Scenes from an invasion - how the U.S. military stumbled to victory in Grenada.

• Author: Gabriel, Richard

In the young histories of how America came to stand tall again, the October 24, 1983 invasion of Grenada has been cited as the major expression of the nation's renewed ability to assert itself abroad. With American citizens on the island in trouble, the government executed a lightning-fast strike to rescue them, vanquished the enemy, and in one swoop restored confidence in the military's capacity to protect our national interests. That at least was the perception. The reality was altogether different. In his book, Military Incompetence, Richard Gabriel shows that rather than demonstrating strength, the invasion gave stunning proof of weakness and ineptitude.

Counting both the special operations and regular forces, the U.S.deployed about 7,000 soldiers for the operation. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had estimated the opposition would be 700 to 1,000 Cuban soldiers, 1,500 Grenadian army soldiers, and another 2,000 to 5,000 Grenadian trained militia. Actually, they found only 50 Cuban soldiers and some Cuban construction workers with limited military training. The territorial militia was essentially unarmed and a significant part of the Grenadian army would not fight for their new government. In the final count, the U.S. outnumbered the opposition in combat forces ten to one. Gabriel, co-author of Crisis In Command, one of the most influential books about the military in the last decade, reveals that despite the overwhelming superiority in numbers and technology, our armed forces repeatedly botched their tasks.

What follows is an adaptation of Gabriel's discussion of the invasion of Grenada. Full supporting documentation can be found in the Notes section of Military Incompetence.

Shortly before midnight on Monday, October 24, a team of 35 or 40men (the numbers remain classified) chuted up in their quarters in a building near the airport on the island of Barbados. Just before midnight, they boarded a C-130 transport, with its insignia painted out, for the 45-minute flight to Grenada. The men of Delta Force [the Army's special anti-terrorist unit] would parachute onto the island in the early morning darkness of Tuesday, October 25.

Their mission was to take up positions in a grassy ravine near some abandoned construction buildings at the far west end of the Point Salines airstrip. Although the specific details of the mission remain secret, it seems certain that it was a twofold mission. The first objective was to determine the airstrip's usability for the Ranger force that was to land on it at dawn.

Sometime after 2 a.m. the Delta team was spotted by a member of the Cuban garrison. The alarm sounded and the Cuban garrison came to life and began to deploy around the ravine, only a half-mile from their barracks. Delta was quickly surrounded on three sides as the Cubans began to pour heavy small-arms fire into the ravine from the surrounding slopes. Some of the Delta Force found their way into a wooden building on the edge of the ravine, but Cuban fire poured through the walls. When Delta was finally rescued at dawn by the Ranger landing, 22 of its men had been killed or wounded, though the military has refused to acknowledge that there were any dead or wounded or even that Delta Force was on the island. Delta's failure to execute its mission alerted the defenders to the larger invasion. The alarm was sounded throughout the island almost four hours before the main forces arrived. When the Rangers parachuted onto the airstrip later that morning, the enemy was waiting for them with their AK-47s and ZSU-23 machine guns.

A second Delta mission launched in the early daylight hours of the first day was to assault Richmond Hill Prison and rescue the "political prisoners" being held there. Built on the remains of an old eighteenth-century fort, the prison cannot be approached by foot from three sides except through dense jungle growing on the steep mountainside; the fourth side is approachable by a narrow neck of road with high trees running along it. The prison offers no place for a helicopter assault force to land. Richmond Hill forms one side of a steep valley. Across and above the valley, on a higher peak, is another old fort, Fort Frederic, which housed a Grenadian garrison. From Fort Frederic, the garrison easily commanded the slopes and floor of the ravine below with small-arms and machine-gun fire It was into this valley and under the guns of the Grenadian garrison that the helicopters of Delta Force flew at 6:30 that morning.

The helicopters of Task Force 160 flew into the valley and turnedtheir noses toward the prison. Unable to land, the Delta raiders began to rappel down ropes dragging from the doors of the helicopters. Suddenly, as men swung wildly from the rappelling ropes, the helicopters were caught in a murderous cross-fire from the front as forces from the prison opened fire, and more devastatingly, from behind, as enemy forces in Fort Frederic rained heavy small-arms and machine-gun fire down from above. According to eyewitness accounts by Grenadian civilians who were in houses and in the mental hospital situated above the ravine, a number of helicopters that could, new out of the valley. In at least one instance, a helicopter pilot turned back without orders and refused to fly into the assault. Charges of cowardice were filed against him by some members of the Delta Force but were later dropped.

Near Pearls airport, Seal teams [the Navy's commando units] also failed to accomplish their missions. Two four-man teams were dropped in the sea near the end of the Pearls runway. The Marines intended to conduct a heliborne assault against the airport and had to know the nature and strength of its defenses. Although the method of bringing them in remains classified, it seems likely that the Seal teams were LAPSEDed into the water LAPSEing (lowaltitude parachute extraction system) is a technique whereby men and equipment are pulled from the back of a low-flying C-130 aircraft by drogue parachute as the aircraft skims the water It seems that one four-man Seal team deploying from the aircraft in its rubber whaleboat was knocked unconscious by the impact on the water Thrown from the boat as it hit the water and weighed down with weapons and equipment, the men were dragged under and drowned.

The second team managed to hit the water safely, start the boat'sengine, and proceed toward the beach. As they approached their landing point, a boat rounded a jut of land near them, in all probability, a civilian fishing...