February 26, 1991 was the date of what has been called “the last great tank battle of the twentieth century”. It’s been known as the Battle of 73 Easting, for us in the 1st Battalion\/41st Infantry it was Objective Norfolk. The actual battle began in the late afternoon by the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment when they made contact with elements of Iraqi Republican Guard and and an Armored Division and systematically reduced the units to scrap heaps before we arrived on the scene at about 2 am when we passed through their forward lines and picked up the battle. <\/p>\n
There was a bit of confusion at our entrance into the battle which resulted in B Co. 1\/41 losing a platoon (3 of their 4 Bradleys) to M1A1 fire. Like I said earlier in the month, 1\/41st had the highest casualty rate of any infantry unit in the war because both sides were shooting at us, the price we paid for being in the lead.<\/p>\n
Many Iraqi tank crews had turned their engines off to let their vehicles cool down in the night air which confounded our thermal optics and led to a 360 degree battle as we passed tanks we thought had been defeated by the 2nd ACR. The battle lasted until sun up. <\/p>\n
The last shot was fired by COB6 when he launched a TOW missile into a T55 Iraqi tank. In the end, US 1st infantry Division had destroyed the 18th Mechanized Brigade and 37th Armored Brigade of the Tawakalna Division.<\/p>\n
The Iraqis stood their ground at Norfolk which gave other Iraqi units time to escape from Kuwait, but at a terrible cost to the Iraqi army which lost hundreds of tanks and thousands of soldiers in the twelve hour engagement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"