O.C.-Based Troops Take It to the Enemy : Combat: Some El Toro, Tustin and Pendleton Marines are already engaged, while others wait for the ground war. All are well-trained in desert fighting.

From their positions close to the Kuwaiti border, Camp Pendleton-based Marine artillery units unleash their 155-millimeter howitzers on Iraqi ground positions as F/A-18 Hornet jet fighters from El Toro pummel an Iraqi truck convoy.

Marine transport and supply helicopters from Tustin, meanwhile, move north toward the border, poised to begin hauling the howitzers, men and supplies to new positions if a ground offensive is ordered.

And on ships in the Persian Gulf, Marines from Camp Pendleton and more Tustin-based helicopters practice for a possible amphibious assault on the Kuwaiti shoreline.

Even as the Pentagon debates whether to commit U.S. ground forces to combat, daily skirmishes between Marine and Iraqi units along the border of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have become commonplace.

The Hornets and Harrier jump jets assigned to the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at El Toro have already taken the battle to occupied Kuwait, but for now the ground troops and the helicopters that will help move them into battle wait for the order to move.

When, and if, the Gulf War moves from the air to the ground, military officials say that years of intense training in the deserts of California and Arizona will pay off “big time” for the Tustin-based helicopter pilots who will be called on to move troops, artillery and supplies and ferry out the wounded.

“I think all the training is going to pay off, absolutely,” said Col. Robert W. Watkins, a CH-46 Sea Knight pilot who is commander of the remaining helicopter squadrons at the Tustin Marines Corps Air Station. “They are the best. The first squadrons that went out of here to the Persian Gulf were made up of the best people we have. They are the best-trained.”

Watkins said helicopter training at Marine facilities at Yuma, Ariz., Twentynine Palms, Camp Pendleton and at locations in the Pacific gives the crews in the Middle East an extra edge. He said they have trained hard in desert and nighttime tactics--two elements believed to give U.S. forces a vital edge over the enemy.

“Now they (the forces in the Persian Gulf) are sitting there waiting their turn,” Watkins said. “Soon as it starts rolling (the ground war), the helicopters will be intimately involved.”

Before leaving for the Middle East, the helicopter crews had extensive training at the Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms and participated in live operations at one of the best schools on tactics in the nation--the Marine Air Weapons Tactics at the Marine Corps Air Station at Yuma--and practiced night flying or lifting heavy 155-millimeter howitzers at sprawling Camp Pendleton.

Helicopters, including the CH-46 and CH-53 Sea Stallions and Super Stallions from Tustin, are based both in the Saudi desert and aboard ships in the gulf. About 40% of the helicopters are aboard ships.

Marine transport and supply helicopters from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing have been moved north toward the Kuwaiti border to be closer to the front-line troops in preparation for a ground war. Reports from eastern Saudi Arabia said that some units were moving to within 25 miles of the border.

If Marines do move against Iraqi positions or launch an amphibious assault from the gulf, some of the troops will advance or come ashore in CH-46 Sea Knights from Tustin. Supplies and heavy artillery will advance in or hanging below cavernous CH-53E Super Stallions or a smaller version called the CH-53D Sea Stallion.

Watkins, commander of Marine Air Group 16 at Tustin, said the Super Stallion, the largest, heavy-lift helicopter made outside the Soviet Union, will see its first battlefield action in the Middle East. The helicopter, the only one of its kind in the U.S. arsenal, can lift up to 16 tons or transport 55 combat-equipped Marines. There are 90 Super Stallions based at Tustin.

The aircraft wing based at El Toro has nearly 10,000 men and women in the Persian Gulf; about 5,000 of them are from Tustin and the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, the home of the F/A-18 Hornet and the C-130 Hercules, both of which are serving in the Middle East.

The supersonic F/A-18 Hornets from the El Toro-based Black Knights Squadron have been flying sorties over occupied Kuwait and Iraq since the war began Jan. 16 and a few days ago were credited with knocking out a convoy of Iraqi trucks.

“I think the first bomb dropped at 3 a.m. and El Toro planes were involved an hour later,” said Maj. Jim V. McClain, a spokesman for the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing in the Persian Gulf.

Former Wing Commander Maj. Gen. Donald E. P. Miller, who is now in Washington heading up planning for the Marine Corps, said when Marines started training in the desert in earnest a couple of years ago, other services questioned the move.

“Obviously, a guy by the name of Al Gray (Marine Commandant Gen. Alfred M. Gray Jr.) did a lot of looking around and concluded that Marines ought to prepare for every eventuality,” Miller said in a telephone interview. “When the Marines trained out there in the desert, he saw the same things, with the exception of a large body of water called the Persian Gulf, as he sees in the desert in Saudi Arabia. There are strange wind storms called Khamsins, much like Santa Ana wind conditions--hot and so dry you can hardly breathe.

“So the Marines get over there and they continue to train just like most of them had trained at Twentynine Palms,,” explained Miller, a helicopter pilot in Vietnam who was the commanding general of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing at El Toro from 1987 to 1989.

In addition to Twentynine Palms near Palm Springs, Marines train in equally desolate desert areas near Yuma or are sent to Camp Pendleton for training in amphibious assaults from ships along the shoreline to a hundred miles inland.

Unlike some of the Marine pilots who were sent to Vietnam with little training, Miller said, 85% of Marines--both the ground troops and the aviators--are in peak condition and ready for battle.

“They’re still training every day. They can’t go into town and chase girls and there is no beer to drink and they don’t have any cars sitting outside the compound,” Miller said. “The way you keep them ready is keep them familiar with reality. You tell them that there’s a guy up the road and he is going to kill you if you don’t listen to what I am saying.”