Pair of Stryker vehicles come under fire in Iraq

The News Tribune - Tacoma, WA ^ | January 31st, 2004 | MICHAEL GILBERT

[Cannoneer No. 4]

MOSUL, Iraq - The Army's new Stryker vehicle had its first combat encounter with a rocket-propelled grenade Friday.

The round struck the front of the vehicle above its slat armor cage, cutting a hose inside the engine compartment. The vehicle commander suffered a superficial cut near his nose, officials said.

But the Fort Lewis crew was otherwise unhurt and drove the vehicle out of danger, their company commander and 1st sergeant said.

It was one of four RPG attacks on Strykers on Friday in Mosul. The other three rounds missed.

Soldiers throughout the brigade had figured it was only a matter of time before a Stryker was hit by an RPG, one of the most widely available anti-armor weapons in the world.

Commanders said the attacks are proof that local insurgents are finished with merely observing the new vehicles moving about the city streets.

"You need to tell your soldiers this is still a very, very dangerous environment," 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment commander Lt. Col. Gordie Flowers told his troop leaders after the day's events. "They need to know that they need to have their 'A game' on every time they go out the gate."

All four attacks were against vehicles from the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry.

Battalion officials gave these details:

•A few minutes before the Stryker was hit at 8:30 a.m., gunmen attacked the same vehicle with small-arms fire and an RPG from about 750 feet away. The round fell short.

•About 7:30 a.m., in a neighborhood in northeast Mosul, insurgents fired an RPG at a Stryker parked near where soldiers had discovered a weapons cache. The attackers got away.

•Attackers tried to hit the same vehicle just before 3 p.m. as it was parked along the eastern shore of the Tigris River, near where dive and boat teams were looking for one of two soldiers missing in the river since Sunday.

The attackers fired the RPG from the west side of the river, from at least 750 feet away, officers said. The grenade struck hanging lines above the vehicle and caused no damage.

Soldiers saw the attackers on the other shore. They returned fire, and a squad searched the area moments later but found no sign of them.

Depending on the type, RPGs are capable of boring through a Stryker's armor and spraying hot shrapnel all around the interior of the vehicle.

The threat prompted the Army to install bulky, 5,000-pound slat cages around the Strykers while RPG-resistant armor is still being developed.

Friday's strike didn't answer the question of whether the slat armor will work as advertised and diffuse the impact of the RPG before it strikes the body of the vehicle.

But at least on this day, the RPG strike wasn't the deadly event that many feared.

The grenade was fired from close range - less than 300 feet - and struck above the cage at the front of the Stryker, battalion officials said. Photographs of the damage showed finger-sized holes near the hinge of the armored hatch that covers the engine compartment.

Crew members had headaches after the blast, but drove the vehicle out of danger, said 1st Sgt. Mike Hurtado of the company.

"The vehicle was drivable. We drove it around in an attempt to pursue the enemy," said company commander Capt. A.J. Newtson.

It was another half-hour or so before they realized one of the engine hoses had been cut, so they stopped driving it to avoid further damage and later towed it to their base camp in central Mosul, he said.

When they were fired at the first time, the soldiers were on an early morning patrol in search of roadside bombs set overnight in the southeast section of town.

After the grenade fell short, the soldiers tried to seal off the area. A resident of the neighborhood told soldiers where they might find the insurgents who shot at them, battalion officials said.

They searched the area on foot, recovering a 155 mm artillery round from the yard where the tipster had told them to look. But they didn't find the gunmen and were reboarding their vehicles when the second attack came.

The same shooters, they believe, moved in closer, fired the RPG and climbed into a car and drove away.

Newtson said the attackers used the dense urban setting to blend in with civilians and escape. Mosul is one of the largest cities in Iraq, with some 1.8 million residents.

Newtson and Hurtado said their injured soldier from the damaged Stryker had returned to duty and would likely be back out on roadside bomb patrol this morning.

They said the expected repairs to the vehicle wouldn't take long and that it would be returned to service soon.

"It worked the way it was supposed to," Flowers said. "To take the hit and still get you out of the attack zone."

Battalion officials said they figured sooner or later their search operations along the Tigris would be attacked. The mission to find two missing soldiers is tying up one of its infantry companies as they provide security coverage for the divers and boat teams working in the water.

Staff Sgt. Christopher Bunda, 29, a squad leader with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, was lost in the river when a boat he was in capsized Sunday afternoon. Lt. Adam Mooney, 28, and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Patrick Dorf, 32, disappeared after their OH-58 Kiowa Warrior helicopter crashed into the river about an hour later as they searched for Bunda.

Navy divers recovered Dorf's body Thursday afternoon.

Michael Gilbert: mjgilbert41@yahoo.com

(Published 12:01AM, January 31st, 2004)

[archy]

This photo is UK army in WWII ?

Yes. From around the period of the British Eighth Army's defeat of the German forces under General Erwin Rommel at el-Alamein, probably mid or late 1942.

[serurier]

Thank you very much .

[R. Scott]

Crew members had headaches after the blast, but drove the vehicle out of danger, said 1st Sgt. Mike Hurtado of the company.

I never had a headache from a near miss – but my hearing always went south for several hours.

A resident of the neighborhood told soldiers where they might find the insurgents who shot at them, battalion officials said.

Making progress.

[mark502inf]

Haven't sen anything about Strykers engaging targets with .50 cal or 40mm fire, either.

That's a real good point--has anybody read or heard anything about a Stryker using the remote weapon station to engage the enemy in Iraq? With what result?

[TomasUSMC]

Look, please, give me a break. If I am an Islamic Terrorist. I dig two holes and put 4 122 mm's in each one. I remote control them and wait for you guys to drive up in any dang thing you want. Put as much armor stick on, bolt on, tie on as you want. I will still blow you sky high and you will die.

And if by some incredible amount of luck, you find me, I'll make sure some of my guys are watching me with with video. Then I raise a big white rag, (we Islamic terrorist have lots of white rags always handy). You guys then will put me in a nice prison and make sure I have nice food and a bed AND first aid if I need it. - And if you guys lose your temper and hit me or kill me, well my guys with the video will make sure you guys get court marshaled.
This is the way it is now and Terrorist are not deterred at all.
Now, on the other hand. After I blow you up, you cordon off a 500 meter radius, then with load speakers in your best heavily English accented arabic, tell all 6000 residents they have 1 hour to relocate to a holding area( or whatever), then you turn everything within 500 meters of the ambush, into an artillery and bombing range for a few days for your troops to zero their weapons. Then after a few days you make those 6000 people move back into their newly derenovated neighborhood. AND you do this again and again.

And when It comes out on the internet and Aljazeera, you KEEEP DOIN IT, so that the whole world can plainly tell that you don't give a AllahDAMN!

Then..... the next time I go to start digging my holes-

EVEN before I take that shovel and point to the ground... the entire stinking neighborhood will have heard about what happened to Salim's hood, and Said's hood and Jamil's hood-

and they are going to jump on my islamic terrorist butt, pass a fatwah on me so I can't hook up with that Islamic heavenly booty, and then tear me into molecular size tidbits that not even the Mars rover will be able to find.

[VOA]

Occasionally encountering a German or Italian armoured car or light tank at intersecting
route roadblocks, American bazookas were one answer, but the .50 Brownings were said
to be quite capable as well, and more certain at night-though the mad Irishman with
the flamethrower must have gotten their attention.

We supply the Jeeps, our cousins have all the fun!
I wonder how these guys ever readjusted to civilian driving after the war.

[archy]

and they are going to jump on my islamic terrorist butt, pass a fatwah on me so I can't hook up with that Islamic heavenly booty, and then tear me into molecular size tidbits that not even the Mars rover will be able to find.

You're welcome to come soldier with me anytime. You get it.

[archy]

We supply the Jeeps, our cousins have all the fun!

I wonder how these guys ever readjusted to civilian driving after the war.

At least one became a wheelman for a bank robbery gang, using the Tommygun he'd been issued while with PPA during the war. But quite a few were inclined toward a something other than mundane or boring style of life before the war, and once freed from military discipline, set sail on their own courses where their own winds took them, some charted before, some not.

Perhaps the most historically significant of the PPA non-duty milestones was their visit to Venice's Plaza de San Marco, where wheeled vehicles aside from the occasional vendor's cart or workman's wheelbarrow had been off-limits for some 2500 years. But PPA had their MGs mounted and noone was about to argue with them, and in 4-wheel drive and low gear, they climbed the marble steps like it was one of the Sicilian mountain paths to which they were more accustomed, and made a point of circling the place seven times. So far as I know, their effort hasn't been repeated since. But they did a number of things that can only be described as *unique*.

Piazza San Marco, Venezia, 1944.
Fred Yeoman, Paddy McAllister and "J.C" Simpson of "B" Patrol, PPA.

[gatorbait]

It seems to me that Stryker fills the niche of a ground cavalry vehicle , in the tradition of the M8 among others. Looks like thus far, it is doing the job,which is a relief.

Oh, for those who have some interest in such things, Allegedly, soon(like mid summer) there is supposed to be a 1/35th scale model of the Stryker .Don't know yet who will kit it, just heard we'll see one.

[Recon by Fire]

Yep, according to the marines they shoot like goat herders.

[Darksheare]

*groan*

Admittedly, some have gotten better at firing their weapons since then.
They probably got spooked and fired waay too soon before.
Now they're getting somewhat cocky and trying some really stupid stuff, like the quad hydra rocket tubes mounted on helmets...
Granted, it might work, but your 'gunner' loses his head in the process sometimes -maybe even his face.
Hopefully the goaty boys are as terrible with that improvised stuff as they were with the RPGs before.
My fingers are crossed that they toast their faces with rocket exhaust a few times, that will make ID'ing teh bad guys somewhat easier -head to teh local hospitals and look for a guy with charred marshmallow looking cheeks.