A Soldiers Blog

From: Patti Patton-Bader



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U.S. Army Hunts for Ordnance in Iraq
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By CHRIS TOMLINSON
Associated Press Writer

May 10, 2003, 1:40 AM EDT

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The gray cylinder was almost completely buried under the rubble of a bombed-out house. A small portion of what appeared to be a 7-foot-long explosive device was visible to the bomb disposal experts.

Sgt. Matt Chapman of Annapolis, Md., gently brushed away some of the cement dust that covered the object and found a serial number stenciled in black paint. Probably a lot number, he said -- not something that would help him identify what kind of missile they had found.

"I don't think it's American," Chapman told his boss with the 18th Ordnance Company, Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Elliott. He pointed at a small piece of steel sticking out the side of the cylinder: "That lug right there -- that's Soviet. I know we'd never weld a lug on like that."

Elliot and his team have been working overtime since they arrived in Baghdad shortly after U.S. forces began occupying the city April 7.

On average, U.S. forces haul away 50 cargo trucks full of Iraqi weapons and ammunition every day from fighting positions, buildings and houses all over the city.

Whenever any of the material looks unstable, an explosive ordnance disposal, or EOD, team is called to inspect the munitions and make sure they can be moved safely.

Sometimes it is safer for the team to simply pack a weapons cache with explosives and blow it up. Elliott's team also deals with unexploded bombs and missiles, which often require delicate work to defuse.

"This is an EOD paradise here. There is stuff here you won't see anywhere else. There's so much knowledge to be gained here," Elliott said. His team has dealt with everything from Chinese hand grenades in schools to large surface-to-surface missiles mounted on trailers and parked in the city zoo.

At the bombed-out house in Baghdad, the four-man explosive ordnance disposal team at first suspected it was dealing with a 2,000-pound bomb, because of the size of the gray cylinder.

The team's job: dig the bomb out, defuse it, then remove it from the neighborhood.

But figuring out what exactly you're dealing with is key to doing that job safely.

The inside of the house was full of Iraqi Republican Guard stationery, which at first led Elliott to believe it might have been an unexploded U.S. bomb. But the more they uncovered the cylinder, the more it appeared to be Soviet-built.

Among the documents scattered on the floor of the house were diagrams he recognized as fuse and missile schematics labeled in Arabic.

Chapman and Elliott, both based at Fort Bragg, N.C., continued to uncover the cylinder and soon revealed "SP 31" painted on one side, and more lugs welded on the sides.

"SP 31 -- that sounds European," Chapman said.

"As long as Connor has his computer out, have him put SP 31 in it and see if he comes up with something," Elliott said.

"Connor" was Sgt. Jonathan Connor of Jacksonville, Fla., who was working outside at the team's specially equipped trucks.

On a heavy duty Army laptop computer, the team has a classified library of publications and photographs of explosive devices from around the world, Elliott said. Whenever the bomb experts find something they don't recognize, they can enter the device's dimensions and description into the database and find out what they are dealing with.

But in this case, the computer came up blank.

Inside the house, the bomb experts figured out they were looking at the tail end of a missile, where the fuel and motor are located. The lugs were where the fins had been attached.

Elliott stuck a rod into the hole at the end of the cylinder. It was empty for at least three feet, indicating the fuel burned up.

Chapman dug under the collapsed roof and found the other end of the missile. The warhead was no longer attached.

Since the propulsion system usually drops off the missile long before the warhead hits its target, finding the missile tail by itself is not unusual. The cylinder, not dangerous, could be safely removed by combat engineers.

"When we find something like that, we start wondering, `How did it get here?' It's not part of the job, but it gets the mind working," Elliott said. "Why it's sitting in this house, I can't explain."

Copyright (c) 2003, The Associated Press

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This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-unexploded-ordnance,0,6287381.story

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