United States invasion of Grenada

• 1. Introduction

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  At dawn on the 25th of October 1983, the United States invaded Grenada, a small Caribbean island nation, in an operation codenamed Urgent Fury. It was the largest American military action since the Vietnam War. The force that arrived numbered some 7,600 troops drawn from the Army Rangers, the 82nd Airborne Division, the Marines, Delta Force, and Navy SEALs. Within only a few days, Grenada was under military occupation. But how did an island of a few hundred square miles become the center of a Cold War confrontation? Who was the man whose execution triggered the crisis? And what did an airport runway have to do with the fate of a nation? Those are the questions Operation Urgent Fury forces us to ask.

• 2. Revolution and Rivalry

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  Grenada's path to crisis began in 1974, when Sir Eric Gairy led the island to independence from the United Kingdom. His rule was troubled from the start. Civil unrest took a violent form, pitting his private militia, known as the Mongoose Gang, against fighters loyal to the communist New Jewel Movement. On the 13th of March 1979, while Gairy was temporarily out of the country, Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movement seized power in what was described as a nearly bloodless coup. Bishop suspended the constitution, detained political prisoners, and set about trying to build the first Marxist-Leninist state in the British Commonwealth. He was a forceful speaker who had appealed to Black Americans during the 1970s heyday of the Black Panther movement. To preserve a veneer of constitutional legitimacy, the new administration kept Queen Elizabeth II as Queen of Grenada and retained Sir Paul Scoon as her viceregal representative. Bishop's government began constructing an international airport at Point Salines with help from the United Kingdom, Cuba, Libya, Algeria, and other nations. The British government had actually proposed the airport back in 1954, when Grenada was still a colony. Canadians designed it, the British underwrote it, and Cuban workers helped build it. The United States saw the project differently. Washington pointed to the new runway's length of 9,000 feet, arguing it could accommodate the largest Soviet aircraft, including the An-12, An-22, and An-124, and suggested it would allow Cuba and the Soviet Union to move weapons to Central American insurgents. The Grenadian government countered that the existing airport at Pearls, with its 5,200-foot runway hemmed in by a mountain on one side and the ocean on the other, simply could not handle modern commercial jets carrying tourists. In 1983, Representative Ron Dellums of California traveled to Grenada at Bishop's invitation and told Congress the airport was built for economic development and posed no military threat. President Reagan publicly disagreed, arguing that the runway's length and the airport's fuel storage tanks pointed to a Soviet-Cuban forward military base in the making.

• 3. The Execution of Bishop

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  By September 1983, a power struggle within the People's Revolutionary Government had reached a breaking point. At a Central Committee meeting, Bishop was pressured to share power with his Deputy Prime Minister, Bernard Coard. Bishop initially agreed, then reversed course. On the evening of the 13th of October 1983, the Coard faction, acting alongside the People's Revolutionary Army, placed Bishop and several of his allies under house arrest. For nearly a week, his secret detention held. On the 19th of October, word spread, and a crowd estimated between 15,000 and 30,000 people freed Bishop and followed him to Fort Rupert, a relatively unguarded installation they quickly occupied. At nearby Fort Frederick, Coard had gathered nine Central Committee members and substantial military forces. A mass of troops in armored personnel carriers departed Fort Frederick under Lieutenant Colonel Ewart Layne, who said their mission was to recapture the fort and restore order. After surrendering to the superior force, Bishop and seven of his loyal supporters were lined up against a wall in Fort Rupert's courtyard and shot by a firing squad. The army under Hudson Austin then formed a military council, placed Governor-General Sir Paul Scoon under house arrest, and imposed a strict four-day curfew, declaring that anyone seen on the streets would be shot on sight. Among the invasion's key planners, once the United States moved toward intervention, were Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and his senior military assistant, Colin Powell. Reagan said he was compelled to act partly out of concern for roughly 600 American medical students on the island and fears of another hostage crisis like the one in Iran, which had ended less than three years earlier. Future Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger later said the real motivation was to remove Austin, and that the students were used as a pretext.

• 4. Allies, Anger, and the Beirut Connection

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  Two days before the invasion of Grenada, 241 American servicemen were killed in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since World War II. American Experience later suggested the Grenada operation was meant in part to displace that bitter memory from public attention. The timing shaped how the intervention was received at home and abroad. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a close ally of Reagan on most matters, was privately furious. Grenada was a Commonwealth member with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state, and Thatcher learned for certain that the invasion was coming only three hours before it began. In the early morning hours of the 25th of October, she sent Reagan a message saying the action would be seen as intervention by a Western country in the internal affairs of a small independent nation, and that she was deeply disturbed by his communication. She raised concerns about the effect on East-West relations and the political difficulties she faced in Parliament over the siting of Cruise missiles in Britain. Reagan did not heed her objections. While fighting was still under way, he phoned Thatcher to apologize for any miscommunication, and their long-running friendship held. Publicly she supported the action. The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, Barbados, and Jamaica had formally appealed to the United States for assistance, lending the operation a regional cover. Paul Scoon had requested the invasion through secret diplomatic channels, though the only document he signed asking for military assistance was dated after the invasion had begun, which stoked questions about whether the United States had used him as a justification. On the 2nd of November 1983, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 38/7 by a vote of 108 to 9 with 27 abstentions, condemning the invasion as a flagrant violation of international law. A similar resolution in the Security Council was vetoed by the United States.

• 5. The Battles on the Ground

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  Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 6 and Air Force combat controllers were dropped at sea on the 23rd of October, two days before the main invasion, to scout Point Salines. The helicopter drop went wrong, and four SEALs were lost at sea. They were Machinist Mate 1st Class Kenneth J. Butcher, Quartermaster 1st Class Kevin E. Lundberg, Hull Technician 1st Class Stephen L. Morris, and Senior Chief Engineman Robert R. Schamberger. Their bodies were never recovered. In an interview published on the 4th of October 1990, Butcher's widow described going to Grenada in hope that he had survived, telling of a fisherman who reported seeing four men in wetsuits come out of the water before four bodies were later thrown back in. The main assault on the 25th of October began with Alpha and Bravo companies of the 1st Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment boarding C-130s at Hunter Army Airfield at midnight. Mid-flight they learned the runway at Point Salines was blocked, forcing an abrupt switch from a runway landing to a parachute drop. The drop went in at 05:30 into moderate fire from ZU-23 anti-aircraft guns and BTR-60 armored personnel carriers. AC-130 gunships supported the landing, and Cuban construction vehicles were commandeered to help clear the airfield. By 10:00 the runway was clear. The raid on Radio Free Grenada, carried out by SEAL Team 6 operators delivered by UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, captured the station unopposed and destroyed the radio transmitter, but a Grenadian counter-attack by car and armored personnel carrier forced the SEALs to cut through a fence and retreat into the ocean, eventually being picked up after a reconnaissance plane spotted them hours later. The mission to rescue Governor-General Scoon from his mansion in Saint George departed late and ran into serious trouble. BTR-60s surrounded the mansion and trapped the SEAL team and Scoon inside for 24 hours. AC-130 gunships, A-7 Corsair strike planes, and AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters were called in. Relief came when 250 Marines from G Company of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment landed at Grand Mal Bay on the evening of the 25th of October, equipped with four M60 Patton tanks. They reached the mansion the following morning, and Scoon, his wife, and nine aides were evacuated at 10:00. An A-7 raid targeting anti-aircraft guns at Fort Frederick hit a nearby mental hospital instead, killing 18 civilians. By the third day, the 27th of October, organized resistance was rapidly collapsing, though the American forces did not yet fully realize it. Students at the Grand Anse campus were evacuated on the afternoon of the 26th of October by Rangers using Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters. One helicopter crashed when its blade struck a palm tree. The 233 students at Grand Anse were flown out by CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters, but the students told the Rangers there was yet a third campus, at Prickly Bay, with more Americans. By the time organized resistance ended, the toll was 19 Americans killed and 116 wounded; 25 Cubans killed, 59 wounded, and 638 captured; and 45 Grenadians killed and 358 wounded.

• 6. Intelligence Failures and Reform

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  Soldiers on the ground in Grenada navigated with tourist maps on which military grid lines had been drawn by hand. Those maps showed no topography and left out crucial positions. The invading force did not know the American students were split across two different campuses, causing a 30-hour delay in reaching those at the second location. Communications between military services were not compatible, hampering coordination throughout the operation. An airstrike called in by an ANGLICO unit accidentally hit the command post of the 2nd Brigade, wounding 17 troops, one of whom died. At Calivigny Barracks, a preparatory bombardment by howitzers mostly sent shells into the ocean, and three Blackhawk helicopters collided during the assault, killing three soldiers. The barracks turned out to be deserted. These failures were not ignored. The Department of Defense recognized a need for sweeping change, and Congress passed the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, formally known as Public Law 99-433. The act made the most sweeping changes to the Department of Defense since the National Security Act of 1947. It increased the power of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and advanced the concept of unified joint forces operating under a single command. Reagan used the aftermath to push back against what he called Vietnam Syndrome, the public's aversion to overseas military action. On the 13th of December 1983, he declared that the country's days of weakness were over and that its military forces were back on their feet and standing tall.

• 7. Aftermath and Memory

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  General elections in Grenada in December 1984 brought the New National Party to power under Prime Minister Herbert Blaize. American forces remained on the island after combat operations wrapped up, conducting security missions as part of Operation Island Breeze. In 1985, Queen Elizabeth II visited Grenada and personally presided over the State Opening of Parliament. In 1986, seventeen political, military, and civilian figures were convicted of crimes connected to the executions of Prime Minister Bishop and his supporters on the 19th of October 1983. The group became known as the Grenada 17. Amnesty International later referred to them as the last of the Cold War prisoners, in light of their lengthy imprisonment. A truth and reconciliation commission was launched in 2001 to revisit the events of that period. One of its most haunting tasks was an attempt to locate the remains of Maurice Bishop, whose body had been disposed of on Austin's orders and was never found. The commission's search proved unsuccessful. Cuba drew its own lesson from Grenada's fall. Increasingly concerned that the United States might also target socialist Nicaragua, Cuba removed its female primary school teachers from that country. On the 29th of May 2009, the Grenadian government renamed Point Salines International Airport the Maurice Bishop International Airport. Hundreds of Grenadians attended the ceremony. Prime Minister Tillman Thomas, delivering the keynote speech, described the renaming as an act of the Grenadian people coming home to themselves. A CBS News poll of 304 people found that 91 percent of Grenadians welcomed the invasion, and 85 percent said they had felt their lives were in danger while Hudson Austin was in power. The invasion date of the 25th of October is now a national holiday in Grenada, called Thanksgiving Day, marking the freeing of political prisoners who later won election to office. St. George's University built a monument on its True Blue campus to honor the American servicemen killed during the operation and holds an annual memorial ceremony on that date each year.