phantom fury the 2nd battle for fallujah

“It was just a mad minute of hell.”įor both soldiers and Marines, the house-to-house fighting was intense and nerve-wracking work. “This all happened in less than three or four minutes,” recalled squad leader Staff Sgt. José Velez, had been killed, shot in the neck while providing covering fire for his squad members to rescue a wounded soldier. 13, after five days of fighting, only two of the eight men were still standing. Before that, though, GIs had to fight through to Highway 10 - dubbed Phase Line Fran by the troops.Įvidence of the ferocity of the fighting in the Jolan neighborhood in the city’s northwest section was the plight of an eight-man squad from 1st Pltn., A Co., 2nd Bn., 7th Cav. commanders was to drive the enemy into a killing zone in the Shuhada neighborhood in the southern part of the city. RCT 1 attacked the western section of the city, while RCT 7 fought its way through the city’s eastern neighborhoods toward the industrial area.Īn Army brigade covered the southern city limits while Air Force gunships and helicopters pounded targets from the sky. 8, the two combat teams swept down from the northern limits of the city.

The “New Bridge,” slightly to the south, carries Highway 10 - the city’s main east-west thoroughfare - into Fallujah.Īt dawn on Nov. contractors kidnapped and executed in March 2004. The “Old Bridge” connected the hospital with the city and was the site where insurgents hung the bodies of U.S. The bridges were obvious strategic objectives. Commanders wanted to avoid inflated claims of civilian casualties that could have emanated from the hospital, which had occurred during an offensive in the spring. Div.) - formed up in the desert north of the city prior to the invasion.īefore the actual battle began, Navy SEALs and Marines from 2nd Force Recon seized Fallujah’s main hospital and two bridges spanning the Euphrates River in the extreme west end of the city. and the Army’s 2nd Bn., 7th Cav, 1st Cav Div.) and Regimental Combat Team 7 (made up of 1st Bn., 8th Marines 1st Bn., 3rd Marines and the Army’s 2nd Bn., 2nd Inf., 1st Inf. The two main assault forces - Regimental Combat Team 1 (comprising 3rd Bn., 5th Marines 3rd Bn., 1st Marines 3rd Light Armored Recon Bn. Preparing for the attack, Air Force planes pounded Fallujah’s industrial section in the southeast with air strikes for weeks before the offensive. fatalities in the battle accounted for 52 percent of American deaths in November 2004 - the deadliest month for GIs in the Iraq War. They also found 26 bomb factories, 350 arms caches, several chemical weapons labs and eight hostage houses and torture/execution chambers in Iraq’s “City of Mosques.”īut it was bloody for U.S. soldiers and Marines and 2,000 Iraqi troops killed some 1,200 to 1,600 insurgents. “When we started this one, we decided we would not let off, that we would press on over the first couple of days, deep into the city, and throw him on the defensive. Metz, commander of military operations in Iraq. As part of Regimental Combat Team 1, the unit attacked the western section of the city.“In the last days of Najaf, in August, when we stayed in the fight for 72 hours straight, we realized he did not have the endurance to fight 24 hours a day, day after day,” said Lt. Rines of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, conduct a house-to-house search in Fallujah on Nov. Those in charge were not taking any chances. commanders determined to take control of Fallujah - the hotbed of Iraq’s insurgent activity. Lessons learned over 18 months of combat in Iraq crystallized the objectives of U.S. But the Battle of Fallujah in November 2004 during the Iraq War could be considered a textbook urban assault by U.S.

Fighting a fanatical, dug-in enemy in the maze-like infrastructure of his own city has often proved disastrous to armies throughout the history of warfare.

Phantom fury the 2nd battle for fallujah