PIN : 085131–000
CMH Pub 70–114–1

Cover: Patrol Extraction, Grenada, November 1983, by Marbury Brown

All photos are from Department of Defense files. 
Introduction

At the end of the Vietnam War and the end of selective service, the 

United States Army was forced to rebuild itself into an all-volunteer force. 

The Army in the late 1970s and early 1980s was untested in combat and 

faced a crisis in confidence, a reduction in size, and the need to reorganize 

and restructure. Army leaders, doctrine, and the political climate of 

the time compelled the Army to focus on its primary potential military 

mission: the defense of western Europe. Equipment and manpower were 

geared toward this mission.

In October 1983, the U.S. Army was unexpectedly thrown into 

a “no-notice” joint force contingency operation on the little island of 

Grenada. Confronted with a deteriorating political situation on Grenada 

after the deposing and execution of the leader of the government by its 

own military, the perceived need to deal firmly with Soviet and Cuban 

influence in the Caribbean, and the potential for several hundred U.S. 

citizens becoming hostages, the Ronald W. Reagan administration 

launched an invasion of the island with only a few days for the military 

to plan operations. While the military’s capabilities were never in doubt, 

the unexpectedly strong Cuban and Grenadian resistance in the first two 

days of the operation and the host of U.S. military errors in planning, intelligence, communications, and logistics highlighted the dangers of even 

small contingency operations. As the first joint operation attempted since 

the end of the Vietnam War, the invasion of Grenada also underscored the 

problems the U.S. Army faced in trying to work in a joint environment 

with its Air Force, Navy, and Marine counterparts.

This pamphlet was prepared by Richard W. Stewart, the Center’s 

Chief Historian, and is an edited extract of Senior Historian Edgar F. 

Raines’ forthcoming account of U.S. Army operations on Grenada 

entitled The Rucksack War: U.S. Army Operational Logistics in Grenada, 

October–November 1983. We hope that you enjoy and profit from this 

synopsis of the short, yet significant, contingency operation conducted 

by the U.S. Army as part of the joint team in the early days of the allvolunteer force.

JEFFREY J. CLARKE

Chief of Military History



Operation Urgent Fury

The Invasion of Grenada, October 1983

The U.S. Army spent much of the decade after its retreat from 

Vietnam rebuilding itself into a supremely capable, all-volunteer force. 

With the application of new doctrine, equipment, and, especially, 

dynamic leadership at all levels, the Army slowly recovered from that 

traumatic time. Focused primarily on preparations to counter the Soviet 

and Warsaw Pact threat to central Europe, the U.S. Army trained hard 

in conventional operations as enshrined in its primary doctrinal manual, 

Field Manual 100–5, Operations (1976). Within ten years of the end of 

U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the Army had rebuilt itself but had only 

begun to integrate into a joint team capable of fighting in a synchronized 

multiservice operation. World events, however, have a way of forcing a 

nation to go to war or, at least, to engage in operations “with the Army it 

has, and not the Army it wants,” to quote a more contemporary statement 

of how occurrences have a way of surprising policy makers. In the case of 

Grenada, an obscure island in the Caribbean, the circumstances resulting 

from an internal power struggle between Communist leaders spilled over 

into a short, but intense, contingency operation for the U.S. Army. 

Strategic Setting

The island of Grenada is the smallest and most southerly of the 

Windward Islands in the Caribbean Sea (Map 1). It is a poor island 

and had a population of some 91,000 in 1983. It is only 100 miles from 

Venezuela but almost 1,500 miles southeast of Key West, Florida. The 

main island of Grenada has an area of about 200 square miles, with a few 

smaller islands bringing the total to some 220 square miles. The next closest island to Grenada in the Windward chain is St. Vincent to the north. 

The capital of Grenada, St. George’s, had a population of about 7,500 

inhabitants. Grenada’s main cash crops were mace, nutmeg, and bananas, 

but one of the island’s main sources of revenue was the St. George’s 

University School of Medicine. The school was founded in 1976 and 

had two main campuses at True Blue near Point Salines and Grand Anse 

just south of St. George’s. The medical school had about seven hundred 

American students attending in 1983 and by itself generated between 10 

and 15 percent of the entire gross national product of Grenada.
C A R I B B E A N

S E A

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

Point Salines

Little Saint Vincent

Little Carriacou Is Martinique

Diamond Is

Ronde Is

G R E N A D A

G R E N

A

D I N

E I S L A

N

D

S

Gouyave

Victoria

Sauteurs

St. George's

Calivigny

Grenville

St. David's

Grand Mal

AT L A N T I C

O C E A N

C A R I B B E A N

S E A

Puerto Rico

VENEZUELA TRINIDAD

TOBAGO

GRENADA

BARBADOS

Martinique

Guadeloupe

Anguilla

BARBUDA

ANTIGUA

ST. KITTS

NEVIS

DOMINICA

ST. LUCIA

ST. VINCENT

L E E W A R D I S

W I N D W A R D I S

1983

GRENADA

0 10

0 10 Kilometers

Miles

ELEVATION IN METERS

0 300 600 and Above

Map 1
The leftist government of Grenada in 1983 was headed by Maurice 

Bishop, the party leader as well as the head of the revolutionary “New 

JEWEL” (New Joint Effort for Welfare, Education, and Liberation) 

movement. Bishop led a Communist-style government that looked to 

Cuba and the Soviet Union for financial and moral support and blamed 

the United States for all the ills of the island, real and imagined. He had 

come to power in 1979 by overthrowing the democratically elected—but 

highly eccentric and increasingly autocratic—government of Sir Eric 

Gairy and immediately signed trade and military agreements with 

Havana and Moscow. Limited military aid and advisers followed, and 

the Grenadians accelerated plans to construct a major international 

airport with an extended runway at Point Salines. By the fall of 1983, 

that runway, built mainly by about seven hundred Cuban workers who 

were all reservists in the Cuban Army, was nearly complete. 

The Grenadian military, even with outside training and support, was 

not a formidable force. It consisted of a small permanent military force 

called the People’s Revolutionary Army of fewer than three hundred 

soldiers, a partly trained militia called the People’s Revolutionary Militia 

of fewer than a thousand, and a small coast guard with a few converted 

fishing boats. The soldiers were armed with light weapons: AK47s, a 

few mortars, some antitank rockets, and light machine guns. The main 

striking force was provided by eight Soviet BTR60 amphibious armored 

personnel carriers and two BRDM2 amphibious scout cars, all with heavy 

14.5-mm. machine guns. Their armor and armament made them formidable weapons platforms. The main threat on the island to any external 

intervention force was, however, the seven hundred Cuban “construction 

workers” who were loosely organized into military units. 

The United States had grown increasingly uneasy about the expansion of Soviet and Cuban influence in the Caribbean and in Grenada 

in particular. By the early 1980s, Soviet support of the Communist 

Sandinista government of Nicaragua and of the Communist insurrection 

in El Salvador was on the rise. The new U.S. administration of President 

Ronald Reagan viewed further encroachments into traditional U.S. 

spheres of influence in South and Central America and the Caribbean 

as constituting an increasing menace. Soviet and Cuban military aid and 

equipment and the construction of an airfield larger than any needed for 

purely civilian purposes set off alarm bells in the U.S. national security 

establishment.

The U.S. intervention had its roots in a bloody power struggle 

within the New JEWEL movement in Grenada between Prime Minister 

and New JEWEL party leader Maurice Bishop and his Deputy Prime 
Minister and chief Marxist theoretician in the party Bernard Coard. In a 

series of internal political maneuvers in the Central Committee, Coard 

consolidated his personal support and on 12 October 1983 deposed 

Bishop and ordered his arrest. When riots broke out after the arrest 

of Bishop was announced, Coard panicked, resigned, and went into 

hiding. Coard’s coconspirators, however, kept Bishop under arrest. A 

few days later, unhappy about the imprisonment of the popular Bishop, 

a crowd of Grenadians stormed Bishop’s residence at Mount Wheldale 

where he was confined and freed him. Bishop moved to Fort Rupert, the 

army headquarters, and with a mob of supporters overawed the guards. 

Before he could consolidate his support, however, he and his followers 

were attacked and fired on by three of the army’s armored cars, which 

killed anywhere from ten to a hundred people. Bishop and several of 

his prominent supporters were captured, lined up against a wall, and 

executed. The head of the People’s Revolutionary Army, General Hudson 

Austin, announced the formation of a Revolutionary Military Council 

with himself as president of an interim government.

The government of Fidel Castro in Cuba, long a supporter of Bishop, 

was surprised by the events on Grenada and on 20 October 1983 issued 

a statement condemning the killings and asking for explanations of the 

coup and the following bloodbath. Cuba also promised continued aid 

and support of the Grenadian people. Despite the bloodshed, Castro did 

not want to risk losing all influence on his new client state.

Despite growing unease about Communist penetration of the 

Caribbean, the initial reaction of U.S. officials on 19 October was 

concern for U.S. citizens on the island. Officials began to contemplate a 

noncombatant evacuation of American citizens. Initially, there was no 

serious consideration given to intervening to change the regime. Early 

concepts of the evacuation included using a show of force followed by 

the seizure of a few departure locations with only enough lethal force to 

defend the operation and protect the evacuees. On the nineteenth, the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff issued a warning order for possible evacuation operations 

to the commander of U.S. Atlantic Command (USLANTCOM), Admiral 

Wesley L. McDonald.

Planning

Initial planning for the noncombatant evacuation of U.S. citizens 

postulated two different levels of U.S. force, depending on whether 

the evacuation was opposed. Admiral McDonald’s naval staff briefed 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John W. Vessey on using 
a combination of fleet warships, elements of a Marine amphibious unit, 

and, if necessary, one reinforced airborne battalion for a show of force. 

General Vessey suggested using portions of recently formed Ranger 

battalions to seize the almost completed Point Salines airfield. This 

would take full advantage of their training in airport seizure. He also 

suggested using some of the Pentagon’s special operations forces since 

hostage rescue specialists might be needed. 

On 20 October, the president’s deputy national security adviser, Rear 

Adm. John M. Poindexter, convened a crisis preplanning group to discuss 

the looming crisis. He recommended that the Special Situation Group, a 

committee of senior policy makers chaired by Vice President George H. 

W. Bush, assume responsibility for managing the crisis. President Reagan 

concurred, and late that day the group met for the first time to discuss 

how the United States should respond. It directed the Joint Chiefs to 

prepare a detailed operational plan for an opposed rescue of U.S. citizens 

and recommended that the USS Independence carrier battle group with 

a Marine amphibious unit be diverted to the region just in case. At the 

same time, General Vessey asked the Joint Special Operations Command 

(JSOC) commander, Maj. Gen. Richard A. Sholtes, to develop some 

ideas for his unit’s potential role in the operation.

The announcement of the diversion of the Independence battle group 

to the eastern Caribbean on 21 October received positive reactions from 

many of the governments of the small islands nearest Grenada. The 

heads of those governments met in Barbados and unanimously agreed 

to support any intervention on Grenada and to request assistance from 

Barbados and Jamaica as well as from the United States and Britain. 

The violence in Grenada had shocked them and heightened their fears 

for more unrest in the region. 

Attempts to resolve the crisis peacefully met with constant roadblocks as the Grenadians, either because of their own dissension and 

confusion or because of a hope to exploit the situation for their own 

benefit, frustrated every U.S. effort to gain an explanation of what was 

happening on the island. Not until 22 October did the Grenadians allow 

a counselor visit that confirmed that the students at the medical school 

were unharmed—for the moment. Endeavors to arrange the departure 

of the Americans, however, including docking a passing ocean liner, 

were blocked by the Grenadians, heightening suspicions that the Austin 

government was in disarray or that foreign nationals were beginning to be 

viewed as potential hostages or bargaining chips. In addition, clandestine 

agent reports from the island indicated that the Grenadians had confined 

the American medical students to their dormitories and had posted 
10

Grenadian troops to keep them there. To many in the U.S. government, 

this seemed proof that the students might already be hostages.

As planning for a possible intervention intensified, the need for 

speed and operational security restricted the number of people involved 

in the discussions. Communications, in addition, were not compatible 

between the various intelligence-gathering activities, the JSOC world, 

and Atlantic Command, the operational headquarters. Also, to keep the 

planning for the operation “close hold,” Atlantic Command cut U.S. 

Readiness Command and, for a while, U.S. Forces Command, out of 

the planning loop. On 19 October a staff officer at Atlantic Command 

placed a telephone call directly to XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, 

North Carolina, advising it to place its subordinate unit, the 82d Airborne 

Division, on alert for a possible rescue operation in Grenada. The corps 

and division began their planning with very little information, however, 

and dispatched a team to Atlantic Command at Norfolk, Virginia, on 

Saturday, 22 October, to attend a planning conference.

During the night of 21–22 October, Prime Minister Eugenia Charles 

of Dominica, as acting chair of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean 

States, formally asked the United States to intervene in Grenada. 

President Reagan’s newly appointed national security adviser, Robert C. 

McFarlane, met with the president early in the morning on the twentysecond and informed him of the request. Reagan indicated his strong 

preference for action and steered his national security team in the direction 

of intervention while withholding a final decision.

Meanwhile, 82d Airborne Division planners at Atlantic Command 

met with Admiral McDonald and his staff to learn more about this operation, only to discover that intelligence on enemy forces and the situation 

on the island was very weak. Nevertheless, preparations continued with 

a Marine and special operations forces plan on the table along with a 

heavier joint plan involving the marines, the 82d Airborne Division, and 

JSOC forces, including one or two Ranger battalions. But which of them 

would be the spearhead force and which the follow-on peacekeeping 

force was still undecided. 

Using the cover of preparing for a division emergency deployment 

readiness exercise, Maj. Gen. Edward L. Trobaugh, commanding 

general of the 82d Airborne Division, directed his staff to put together a 

series of plans for multiple contingencies from 22 through 25 October. 

Complicating the logistical arrangements was the decision by Atlantic 

Command to exclude XVIII Airborne Corps, then commanded by Lt. 

Gen. Jack V. Mackmull, from the planning and operational chain of command. Neither Admiral McDonald nor his staff apparently understood 
11

the critical functions of logistics, communications, and especially the 

complicated ballet of the airflow (the arrival, loading, and movement of 

Air Force transporters in conjunction with Army airborne soldiers) that 

the XVIII Airborne Corps performed for the 82d. Many of the support 

resources the division needed in an airborne operation—communications 

with the Air Force, engineers, loading ramp operations, medical support, 

airdrop and rigging support, and even water purification units—were 

provided by the corps. The corps was also a critical element in planning 

and conducting air assaults. Cutting it out of the chain of command 

threw a heavy and unexpected burden on the already overworked 82d 

Airborne Division staff. 

On 23 October, Atlantic Command charged the commander of the 

U.S. Second Fleet, Vice Adm. Joseph Metcalf III, with command of 

Joint Task Force 120 and with overall command of the Grenada operation. General Sholtes was to command all the special operations forces 

as part of Task Force 123. In a final meeting at Atlantic Command on 

24 October, the participants modified the starting times for the increasingly ad hoc operation. They also changed the target listing for the 

Members of the 82d Airborne Division wait in an equipment-filled light 

utility vehicle before boarding aircraft for deployment to Grenada. The 

vehicle has a wire-cutting bar mounted on the front.
12

special operations forces by adding (at State Department insistence) 

the Richmond Hill prison. They even proposed changing the chain of 

command when Admiral Metcalf tried to make Maj. Gen. H. Norman 

Schwarzkopf, Admiral McDonald’s Army adviser, the overall ground 

forces commander over General Trobaugh, a more senior officer. That 

attempt was quashed, but the role of the XVIII Airborne Corps remained 

uncertain, with General Mackmull still missing from the chain of command. The plan continued to evolve, and the new invasion time was set 

for 0500 on 25 October.

Preparations

Having received a warning order for the operation late on 22 October, 

the 1st Battalion (Rangers), 75th Infantry, at Hunter Army Airfield, 

Georgia, alerted its soldiers to assemble and to start loading for deployment. The 1st Battalion was joined by the 2d Battalion (Rangers), 75th 

Infantry, out of Fort Lewis, Washington, late on the twenty-third. The 1st 

Battalion was commanded by Lt. Col. Wesley B. Taylor Jr. and the 2d 

by Lt. Col. Ralph L. Hagler Jr. Both units were highly trained in airfield 

seizure operations and, although activated only in 1974, they already 

had reputations for high morale and levels of readiness. Despite fewer 

C–130 Hercules aircraft arriving than anticipated on the twenty-fourth 

and constantly shifting plans for the time of H-hour, most of the men were 

loaded and ready for departure by 2230. They would spearhead the attack 

on Grenada by a parachute assault onto the airfield at Point Salines.

While the Rangers were loading, the 2d Brigade, 82d Airborne 

Division, commanded by Col. Stephen Silvasy Jr., was going through a 

similar process at Fort Bragg. The brigade was assisted by the division 

and corps staffs. Despite being left out of most of the planning and 

entirely out of the chain of command, the XVIII Airborne Corps and its 

1st Support Command provided every assistance. The combat battalions 

that constituted the brigade for the operation were the 2d Battalion, 325th 

Infantry (augmented by a company from the 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, 

from the 3d Brigade), commanded by Lt. Col. Jack L. Hamilton, and the 

3d Battalion, 325th Infantry, led by Lt. Col. John W. Raines. The brigade 

was not participating in the first wave of the assault, so its timeline for 

loading was not as short as that of the Rangers, but its schedule was still 

compressed. The troops quickly assembled at “Green Ramp” (an area 

on the base where airborne soldiers habitually assembled, donned their 

parachutes, and prepared their gear for airborne operations) at nearby 

Pope Air Force Base and began readying themselves and their equipment 
13

for what some still believed was just an emergency deployment readiness 

exercise. Word finally began to filter down to the soldiers around 2300 

on 24 October, when General Trobaugh briefed his officers on the final 

invasion plans, that this was a “real-world” mission, not a drill. 

At 0030 on 25 October, elements of the 2d Brigade staff and men of 

the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, began their movement to the personnel 

holding area closest to Green Ramp. With planners still unsure whether 

the invasion would be by parachute assault or airlanding (keeping troops 

on airplanes and landing them on already secured airfields), Colonel 

Hamilton began preparing his men for the more complicated of the two 

operations: a parachute assault. Working with a compressed ten-hour 

load sequence rather than the usual eighteen-hour plan, the men began 

drawing ammunition and equipment in what was called, at the time, 

organized chaos. The men drew double basic loads of M16 ammunition, 

but most individuals were not issued grenades because of concerns of 

having grenades on board the flight to Grenada. 

The first of the C–141 Starlifter aircraft, none configured for airdrop, 

arrived at Pope Air Force Base at 0400. Still uncertain about orders and 

counterorders from Atlantic Command on whether to prepare for an 

airdrop or airlanding, General Trobaugh had his men rig the C–141s for 

Combat-equipped paratroopers of the 82d Airborne Division awaiting 

deployment during Operation Urgent Fury
14

parachute assault while the planes were in flight. He wanted to be ready 

for a combat drop regardless of the outcome of the Ranger assault or 

the condition of the airstrip at Point Salines. Rigging the equipment for 

an airdrop was impossible, but the men could “hit the silk” if necessary. 

Finally departing Pope Air Force Base by midmorning on the twentyfifth, the men of the 82d Airborne Division continued to work during 

the flight to prepare for whatever awaited them on an island of which 

few had ever heard.

Operations

Day One: 25 October

The Rangers and the other special operations forces of the Joint 

Special Operations Command, including the helicopters of the 160th 

Aviation Battalion—designated Task Force 160 and commanded by Lt. 

Col. Terence M. Henry—were the spearhead force for the operation. The 

Rangers of the 1st Battalion, 75th Infantry, had departed Hunter Army 

Airfield at 2230 the night before in C–130s. The uncertainty of the situaTroops of the 82d Airborne Division gather their gear and prepare to 

board a C–141B Starlifter bound for Grenada.
15

tion on Grenada, like the confusion of the 82d Airborne Division, led the 

Rangers, except for the lead assault company, to rig for airlanding, not for 

airdrop. During the flight, however, Colonel Taylor received additional 

intelligence that the Cubans had placed obstacles on the runway, making 

airlanding unlikely. He believed that if he parachuted only one company 

down to clear the obstacles they would be dangerously exposed, with no 

chance of reinforcement. He therefore decided, just in case, to rig the 

entire battalion for airdrop and gave the order during the flight. It was 

well he did. The first two planes with the lead assault company had to 

abort their drops because of failures in their inertial navigation system and 

radar. Not originally scheduled as the lead assault element, the Rangers 

were then air-dropped from the third plane. They jumped in the face of 

moderate antiaircraft fire beginning at 0530. Assisted by circling Air 

Force AC–130 Spectre gunships, the Rangers hit the ground, returned 

fire, and set up their command post. 

Almost simultaneously with the Ranger attack, a company of the 2d 

Battalion, 8th Marines, landed by helicopter south of Pearls Airport on 

the east coast of Grenada (Map 2). A Grenadian attempt to engage the 

helicopters with antiaircraft fire ended when Marine AH–1 Cobra gunships silenced the threat. The marines moved out to the north to secure 

the airfield, encountering only light resistance. 

The special operations forces’ effort to rescue Governor General Sir 

Paul Scoon in St. George’s did not go as smoothly. The helicopters of the 

supporting Task Force 160 had arrived late at the intermediate staging 

base in Barbados and did not depart until 0530, well after dawn and a 

half hour after the planned attack time. As a result, the assault force, 

consisting of lightly armed Navy SEALs (sea-air-land commandos) 

and their Army special operations counterparts, was fully exposed to 

enemy fire. After rappelling from their helicopters to the ground near the 

governor general’s residence and securing Sir Paul, the special operators 

found themselves under attack by Grenadian forces including armored 

cars. Lacking antitank weapons, they called in air strikes from circling 

AC–130s, Marine helicopters, and Navy A–7 Corsair fighter-bombers, 

battling the enemy all day and into the night. 

Other special operations attacks that day were even less successful. 

Attempts to silence Radio Free Grenada by capturing the main radio 

transmitter were unsuccessful. It was later discovered that the Grenadians 

had alternate transmitters for the station. Counterattacks drove the 

Americans into the jungle in a hasty retreat. Daylight attacks against 

objectives at the Richmond Hill prison and Fort Rupert also failed after 

withering antiaircraft fire severely damaged the helicopters involved 
C A R I B B E A N

S E A

G r a n d M a l B a y

Requin Bay

G r a n d A n s e B a y

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

Mount St. Catherine

Mount Horne

Mirabeau Hospital

True Blue Campus

Calivigny Campus Grand Anse Campus

Pearls Airport

Point Salines

Airport

Ross Point

G R E N A D A

Victoria

Sauteurs

ST. GEORGE’S

Calivigny

Lance aux Épines

Calliste

Frequente

Grand Mal

Grenville

Pearls

St. David's

Gouyave

1983

G R E N A DA

0 5

0 5 Kilometers

Miles

E L E V A T I O N I N M E T E R S

0 300 600 and Above

Map 2
17

in the assault. Two of the helicopters crashed, killing one of the pilots, 

Capt. Keith J. Lucas. Two Marine AH–1 Cobra gunships were also shot 

down by antiaircraft fire from nearby Fort Frederick. Three of the four 

crew members were killed.

Meanwhile, the Ranger attack at Point Salines slowly gathered steam. 

Using two-man teams to clear the vehicles that the Cubans had parked 

on the runway (in some cases conveniently leaving the keys in the ignition), the Rangers were able to ready the airfield to receive planes. But 

the Rangers also had to suppress the antiaircraft fire, and they quickly 

called in AC–130s to finish the job. Small arms fire from the Cubans 

and Grenadians continued, however, although it affected troops on the 

ground more than aircraft. Still, with two companies on the ground, the 

Rangers were able to shift to the high ground to their east and capture 

about two hundred Cubans. As they continued on toward the Cubans’ 

construction camp, they took an additional twenty-two prisoners. The 

airfield was declared secured at 0735. The first C–130 touched down 

moments later. 

Even as the airfield was secured, the Rangers began to push toward 

nearby high ground to silence enemy snipers. They enlisted airpower and 

even commandeered a Cuban bulldozer to assist. S. Sgt. Manous F. Boles 

Jr., a member of the runway-clearing team, put the blade of the bulldozer 

up for protection against small arms fire and drove it up the hill with a 

squad following behind to take the heights. Ranger mobility improved 

when aircraft delivered long-awaited gun jeeps. One jeep immediately 

loaded up with soldiers and drove off to establish an outpost to protect 

the nearby True Blue medical school campus. The Rangers, however, 

lost their way and were ambushed. Four Rangers were killed and one 

badly wounded. 

By midday, all of the close high ground surrounding the airfield 

was in friendly hands. Using a captured antiaircraft gun on the heights 

near a Cuban Army compound north of the village of Calliste, the 

Rangers forced the surrender of one hundred fifty more Cubans. Only 

eighty Cubans remained unaccounted for, and enemy fire slackened 

considerably.

Meanwhile, the Rangers set up a detainee collection and interrogation 

point near the airfield. The Rangers retained custody of the detainees 

for only a few hours before they turned them over to the lead elements 

of a 300-man Caribbean Peacekeeping Force arriving in an Air Force 

C–130. The U.S. military and civilian leadership, recognizing the public 

relations value of an international armed contingent and its lack of training 
18

for combat, had arranged for these troops to assume peacekeeping and 

detainee control duties. 

Being freed from detainee guard duty and not wishing to commit his 

reduced force to the second mission, the seizure of Calivigny Barracks, 

General Sholtes awaited the arrival of the follow-on 82d Airborne 

Division elements. They began arriving by airplane and not by parachute 

assault at 1400. With the airfield secure, General Trobaugh had decided 

that the risks of losing men in the ocean (the paratroopers had not been 

issued flotation devices) outweighed whatever advantages of mass that 

might be achieved by a parachute assault. Though the airfield could only 

handle one plane at a time, the troops would be much less scattered and 

less likely to suffer the normal accidents and breakages attendant to any 

parachute drop. 

Even as the command group for the 82d Airborne Division gathered 

on the island, linked up with the Rangers, and began to assess the fluid 

situation, a larger problem erupted. When the Rangers had moved to 

rescue the American medical school students at the True Blue campus, 

they found only about one hundred forty students. The students told the 

Rangers that there was a larger campus with even more students—around 

two hundred—at Grand Anse a few miles to the north. This was the 

first the Americans had heard of this second campus. No plans existed 

to capture it. 

The frail security of the perimeter protecting the airfield was 

underscored by an incident about 1530. Company A of the 2d Battalion, 

325th Infantry, was reinforcing some Ranger positions near the True 

Blue campus when three BTR60 armored personnel carriers attacked, 

pushing down the road from the university campus. The soldiers of the 

Grenadian Army’s Motorized Company drove directly into the Ranger’s 

positions, firing their machine guns wildly in all directions. In response, 

the Rangers and the airborne troopers showered the vehicles with light 

antitank weapon (LAW) fire and 90-mm. recoilless rifle fire, which 

caused two vehicles to crash and their occupants to flee, leaving two 

dead behind. The third vehicle was fired on by a circling AC–130 and 

destroyed. 

Although this was the last major attack against the perimeter, the 

assault so surprised General Trobaugh that he requested reinforcements. 

Calling Fort Bragg on his satellite radio, he told his division rear staff, 

“Send me battalions until I tell you to stop.” This began the flow of 

additional infantry but severely disrupted the logistical stream as the 

combat forces received priority over support troops and supplies. He also 

asked for, and received, operational control over the Ranger battalions 
19

even though the original plan had them departing once the 82d took over 

the operation.

While action continued around the airfield at Point Salines, air and 

naval forces raided enemy command posts in the Fort Frederick and Fort 

Rupert areas and pursued rescue of the cutoff SEALs at the governor 

general’s residence. A–7 Corsairs from the Independence attacked the 

two forts, accidentally hitting a hospital close to Fort Frederick and killing 

eighteen mental patients. They also struck the gun positions placed near 

the hospital by the Grenadian military. 

Around 1900, a landing force of about two hundred fifty marines with 

tanks and amphibious vehicles stormed ashore at Grand Mal Bay north 

of St. George’s and pushed south and east toward the governor general’s 

residence. Moving deliberately, the marines finally linked up with the 

beleaguered SEALs just after sunrise on the twenty-sixth. They flew Sir 

Paul, his wife, nine civilians, and the SEALs out to the USS Guam by 

helicopter at 1000. The marines then moved on to Fort Frederick to the 

east and quickly captured the fort.

The 82d Airborne Division’s buildup of forces on the airfield 

continued throughout the afternoon and evening of 25–26 October. The 

last of the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, reached the airstrip before dusk, 

Paratroopers of the 82d Airborne Division board a C–141 aircraft for 

deployment during Urgent Fury.
20

and the follow-on 3d Battalion of the 325th was in place early on the 

twenty-sixth. Supplies began to flow more easily as the pace of C–130 

landings picked up, but quantities of food, water, and ammunition 

remained limited. 

Day Two: 26 October

General Trobaugh’s priority on the morning of the twenty-sixth 

was to rescue the medical students at the newly “discovered” Grand 

Anse campus of the St. George’s University School of Medicine. 

(See Map 2.) However, the few helicopters available to him from the 

special operations aviation task force were too badly shot up for use, 

and his own helicopters had not yet arrived on the island. He decided 

to use his forces to consolidate his hold on the airfield—still subject 

to harassing sniper fire—and then move out in strength the next day 

to find the students. 

The 2d Brigade attack kicked off early on the twenty-sixth only to 

have a reconnaissance patrol near a hill at Calliste led by Capt. Michael F. 

Ritz of Company B, 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, ambushed by Cubans. 

Ritz was killed instantly, and his sergeant severely wounded. One of the 

company’s platoons then moved cautiously up the hill conducting reconnaissance by fire to flush out the Cubans. Locating some Russian hand 

grenades, the soldiers bombarded the Cuban positions and fire diminished 

but not before another soldier was killed and five more wounded. The 

fight had been an intense and costly one, with two American dead and 

six wounded in the space of a few minutes. 

After the firefight near Calliste, the main attack started at 0630. A 

combination of artillery fire and Navy fighter-bomber sorties against 

the center of enemy resistance, a Cuban compound, soon silenced the 

enemy guns and white flags began appearing. Though some of the 

Cubans escaped into the surrounding jungle, the main body of the 

Cuban “construction workers” surrendered, and the compound was 

secure by 0835.

The 2d Brigade continued to move slowly north and east, expanding the perimeter around the airfield with only minor enemy contact. 

Despite a few heat casualties, the force advanced toward Frequente. 

Near Frequente, one of the companies, Company C, discovered a series 

of warehouses surrounded by barbed wire and chain-link fence. Inside 

the warehouses were enough Soviet- and Cuban-supplied small arms 

and military equipment to outfit six infantry battalions, far in excess of 

Grenadian military needs. 
21

While securing the warehouses, men from Company C watched as 

five gun jeeps of the battalion’s reconnaissance platoon were ambushed 

by Cubans. The Cubans let the first two jeeps go past and opened fire 

on the last three. The lead jeeps wheeled back toward the ambush zone 

with machine guns blazing. Company C opened fire as well and began 

placing mortar rounds on the Cuban positions. The Cubans broke contact 

and fled, leaving behind four dead. There were no U.S. casualties. The 

troops continued the advance east until sunset, when they halted and 

established a defensive perimeter.

While the paratroopers pushed east and north, General Trobaugh 

ordered the Rangers of the 2d Battalion, 75th Infantry, to launch a 

helicopter assault to rescue the American medical students at Grand 

Anse. He had wanted to delay the raid until the twenty-seventh, but at 

1100 on the twenty-sixth he received a directive from the Joint Chiefs 

to rescue the students immediately. He assigned the mission to Colonel 

Hagler’s Rangers and borrowed some Marine helicopters from the 

Patrol Insertion, Grenada, November 1983, by Marbury Brown
22

Guam to transport them to Grand Anse. Hagler met with Col. James P. 

Faulkner, commander of the 22d Marine Amphibious Unit, to work out 

the details.

The rescue operation began late in the afternoon. Using Navy and Air 

Force planes for preparatory fires and fire support, Hagler’s Rangers flew 

in on six CH–46 Marine Sea Knight helicopters and seized the campus. 

Two companies secured a perimeter while the other company found the 

233 students and led them to the waiting Sea Knights. The Grenadian 

defenders mounted only a token resistance before fleeing, and one Ranger 

was lightly wounded. One CH–46 crashed into the nearby surf when its 

blades hit a palm tree, but the evacuees were loaded onto other helicopters 

without further incident. With one less helicopter for the evacuation, 

eleven Rangers were forced to stay behind, but they borrowed a rubber 

raft from the downed helicopter and after dark paddled out to sea where 

they were picked up by an American destroyer, the USS Caron. But 

perhaps the most unsettling occurrence was when intelligence gained 

from the students indicated that there was yet a third area where large 

numbers of Americans resided, a peninsula on Prickly Bay (near Lance 

aux Épines) just east of Point Salines. Once again a lack of intelligence 

forced planners to readjust and prepare for another rescue mission.

By the end of the day on the twenty-sixth, most objectives had been 

accomplished and the 82d was well established in a perimeter along the 

Calivigny Peninsula. The plans for the following day included expanding 

the perimeter toward St. George’s in the north and receiving follow-on 

forces from the 3d Brigade and pushing them to clear the southern portion of the island. 

Day Three: 27 October

The third day of military operations saw the slow consolidation of 

U.S. forces on the island. The marines fanned out from their positions 

in the St. George’s area and occupied Fort Lucas, Richmond Hill prison, 

and other sites without opposition (Map 3). The paratroopers of the 2d 

and 3d Brigades of the 82d Airborne Division, being surprised by the 

strength of Cuban resistance on the island and wondering if a guerrilla 

war was in their future, moved east from the airfield and cleared any 

lingering opposition. Still lacking effective helicopter and artillery support, the paratroopers depended for most of their fires on naval close 

air and gunfire, but insufficient direct communications with the ships 

caused requests for fire to be relayed back to Fort Bragg and then by 

satellite to the ships.
G r a n d M a l B a y

S t . G e o r g e ’s B a y

G r a n d A n s e B a y

St. John’s R

Bon Accord R

Prime Minister’s Residence

Governor’s Residence

Fort Frederick

Fort Adolphus

Prison St. George’s Harbor

Hotel

Queen’s Park

Racecourse

Ross Point

Quarantine Point

Molinière Point

St. Eloi Point

G r a n d A n s e B e a c h

ST. GEORGE’S

Gretna Green

1983

GRENADA

ST. GEORGE’S CITY

0 1

0 1 Kilometer

Mile

E L E V A T I O N I N F E E T

0 500 1000 and Above

Map 3
24

Once the 2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, arrived in the Grand Anse 

area, it found only discarded Grenadian Army uniforms and equipment, 

indicating a collapse of resistance. The paratroopers also discovered 

about twenty American medical students that the Rangers missed the 

day before. Except for a few sniper attacks, the movement north toward 

St. George’s occurred without incident. 

The 3d Battalion, to the right of the 2d, advanced north toward St. 

George’s along the True Blue–Grand Anse road. Just short of the village 

of Ruth Howard, the soldiers were surprised by a crowd of celebrating 

civilians who began welcoming the startled paratroopers as liberators. 

The celebration ended abruptly with snipers firing on the crowd, but rapid 

and accurate return fire ended the attack. The battalion continued north 

and then east toward the highlands through rough and trackless terrain.

One friendly fire incident in the late afternoon of the twenty-seventh 

marred the otherwise uneventful movement of the 3d Battalion from 

the airfield. As one of the companies moved up to Ruth Howard, it was 

met by elements of an ANGLICO team (Air Naval Gunfire Liaison 

Company) at the crossroads. Suddenly, they came under fire. The marines 

of the ANGLICO element identified what they thought was the enemy 

position and called in an A–7 Corsair. Several dry runs over the target 

seemed to indicate that the pilot knew where to fire, but on the fourth, 

live-fire, strafing run, the plane deviated slightly and shot directly into 

the nearby command post of the 2d Brigade. Seventeen members of the 

brigade staff were wounded, three of them seriously. One subsequently 

died of his wounds.

The other military operation that day was an unexpected launch of 

an air assault by Hagler’s 2d Battalion. General Trobaugh had planned 

to take the Calivigny military barracks the next day, but an order from 

someone on the Joint Chiefs of Staff (exactly who sent the command 

and under whose authority it was sent was never determined) demanded 

that the joint task force capture the barracks “before dark” on the twentyseventh. No reason was given for this long-distance micromanagement 

of a tactical battle, but after several attempts to clarify the order failed, 

General Trobaugh directed the Rangers to prepare for the mission, even 

though they had conducted two air assaults already and were relaxing 

at the airfield, expecting to go home. 

Trobaugh turned to the commander of his 3d Brigade, Col. James T. 

Scott, to coordinate the operation, which involved both the 2d Battalion 

and Company C of the 1st Battalion. Colonel Scott was the logical choice 

for this mission involving multiple commands. He had only given up 

command of the 1st Battalion (Rangers) the previous May and was well 
25

known to both battalion commanders and their staffs. Intelligence on 

Calivigny was poor, but it was suspected that the enemy had antiaircraft 

gun emplacements protecting the barracks, making a daylight air assault 

risky. It was also possible that a battalion of the Grenadian Army and 

perhaps as many as three hundred to four hundred Cubans (with some 

Soviet advisers) were prepared to defend the barracks. Trobaugh and 

Scott decided to err on the side of caution given the recent proof of how 

costly daylight helicopter raids could be. 

With little more than fifteen minutes to plan the assault, the Rangers 

boarded their UH–60 Black Hawk helicopters. A few artillery rounds 

were fired on the landing zone, but most of them did not fall on target. 

Air support was more effective and, as the helicopters took off from 

Point Salines, the men could see plumes of smoke from the burning 

buildings of the barracks in the distance. No antiaircraft fire greeted the 

helicopters at the landing zones, and only a few Grenadian soldiers were 

in evidence to make a token resistance. Nevertheless, a few rounds from 

small arms from the ground (perhaps exploding rounds resulting from 

the air strikes on enemy ammunition dumps) hit the lead helicopters, 

severing hydraulic lines and causing one helicopter to crash into another. 

Col. Peter J. Boylan, 82d Airborne Division’s assistant division 

commander for operations in Grenada (second from the left), and Col. 

James T. Scott, 3d Brigade commander (third from the left), conferring
26

The two helicopters went down in a tangled mess. Nearby, a third one 

unexpectedly landed in a ditch, striking the tail boom and damaging it 

without the pilot’s knowledge. As the helicopter tried to take off, it went 

out of control and crashed into the wreckage of the other two helicopters. 

The Rangers inside the helicopters suffered no major injuries, but several 

who leaped from the aircraft were struck by the blades. Three Rangers 

died, and five were seriously injured. While the rest of the helicopters 

hovered, the Rangers jumped and quickly secured the compound. They 

suffered no further casualties.

Day Four: 28 October

The collapse of any substantive resistance became apparent during 

operations on the fourth day. Airborne troopers spent most of the day 

continuing the search for any fugitive Cubans and trying to locate Hudson 

Austin, Bernard Coard, and other members of the revolutionary government still in hiding. Elements of Colonel Silvasy’s 2d Brigade closed on 

St. George’s, having swept the area between the capital and the airfield 

to flush out Grenadian or Cuban snipers. Near the Ross Point Hotel, the 

2d Battalion, 325th Infantry, unexpectedly ran into the marines, already 

occuppying the position. Absent compatible communications, neither 

was aware of the movements of the other, and only luck prevented a 

friendly fire incident. 

Elements of Colonel Scott’s 3d Brigade continued their advance to 

the east to clear the southern portion of the island. Early in the morning, the 1st Battalion, 505th Infantry, commanded by Lt. Col. George 

A. Crocker, moved onto the Lance aux Épines Peninsula looking for 

more missing medical school students. They found some two hundred 

Americans, mainly students, as well as a few other foreign nationals 

needing to be transported out of the country. Black Hawks from the 82d 

Aviation Battalion flew the rescued group to the airfield where they 

boarded C–141s for the United States. A total of 581 American students 

and over 100 other foreign nationals were evacuated during the course 

of the operation.

As combat wound down, fears of U.S. planners that the Cubans or 

Grenadians were planning a prolonged resistance to the U.S. invasion or 

even a guerrilla war evaporated. Although elements of the 101st Airborne 

Division (Air Assault) were alerted for a possible mission to reinforce 

the two 82d Airborne Division brigades already on the island, that was 

soon canceled. The two Ranger battalions were finally withdrawn back 

to the airfield beginning at 1400 and completed their departure from the 
27

island early the next morning. By the end of the day on the twenty-eighth, 

General Trobaugh realized that a small peacekeeping force would suffice 

to secure the new interim government led by Sir Paul Scoon.

For the next few days, intelligence continued to paint a picture of 

a handful of Grenadian revolutionary government members on the run, 

with the people of the island welcoming liberation from their tyranny. 

General Hudson Austin and his bodyguards were captured on the twentyninth, leaving any potential resistance force virtually leaderless. On the 

morning of 1 November, the marines, responding to the chance that a few 

die-hards had established themselves on the nearby islands off Carriacou, 

stormed ashore on the main island but found only a small garrison that had 

already shed its uniforms and blended into the general population. Admiral 

Metcalf reported back to Atlantic Command that hostilities had ceased as 

of 1500 on 2 November. General Trobaugh assumed responsibility for all 

military operations as commander, U.S. Forces-Grenada, shortly thereafter. 

Troops of the 82d began their withdrawal and turned over peacekeeping 

responsibilities to the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force. 

The next few days saw a number of interesting developments, but 

no additional fighting. The airborne troopers were first assigned to guard 

Evacuation of students from St. George’s University School of Medicine 

on Grenada during Urgent Fury
28

the Soviet and Cuban embassies to keep them from offering sanctuary 

to any of the missing Grenadian leaders. Then the 82d provided guards 

and gun jeeps to escort the Soviet and Cuban embassy personnel to the 

airfield because the new provisional government was expelling them 

from the country. 

The paratroopers also took over the mission of guarding the Cuban 

detainees near the airfield. The conditions in the detainee camp were 

unsatisfactory by any measure, and division planners began mapping 

out a new temporary camp while decisions were being made about the 

ways and means of repatriating the Cubans. The 307th Engineer Battalion 

cleared an area on 2 November and, using U.S. and Cuban workers, 

built a tent encampment with water, security, and a lighted perimeter. 

The camp was finished on 3 November, just in time for the Cubans to 

begin their repatriation process the next day. By 9 November, the new 

camp was empty.

One of the lingering issues from the invasion was what to do with 

the captured Soviet equipment in the warehouses at Frequente. A small 

sampling of the weapons was shipped by air for display at the United 

Nations, but most of the materiel had to return by sealift. While the plans 

were being developed for sling loading the equipment under helicopters 

for transport to a nearby port, the Joint Chiefs ordered on 5 November 

that it be flown back to Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, and that 

it arrive by the fourteenth for a public display that would highlight the 

degree of Soviet involvement on the island. Tons of ammunition, weapons, and uniforms were loaded onto airplanes from 6 to 9 November by 

engineers of Company C, 548th Engineer Battalion. Other equipment 

and munitions were collected, inventoried, and loaded onto trucks and 

helicopters for movement to the harbor, where the SS Dolly Thurman, a 

cargo ship, awaited them. The Dolly Thurman departed Grenada on 18 

November, taking its cargo back to the United States.

The withdrawal of the troops of the 82d Airborne Division was 

slow and deliberate, in marked contrast to their hurried and piecemeal 

arrival. The 2d Brigade began pulling out at 0300 on 4 November, 

leaving Colonel Scott’s 3d Brigade as the major combat organization 

on the island. General Trobaugh left the island on 9 November, turning 

command of U.S. Forces-Grenada over to his deputy, Brig. Gen. Jack B. 

Farris, who had arrived on 29 October. As the necessity for no antiguerrilla campaign became clearer, the 3d Brigade began to depart as well. 

The last battalion of the brigade, the 2d Battalion, 505th Infantry, pulled 

out on 12 December. On the fifteenth, General Farris disestablished 

his command and turned over all responsibility for military forces on 
29

the island to the Caribbean Peacekeeping Force. Except for about two 

hundred fifty military police, Special Forces, civil affairs personnel, 

communications specialists, and logisticians, all U.S. military personnel 

had returned to their home stations. 

Analysis

The return of Army combat units to the continental United States 

precipitated several debriefings. These actions in turn provided the basis 

for a series of formal after action and lessons learned reports that, when 

digested, would provide the basis for possible changes to Army doctrine, 

training, and organization. Army Chief of Staff General John A. Wickham 

went further and directed the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command 

to prepare an in-depth analysis of the operation. The commander of the 

U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Lt. Gen. 

Carl E. Vuono, charged the director of the newly established Combat 

Studies Institute, Col. Louis D. F. Frasché, to create an ad hoc analysis

team from officers assigned to the staff and faculty of the Command 

and General Staff College. Designated the Grenada Work Group, it 

was “to capture . . . Army lessons learned in terms of doctrine, training, 

Cmd. Sgt. Maj. Tommie McKoy (right) greets Maj. Gen. Edward L. 

Trobaugh (center) upon Trobaugh’s return from Grenada.
30

organization, materiel, and leadership.” At about the same time, General 

Richard E. Cavazos at U.S. Army Forces Command ordered the 44th 

Military History Detachment, commanded by Maj. Charles R. Bishop, 

to collect documents pertaining to Grenada and to conduct interviews 

with key participants. Once Frasché and Bishop became aware of one 

another’s activities, they coordinated their work and shared information 

that allowed Frasché to prepare a comprehensive analytical report on 

the operation.

The team concluded that Grenada generally validated existing Army 

doctrine but that difficulties arose when individuals ignored it and tried 

to operate outside of established practices and procedures. The most 

disturbing conclusions centered on joint doctrine. Army participants 

were either unaware of or misunderstood existing joint doctrine, while 

its implementation revealed deep flaws in the areas of communications, 

planning, and deployment. Clearly, the subject offered ample room for 

improvement in professional military education programs and unit training throughout the Army, the other services, and the joint staff. 

As an example of military mismanagement, Grenada gave impetus 

to efforts to reform the Joint Chiefs of Staff and provide greater authority 

to unified commanders. The Senate Armed Services Committee staff 

report on Department of Defense reorganization, known informally as the 

Locher Report, found that the operation revealed “serious problems in the 

ability of the Services to operate jointly” and proposed major changes. 

The resulting Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization 

Act, signed by President Reagan on 1 October 1986, strengthened the 

power of the chairman and unified commanders and attempted to ensure 

that in future operations senior officers had a joint, as opposed to a singleservice, outlook. As a consequence of this legislation, the brief combat 

of Operation Urgent Fury exerted an influence on subsequent military 

operations disproportionate to its size, duration, or immediate results.

To Cuba, Grenada was both a humiliation and a foreign policy 

disaster. Shortly after the public welcome to the Cuban veterans of the 

campaign, Fidel Castro ordered that the Cuban ambassador to Grenada 

be stripped of his rank and imprisoned without benefit of trial for his 

failure to detect the impending coup against Grenadian Prime Minister 

Maurice Bishop. The commander of Cuban forces on the island, Col. 

Pedro Tortoló Cosmas, underwent a secret court-martial that reduced 

him to private for his inability to mount an effective defense. Shipped to 

Angola, he died there in 1986. The colonel’s conviction neatly obscured 

the fact that Castro’s confused directives to Tortoló made any coherent 

defense of Point Salines impossible on the day of the invasion.
31

The Grenada operation during the last days of October 1983 was 

only a minor episode in the sweep of American military history. At 

best, combat consisted of a few firefights against opponents who could 

hardly be rated second or even third class. As soon as a large number of 

U.S. ground troops seized a lodgment on the island, the Grenadian and 

Cuban defeat in conventional battle was assured. From a logistical and 

lessons learned standpoint, however, the intervention was much more 

interesting. As a “no plan” contingency operation, Urgent Fury placed 

sudden, substantial stress on the U.S. Army’s supply, maintenance, 

transportation, and medical systems.

From the beginning, logistical problems started at the top of the 

chain of command with the insistence on extraordinary secrecy and 

compartmentalization of the planning process. These practices had 

a chilling effect at all levels and a significant impact on the shape of 

the operation. Because of the security restrictions, most commanders 

excluded their logisticians from the early preparations, with the two 

Ranger battalion commanders being the only notable exceptions. The 

result was that unexamined assumptions about logistics, communications, 

and even medical support permeated both joint and Army planning. 

Communications experts were cut out of the planning, effectively 

crippling the ability of the commander of the 82d Airborne Division to 

communicate with his higher headquarters. This inhibited planning before 

the operation and crippled close air support and coordination between 

Navy, Marine, and Army units during combat. Until General Trobaugh 

and his staff actually arrived on Grenada, no one in the 82d Airborne 

Division’s tactical operations center realized that the unit would have 

only limited communications with the joint task force headquarters, next 

to none with the marines, and only episodic interchanges with its own 

rear echelon at Fort Bragg. Modern systems of command and control 

are flexible and allow the concentration of much power, but they are 

also complex and, on that account, fragile. Even a slight disturbance can 

produce profound and unexpected consequences.

Although time was pressing, the real issue in preparing the intervention was not so much the lack of planning time but the lack of quality 

planning in the time available. “An extremely short time period” for 

planning requires full disclosure and absolute coordination rather than 

the opposite. The absense of these attributes on multiple levels was, as 

one officer observed, “the crux of the problem.” Sensitivity to public 

opinion and concerns about the impact of the operation on the strategic 

context combined to produce a crippling operational security policy that 

straitjacketed the planners. Urgent Fury was not unique in this regard. 
32

It was a continuing theme in U.S. Cold War and post–Cold War military 

interventions, although the reasons for the security policies varied from 

case to case. Some secrecy is always essential, but those who need to 

know about an operation to ensure that it is thoroughly organized, and 

thus more likely to succeed with minimal cost, should be involved in 

the planning process.

This obsession with operational security extended beyond the planning process into the field of media relations. The administration decided 

during the early days to deny media representatives—print media and TV 

news—access to the operation. This prohibition extended into the third 

day of the invasion and led to a firestorm of media criticism. Despite 

explanations by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Vessey, that 

the speed of planning for the operation made such practices necessary, the 

media responded with accusations of censorship and coverup. Prominent 

media representatives, instead of reporting on U.S. operations on the 

island, produced articles about the first amendment and criticized the 

“self-serving accounts” of the actions by the military. A small press pool 

finally went ashore late on the twenty-seventh, but the damage to mediamilitary relationships had already been done. Both press and Pentagon 

sought to repair the damage by establishing short-notice pools of reporters 

for future operations, but the hostility between the two domains inherited 

from the Vietnam War was hardly over.

Perhaps the most serious military lapse in the early planning efforts 

centered on intelligence: the failure to identify more than one campus at 

the medical school and to discover that a large number of Americans lived 

off campus. Again, excessive compartmentalization for security reasons 

and compressed planning appear to have severely hampered not only the 

flow of information within intelligence circles, but also the collection of 

additional, readily available information from open sources.

Next to the intelligence failure, Atlantic Command’s inability to 

coordinate planning by all the disparate ground force elements involved 

in the operation was the most striking flaw. The compressed planning 

time was only part of the explanation. The failure to design an adequate 

concept of a joint operation at an early stage indicated that the joint 

headquarters in question, Atlantic Command, was neither trained nor 

manned to mount a complicated ground force operation in the time 

allotted, whatever the size. Atlantic Command was geared to transport 

massive reinforcements and supplies safely to Europe in the event of a 

Soviet attack, but in October 1983 it was unprepared for the complexities 

of its joint task force responsibilities. 
33

The Joint Chiefs of Staff had originally approved a night-time raid 

by a small, highly trained special operations force, but the concern over 

the status of the airfield at Point Salines caused the theater commander, 

Admiral McDonald, twice to change the start time for the operation, 

causing it to begin only a few minutes before daylight. These changes 

in timing contributed greatly to the less-than-total success the special 

operations forces enjoyed in achieving their first-day objectives. Their 

partial failure on 25 October meant that conventional forces, notably the 

82d Airborne Division, would have to carry the operation to conclusion 

despite poor intelligence and plans and would, therefore, be accompanied 

by unnecessary losses. 

Confusion also resulted from the lack of unity of command, a basic 

principle of war. Admiral McDonald’s plan, approved by the Joint Chiefs, 

dispensed with two important command and control features: the designation of one officer to direct all the ground forces no matter what the 

service and the selection of the commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps 

to head the Army contingent. Lack of a single ground force commander 

meant that coordination between the Marine Corps and the Army on 

Grenada was poor, and the severing of the corps headquarters from the 

chain of command complicated the ability of the 82d Airborne Division 

to deploy from Fort Bragg and to communicate with the other services 

once it arrived in the area of operations. Furthermore, once the division 

reached the island, the new plan left General Trobaugh overloaded with 

responsibilities.

The decision to delete the XVIII Airborne Corps from the operation 

had equally far-reaching effects. It not only slighted the institutional 

changes that had taken place in corps and divisions after the Vietnam 

War, but it also overlooked the Army force commander’s nature and 

scope of responsibilities, which stretched from depots in the United 

States to the airfield at Point Salines. The geographic sweep of these 

obligations delineated that officer’s role because, by deciding when and 

in what sequence units and materiel entered the combat zone, he dealt 

with the operational level of war. This was quite different from the sphere 

and responsibilities of a tactical commander, whose charge involved an 

airhead (the initial lodgment seized by an airborne force) a few hundred 

meters deep around the airstrip at Grenada. Here he sought to mass and 

then maneuver sufficient men and materiel to defeat the Grenadians and 

Cubans on the island. In General Mackmull the Army had an officer 

fitted by training and experience to act as an Army force commander, 

and at Fort Bragg he had a highly capable and well-rehearsed staff for 
34

his command post. Many of the unfortunate events of the campaign 

stemmed from his and its exclusion.

Not all the problems that surfaced in the days before the troops 

landed on Grenada were centered in the upper reaches of the command 

structure, but senior headquarters did have a major impact on the ability 

of their subordinates to complete their preparations. Compared to the 

two Ranger battalions, the 82d Airborne Division failed to use its planning time efficiently. Its logisticians suffered from a major handicap: 

with the XVIII Airborne Corps headquarters removed from the chain of 

command, they had to spend considerable time trying to understand what 

its replacement, the predominantly naval Atlantic Command, wanted. 

It was not a question of one group of officers being more intelligent or 

more professional than the other, but rather the lack of familiarity each 

had with the other. 

In contrast, Ranger commanders and their staffs worked directly 

with the Joint Special Operations Command, a true joint headquarters, 

and all concerned shared a common language and common assumptions. 

The Rangers could devote their energies and attention to planning rather 

than to attempting to clarify directives written by individuals unfamiliar 

with the concepts behind airborne operations and the language that 

expressed them. 

Although their objectives shifted during planning, the Rangers’ 

mission, unlike the paratroopers’, remained constant: armed entry into 

the territory of a sovereign country to rescue American citizens. The 

82d’s staff had to prepare both for this mission and for a mission as a 

peacekeeping follow-on force. Although General Trobaugh chose to 

spend much of his planning time on the more difficult and less likely 

mission of airborne assault, the other possibility exerted an influence on 

the division’s preparations.

As conceived by the theater commander and his staff and approved 

by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the plan adopted for the operation anticipated 

that American forces would meet little or no opposition. In this best-case 

assumption, Atlantic Command planners allowed the Ranger battalions 

and the airborne brigade to arrive at Point Salines in a leisurely fashion 

over a long day. They made no attempt to mass combat power or to 

muster the logistical support that would be required if a fight occurred. 

McDonald’s order that directed the 82d Airborne Division to airlift and 

then airland rather than giving its commander the option to airland or 

airdrop depending on the circumstances was entirely consistent with 

this approach. In the end, Trobaugh correctly insisted on keeping the 

option to airdrop open for the initial brigade task force, but he made 
35

this determination so late in the loading sequence that it was disruptive. 

His next decision, en route to Grenada, to airland was probably correct, 

given the need to guard against casualties and to guarantee the long-term 

success of the operation. It exacted, however, a heavy operational and 

logistical price by impeding the ability of the Air Force to build up men 

and materiel in the airhead quickly.

At this point, another fundamental problem in the initial concept of 

operations arose. Trobaugh and his staff were understandably distracted 

by establishing a tactical operations center in the airhead and picking 

up the threads of a battle already in progress. The issue existed because 

the plan called for General Trobaugh’s headquarters to replace that of 

General Scholtes’. Such a changeover made sense only within the context 

of the initial assumptions—that there would be little or no resistance and 

that all fighting would have ended by the time the 82d Airborne Division 

arrived. In fairness, Admiral McDonald may not have felt free to alter 

that portion of the plan even though the assumptions on which it had 

been based had proved invalid. The reason for his inability to modify 

this aspect was because the Joint Chiefs wanted to keep the methods and 

organization of U.S. counterterrorist units secret and were pressuring him 

to redeploy the Joint Special Operations Command and the special units 

it controlled before the news media arrived. In retrospect, General Vessey 

considered this rigidity to be the main flaw in the initial plan because a 

pause in ground force operations was guaranteed while Trobaugh and 

his staff assumed control of the ongoing operation from Scholtes and 

his headquarters. 

Although enough things went wrong to make the Grenada campaign 

worthy of criticism, there is no doubt that the operation was also a victory for the United States and its allies. Credit for this accomplishment 

again begins at the top of the chain of command and runs to the bottom. 

President Reagan, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral McDonald 

recognized that, given the disparity of the forces available, the United 

States only had to marshal an overwhelming force to seize the island 

in a relatively bloodless fashion. The plan that resulted, while flawed, 

achieved the desired outcome. Of course, more time for preparation 

would have allowed the participants to perfect these plans, but the 

paucity of information suggested that the Grenadian government was 

in disarray—creating a period of maximum danger for the students but 

also one of great opportunity for their rescuers. At the commanders’ 

conference at Norfolk on 24 October, Admiral McDonald used the 

occasion to weigh opportunities against risks. Although subordinates 

recommended postponing the operation, he decided to press ahead. That 
36

resolution left the Cubans and Grenadians insufficient time to organize 

a sustained and effective defense, though it resulted in a number of U.S. 

planning errors.

There are three additional factors to consider when pronouncing 

judgment on the operation. Urgent Fury was an airborne operation, a 

joint operation, and a very short-notice contingency operation. Of those, 

airborne assaults are almost always among the most complex, being 

heavily dependent on both ample time to prepare and good intelligence. 

Previous military operations, especially involving the potential rescue 

of hostages, had more time for planning. By contrast, the Rangers and 

marines had only four days of preparation time for Grenada, and the 82d 

Airborne Division just three. The intelligence available was sketchy, 

complicating plans and making any rehearsals impossible. 

Unlike most similar operations in the past, the attack on Grenada 

was also a joint operation, and in the previous decade the U.S. Army and 

Navy had not had many opportunities to plan and conduct such operations. Moreover, historically, the two services did not always work well 

together. Navy and Army cultures were different and, in this instance, 

the officers of each service had worked together too infrequently before 

1983 to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of the other. The good 

working relationship that developed between Admiral Metcalf and his 

Army adviser, General Schwarzkopf, demonstrated that such cooperation 

was possible. Even so, that rapport developed after, rather than before, 

Urgent Fury began. 

In sum, the major complicating factor in Urgent Fury was that it was 

a very short-notice contingency operation involving many specialized 

participants who had had little practical experience in working with one 

another. Still, the operation achieved its goals and served as a symbol to 

the services and to the world that the United States had begun to recover 

from the “Vietnam syndrome.” While much improvement was needed, 

especially in learning to fight as a joint force, groundwork for future 

success was already in place. The operation had been expensive, however, 

and no observer should look further than the 19 U.S. soldiers killed and 

the 116 wounded. These casualties, when added to the 25 Cubans killed 

and 59 wounded and 45 Grenadians killed and 358 wounded, underscore 

just how costly a short, intense, no-notice operation could be. But costly 

or not, Operation Urgent Fury was a successful operation that set in 

train a number of necessary tactical, operational, and strategic reforms 

that changed the shape of the U.S. military establishment and led to a 

more capable Army as part of a more effective joint force, ready to face 

any enemy, anywhere.
37

Operation Urgent Fury

Killed in Action or Died of Wounds

United States Army

Sgt. Randy E. Cline

S. Sgt. Gary L. Epps

Sp4c. Philip S. Grenier

Sgt. Kevin J. Lannon (posthumous promotion)

Capt. Keith Lucas

Sgt. Sean P. Luketina

Pfc. Marlin R. Maynard

Sgt. Mark A. Rademacher

Capt. Michael F. Ritz

Pfc. Russell L. Robinson

Sgt. Stephen E. Slater

Sp4c. Mark O. Yamane

United States Navy*

MM1 Kenneth Gary Butcher

MM1 Kevin P. Lundberg

HT1 Stephen L. Morris

ENCS Robert R. Schamberger

United States Marine Corps

Maj. John P. Gigure

1st Lt. Jeffrey R. Scharver

Capt. Jeb Seagle

*The Navy’s ranks are a little different from the other services. MM1 stands for 

Machinist Mate First Class, HT1 stands for Hull Maintenance Technician First Class, 

and ENCS stands for Senior Chief Engineman.
38

Further Readings

Adkin, Mark. Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada. Lexington, Mass.: 

Lexington Books, 1989.

Bolger, Daniel P. “Special Operations and the Grenada Campaign.” 

Parameters 18 (December 1988): 49–74.

Burrowes, Reynold A. Revolution and Rescue in Grenada: An Account of 

the U.S.-Caribbean Invasion. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Cole, Ronald H. Operation Urgent Fury: The Planning and Execution 

of Joint Operations in Grenada, 12 October–2 November 1983. 

Washington, D.C.: Joint History Office, 1997.

Dunn, Peter M., and Bruce W. Watson, eds. American Intervention in 

Grenada: The Implications of Operation “Urgent Fury,” Westview 

Special Studies in Military Affairs. Boulder, Colo.: Westview 

Press, 1985.

Pirnie, Bruce R. Operation Urgent Fury: The United States Army in 

Joint Operations. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military 

History, 1986.

Raines, Edgar F. The Rucksack War: U.S. Army Operational Logistics 

in Grenada, October–November 1983. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army 

Center of Military History (forthcoming).

PIN : 085131–000