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Author: Sasha
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Why did the 20,000 Kuwait troops hold out for only 2 days? Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990
2 August 1990: The Republican Guard of Iraq invades Kuwait and defeats most of the Kuwait army, leading to the outbreak of the Gulf War seven months later.
Many people do not understand why Saddam Hussein dared to attack Kuwait at will.
In addition to various political, diplomatic and economic reasons, the most important thing is that Kuwait's military strength is too weak to be vulnerable at all.
Although the Iran-Iraq war caused Iraq huge losses, it also created a powerful army of 1.2 million that had withstood the brutal baptism of war.
In the Middle East at that time, Iraq's military strength could be regarded as second to none, and Iran was also slightly inferior. In the Iran-Iraq war, Iran turned defeat into victory because it paid a huge price for casualties.
More than 300,000 soldiers and civilians died in Iraq and more than 500,000 in Iran, almost twice as many as Iraq.
The Iraq army is quite large, equipped with 5,500 tanks, including 1,350 Soviet T54/55 tanks, 1,500 T62 tanks, 750 T72 tanks, and 1,500 Chinese Type 69/59 tanks.
In addition, there are 2,500 armored reconnaissance vehicles, 1,500 Soviet BMP1 and BMP2 infantry fighting vehicles, and 4,000 armored transport vehicles.
In terms of artillery, Iraq has 550 self-propelled guns, 3,100 towed guns, 400 rocket artillery, 4,000 anti-aircraft guns and 700 self-propelled anti-aircraft guns.
These figures are quite staggering, and just 5,500 tanks can rank among the top five in the world.
In addition to having a million-strong division, the Iraq army is very well armed with weapons.
Western countries believe that the current equipment of the Iraq army has reached the level of the second-rate army of the Warsaw Pact and ranks first in the world.
The 100,000-strong Republican Guard of Iraq is equipped with first-class equipment to the Warsaw Pact countries, and its officers and men are very elite, most of whom have experienced a hundred battles.
In terms of weaponry, in addition to the impressive number of weapons, Iraq has a lot of modern weapons. Their army has advanced Soviet-made T72 tanks, BMP infantry fighting vehicles, and all kinds of modern artillery, while the air force has Soviet-made MiG-29 fighters and French-made Mirage fighters.
In contrast, Kuwait is no match at all. Not to mention the fact that Kuwait has an area of only 17,000 square kilometers (about the same size as Beijing) and a population of only 2.1 million. What's worse is that of these 2 million people, Kuwait's own population is only 600,000, and the rest are immigrants or migrant workers. The population is so small that the Kuwait army has only 20,000 men. As long as Saddam wants to, he can eat Kuwait in one bite.
What is worse is that Saddam Hussein has repeatedly announced that he wants to eliminate Kuwait and has amassed a large number of troops on the border between the two countries, and the Kuwait government is still not vigilant enough.
The king of Kuwait believed that Saddam Hussein was one of the Sunni leaders and could not casually engage in infighting among his Sunni brothers. At this time, the situation in the Middle East is chaotic, and Iran, which is in power in Shia, and his younger brothers are constantly expanding their power outward, which is the real enemy of Sunnis, not to mention the pagan Israel.
When Saddam launched an attack, the Kuwait royal family was immediately caught off guard and completely disorganized.
As for Saddam, this careerist has long wanted to annex Kuwait and then eat Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and other countries. Deep down in his heart, he wanted to establish the Second Arab Empire, unify the Muslim countries of the Middle East, and become a superpower in the world no less than the United States and the Soviet Union.
Interestingly, another Arab leader, Muammar Gaddafi, had an equally ambitious ideal: to unify Africa by Libya, with Gaddafi as African emperor.
As early as February 1990, Saddam Hussein set out to invade Kuwait. Under his orders, a large number of intelligence officers began to enter Kuwait to collect military intelligence under various banners. And Iraq already has many agents operating in Kuwait, and this time there are suddenly so many spies, the only purpose is to prepare for the war.
By June 1990, Saddam Hussein secretly ordered the chief of staff of the Republican Guard to formulate a plan for the lightning occupation of Kuwait.
The plan was quickly drawn up, and no more than 10 people in Iraq knew about it, not even the Minister of Defence.
The chief of staff believes that Kuwait's military strength is weak and vulnerable, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other countries have little strength, and the biggest worry is that United States and other Western countries will send troops to intervene.
In July 1990, Iraq began to dispatch MiG-25 and other reconnaissance planes, began frequent military reconnaissance of Kuwait and neighboring countries, and spent a lot of money to purchase high-resolution satellite photographs from France and other countries.
Obviously, these were the final preparations before the war.
However, the Iraqis did a poor job of preparation.
The Iraq army and intelligence services are inefficient and incapacitated, and much of the basic military intelligence is faulty.
Saddam Hussein received information that Kuwait had 20,000 combat troops and about six brigades that could fight. In fact, only three brigades in Kuwait have external combat capabilities.
The military was unable to obtain detailed tactical maps and had to replace them with satellite photos, aerial maps of aircraft and even tourist maps of Kuwait.
Later, the front-line soldiers of the Iraq army suffered a lot for this, and often had the problem of getting lost.
However, Iraq's estimate of the duration of Kuwait's resistance is more accurate, i.e. it will not exceed four days. The Kuwait army will not put up resolute resistance, and civilians cannot participate in the war casually.
Therefore, the plan recommended that the Iraqi army refrain from large-scale air strikes and artillery strikes, and that it should refrain from using chemical weapons, but only need to occupy key Kuwait areas and crush the resistance of a few Kuwait forces.
No one wants to destroy rich Kuwait, nor does he want to kill a large number of civilians, and Saddam Hussein has listed it as the 19th province of Iraq and does not want to be left in ruins.
Despite Kuwait's weak military strength, Saddam decided to kill chickens with a knife.
He concentrated the forces of the 5 main divisions of the Republican Guard (there were only 7 divisions in total), a total of 5 armored brigades, 4 mechanized brigades, 11 infantry brigades, 3 assault brigades, and 2 special brigades. Three of the main divisions were equipped with all Soviet T72 tanks, with up to 55 to 60 tanks per tank battalion.
Naturally, this is only the first line of Iraq's troops, and the second line also has several armored divisions on standby, ready to support the Republican Guard.
Expected to encounter no air battle, Iraq still used a total of 4 squadrons of MiG-23 and Su-22, and 1 squadron each of MiG-29, Mirage, Su-25 and MiG-25, with a total of up to 120 fighters as air support.
The Iraq Navy dispatched a number of ships to blockade the islands off the coast of Kuwait.
In addition, in order to quickly occupy Kuwait, Iraq also used airborne troops, including hundreds of helicopters alone and up to 1,000 paratrooper assault troops.
As for the timing of the attack, Saddam Hussein chose August 2.
August 2 is a traditional religious holiday for Arabs, and the Kuwait army will have a half-day holiday, and many soldiers are not on their posts, and their strength is the most empty.
Compared with the more than 100,000 elite Iraqi troops armed to the teeth, the Kuwait army is pitifully weak.
Kuwait's total army is 20,000, of which the army is only 15,000. Nominally Kuwait has six brigades, but in fact only three brigades are more combat-ready.
If you look at the weapons and equipment of the Kuwait, you can see the strength of this army.
The core armament of the army is 165 United Kingdom Emirates tanks, 70 Vickers MK1 tanks and 40 Centurion tanks.
Among them, the Centurion tank is an old tank developed by United Kingdom in the 40s, which can be called antique-level equipment and is basically negligible.
The Vickers MK1 tank was also a tank equipped by the British army in the 60s, although the firepower was acceptable, mobility and defense were not flattering, and it was a tank of more than 30 tons, mainly as a low-grade replacement for the Chieftain tank.
Kuwait bought Vickers MK70 tanks, which by the 90s were long outdated.
The only thing that can be considered powerful in Kuwait is the Chieftain tank. Although it was a tank equipped with the British army in the 60s, the benchmark was only the Soviet-made T62 tank, after all, it was a tank weighing 50 tons. The Chieftain is not bad in all aspects, such as being armed with a 120 mm rifled gun and 120 mm frontal armor.
Be that as it may, in the 90s, the Chieftain tank was nothing remarkable. The Sheikh tank has a bad reputation in Kuwait because of its poor mobility and reliability. Kuwait tank crews even believe that such a tank, which has a maximum speed of only more than 40 kilometers per hour on the road, cannot leave the road at all, otherwise it is prone to various mechanical failures.
A mere 165 poorly performing Chieftain tanks, facing up to 9 battalions of Iraq T72 tanks (a total of about 400 to 500 units), the results can be imagined.
In addition, Kuwait has 256 BMP2 infantry fighting vehicles, more than 700 various armored transport vehicles and armored reconnaissance vehicles, which is naturally nothing remarkable.
What's worse is that the Kuwaitis do not know much about modern warfare, and the army is equipped with very little artillery.
The Kuwait Army has only 36 American-made M109A 155-mm self-propelled howitzers and 20 French-made Mk F3 155-mm self-propelled howitzers, as well as a meagre 40 120-mm mortars and 16 105-mm towed howitzers.
Once the war began, these dozens of artillery pieces would simply not be enough.
With regard to anti-tank weapons, Kuwait is equipped with 56 M901 anti-tank Tao missile launchers and 320 individual anti-tank units.
Before the outbreak of the war, the Kuwait Army had six brigades in name, but two of them were only battalion-sized brigades.
What's worse is that only three of the four brigades with a large number of troops are equipped with tanks.
The Kuwait Army is somewhat stronger, while the Kuwait Air Force is even weaker, with only 21 Mirage F1 fighters and 29 A4 Skyhawk attack aircraft, stationed at two bases in the country.
Because the territory of Kuwait is too small, in the event of a war, the two airfields will be hit intensively, and it will be difficult for the aircraft to take off.
The Kuwait Navy, on the other hand, has only a few missile boats and amphibious landing ships, with almost zero strength, all stationed in the only naval base.
What is even worse is that Kuwait, such a weak army, still has a lot of corruption and feudal remnants inside.
According to the tradition of the Arab armies, the officers of the Kuwait army are basically the sons of the country's large tribal nobility, and they only value their birth rather than ability. As long as you are from a good enough background, even if you don't know how to carry a gun, you can also parachute into Kuwait as an officer. Therefore, the quality of officers in Kuwait is generally not high, and many people are like gangsters, just eating an empty salary. United Kingdom officers who went to Kuwait to teach found that many local officers lacked basic military knowledge, and some could not even read military maps.
And many of the soldiers of the Kuwait army are low-status Bedouins. In Kuwait, these Bedouins were considered semi-barbarians who could only herd cattle and fight on horseback, and were at the bottom of society. These Bedouin soldiers were generally very poorly educated, and some were largely illiterate and could not use more sophisticated weapons.
Because Kuwait had purchased large quantities of weapons from United Kingdom, France, United States, the Soviet Union, and even Yugoslavia, the army's weapons were disorganized and difficult to use, and these semi-literate soldiers could not use them effectively.
Most of the soldiers of the Kuwait army are mercenaries who serve only for their salaries.
Kuwait is a constitutional monarchy with a hereditary head of state by the Sabah family. To put it more simply, Kuwait belongs to the Sabah family and has little to do with the common people, especially immigrants.
Most of the Kuwait soldiers did not have a sense of national consciousness and were unwilling to give their lives for the sake of the princes and nobles of Kuwait.
Saddam Hussein was well aware of the weakness of the Kuwait army, so he decided to eat him in one bite.
After the war broke out suddenly, Iraq's more than 100,000-strong army divided into three routes and advanced on all sides along the flat desert road of Kuwait, and the invasion began.
In contrast to the reckless high-speed advance of the Iraq army, the Kuwait were unprepared.
Most of the officers and non-commissioned officers of the Kuwait army are on vacation, and each brigade has only one battalion of combat-ready troops.
Upon learning of the Iraq attack, the Kuwait army was shocked, and many officers even considered it a false alarm.
The 6th Mechanized Brigade, deployed in the far north of Kuwait, quickly dispatched a reconnaissance unit to see if the Iraqis had really killed them.
This reconnaissance unit collided head-on with the Hammurabi Division of the Iraq Republican Guard.
At this time, the Hammurabi division was driving at a high speed of 30 kilometers per hour for the whole army, and its attitude was extremely arrogant.
The commander of the 17th brigade of the division's vanguard, Hamdani, recalled: 2 columns under me began the night march...... The roar of tanks and flying dust clouded the starry sky over our heads, but it was a tensely silent night. We were asked to implement radio silence. None of the friendly troops were seen along the way, and my staff officers even began to wonder if the mission had been canceled and that our brigade was the only one to go to Kuwait City to die. After we crossed the border, we were not intercepted by the Kuwait, and there was no first exchange of fire until 6 a.m.
The Kuwait reconnaissance force was frightened and did not just flee, but took advantage of the familiar terrain to ambush.
The reconnaissance unit, armed with several British-made Vickers MK1 tanks and Soviet-made BMP2 infantry fighting vehicles, opened heavy fire at a distance of 300 meters, destroying 1 T72 tank on the road.
After the attack on Hammurabi's division, the follow-up troops immediately came like a torrent, and shells rained down.
The Kuwaitis suddenly lost several BMP2 infantry fighting vehicles, and the scouts had never seen such heavy artillery fire, so they were so frightened that they retreated in a hurry.
The Hammurabi division did not give the Kuwaitis a chance to breathe, and pursued these reconnaissance units at high speed.
At this time, the Kuwaitis were simply caught off guard, and everything fell into chaos.
The Hammurabi division advanced along the road and saw that many Kuwait civilian trucks were still coming in their direction. It was only when they saw the Iraq flag on the tank that these Kuwait civilians jumped to the front of the car in a panic or simply abandoned the car and fled.
The Kuwait 6th Mechanized Brigade was ordered to stay where it was for 48 hours.
Because the Iraqis moved too fast, the 6th Mechanized Brigade was dispersed before it could assemble.
Due to the low morale of the officers and men at the grassroots level, the Kuwait 6th Brigade soon suffered a mountain of defeat.
The brigade fled without heavy fighting, almost outnumbered by the Iraqis, and finally surrendered to the Iraqi army on 3 August, and the brigade commander was captured.
After the 6th Brigade in the north broke up without a fight, the 35th and 80th Mechanized Brigades of Kuwait stopped in front of the Iraq.
Among them, the 35th Mechanized Brigade is better equipped, with 2 battalions equipped with more advanced Chieftain tanks, 1 battalion equipped with M109A2 self-propelled howitzers, and 1 mechanized infantry battalion equipped with BMP2 infantry fighting vehicles and American-made M113 armored personnel carriers.
The brigade also suffered from lack of operational readiness, with only one of the two tank battalions deployed on the position, and two main companies of the mechanized infantry battalion not on duty.
In other words, the 35th Mechanized Brigade can use only half of the force.
By the time the Iraqis were killed, Salman, the brigade's commander, had managed to piece together 36 Chieftain tanks, five BMP2 infantry fighting vehicles, an unknown number of M113 armored personnel carriers, and seven M109 self-propelled howitzers.
To make matters worse, the tank company of the brigade was short of shells, with an average of just over 20 shells per M109.
Just as the 35th Brigade of Kuwait hastily moved north to meet the enemy, the 17th Brigade, the vanguard of the Iraq Hammurabi Division, had already approached them.
The Kuwait 6th Brigade collapsed without a fight, and the Hammurabi Division also had the mood of underestimating the enemy. The 17th Brigade spread out three regiments in an attempt to storm Kuwait City in one fell swoop, taking the lead among the divisions.
The two armies first exchanged fire on the perimeter, and a tank battalion in the Kuwait Vanguard shelled from a distance with several Chieftain tanks to try to avoid its own losses.
Seeing that the enemy's fire was sparse and in no mood to entangle with them, the Iraq Hammurabi division chose to pass at high speed from the flank, disdainful of firing back at them.
Just as the Kuwait forces were firing hard, they suddenly noticed more than 30 Mi-8 helicopters and Mi-24 helicopter gunships flying over their heads. The Mi-8 is still good to say, the Mi-24 is a tank killer, and only one can destroy several Sheikh tanks in Kuwait.
The Kuwaitis hurriedly ceased fire and hidden, but the rigidly combative Iraqi helicopters did not attack the ground at all, but swaggered over the heads of the Kuwait tanks and carried out their mission.
Having said that, this group of Kuwait soldiers is still relatively brave. When the Iraq helicopters flew away, their chieftain tanks continued to fire.
During several rounds of long-range shelling, one Iraq tank was destroyed and several trucks were lost.
Even so, Iraq sent only a few infantry to reconnoiter the situation. A small number of Iraqi infantry, using small arms and RPGs, fired at the Kuwaitis and then retreated.
After receiving the report from these infantrymen, the Hammurabi division decided that it was not worth entangling with the Kuwait here and losing precious time. After a bombardment with tanks, they continued to march highly.
Division Commander Hammurabi recalled: After a few rounds of artillery fire from our advance tanks, the Kuwaitis turned around and ran. They fled in a hurry, leaving most of the tanks with their engines not turned off. These units are part of an advance unit of the 35th Brigade of Kuwait.
As a result, the 17th Brigade of the Hammurabi Division easily killed Kuwait City in the scattered artillery fire of the Kuwait.
At about 10 o'clock, the 35th Mechanized Brigade of Kuwait suffered a serious shortage of ammunition and was forced to stop shelling and return to the barracks to replenish shells.
At 11 o'clock, the 35th Mechanized Brigade of Kuwait had not yet finished replenishing its ammunition when it received an intelligence. An armored unit arrived from the rear of the western flank, and the Kuwait officers were delighted, judging that it was reinforcements sent by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and other allies.
The brigade commander sent a captain named Kasan to engage with the friendly forces on a motorcycle.
The hapless Captain Kasan rode a motorcycle to a few hundred meters in front of the tank unit, only to find that it was Iraq armored troops, and he turned the car around in fright and ran.
The Iraq tank had a bad view and was not very observant, mistaking it for a civilian motorcyclist and did not fire.
This Iraq tank force, not knowing that there is a Kuwait army here, just burrows its head in the rush.
The Kuwait 35th Brigade repeated its old tactics and shelled the road from a distance, destroying several Iraq trucks and capturing several wounded Iraq soldiers.
The soldiers informed the Kuwaitis that they belonged to the 14th Armoured Brigade of the Medina Division of the Iraq Republican Guard.
This information was a blow to the Kuwait, because the Medina Division was attacking not from the north, but from the west of Kuwait.
In other words, Kuwait has been lost to the north and west, and Iraq's army has approached Kuwait City from two directions.
After the blow, the 14th Panzer Brigade of the Medina Division temporarily stopped advancing.
After spotting two Kuwait armored battalions in the distance, the Iraqis began shelling with their own artillery.
The two sides engaged in a very inaccurate artillery battle, and the Iraqis, who had superior combat experience, quickly gained the upper hand.
Seeing that the Kuwaitis could not stand, a Kuwait A4 attack plane unexpectedly flew in the sky. The fact that Kuwait planes were still in the air a few hours after the start of the war was a miracle in itself.
The A4 attack plane fired indiscriminately at the ground and dropped several bombs on the heads of Iraq artillerymen.
The damage caused by these air strikes was zero, which still allowed Iraq artillery to temporarily stop attacking.
Iraq infantry then fired with individual SAM anti-aircraft missiles, damaging the unskilled but rather brave A4. The A4 staggered back to the airport in Kuwait City and finally made a successful forced landing.
After beating off the A4, the Iraqis continued to attack. At this time, the Medina division found that the Kuwait had made a mistake, their armored forces and artillery were dispersed, with the artillery position behind and the tank position in the front.
As a result, the old Iraqis immediately bypassed the Kuwait tanks and launched a fierce attack on the low-defense Kuwait artillery.
Not long after, the BMP2 infantry fighting vehicle, covering the Iraqi infantry, rushed to the Kuwait artillery positions.
Infantry fighting vehicles used 30-mm machine guns to fire indiscriminately at Kuwait artillery from a long distance, and the artillery positions were in shambles.
Kuwait's artillery is all M109 self-propelled guns, which are very mobile. After the attack, the Kuwait artillery did not bother to call for tank rescue, and quickly retreated to the rear on their own, and finally escaped the fire range of the Medina division, but the artillery battalion commander was killed.
The Kuwait artillery never dreamed that the Iraqi Hammurabi division, which had bypassed their advance, would kill back the carbines.
At this time, after receiving the call of the Medina division, he actually sent some elite main forces to turn back and flank the attack.
At this point, two tank battalions and one artillery battalion of the 35th Mechanized Brigade of Kuwait were pinned off by one division each of Iraq's Medina Division and Hammurabi's Division.
The 1st mechanized brigade, which actually had only 35 regimental strengths, was certainly not an opponent.
The commander of the 35th Mechanized Brigade of Kuwait calmly judged the situation, believed that a hard fight would definitely lead to a dead end, and decided to move quickly, which was actually a flight. The brigade fled in the direction of Saudi Arabia and eventually fled to the desert near the border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the afternoon. Due to lack of fuel, the Kuwaitis were forced to abandon a batch of M109 self-propelled howitzers, and only six were eventually withdrawn. After urgent consultations, the Saudi government allowed the brigade to take refuge in its own territory.
After the Iraq attacked, it was discovered that the Kuwait army had fled. They had no intention of pursuing and continued along the road towards Kuwait City to carry out their mission.
The Kuwait 35th Mechanized Brigade later boasted that it had independently resisted two Iraq brigades for one day with more than three or four tanks. Judging by the fact that the 35th Brigade had only 10 killed, 35 wounded, and lost 2 Chieftain tanks, they fled without experiencing any fierce fighting.
After the escape of the Kuwait 35th Brigade, only the Kuwait 80th Brigade could intercept the Iraqis.
The 80th Brigade was closer to Kuwait City, by which time most of the officers and men had already gone home from vacation. In a hurry, the brigade was able to gather only one armored company and one infantry company. To make matters worse, the armored company had no tanks, only British Saladin wheeled armored vehicles. The defense of this thing is basically 0, and it can't deal with a tank with a 76mm gun, and it doesn't have a modern sighting fire control system.
Using Saladin's armored vehicles to fight Iraq's BMP2 is also more dead and less alive, let alone fighting tanks.
While fighting with the 35th Mechanized Brigade in Kuwait, the Iraqis also began to exchange fire with the 80th Brigade vanguard. Where did the Republican Guard look at these lightly armed enemies, a single artillery and tank shock drove away the small blocking force of the Kuwait 80th Brigade.
The 80th Brigade retreated, gathering the remnants to continue the resistance. However, the Iraqi armoured forces advanced quickly and again caught up with the Kuwait one hour later. Some of Iraq's tanks attacked head-on, while some of them made a sideways detour. Finding surrounded, the demoralized 80th Brigade chose to lay down its arms and surrender.
When the whole army surrendered, the Kuwait 80th Brigade also lost only 6 Saladin armored vehicles, and 7 people were killed, so it can be seen that there was no fierce fighting.
With the collapse of the 35th and 80th Brigades in Kuwait, Kuwait City was left without troops.
At this time, stationed south of Kuwait City was the Kuwait 15th Brigade. The 15th Brigade was far from Kuwait City, and by the time they received the order and were ready to go north, the Iraq vanguard had entered the outskirts of Kuwait City.
The 15th Brigade, knowing that it was outnumbered, still sent a reinforcement to Kuwait City. As soon as the tanks and infantry of the 15th Brigade entered Kuwait City, they received an order to urgently rescue the Mbarakiya military base. The base serves as the command centre of the Kuwait Ministry of Defence, the General Staff and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, with only a small number of guards.
The 15th Brigade hurriedly reinforced the base and set up a number of defensive positions. However, in the afternoon of the same day, the Iraqi army rushed in like a flood, and the 15th Brigade exchanged fire with the enemy several times, and it could not be stopped. In desperation, the 15th Brigade rushed to cover the full retreat of the base personnel before the arrival of the enemy's large forces. Eventually, the brigade also fled to Saudi Arabia.
Interestingly, in the records of the Iraqis, the 15th Brigade did not resist at all, but simply fled.
Here, Iraq's Hammurabi division has entered Kuwait City. They saw little organized counterattack by the Kuwait army, but countless panicked Kuwait civilians, including Kuwait bigwigs in luxury cars.
Most of the Kuwaitis people thought they were their own tanks, and when they discovered that they were Iraqis at close range, they were so frightened that they abandoned their cars and fled. These cars blocked the roads, making it difficult for the Hammurabi division to move forward. The division commander laughed at himself: these abandoned cars caused much more trouble than Kuwait tanks.
Another problem for Iraqis is the lack of fuel and drinking water. Before the battle began, Saddam Hussein asked the Republican Guard to prepare its own supplies for 72 hours.
What the great dictator doesn't know is that supplies are not difficult to raise, the real difficulty is how to get to the front-line troops.
The 17th Brigade of the Pioneer Division of the Hammurabi Division has not been supported by rear supply vehicles for a long time.
August is the hottest season in Kuwait, with temperatures easily exceeding 45 degrees, generally exceeding 50 degrees for most of the month, and even more than 60 degrees in tanks and armored vehicles. Local media joked: air conditioning should be installed on all the streets of Kuwait City!
In this kind of weather, people must drink water constantly, otherwise it is easy to fall into a coma or even die due to dehydration.
In previous battles, some thirsty Iraq tank crews even jumped out of their tanks and found Kuwait water shops on the side of the road to buy ice water for themselves. There were many civilians queuing up to buy water, including some fleeing Kuwait soldiers.
However, everyone was a soldier who fought for the king, there was no enmity against each other, and they were all Arabs. So, there is such a comical scene. In the long queue to buy water, there were both Kuwait and Iraqi soldiers, who pretended not to see each other.
The problem of water is easy to solve, but what about gasoline?
By this time, most of the fuel had been depleted on some of the vehicles of the 17th Brigade of the Hammurabi Division and had to be replenished immediately.
Naturally, Kuwait, as the world's largest oil producer, will not lack gasoline.
The commander of the 17th Brigade of the Hammurabi Division sent soldiers to kidnap a local police chief in Kuwait: I and my communication vehicle ran out of gas, so I had to call a nearby Kuwait police officer. I said, first I brought more than 1000 tanks. So please and your colleagues help us clear the way so that we don't hurt your people. Second, help me get some oil. He was very scared and I tried to calm him down and get him to obey my commands. The officer then cleared the road, helped us with the fuel, and showed us the way to the Masila Hotel.
The police chief instantly confessed and revealed the location and inventory of the nearby Kuwait army fuel depot. This huge fuel depot can maintain a fuel supply of at least 1,000 tanks.
At this time, the organized resistance of the Kuwait army basically stopped, and at about 9 o'clock the next morning, the tanks of the 17th Brigade of the Hammurabi Division drove to the gate of the Kuwait Royal Palace, and a brief battle ensued.
Prince Fahd, 45, led the palace guards to fight the Iraqi army until the last minute, resulting in the death of Fahd and his two sons.
After killing Prince Fahd, the Iraqis deliberately ran over his body with tanks and stormed the palace in one fell swoop.
At this point, the war was over.
By noon on 4 August, all units of the Iraq Republican Guard had reached the planned occupied zone and the organized resistance in Kuwait had come to an end.
In this battle, Kuwait was basically a one-sided rout, and the only 35th Mechanized Brigade that resisted for a long time did not achieve much success.
Kuwait announced that the total number of soldiers killed in the war was more than 600, and it is clear that there were not many fierce battles.
Saddam later announced that only more than 100 Iraq soldiers had died in the battle, and the losses were extremely small.
Naturally, the actual casualties in Iraq were not so small: the battle report of the Hammurabi division recorded 99 killed, 249 wounded, and 15 missing.
That being said, the Iraqi army suffered only a few hundred casualties, and the Hammurabi division was the most loss-making force.
The capture of Kuwait, which has the fourth largest oil reserves in the world, and Iraq only suffered hundreds of casualties, which is naturally very cost-effective.
However, the war was not perfect for Iraq.
Due to inaccurate maps and sporadic resistance of the Kuwait army, the Medina Division and other units responsible for outflanking did not form an encirclement in time, resulting in part of the Kuwait army fleeing to Saudi Arabia.
In addition to the huge disparity in strength between the enemy and us, the low morale of the Kuwait army and the imminent collapse of the army at the touch of a button are also the decisive factors.
In fact, the Kuwait army has long had a strong sense of fear of neighboring Iraq. Kuwait officers and soldiers generally believe that once the war between the two countries breaks out, it will be a duel between lions and sheep, and Kuwait will definitely lose.
Some Kuwait troops had no sense of resolute resistance at all, and chose to flee to neighboring Saudi Arabia as soon as the war began.
The fiasco of the Kuwait war also told many small countries. If they do not have the same strong military capabilities as Israel, the richer the smaller the country, the more dangerous it is, and it can be destroyed or even extinct at any time.
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