Word: surts
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...cause and the means with which he pursues it are the result of his desert youth, his early military training and his scattered reading of utopian and anarchist writers. His father was an illiterate Bedouin shepherd, and Gaddafi was born in a goatskin tent in the desert near Surt. "The desert teaches you to rely on yourself," Gaddafi has written. "The values I learned there have remained with me all my life...
...been drawn in impressive detail. One involves three waves of carrier-based planes that would strike in quick succession under cover of predawn darkness. First, fighter planes would launch missiles that home in on radar to knock out once again the radars at the SA-5 missile sites at Surt and Benghazi. Then, attack planes would wing in low and fast to knock out the missiles and their launchers. Once they had been destroyed, the third wave would hit adjacent airfields, destroying the runways so that Gaddafi's 550 combat aircraft could not scramble to counterattack the fleet. Supposedly...
Less than an hour later, two A-7 attack planes took off from the Saratoga after Navy sensors detected radar emissions from the missile site at Surt. They flew to about 40 miles from the base and released their high-speed anti- radiation missiles (HARM). The missiles home in on radar waves and are designed to destroy the transmitter, not the missiles or launchers themselves. "We shot out the tires," said one Pentagon official. "We didn't need to fire a pistol through the windshield to take out the driver...
About four hours after the first strike on the Surt missile base, American sensors again detected radar from the site scanning the gulf. Weinberger later said he "would assume" that Soviet technicians helped the Libyans repair the base. American planes launched two more HARM missiles, and again the radar went dead. The final American strike occurred later that morning: a pair of fighter jets hit at least one Libyan vessel near Benghazi...
...major risks had been the possibility of killing Soviet personnel, who were known to be present at Surt. But the U.S. had quietly informed Moscow of its intentions in advance. Says one Navy source, referring to the placement of Gaddafi's "line of death": "We told the Soviets explicitly what we intended to do, including transiting below the 32nd parallel. They didn't have to read between the lines." When the attacks were launched, the Soviets apparently were not around. "Maybe they were taking a coffee break," said one official wryly. The Soviets had one communication ship anchored at Surt...