Operations involving the OH-58D Kiowa Fighter

1987 Operation Earnest Will and the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior

Let's start this section with a few reminders. The Iran-Iraq War lasted for about 8 years, from September 22, 1980 to August 20, 1988. Since September 1980, Iran and Iraq had been struggling to outmaneuver each other in a war of attrition. Beginning in 1984, the belligerents added attacks on each other's oil tankers to the fruitless cycle of unsustainable World War I-style ground assaults and ballistic missile attacks on population centers. By 1986, the balance had shifted in Iran's favor. In 1986, Iran captured the Iraqi Fao Islands near Kuwait, convinced the Kurds living in the north of Iraq and started to use them more as a pawn. With this opportunity, Iran's willingness to attack from the north increased.

The Arab countries ruled by monarchy, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and Jordan, who thought that they would be affected by the Iranian Islamic Revolution in the face of Iran's strengthening in the field.  Although there is a parliament in these countries, the king and the royal family have a great supremacy over the government. 

In Iraq, the monarchy was overthrown by a military coup on July 14, 1958. Dynasty members were killed. The era of military coups began in Iraq. In 1979, Saddam Hussein, a soldier, officially began to rule Iraq. Although Syria gained its independence from the French in 1946, it is not clear who governs the country; it is such a state. Soldiers have always tried to seize power from each other. In 1970, Hafez al-Assad, who had military origins, took over the Syrian government and started to rule. Israel, on the other hand, gained independence from the British in 1948. We can say that Israel is a more democratic country compared to other countries. In Iran, the Islamic Revolution took place in 1979.  Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had very good relations with the USA, was overthrown. He fled the country. Ayatollah Khomeini, a religious man, started to rule Iran. What oppressive authoritarian regimes love the most is to create internal and external enemies to maintain their regime. They don't care about the country. They create internal and external enemies within the country and this is what happened during the Iran-Iraq war). 

It is useful to think about the situation in the region in the light of the above information. If you ignore this information, you cannot understand who is doing what and why.

The Gulf Arab countries started to help Iraq in 1986. For these countries, Iraq was seen as the last bastion to prevent their regimes from being jeopardized. They were alarmed when Iran started attacking oil tankers in order to dissuade Kuwait and other oil producing Arab countries from supporting Iraq. 

In the face of this developing situation, the Western powers sided with Iraq against Iran. There were two countries that supplied Iran with weapons during this war. Israel and Syria. Since these two countries saw Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime as their primary threat, they supported Iran even though they were enemies of each other. Imagine that Syria, despite being an Arab state, supports Iran and not Iraq, which is Arab. Israel, on the other hand, is on Iran's side despite bad relations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran. Syria and Israel are united in providing arms to Iran in the Iraq-Iran war. The USSR has also accelerated its arms shipments to Iraq. In other words, Iran has started to be left alone on the international platform. It is interesting to note that throughout this war, the United States has allowed the Iranian Air Force to provide underhanded spare parts and ammunition for US weapon systems, especially the F-14, so that the war of attrition and the fruitless cycle could continue. When Iran began to prevail on the ground, it disrupted or stopped the supply chain. In this war between Iraq and Iran, there were very intricate relations that ordinary people cannot easily understand. 

After these brief reminders for the understanding of the subject, we can continue from where we left off. In order to reassure the panic-stricken countries siding with Iraq, the United States came to the rescue. Kuwait officially invited the US to the region and asked for help.  From September 1986 onwards, Iranian air strikes in the Gulf focused on Kuwaiti ships and tankers diverted to Kuwaiti ports. This was mainly due to Kuwait's significant financial support to Iraq in the war. Of the next 31 attacks, 28 were against Kuwaiti tankers or tankers bound for Kuwait. Kuwaiti tankers hoisted US flags on their flagpoles. US warships began escorting these tankers. From July 1987, the US Navy was tasked to escort these ships under Operation EARNEST WILL to secure the Persian Gulf and protect global maritime trade. OH-58D helicopters played an important role in the protection of oil tankers in the Persian Gulf in 1987; in this operation, the OH-58D flew mainly at night and performed night reconnaissance missions.

Lacking sufficient aircraft and large warships to challenge the outnumbered and better armed US fleet, Iran resorted to naval guerrilla methods with fast patrol boats (known as 'Boghammers') and sea mines.

US Navy frigates, destroyers and cruisers might have been up to the task of fighting the Soviet Navy, but they were too big to chase small speedboats that could easily escape into shallow waters where warships could not follow. The US Navy of the 1980s had also apparently failed to acquire and deploy sufficient numbers of modern minesweepers.

Although EARNEST WILL was a highly publicized defense campaign, America's offensive response to Iranian mine laying operations and Boghammers in the Persian Gulf was a covert operation called PRIME CHANCE. This Operation began with Special Operations Forces (SOF) assets.

Prime Chance's primary targets were Iran's coastal fleet of small boats, mostly Swedish-built Boghammers and Boston whaler-type vessels used by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to attack or mine commercial vessels, and Iranian oil platforms used as observation posts. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards' preferred tactic for attacking the ships was to gather around the oil tanker and fire 107 mm rockets, RPG-7 guided rockets, grenade launchers and machine guns at the ship's bridge and superstructure. The aim was not to sink the ship, but to inflict as much damage as possible on the ship and the crew and to frighten the crew of the oil tanker. The crew, who are afraid and worried about their safety, will not want to work, this fear will be reflected on other oil tanker ships and will affect the crew, personnel wages will increase, it will be difficult to find seafarers who want to work on oil tankers. Freight rates of the ships will increase. The insurance costs of the ships would increase or the insurance companies would not insure the ships because they would see this situation as too risky. The main goal of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps was to achieve this by disrupting the trade of the countries in the region that support Iraq and to reduce the profit margins of all the oil trading institutions of these countries and to make their business difficult. This method was to cut their support for Iraq.

In the photo above; October 8, 1987, the Boghammer of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was heavily damaged by an American AH-6 helicopter.  A 107 mm rocket launcher is seen on the Boghammer's bow. Photo; United States Special Operations Command (2007)

US Navy SEAL commandos in speedboats supported by AH-6 and MH-6 Little Bird light multi-mission helicopters (call sign Sea Bat) from Task Force 160, the forerunner of today's Special Operations Aviation Regiment. After several victories against the Iranians, the special operators had to reduce their presence due to mission demands elsewhere. To reinforce them, a secret program in September 1987 (also called PRIME CHANCE in some sources) donated fifteen OH-58Ds of the regular Army with various weapon options: Hellfire anti-tank missiles, AIM-92 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, the M260 seven-round rocket pod, and the Global Helicopter Technologies CFD-0,50 CFD-12,7 equipment on the left side only for the 296 caliber (5000 mm) M296 machine gun. Other PRIME CHANCE add-ons for the Kiowa's deployment at sea included electromagnetic shielding to insulate against the high-powered sensors of base warships, ladders to facilitate the recovery of downed pilots from the sea, additional navigation aids and engine oil compatible with the hot Gulf weather.

Operating under Task Force 118, armed OH-58Ds supported TF 160 Little Birds from February 1988. The Task Force flew most missions at night, flying at 30 mph at an altitude of 100 feet to evade Iranian radar at 48⁰ C (120⁰ F). Specific details of TF 118's accomplishments are scarce as most of the publicly known aspects of PRIME CHANCE occurred before TF 160 was completed. A pair of OH-47Ds were deployed to the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate USS Nicholas (FFG-58). In an unusual partnership, the US Navy's SH-60B Seahawk and the British Navy's Westland Lynx anti-submarine helicopters, the OH-58D Kiowas, were deployed.

Although the TF-118 left the Gulf in 1989, the OH-58D returned only a year later with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (previously supported by the US and various Arab countries against Iran). Alongside the older C models, they fulfilled the same role they had planned in Europe: spotting Iraqi targets for attack helicopters, reconnaissance for bombers and assisting in artillery fire corrections. 

Gulf War / First Gulf War / Operation Desert Storm

The 115 OH-58D helicopters deployed during Operation Desert Storm participated in a wide range of critical combat missions and were vital to the success of the ground force mission. No OH-58Ds were lost due to enemy action, as Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Sword - the phase of the war to liberate Kuwait was very short (17 January - 28 February 1991) and the Iraqi Air Force and ground anti-aircraft defenses were effectively destroyed. Although the OH-58D Kiowa Fighter took part in this war, the OH-58D was overshadowed by the AH-64A Apache and AH-1W Super Cobra.  During Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm, Kiowas collectively flew nearly 9,000 hours with a full mission capability rate of 92 percent. The Kiowa Warrior had the lowest ratio of maintenance hours to flight hours of any combat helicopter in the war. 

What mission planners particularly liked was that the OH-60 needed only 16 hours of maintenance per flight hour, compared to 16 hours for the UH-64A Blackhawk and 18 hours for the AH-58 A Apache.

Above Photo; OH-58D's Transmission and MMS assembly and maintenance. Image Source: MilitaryFactory.com

In 2002, Kiowas were deployed in Bosnia as part of NATO's SFOR forces

The US Army used the OH-58D during Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. In these operations, a combination of combat and accidents resulted in the loss of more than 35 helicopter fuselages, resulting in the deaths of 35 pilots (this information is not confirmed). In 2003, 120 Kiowas were deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. 29 helicopters were lost in this operation (this information is not confirmed). It is reported that OH-58Ds flew 72 hours a month in Iraq and 80 hours a month in Afghanistan. In April 2013, Bell stated that the OH-58D had collectively accumulated 820,000 combat hours and had reached 90% mission capability. 

Conclusion

The story that began with the OH-58 Kiowa in the US Army during the Vietnam War continued with missions in the hot waters of the Persian Gulf, the sun-baked deserts of Iraq and the harsh mountains of Afghanistan. In the US Army, the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior is out of inventory. On September 19, 2017, they were fully retired. The OH-58 continues to live on in the memories of the pilots who flew it, the pilots of the attack helicopters it supported, the pilots of close air support aircraft and artillery, the soldiers who saw what this helicopter can and cannot do. 

The OH-58D is a product of American ingenuity and engineering, combining state-of-the-art optics, weapon systems and maneuverability in a compact, lethal package. A revolutionary innovation in its time, Mast Mounted Sight technology was seen as a key force multiplier that increased situational awareness on the battlefield. Its fire control and weapon options also made it a versatile force multiplier. While other helicopters may have had greater size or power, the Kiowa's legacy lay in the perfect balance and harmony between agility, firepower and technological prowess. 

While the Kiowa Warrior has taken its glorious place in the history of world ground aviation, the story is far from over. Because the story of the OH-58D helicopter continues outside the US Army. The countries that continue to use the OH-58D helicopter are as follows: Greece has 70 units (57 of which are operational), Taiwan Army has 39 units (2 of which were destroyed in an accident and 37 of which are still operational), Tunisian Army has 24 units (18 of which are operational). The Croatian Army had 16 (12 of which are operational).

I salute this old but still beautiful helicopter, the Kiowa Warrior, and wish its pilots safe flights.