Operation Urgent Fury: Grenada's Tourist Maps and the Fort Bragg Payphone

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Grenada won independence from Britain in 1974 under Eric Gairy, whose Mongoose Gang militia silenced opponents. In March 1979, while Gairy was at the United Nations, Maurice Bishop of the Marxist New Jewel Movement took power in a nearly bloodless coup, built ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union, and still kept Queen Elizabeth II as head of state with Governor-General Paul Scoon in place. The Reagan administration fixed on the 9,000-foot runway under construction at Point Salines, seeing a Soviet and Cuban staging base, while Bishop said the island needed jets for tourism and Representative Ron Dellums called the military theory absurd. In October 1983 Bernard Coard's hardline faction put Bishop under house arrest, a crowd of up to 30,000 freed him, and soldiers at Fort Rupert executed Bishop and seven loyalists.

General Hudson Austin's military council imposed a shoot-on-sight curfew, and Caribbean states, a secret request from Scoon and the safety of about 600 St. George's University medical students became the stated reasons for invading on October 25, two days after the Beirut barracks bombing killed 241 Americans. More than 7,600 U.S. troops faced about 1,500 Grenadians and 784 Cubans, mostly armed construction workers. Four SEALs drowned in a storm, Rangers jumped from 500 feet onto the blocked runway, Delta Force helicopters were shot up at Richmond Hill Prison, and troops learned that most students were at a second campus at Grand Anse and a third site at Prickly Bay. The UN General Assembly condemned the invasion 108 to 9, Margaret Thatcher was furious, and the communication failures led to the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.

• Troops called in strikes using grid lines drawn by pen on ordinary tourist maps.
• An Army officer used a Grenadian payphone and calling card to reach Fort Bragg so a message could be relayed to Navy ships offshore.
• A Navy jet targeting an anti-aircraft gun at Fort Frederick hit a mental hospital and killed 18 patients.
• Scoon's formal written request for intervention was signed only after U.S. troops had landed.
• Bishop's remains were never found, and in 2009 the runway's airport was renamed Maurice Bishop International Airport.