Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 4, 1991 TAG: 9102040038
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From The New York Times/ and The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: DHAHRAN, SAUDI ARABIA LENGTH: Medium
One plane returning from such a mission, an American B-52, crashed in the Indian Ocean Sunday. The Southwest Virginians doing their part - and more. A3 U.S. counts on allies' financial help. B5 Israeli nominee wants Palestinians expelled. B5 military said there was no evidence that the B-52, which was flying to its base in Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean, was downed by hostile fire.
A military spokesman said it was likely that a mechanical problem was to blame.
Three crew members were rescued and a search continued for three others.
In a briefing, Maj. Gen. Robert Johnston, chief of staff of the United States Central Command, said that at least 68 Iraqi aircraft were destroyed in attacks on hardened air-base shelters, in addition to the 31 disclosed before Sunday.
He said that with 89 other planes taking refuge in Iran, one-third of Iraq's air force may have been eliminated from the war.
Johnston also said that seven of the 11 Marines killed last week in a battle west of Khafji, Saudi Arabia, died after an American Maverick missile struck their armored vehicle during fierce fighting with Iraqi tanks and personnel carriers.
Another Marine was killed Saturday in what the military said was probably a second case of "friendly fire" when an American plane dropped a bomb on a convoy. Casualties caused by friendly fire are not uncommon in close combat.
With supremacy of the skies secured, allied air forces continued to pummel airfields, aircraft bunkers, ammunition depots, oil pumping stations and supply lines linking Baghdad with 545,000 troops in southern Iraq and Kuwait.
British Tornados and Jaguars blasted oil-pumping stations, storage tanks and production plants in several strikes deep into Iraq, a British military spokesman said at a news briefing.
The Jaguars dropped 1,000-pound bombs on six artillery batteries on Failaka Island, in the Persian Gulf northeast of Kuwait City, the spokesman, Group Capt. Niall Irving, said.
At his news briefing in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Johnston said Iraqi supply convoys bogged down and took heavy losses from allied aircraft where 25 of 35 major bridges had been destroyed or badly damaged.
"The bottom line is we are shutting off substantially his ability to resupply those forces in the Kuwaiti theater of operations," he said.
Marines camped near the Kuwait border told a group of reporters that on Saturday night they heard the most sustained sound of B-52 bombing since the war started.
The B-52s have been bombarding Iraq's Republican Guard to soften up the elite units in preparation for a possible allied land invasion. Johnston said, however, that the American-led coalition had "no timetable we're obliged to follow" to start a ground war.
The 18th day of the Persian Gulf war saw little activity by Iraq's forces. Border patrols exchanged small arms fire, but Baghdad's reportedly moribund navy was silent and few Iraqi planes were spotted flying.
"It seems to me that they're literally hunkering down in a defensive position," Johnston said.
He said that about 800 Iraqi prisoners were now being held in Saudi and American camps.
With Iraq's ability to conduct aerial reconnaissance crippled, Johnston said, the military expects more "probing activity by Iraqi ground forces along the border."
Overnight, Iraq fired two Scud missiles at Israel and one at Riyadh, drawing immediate fire from allied fighter-bombers, American officers said. Cloud cover made it impossible to determine whether mobile launchers had been destroyed.
Both Scud missiles fired at Israel fell harmlessly in unpopulated areas. Johnston said one may actually have landed in western Jordan.
The missile fired at Riyadh was intercepted by an American Patriot missile. Falling debris damaged buildings in a suburb of the city and injured 29 people, Saudi officials said.
In the ground war, the Army said it was inspecting 300 of its 2,000 Bradley fighting vehicles in the gulf for a transmission defect. The defect could limit the speed of the armored transport carrier to 12 mph; it is designed to travel as fast as 38 mph.
B-52s, based in Diego Garcia and elsewhere, have been pounding Iraqi fortifications in and near Kuwait in an effort to inflict as much damage as possible prior to an allied ground assault.
by CNB