Which airfield? Sorry, I don't have the reference here at home. Its the
same place where the Army POWs were transferred to the KC-130 on TV.

"Guy Alcala" wrote in message
.. .
Frijoles wrote:

snip

On the warfighting side, if fighting an air war was simply a matter of
stacking jets somewhere, we could cover the entire battlespace with B-1s
or
B-2s. (A trivia question -- how many CV sorties does it take to cover
the
same number of DMPIs that ONE B-1 with a full load of SDBs can cover?)
And
if tanking isn't an "issue," what's up with all the bragging about what
a
great tanking capability the Navy's brand new STRIKE aircraft
provides...?

Especially since they had to send four more F-18Es to the theater during
the
war, to boost the navy's own tanker assets (and of course, taking away
airbridge
tanker assets from other jobs, to get them there).

45% of Marine CAS sorties during OIF were flown by Harriers -- that's
hardly
a trivial number, particularly if you're on the ground getting shot at,
or
facing the prospect of having to deal with massed armor and indirect
fires.
IIRC, about 1500 strike sorties were flown off L-class ships,
principally
Bataan and BHR which each operated 20-25 jets. A couple hundred were
flown
from a "recovered" airfield within 10 minutes of Baghdad.

snip

Would you happen to know which airfield? I've found one source that says
it was
"60nm south" of Baghdad, but no other details. Looking at a map,


http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middl...print_2003.jpg

Shayka Mazhar and Al Iskandariyah New appear to be too close to the city,
Salman
Pak East is too close and too far east (although the Marines did go by
there
IIRR). An Najaf New is due south of Baghdad and about the right distance,
but
AFAIK the marines weren't near there in any strength, having crossed the
Euphrates at Nasiriya before heading up between the rivers towards
Baghdad. The
Shaykh Hantush Highway Strip seems to be the closest match for distance
and
direction, but the marines also went through al Kut, which puts An
Numaniyah (I
know they took that) or Al Jarrah in the picture (although they're more SE
than
S), and possibly the fields south and/or east of Al Kut, altough they're a
bit
far and definitely southeast.

Guy