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The plan called for overwhelming American forces to intimidate and neutralize the P.D.F. while special units secured vital dams and the electrical facilities powering the Panama Canal. Once organized resistance had been shattered, military police and other units trained in MOUT -- military operations in urban terrain -- would undertake the house-to-house battle against the Dignity Battalions. At Southern Command Headquarters in Panama City, the arrival of General Maxwell Thurman last Oct. 1 brought a marked change in mood. Unlike his predecessor, General Frederick Woerner, Thurman saw Noriega as primarily a military rather than a political problem. According to Pentagon sources, Thurman had been bristling for a fight since American troops stood helplessly by while the October coup was crushed.
As Wednesday's H hour approached, huge military transports were landing at ten-minute intervals at Howard Air Force Base, doubtless alerting Noriega that a U.S. strike might soon be under way. Pentagon spokesmen dismissed the airlift as a routine exercise. But total surprise had never loomed large in Pentagon planning, which depended on vastly superior manpower, firepower and speedy execution.
The initial phases of Operation Just Cause went off as planned. Shortly before midnight Tuesday, guests at Panama City's ritzy Marriott Caesar Park Hotel were awakened by sporadic shooting. A team of Navy SEALs (sea, air and & land capability) rushed the nearby private Paitilla Airport, where Noriega kept a potential getaway Learjet. In a brief but vicious firefight the SEALs overwhelmed guards, secured the landing strip and destroyed the aircraft. But four SEALs were killed, perhaps the earliest casualties of the conflict. Other SEALS died while disabling boats Noriega could have used to make an escape by sea.
At around 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, residents of century-old wooden houses ringing Noriega's sprawling P.D.F. headquarters, called the Comandancia, were startled by the roar of circling U.S. AC-130 combat Talon gunships and attack choppers, then the rumble of tanks in the streets. The tanks fired barrage after barrage at Noriega's official lair, and the sky was lit by antiaircraft tracers. The streets soon began to fill as terrified residents ran out of their flaming houses. An unknown number died in their homes; many were injured. Meanwhile, U.S. infantry units at Fort Amador opened fire with howitzers against P.D.F. barracks situated conveniently nearby at the facility shared by troops of both nations.
Over the next 24 hours, the American force nearly doubled as 9,500 troops, divided into five task forces, parachuted out of the Panama skies or scrambled from large transport aircraft:
TASK FORCE ATLANTIC. Made up of 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers from Fort Bragg, N.C., and Seventh Infantry troops from Fort Ord, Calif., backed by special units, it raced to secure vital facilities at the Caribbean end of the canal, near Colon. It took over Madden Dam, which stores water used to raise and lower ships in the canal's locks, and seized control of the electrical distribution center at Cerro Tigre. The task force encountered stiff resistance from a P.D.F. naval infantry unit on the northern coast. This force also freed 48 P.D.F. prisoners at Gamboa prison.