Files and other material seized during the multiservice, multinational Operation URGENT FURY, stacked outside the US Joint Detention Center Cuban weapons, including a recoilless rifle and mortars, captured during Operation URGENT FURY US forces score … Leading this unit — the 1st Battalion of the 82nd Airborne’s 505th Infantry Parachute Regiment — was the fulfillment of a dream, the culmination of a career that began when he left Arkansas for Beast Barracks in 1962. They found some two hundred Americans, mainly students, as well as a few other foreign nationals needing to be transported out of the country. Daylight attacks against objectives at the Richmond Hill prison and Fort Rupert also failed after withering antiaircraft fire severely damaged the helicopters involvedThe two helicopters went down in a tangled mess. The brigade was not participating in the first wave of the assault, so its timeline for loading was not as short as that of the Rangers, but its schedule was still compressed. The Rangers inside escaped safely, and subsequently paddled to sea in a life raft; they were picked up by the Navy destroyer U.S.S.
These actions in turn provided the basis for a series of formal after action and lessons learned reports that, when digested, would provide the basis for possible changes to Army doctrine, training, and organization.
Yet the Pentagon’s zeal to prove itself — to exorcise those demons from Vietnam — quickly colored the planning and influenced the shape of Urgent Fury. After two gyrations, the Chalk Four pilot deliberately crash-landed his helicopter.The best map in his collection was a four-foot tourist guide bearing the legend “Grenada: The Isle of Spice.” He opened the map and spread it on the ground. It exacted, however, a heavy operational and logistical price by impeding the ability of the Air Force to build up men and materiel in the airhead quickly.Unlike most similar operations in the past, the attack on Grenada was also a joint operation, and in the previous decade the U.S. Army and Navy had not had many opportunities to plan and conduct such opera- tions. Michael F. Ritz of Company B, 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, ambushed by Cubans. Did they want to be rescued? “What the hell is going on?” The rebuke was to linger for years with the paratroopers, who bitterly resented Vessey’s censure as a classic example of know-nothing meddling from Washington.As door gunners hammered the Cuban and PRA positions with .50 caliber fire, the Rangers sprinted through the campus buildings, rounding up students who had barricaded the windows with mattresses. The third vehicle was fired on by a circling AC–130 and destroyed.At 0030 on 2 October, elements of the 2d Brigade staff and men of the 2d Battalion, 32th Infantry, began their movement to the personnel holding area closest to Green Ramp. Hundreds of PRA soldiers were fleeing for the hills, leaving behind little piles of hats, belts, uniforms, and rifles.
They enlisted airpower and even commandeered a Cuban bulldozer to assist.
The U.S. government listed 19 U.S. troops killed and 115 wounded (although some analysts believed that the number would be considerably higher if all casualties among the secret, special operations forces were included).The other classmate was the division’s aviation battalion commander, Bob Seigle, an animated extrovert from Cincinnati who had been one of Bobby Knight’s guards on the academy basketball team. Their armor and armament made them formi- dable weapons platforms. His sole mission thus far had been to deploy the battalion ready for combat.
Operation Urgent Fury, the 1983 invasion of Grenada.