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(anti-aircraft artillery) soon became the bigger concern, as battery after battery of enemy AAA guns fired salvos of shells at the MC-130s as they flew along SAM Alley. The Air Force pilots’ quick-thinking solution was to dive the plane low to the ground, bringing the Talons’ flight paths under the Iraqi AAA guns’ arc of fire. Once raised into position, one SF operator explained, the enemy artillery pieces could not be quickly lowered, so their arcs of fire went right over the top of the MC-130s.
    â€œHow we survived that triple-A fire, we’ll never know, to this day,” SGM Tim Strong later recalled.
    The first MC-130 to cross the Iraqi radar screens along “SAM Alley” set off the warning systems on Iraqi radar. The AAA began to fire, and the second plane flew under the arc of the guns. The third plane was not so lucky, as the anti-aircraft gunners finally zeroed in.
    The third Combat Talon was hit by flak from one of seven batteries of Iraqi AAA flak as it flew through Iraqi airspace north of Mosul. The pilot rerouted to Turkey for an emergency landing, with more than forty holes in the aircraft’s skin, the largest over a foot and a half in diameter. Luckily, all forty-eight of the crippled MC-130’s passengers safely landed in Turkey.
    The first and second MC-130s made it all the way past Mosul and into Bashir airfield unscathed. The 10th Special Forces Group’s commander, now the commander of CJSOTF-N, recalled that at the time, he had no way of knowing the status of the other two MC-130s of the group, which were assigned to 3rd Battalion, 10th SFG (A) and infiltrated into Iraq along a new flight path to different coordinates. The rumor had been that they also made it into Iraq in one piece; thankfully this proved to be true. Their planes were destined for As-Sulaymaniyah to the east, where they landed without incident.
    Three ODAs, including ODA 043 and ODA 045, were already inside Iraq and had linked up with Kurdish Irbil sector commander General Mustafa, when the last two birds touched down, bringing the strength of 10th SFG (A) in northwestern Iraq up to 108 men, a total of nine A-Teams, of a dozen Green Berets each. ODA 043 and ODA 045 later became a QRF (Quick Reaction Force) that could be called in to back up another A-Team if they were overwhelmed. They also had the secondary function as a Combat Reconnaissance Force (CRF). As a CRF, they would be called upon for their firepower more than a few times in the following days of battle. As a CRF, ODA 043 and ODA 045 would do reconnaissance missions of enemy positions in their armed Land Rovers and call in CAS.
    The ODAs were also supplemented by Air Force Combat Controllers. An Air Force Combat Controller is a single Air Force man attached to an A-Team for the purpose of bringing the bombs in precisely on target. This brought the total strength of Task Force VIKING to twenty ODAs in northern Iraq.
    General Mustafa
    After touching down on their Landing Zone (LZ) at Bashir airfield at approximately 0130 hours on March 23, the five newly arrived A-Teams and their Operational Detachment B-Team (ODB) loaded into the waiting vehicles and began a long, grueling drive along winding mountain roads to General Mustafa’s compound, northeast of Irbil.
    There, in the dawn’s early light, they discussed their first moves with Mustafa and his commanders. Most of the men had yet to see the country they had just invaded. Within hours of this first meeting, the A-Teams moved out to the battlefield to join the Peshmerga guerrilla warriors in their defensive positions, known as TAIs, or Targeted Areas of Interdiction.
    In Kurdish culture, the name Peshmerga means “ready to die,” or “those who face death.” The Peshmerga are a faction of Kurdish people indigenous to northern Iraq and Kurdistan. Historical records make note of the Kurds as far back as 3000 B.C . Even in those early times, they had a reputation as