It took only 20 seconds for HMS Marlborough's main gun to fire 10 rounds at the Iraqi bunker complex 10km away on the Faw Peninsula. The shock wave of each high explosive round exiting the barrel might have shaken the 3,500 tonne ship to the core, but it was nothing to the effect the shells had when they hit their target 25 seconds later.
Moments after the final shell had reached its destination the radio on the bridge crackled into life.
"End of mission, good shooting," said the Royal Artillery spotter on the ground who had ordered the strike on the bunker. "Enemy positions thoroughly neutralized," he added.
Exactly how many Iraqi casualties the salvo inflicted nobody on the ship yet knows, but those soldiers who survived the white-hot razor-sharp shrapnel were in no doubt they did not want to go through the experience again.
Minutes later the artillery spotter was back on the radio.
"Possible white flags being raised," he reported.
It was a story that was repeated several times on Friday on the Faw Peninsula, as the Royal Navy ships Marlborough, Chatham and Richmond and the Australian frigate Anzak unleashed a barrage of fire. By the end of the morning not only was the bunker system in ruins, but a large military installation on the southern tip of the peninsula also appeared to have been destroyed.
The invasion of Faw had begun on Thursday night when US navy Seals secured the Kwahr al Amaya and Mina al Bakr oil terminals, which had been used to supply the UN oil for food program. The first coalition boot landed on Iraqi soil moments later as members of the Royal Marines Bravo Company captured the oil pumping station on the mainland that piped oil to the terminals.
As they bunkered down to wait for support, helicopter troop carriers containing the other three companies of 40 Commando Royal Marines were already in the air from Viking, the code name for their base in Kuwait, while smaller units were deploying from the aircraft carriers Ocean and Ark Royal, both of which had moved up into the waters of the northern gulf.
The peninsula, a flat, featureless wasteland of mud, sand and a thick jungle of date palms, is roughly 9km wide and 14km long. To the west, across the Kwahr ad Allah river is Kuwait; to the east the Shatt al Arab waterway and the border with Iran.
Strategically it has been vital to the Iraqi regime and it is the country's only route to the sea and a conduit for smuggling oil and dates.
The operation to take down the terminal was vital. Few Iraqis were killed and 13 were captured during Bravo Company's operation to take the pumping station, while no marines were injured.
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