Swift and Effective Retribution

El Dorado Canyon Sent "A Powerful Message"

By DAVID F. WINKLER

Dr. David F. Winkler is a historian with the Naval Historical Foundation.

For many Navy leaders of the 1980s, "jointness" was a dirty word. For example, in his book, Command of the Seas: Building the 600 Ship Navy, former Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. asserted that, "the current defense ideology of 'jointness' hobbles our military effectiveness terribly." He claimed that "forced jointness" had hindered the execution of the 1983 Grenada operation.

Since the dawn of the Republic, though, the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and--since it became a separate service--Air Force, as well as the Coast Guard, have repeatedly demonstrated that, in time of war, all of them can cooperate with one another to win a battle, carry out a mission, or accomplish almost any other national objective. Such was the situation in the early morning hours of 15 April 1986, when Air Force and Navy aircraft executed a well coordinated attack against targets in Libya in operation "El Dorado Canyon."

The purpose of the attack was to deliver a punitive warning to Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, the Libyan strongman whose radical government seemed dedicated to destroying all Western influences not only in Libya but elsewhere throughout the Islam world. In the early 1970s, Qaddafi had turned to the Soviet Union to purchase billions of dollars worth of military equipment, with Soviet technical assistance also provided, that Libya could use to intimidate its neighbors. Emboldened by the lack of an effective U.S. or NATO response, Qaddafi went a step too far in 1974, when he claimed the Gulf of Sidra as territorial waters--a move clearly in violation of international law--and then became a major sponsor and supporter of terrorism.

Taking a more aggressive stance than his predecessor against the Libyan dictator, President Ronald Reagan ordered the Nimitz and Forrestal aircraft carrier battle groups (CVBGs) to cross Qaddafi's self-proclaimed "Line of Death" and enter the Gulf of Sidra. The U.S. CVBGs were on a peaceful mission in international waters, but obviously prepared to fight fire with overwhelming fire. On 19 August 1981, two Navy F-14 Tomcat fighters reacted to an aggressor attack by shooting down the two Libyan aircraft that had launched the missiles against them.

During the next three years, American intelligence was able to develop an abundance of credible evidence linking more and more terrorist operations with the Qaddafi regime. In late 1985, when Libyan-based Abu-Nidal terrorists carried out massacres at airports in Rome and Vienna, Reagan severed economic ties with Libya and moved the aircraft carriers USS Saratoga, USS Coral Sea, and, later, the USS America into the region to challenge Qaddafi's military. On 24 March, when the Libyans fired surface-to-air missiles at U.S. Navy aircraft flying in international airspace, they started a chain of engagements that eventually cost Libya a missile attack boat and a missile corvette (a second missile corvette suffered serious damage).

Unable to bloody the Americans by attacking with conventional forces, Qaddafi turned to terrorism. Early on 5 April, a bomb ripped through La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin, killing two American soldiers and injuring over 200 more. When British Signals Intelligence intercepted a message linking Libya directly with the attack, the United States prepared for action. Sixth Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Frank B. Kelso II was assigned the responsibility for coordinating and conducting the retaliatory attack ordered by President Reagan.

Concerned about their own economic interests, most U.S. allies in Europe ignored America's legitimate right to defend itself against foreign attacks, preached military restraint, and denied overflight rights to the U.S. aircraft that would be flying combat missions against Libya. Only Great Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher backed the U.S. president. She gave the United States permission to strike Libya with all-weather night-capable U.S. Air Force F-111F bombers based on British soil. The strictures imposed by America's continental allies, though, forced the U.S. pilots to skirt the Iberian Peninsula and enter the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar to get into position to strike targets in the vicinity of Tripoli.

The only other all-weather night-capable aircraft in the U.S. inventory that were then available were the Navy's A-6E Intruders--which, flying off the America and the Coral Sea, launched deadly blows against Libya's Benghazi/al-Jamahiriyah military barracks and MiG-23 assembly facility as well as the Benina Airfield.

Striking simultaneously, and with remarkable precision, the joint Air Force-Navy attack force successfully executed the attack in the face of heavy Libyan air defenses. Lehman said the strikes "demonstrated the real cooperation, integration, and tactical training and know-how" between the U.S. armed forces.

One F-111F and its crew were lost, and a few bombs missed their assigned targets. Nonetheless, the attack achieved its objective of delivering a powerful message to the Libyan strongman that from that day forward he would be held personally accountable for his misdeeds. *

Sources: Joseph T. Stanik, El Dorado Canyon: Reagan's Undeclared War with Gaddafi (Naval Institute Press, 2002); John F. Lehman Jr., Command of the Seas: Building the 600 Ship Navy (Charles Scribner's Son, 1988).