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Pilots flying off the Ranger were so eager to refuel and get back into the air to kill more tanks that they had their planes loaded with whatever bombs or missiles happened to be available on the flight deck, rather than waiting for the ship's slow elevators to bring up ordnance specifically chosen for their mission. Pilot after pilot described attacks in which, after the first tank in a column was hit, the crews would abandon the others and set out on foot for home. Correspondents touring the road at week's end found mile after mile of blasted, twisted, burned, shattered tanks, trucks and other vehicles, many still incongruously carrying loot from Kuwait City: children's toys, carpets, television sets. Those Iraqi soldiers who reached the Euphrates threw up pontoon bridges to replace sturdier spans that had been destroyed by bombing; when more bombs wrecked the pontoon bridges too, some desperate troops crossed by walking along earthen dams.
WEDNESDAY: CLOSING THE RING
Some allied units had reached the Euphrates as early as Monday; by Wednesday morning they were established in enough force to prevent further crossings. British units cut the main Kuwait City-Basra highway early in the day; ! American Marines had reached it farther to the south the previous afternoon. The gate had slammed shut on Saddam's forces in Kuwait. Their escape routes were broken. Encirclement was complete.
The day was dominated by the two big tank battles of the war. U.S. Marines ran into a major Iraqi armored force at Kuwait International Airport. The sky was so dark because of the heavy smoke from oil wells set afire by the Iraqis that Marine Major General Michael Myatt had to read a map by flashlight. The Marines nonetheless resumed the battle by what light there was, and late in the day reported having destroyed all 100 Iraqi tanks they had engaged.
In a far bigger clash along the Kuwait-Iraq border, American and British troops pushing eastward after their flanking maneuver through the desert finally broke the Republican Guard. Schwarzkopf had defined these troops as the "center of gravity" of the Iraqi forces. Said a senior Army staff officer: "The whole campaign was designed on one theme: to destroy the Republican Guard."
British troops encountered some Guard units as early as Monday night, destroying a third of their armor at the first blow with long-range artillery fire and aerial attack. Fighting between American troops and Guard units also began Monday and steadily intensified; by nightfall Monday a briefer reported one of the Guard's seven divisions in the area rendered "basically ineffective." The big battle raged all day Wednesday. Some allied officers reported that the Guard fought about as well as could have been expected of troops battling without air cover, with minimal, if any, communications and under relentless allied bombing. But one American officer asserted that "basically we are chasing them across the plains, shooting as we go."