Bravo Two Zero

Iraq's occupation and annexation of Kuwait in 1990 caused widespread international outrage. Many countries of the world sent their national military contingents to the Multinational Force (MNF), which defended Saudi Arabia from possible Iraqi aggression and further liberated Kuwait by military means in accordance with UN Security Council resolution No. 678.

The MNF also included the troops of a number of Arab states - Egypt , Syria , Morocco and the countries of the Arabian Peninsula . Immediately after the start of the Desert Storm military operation, on January 17, 1991, Iraq launched a campaign of rocket attacks on Israeli territory, a country that did not take part in the MNF in any form. It is assumed that Saddam Hussein hoped thereby to provoke a retaliatory strike by the Israelis, after which the Arab countries would most likely leave the MNF for ideological reasons. The shelling was carried out by Scud missiles, mainly from mobile launchers operating in the deserted western part of Iraq. The units moved in the dark, and during the day they carefully masked, which made their detection from the air extremely difficult. Since the issue was of great political importance, the MNF command allocated significant aviation forces to hunt for launchers, and the Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems were deployed in Israel to intercept the Skuds in flight. The effectiveness of these steps turned out to be low, and then it was decided to use special units of the USA and Great Britain to detect the installations and direct the aircraft at them.

One of the units tasked with finding the Scuds was the patrol squadron B of the 22nd regiment of the Special Aviation Service (the patrol is the main tactical unit of the SAS and consists of 8 people) under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab (pseudonym). In addition, the patrol had to find and detonate fiber-optic communication lines along the Baghdad - Amman highway, which were used to transmit orders to launcher commanders (regular radio communications were completely clogged with interference established by the coalition's EW units). It was assumed that the “Bravo-two-zero” will autonomously operate on the territory of the enemy for 14 days.

The group was delivered to the landing point by the British Chinook helicopter on the night of January 22, 1991. She successfully organized a base camp and carried out reconnaissance of the surroundings. Very soon, she faced a critical problem - a complete lack of communication with the command. As it turned out later, the group was mistakenly given the wrong radio frequencies, and communication via the radio became impossible. An attempt to get in touch with early warning radar ( AWACS ) aircraft using tactical beacons also failed. Then a patrol was discovered. According to McNab, they were discovered by an Iraqi shepherd boy in a base camp, driving a flock of goats (actually sheep , according to Escher's book):

Flunk the boy? Too much noise. Besides, what will we achieve with this? I did not want my conscience tormenting me until the end of my days. Curse, I felt like an Iraqi who was behind enemy lines in Britain and stumbled upon my Katie. ^[2]

At the same time, Escher (see the section "Historiography" ), relying on an interview with a family of nomads who is believed to have discovered a patrol, writes that in reality the shepherd did not notice the soldiers; they were seen by the driver of a bulldozer driving past the base camp a short time after this incident. The group hurriedly left the camp, but soon became involved in a battle with the enemy forces (the extent of this clash remains debatable). When the patrol broke away from the pursuers, McNab decided to retreat west to Syria. It should be noted that when planning the operation, it was decided to withdraw the patrol in case of emergency to the south, to Saudi Arabia; thus, a change of direction doomed the search for the missing group to failure.

On the transition to the Syrian border, the weather became the main enemy of the patrol. The winter of 1991 in the Persian Gulf region was the harshest in three decades. The group turned out to be poorly equipped for hours-long marches on an open plain under a cold piercing wind and in conditions of snowfall. The soldiers were physically exhausted, which led to the inadvertent division of the patrol into two squads, when, during the night crossing, McNab again tried to contact the AWACS through a tactical beacon . The soldier walking in front of him, because of fatigue, did not accept the command to stop, which was discovered too late. In the group that went ahead, there were three people, two of whom were in poor physical condition (one soldier had his leg tucked up, the other suffered from dehydration ). Four remained with McNab. Both groups failed to find each other due to darkness and continued on their way to the Syrian border separately.

After several days of travel, the McNaba group found itself in a difficult situation: all the servicemen had freezing symptoms, and it became obvious that the group would not reach the border on its own. This forced the soldiers to take a desperate step: they grabbed an Iraqi taxi on the road and rode on it. According to McNab, they were forced to leave a taxi at a checkpoint; according to another version, they left the driver in the car, agreeing to meet at the checkpoint, but he told the police about them. With a further attempt to break through to the border, the group was forced to engage in battle with the enemy and was dispersed; all its members lost contact with each other, one of them died, one died of hypothermia, and the other three were captured. Moreover, the group has almost reached the border; for example, McNab at the time of his capture could see the territory of Syria.

The second group, whose leader was Chris Ryan (a pseudonym), also lost one person from hypothermia. Another member of her was captured while trying to steal a car, and only Ryan managed to get to the border and crossed it safely on January 31 . In eight days of retreat, Ryan was found to walk 300 km on foot and lose 16 kg of weight; in the last two days he had no water, and he began to experience hallucinations .

All five soldiers captured were held apart from each other (only McNab and Pring had periodic contact), were beaten, interrogated and tortured . So, at the time of release, McNab had several teeth broken, a shoulder joint was knocked out, back muscles were torn, there were scars on the kidney tissue, burns on the hips and loss of mobility of the hands of both hands (the result of being kept in handcuffs), and after returning from captivity he hepatitis virus has been detected; When captured, Koburn received a bullet wound in the leg, which the Iraqis did not treat during the entire captivity, only bandaging the wound. During interrogations, the prisoners adhered to a previously agreed legend that they were members of a search and rescue group. In early February, the Iraqis threatened to leave two soldiers to their own devices, as if they were in the infirmary, and after that, McNab provided some additional information, saying that the group was engaged in reconnaissance in the interests of a regular infantry unit. Apparently, the Iraqis believed this, because they transferred the prisoners to the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, where they were no longer interrogated and kept in relatively normal conditions (McNab, Pring and McGoven were in the same cell). In early March, they were all released. After returning to their homeland, the surviving members of the Bravo-two-zero patrol took part in the reconstruction of the operation and the investigation of the causes of its failure.

The Bravo Two Zero patrol failed to fulfill its mission and became the only SAS patrol lost during Operation Desert Storm. Of the eight servicemen, four were captured, one was killed in a shootout, two died of hypothermia and only one managed to escape. McNab, Ryan and Coburn are still hiding their real names, due to personal security reasons.

• Andy McNab (nickname) - patrol commander. Captured.
• Chris Ryan (pseudonym) is the only member of the patrol who managed to get to Syria.
• Bob Consiglio ( Bob Consiglio ) - died in battle.
• Steve "Legged" Lane ( Steve "Legs" Lane ) - died of hypothermia .
• Vincent Phillips ( Vincent Phillips ) - died of hypothermia.
• Ian "Dinger" Pring ( Ian "Dinger" Pring ) - was captured.
• Malcolm "Stan" McGowan ( Malcolm "Stan" McGowan ) - was captured.
• Mike "Mark the Kiwi" Coburn (nickname) - was captured.

For the first time, the history of the Bravo Two Zero patrol was occasionally mentioned in the autobiography of Peter de la Billière , a former commander of British forces in the Persian Gulf. In 1993, Andy McNab's book Bravo-Two-Zero, which became a bestseller, was released . Chris Ryan (The Only Survivor) and Mike Coburn (The Fifth Soldier) also wrote their books. Finally, Michael Asher, who did not participate in the patrol but served in the SAS, visited Iraq after the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein, tracked the patrol’s path on the spot and published the results of his research in the book “True, Bravo-Zero.”

All four books on the fate of Bravo-Two-Zero contradict each other to one degree or another. The book of patrol commander McNab received the greatest fame. Judging by later books, McNab exaggerated the scale of the fighting in which the patrol participated, including the scale of the battle that followed the group’s first discovery. Ryan criticizes McNab's actions as patrol commander, as well as the behavior of Vincent Phillips, who blames the discovery of the group. Escher criticizes the work of both McNab and Ryan. In addition, the books of Escher and Coburn attempt to justify Phillips.

Based on the history of the Bravo Two Zero Patrol, two feature films were shot.

• The One That Got Away was shot by ITV in 1996 based on a book by Chris Ryan.
• The film “ Bravo Two Zero ” ( Bravo Two Zero , in Russia is known as “ Desert Storm ”) was shot by BBC in 1998 based on McNab’s book. The role of McNab himself was played by Sean Bean .

1. ↑ Bravo Two Zero
2. ↑ Andy McNab. Bravo Two Zero. - M .: Eksmo, 2007 .-- S. 127.

• Andy McNab Bravo Two Zero. - M .: Eksmo, 2007. ISBN 978-5-699-24395-2 .
• McNab, Andy. Bravo Two Zero. Pb Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1994. ISBN 978-0-552-14127-7 .
• Ryan, Chris. The One That Got Away. Washington: Brassey's, 1998. ISBN 978-1-57488-156-1 .
• Asher, Michael. The Real Bravo Two Zero: The Truth Behind Bravo Two Zero. Cassell Military, 2002. ISBN 978-0-304-36554-8 .
• Coburn, Mike. Soldier Five: The Real Truth About The Bravo Two Zero Mission. Mainstream Publishing, 2004. ISBN 978-1-84018-907-0 .