UK Defence Forum

A three part documentary on the 1st Gulf War from the point of view of the British Armed Forces and the Army in particular. I raises some issues I wasn't fully aware of and is worth a watch.
Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Great accounts to follow in the run up to Desertstorm30 and if you have interest in photography Ian black is one of the best

No mention of PR Canberras? Did they fly out of Cyprus, or why the omission?

Long reads:

https://britisharmy.wordpress.com/tag/desert-storm/

Then Captain Tim Purbrick's account of his service during the OP GRANBY, especially scoring the longest tank kill

https://britisharmy.wordpress.com/2016/ ... y-brigade/

https://www.army.mod.uk/media/11016/bar ... -final.pdf

British Army Review on the First Gulf War.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/3 ... ittershare

“With just a few seconds to run to the target, we got a red autopilot caption and the Tornado yawed violently after a massive bang on the left-hand side. I shouted to Paul, “We’ve been hit, we’ve been hit” and he came back, “mark is good, continue.” So I stuffed the nose down, and re-engaged the terrain-following radar [TFR] — we were right at the point of weapon release. As we flew into a wall of tracer fire, Paul said “Committing.” I already had my “commit” button depressed — the weapons were coming off no matter what!"

“I could see the airfield below lit up through the triple-A [AAA, anti-aircraft artillery] as our JP233 started releasing its munitions. Suddenly, as we’d been briefed, there were three massive bangs as the weapon canisters were automatically jettisoned. We came off target and I pulled us up into a climbing left-hand turn. The TFR had disengaged and Paul called “Height,” and by the time our wings were level, we were back down at 200 feet with the TFR on. It had lasted a matter of seconds, but it felt like hours! There was a palpable feeling of relief as we screamed away into the pitch black as fast as we could, leaving it all behind us.”

During the first four nights of the war, the Tornado crews flew 53 JP233 raids against Iraqi airfields, expending 106 JP233s. After five days, thanks to a mix of coalition successes, it was decided that the threat from Saddam’s air force had been suitably reduced. The intense low-level raids had taken their toll on the RAF Tornados, with four jets lost during these raids and four aircrew killed.

While JP233 had an important role to play in Desert Storm, it’s delivery profile resulted in some of the most dangerous missions of the entire air war. Designed in the depths of the Cold War, it was reliant on having a delivery aircraft directly over the target at very low level, making a long and predictable target run. What the RAF Tornado aircrews did on those first few nights of Desert Storm was unbelievably brave.

Apaches start the Gulf war



And the first daylight low level tornado raid

Though the battle at sea was a total success, the success rate of Sea Skuas was unexpectedly low as per the detail in this
- the holiday taken from air-launched anti-ship missiles is often mentioned, but without any analysis of why such a decision (can't be simply an omission) was taken

The ground war is about to begin