WrrH THE 1 MARINE EXPEDITIONARY FORCE IN DESERT SHIELD AND DESERT STORM         97

gave enough detail to form a picture apart from a conclusion that the amount of
the activity seemed to be increasing as time passed.
   At about 0136 on 26 February 1991, both I MEF and CentCom sensors
began detecting very large amounts of vehicle movements in the vicinity of
Kuwait City.    At the I MEF combat operations center, the night air officer,
Colonel James L. Whitlow, and the senior watch officer, Lieutenant Colonel
John A. Keenan, compared reports.      They became concerned that an Iraqi
counterattack might be developing. Within an hour, reports from the prototype
Joint Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) aloft made it obvious that all this
activity was a major retreat by the Iraqis.    The Kuwaiti Resistance soon
confirmed the electronic reports.  General Boomer decided that it was time to
slam the door shut on the escape route.
   General Boomer directed Whitlow to launch as many aircraft capable of
night attack as possible.   The weather turned sour again with rain and poor
visibility which restricted the attack to all-weather A-6E Intruders, which had
moving    target   indicators and  forward   looking infrared   (FLIR),       and
FLiR-equipped F/A-i 8 Hornets from Marine Aircraft Group 11 at Bahrain.
After sunrise, they were reinforced by more Hornets.   Joining in also were
AV-8B Harriers from Marine Aircraft Group (Forward) 13 staging from King
Abdul Aziz Naval Base, Jubayl, and Tanajib.  None of the attack pilots had ever
seen anything like it.
   The first Intruder attacks bottled up the main route with CBU-78 Gator
aerially  delivered mines   that forced many  of the Iraqi convoys         off the
superhighway onto the desert.    Immediately following this, the Marine flyers
attacked the vehicles continuously with 500- and 1,000-pound bombs and MK20
Rockeye cluster bombs.    The attacks continued into the evening of 26 January.
Marine Aircraft Group 11 flew 298 combat sorties that day, and during the
peak, its commander, Colonel Manfred A. `1Fokker" Rietscb, personally directed
the attacks from an F/A-18D, completing his 66th and final combat mission of
the operation.     Despite the weather, hundreds if not thousands of vehicles
were destroyed, damaged, or abandoned along the main supply route from
Kuwait City to Safwan, Iraq.   The section of highway into and out of Al Jahra,
later dubbed the "Highway to Hell," was choked with burning Iraqi vehicles.
Along the grade leading up the Mutla Ridge, the Marine attacks left vehicles


   Along with these reports came several others concerning Scud launches at targets in Saudi
Arabia. One Scud impacted a billet in Dhahran, killing 28 American National Guardsmen and
wounding 98 others.

    The prototype JSTARS radar could detect movement over a wide area.   However its
accuracy degradcd over time, and the eoded4ext reports it transmitted took time to decipher.
Nonetheless, offlccrs of the force were highly impressed with the potential of the system.

    Colonel Rietsch's total of 66 combat missions was the highest number flown by any Marine
during the campaign and is believed to be the highest flown by any pilot in the theater. The total
excludes 118 combat air patrols flown over the northern Gulf, 24Aug90-15Jan91. Rietsch also
flew 653 combat missions in F~B Phantoms in Vietnam, bringing his career total to 719.