In 1991, the Roland Company collaborated with the U.S. Naval Institute in producing the documentary film Storm from the Sea, which featured interviews with many of the key players in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm—while the memories were still fresh in their minds. In 2017, the Roland Company graciously donated the rights to all interviews and transcripts from the production to the U.S. Naval Institute Memoir Collection.
What follows is an excerpt from one of those interviews. Rear Admiral Bill Fogarty was Commander, Joint Task Force Middle East, at the time of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. Here he recalls some of the factors that defined the waning months of 1990 as Desert Shield paved the way for what would follow in the new year: Desert Storm and the rollback of Iraqi aggression.
We had to take into account the possibility that Saddam Hussein’s final objective would be to take over the whole Arabian Peninsula—moving south through Saudi Arabia, perhaps taking Bahrain on the way, down through the United Arab Emirates, through Yemen. Add all that to what he had in his own country, and he would control most of the oil resources for the whole world. It’s almost mind-boggling to think what might have happened if that were the case.
As I recall, in our early meetings, my staff and I went through the possibilities of the situation. Worst case from a maritime standpoint was that he would throw his complete air force, especially the F-1s with the Exocet antiship missiles, against our forces in the Persian Gulf, and we did not have the air superiority at that time that we had later. It would have been pretty dicey, I think. The Iraqi Air Force, remember, had had lots of experience in the Iran-Iraq War [1980–88].
We went into some pretty heavy planning at that time on how to deceive him if that was in fact what he had in mind. He’d have to find us, and he’d have to be able to target us, and we did some things at that time to make that difficult for him.
I believe there was a definite comfort factor for the Saudis knowing that the U.S. Navy was there; we had maintained a presence during the Iran-Iraq War, and because we had, the Saudis had been able to get their oil out, to keep their ports intact, and keep the belligerents at bay.
Early on in Desert Shield we were able to have a conference in Bahrain of some 20 nations; there were nine participating navies who actually supplied naval forces to maritime intercept operations. It was a difficult situation in that we had to move quickly to ensure that UN sanctions were carried out as soon as possible. When you have that many countries involved it’s always difficult at first to get everybody together. But what was so reassuring to me is that after that first meeting it was obvious that, with the United States taking a coordinating role, all the countries participating in the intercept operations felt confident that we could carry this out—and it proved to be true. It was very, very successful.
We set up the intercept operations on sort of a zone-defense system. We took the choke points in the northern Arabian Sea, in the Gulf, in the Red Sea, and established patrol areas within those choke points. Then, by a division of labor among the countries, we were able to have time off for the ships to go into various ports for repair. We were able to come up with a concept and a command-and-control organization that lent itself to the geography of the area. The ability to start off quickly in this whole operation had a lot to do, I think, with the fact that many of these countries we had worked with before—the NATO countries, Australia—so the terms of reference and the plans and communications and the interoperability were sufficient. We could plan together, and we knew each other well enough that we trusted each other.
So, while it appeared at first that the intercept operations were going to be very difficult, cumbersome, and awkward, in reality it was not that way. Also, we were able to keep the seats of government out of the operation and have it as a commander-to-commander type of command and control—and that really lent itself to good coordination.