling march of nearly 300 km (over 186 miles) to exfiltrate northwest to the Syrian border while trying to avoid the perceived efforts of the Iraqis to locate them. Coburn's account, however, suggests that during the pre-planning phase of the mission, Syria was the agreed upon destination should an escape plan need to be implemented. He also suggests that this was on the advice of the Officer Commanding of B Squadron at that time.
According to Ratcliffe, this change in plan nullified all efforts over the following days by allied forces to locate and rescue the team. Andy McNab has also been criticised for refusing advice from superiors to include vehicles in the mission (to be left at an emergency pickup point) which would have facilitated an easier exfiltration. Another S.A.S. team successfully employed Land Rovers in this role when they also had to abandon a similar mission. However, it is also suggested that the patrol jointly agreed not to take vehicles because they felt they were too few in number and too small (only short-wheel base Land Rovers were available) to be of use and were ill-suited to a mission that was intended to be conducted from a fixed observation post.
During the night - whilst trying to raise a passing, high-altitude Coalition aircraft via TACBE emergency beacons - the team became separated after losing contact due to a miscommunication. The patrol was thus split into two groups. Despite attempts the two parts of the patrol were unable to locate each other again in worsening weather conditions. Both separate groups continued to implement their Escape and Evasion plan whilst experiencing unexpectedly harsh freezing weather, including snowstorms. The teams were ill-equipped for the cold winter nights of this desert region carrying only their belt order, due to having ditched their bergens (rucksacks) and thus the majority of their kit during the firefight as they exfiltrated from the wadi position.
The cold weather would eventually contribute to the death of two team members - Vincent Phillips and Stephen Lane. A third, Robert Consiglio, was killed in a firefight with Iraqi troops or police. Other surviving SAS members (some of whom had undergone Arctic Warfare training in Norway) would subsequently claim that the conditions were amongst the coldest they had ever had to endure. The death of Phillips, a veteran of a number of these Arctic Warfare courses, indicates the severity of the conditions with which both groups had to contend.
Corporal Chris Ryan led a group of three, which included the more senior Sergeant Vincent Phillips, who was already beginning to suffer with hypothermia. McNab led the other group of five. Ryan's group was bolstered by the presence of Night Viewing Aid in the form of a Kite Sight.
The larger of the two groups, led by McNab, commandeered a taxi to get closer to the border, but had to abandon it at a checkpoint. It was later found out instead of leaving the drivers of the taxi on the side of the road as McNab's account says, the driver drove them to the check point and also instead of shooting their way through the wood box around the check point and get the driver to pick them up on the other side. The driver alerted the police. Of this group, one died of exposure, one was shot and killed and three were captured. In Ryan's group, Phillips died of exposure and the other member ('Stan') was captured after soliciting help from a shepherd. Only Ryan reached Syria after a remarkable eight days of evasion, suffering from exhaustion, starvation and dehydration.
The captured soldiers were moved numerous times, enduring torture and interrogation at each successive location. They were last held at Abu Ghraib Prison before their release.
Except as noted, these names are pseudonyms or nicknames used by McNab and subsequent authors.
The events of the patrol are disputed since the facts in two books written by two members of the team, Andy McNab and Chris Ryan do not always correspond. Their accounts have been criticised by a third member of the team, Mike Coburn, in a book titled Soldier Five: The Real Truth About the Bravo Two Zero Mission. Michael Asher, himself a former SAS reservist, travelled to Iraq to interview witnesses and recreate the patrol. His findings were published in a book titled The Real Bravo Two Zero: The Truth Behind Bravo Two Zero and he also raises serious questions of the accounts given by both McNab and Ryan.
Most of the controversy surrounds the blame placed on one team member, Vince Phillips, for the discovery of the patrol, particularly by Chris Ryan. Eyewitness accounts by the Bedouin family that discovered the team and contradictions in the accounts by McNab and Ryan seem to refute this claim. Surviving members of the patrol (whilst still serving with the regiment) were later permitted by the S.A.S. to write to the Phillips family rejecting Ryan's accusations and condemnations of Vincent Phillips. Both Asher and Coburn are quite specific that a significant factor in the writing of their accounts of the patrol was the desire to exonerate the reputation of Phillips who was a popular and greatly experienced soldier.
It is also accepted that McNab and Ryan (to a lesser extent) exaggerated the size of enemy forces and number of enemies killed. By most accounts they never encountered military opposition only exchanging fire occasionally with police or civilians – albeit commonly armed with AK-47s. However, Coburn's account does suggest that the patrol endured a brisk contact after it was compromised and began exfiltrating from their wadi position. Coburn also agrees that they came under fire from a distant S-60 (57mm) anti-aircraft position, a claim which the Bedouin rejected. According to Coburn the incoming rounds were identified as such by "Dinger" who had experienced them before (in a ground attack role) whilst fighting in the Falklands Conflict as a member of the Parachute Regiment.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |