RIO HATO
While the 1st Ranger Battalion was parachuting down on Torrijos-Tocumen, the other two battalions of the 75th Regiment were making a parachute assault at Rio Hato, west of Panama City.
They had launched seven hours earlier from Fort Benning, Georgia, in seventeen C-130s of the 317th airlift wing, stationed at Pope Air Force Base. Each of the first fifteen aircraft was crammed with sixty-five Rangers (C-130s normally carried fifty-two fully loaded troops), jammed tighter than rush-hour subways. Forget about moving. Forget about walking down the aisle to a "toilet." Five-gallon cans were passed around under people's legs. Because there wasn't room to rig, everyone had donned their equipment before boarding. Each Ranger carried on his lap a sixty-to-one-hundred-pound rucksack loaded with ammunition and supplies — including at least one 66mm light antitank weapon (LAW). As it turned out, the LAWs came in very handy.
At H-hour, F-117 stealth bombers dropped two 2,000-pound bombs, with time-delay fuses, 150 meters from the 6th and 7th Company barracks. For the next three minutes, Apache helicopters, AH-6 helicopter gunships, and an AC-130 gunship fired on antiaircraft weapons positions around the airfield.
At H+3 minutes, the lead C-130 crossed the drop zone at 500 feet, trailed immediately by the C-130s dropping the Rangers, followed shortly by two C-130s dropping four jeeps and four motorcycles.
As the Rangers started their descent, they could see green machine gun tracers crossing the drop zone — or worse, whizzing up toward them. Thirteen of the fifteen C-130s received multiple hits. And a few Rangers were also hit as they descended. The bombs and the preparatory fire had had an effect — two hundred cadets were later found hiding under their bunks — but not enough. Most of the PDF 6th and 7th Companies had managed to deploy around the airfield, and were coming at the landing Rangers in CG-150 armored cars and other military vehicles with machine guns blasting; a.50-caliber machine gun on the rock archway at the main gate raked the drop zone.
From all indications, they had been alerted before the attack, and they were good soldiers. They did what good soldiers do.
The Rangers did not take this quietly; Rangers arc as passive as blow-torches. As they slipped out of their chutes and assembled for their assaults, they fired at the PDF vehicles with their LAWs, and knocked several out even before moving on to their assigned assault objectives. They knocked out three trucks this way, one of them a fuel tanker that burned for hours.
In one of the stranger moments of that night, a Ranger's parachute was snagged by a fleeing PDF two-and-a-half-ton truck, which dragged him across the drop zone, with the Ranger yelling for help. His call was answered when a comrade coolly put a LAW rocket into the truck cab at 150 meters — a long shot for a moving target.
While all this was happening, Colonel Buck Kernan, the Ranger regimental commander, was single-handedly shutting down power at the airfield — though not exactly on purpose.
During his descent, he'd passed through the field's power lines. When he landed, his parachute was tangled in the lines and in flames. As he pulled the chute free, he dragged a light pole onto the power lines supplying the camp — shorting out the entire airfield complex. He quickly detached from his parachute harness, and found himself on the edge of the bullfighting ring in the center of the camp.
Meanwhile, the regimental sergeant major, Chief Sergeant Major Leon Guerrero, who had jumped after Kernan, was floating down above him watching all of this, worried that the colonel was badly injured. But when he saw Kernan climb out of the ring and had determined his boss was okay, the only thing he could do was break into laughter. Kernan instantly took charge and rallied his troops.
Colonel Kernan's plan for the takedown for Rio Hato called for two AC- 130 gunships, one Army Apache, and two AH-6 helicopter gunships to be orbiting near Rio Hato before the troop-carrying C-130s arrived. At precisely 0100 hours, they engaged known antiaircraft weapons positions and other preselected targets in the Rio Hato complex, with great results. The Rangers started dropping at precisely 0103 hours.
Once on the ground, 2nd/75th Ranger Battalion had the mission of neutralizing the 6th and 7th PDF Companies, while 3rd/75th Ranger isolated the airfield, cleared the NCO Academy, the camp headquarters, the communications center, the motor pool, and the airfield operating complex.
Although the complex was defended by some of Noriega's elite, these were no match for Rangers. Once on the ground, the Rangers attacking assigned objectives with platoon- and squad-size elements quickly overwhelmed the PDF, killing 34 and capturing 278, along with thousands of weapons.
After an hour and fifty-three minutes of tough, close-quarters fighting, Rio Hato was secured, resistance had ceased, and supply aircraft had started landing.
One Ranger mission was to search Noriega's "Farralon" beach house on the airfield's southern approach to the airfield. It was unoccupied. Rangers from Lieutenant Colonel Al Maestas' 2d Ranger Battalion found the large double-glass door locked. The Rangers debated how to enter the luxurious home. Their solution? They backed off and shot a LAW rocket into the door, shattering it into nano-pieces. (Troops in the JSOTF later called LAWs "the Ranger key.")
Again, vast quantities of pornography were found.
Turning LAWs into an entry device is typical of Rangers. They are not subtle. Several days later, the Rangers moved into Panama City and began establishing checkpoints and traffic control.
About 10:30 one night, a Ranger squad was manning a major intersection. This checkpoint had been set up with typical Ranger efficiency, and in depth. The block was manned by three Rangers, supported in overwatch by a 90mm recoilless rifle and an M-60 machine gun.
A car approached, slowed, then accelerated and burst through the barriers.
No screwing around with the Rangers. The 90mm immediately engaged, the sedan exploded with a direct hit, and the M-60 hosed down the flaming wreck just to make sure. Inside were PDF soldiers, all dead, and several open bottles of whiskey. They'd been drunk when they ran the block.
The story quickly made the rounds of the JSOTF. Somebody drew a cartoon poster of a Ranger gunner destroying a sedan; its caption read: "RADD! — Rangers Against Drunk Drivers."
TASK FORCE PACIFIC
Though the ice storm at Pope Air Force Base had taken its toll, the twenty heavy-drop and three CDS birds (C-141s) from Charleston were unaffected, and arrived at Torrijos-Tocumen on schedule at 1:45 A.M. carrying most of the equipment the 82nd would use in Panama: seventy-two HMMWVs, most of them equipped with.50-caliber machine guns; eight Sheridan M-551 armored assault vehicles; four 105mm artillery pieces; and several pieces of engineer equipment. Twenty-six minutes later, eight C-141s arrived with paratroopers. General Johnson, his Division Assault CP, and his brigade and battalion commanders flew in with the first eight birds. An hour after that, five more birds dropped. The last seven dropped at 0515 hours, completing the Division Ready Brigade of more than 2,000 paratroopers.
The first division objective was Panama Viejo in eastern Panama City. Stationed there were the PDF 1st Cavalry Squadron, primarily a ceremonial unit with approximately eighty horses, and a 170-man detachment from Noriega's elite and fiercely loyal special operations antiterrorist unit (USEAT), equipped with V-300 armored assault vehicles and antiaircraft weapons. The job of taking this target had been given to the 2nd Battalion, 504th Infantry.