Heavy Metal - A Tank Company's Battle to Baghdad

But the training we did there was for traditional tank warfare, shooting and killing the enemy at distances of 1,500 meters or more. Now we were being ordered to go into a city with restricted manoeuvre areas, multi-story buildings, and tight corners; perfect tank-killing ground for small groups of fighters who knew where the Abrams was most vulnerable. Few Charlie Company soldiers were trained for urban warfare, none in tanks. It was just not something that tankers did. A few of the officers got a quick lesson or two in urban warfare at the Armour Officer Basic Course at Fort Knox, Kentucky. But they were on foot when they did that, not in a tank.

Not since World War II had there been tank battles in cities involving American forces. There were tanks at Hue City during the Vietnam War, but that was largely American tanks against North Vietnamese infantry. Tank-on-tank warfare in an urban environment was not something any of us expected to see. Or wanted to be a part of.

We were exploring new territory here, literally and figuratively.

Even though we did not realize it at the time, we were about to take all the modern doctrine of tank warfare and stand it on its ear. But what we were to discover this day about ourselves, and about how to fight with tanks in urban areas, would help convince division officials just a few days later to make the final push on Baghdad.

And it would set new standards for the use of tanks in a city fight.

We got the tank-hunting mission shortly after noon on 3 April.

We crossed the Euphrates River about 10 that morning after it was secured by the division’s Task Force 1-15 in what appeared to have been a tough but eventually lopsided battle. Destroyed Iraqi vehicles were scattered all along the eastern approaches to the bridge, many still burning. And the smoking bodies of dead Iraqis littered trenches and bunkers on both sides of the road. Prisoners were still being rounded up as we drove through.

By late morning we moved into Objective Saints south of Baghdad and were set up at a crossroads next to a canal in the middle of potato fields. We had little opposition getting there, but at the crossroads found a single soldier with an AK-47 dutifully manning his post. When he raised his rifle to fire at S.Sgt. Jason Diaz’s lead tank, the soldiers killed him with a quick burst from one of the machine guns.

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