Bijal Trivedi - National Geographic Channel When 'Shock and Awe' launched the first stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom the phrase became synonymous with a massive military strike—terrifying and overwhelming. The onslaught of surgically precise attacks that began on March 21, 2003, was expected to vaporize the enemy's military and political will and bring them to their knees. It was a strategy designed to end the war in hours or days. That was the theory. The mission was to decapitate the government, destroy critical buildings and disrupt military communication with minimal civilian casualties—a tough order in Baghdad, a city of five and a half million. The tools for the attack represented a top of the line, high-tech arsenal: submarine and ship-launched tomahawk cruise missiles, B-2 stealth bombers and F-117 stealth fighters, and precision-guided bombs and bunker-busters. As a military tactic, shock and awe has been tried before during the last century—though it has rarely succeeded. In World War I the Germans used zeppelins to cross the English Channel and drop bombs on Britain, convinced the English would be stunned into submission. In World War II Hitler's air force inflicted a 57-day bombing campaign—the Blitz-on Londoners who once again refused to surrender. The Japanese also survived and resisted prolonged air attacks—until the atomic bombs were dropped. Hiroshima and Nagasaki created both shock and awe. In the Iraq war, 'Shock and Awe' hoped to generate a similar psychological blow—without the casualties or the use of nuclear weapons—via precision-guided bombs. Controlling where a bomb falls has always been a challenge. Early in WWI bombs were literally tossed, like a grenade, out of the plane. Things had improved by WWII with the development and use of relatively advanced aiming devices like the Norden bomb sight, which was mounted in the nose of many U.S. bombers. This device took into account altitude, wind speed and other variables to calculate the precise moment to drop a bomb—the accuracy swung between hundreds to thousands of yards if the weather or enemy resistance was bad. During Vietnam, when jungle guerilla warfare often made precision bombing moot, the first laser guided bombs were born. The bombing involved two planes—one directed a laser beam at a target and the other would drop a bomb with a seeker in the nose cone that would detect the laser light and hone in on it.

Attacks began on March 21, 2003

After Vietnam the sophistication of guided bombs grew steadily until the public witnessed the grand entrance of the "smart bomb" during the first Gulf War. In the early 1990s the American public watched spellbound as their network and cable news stations bombarded them with a bird's-eye view of precision guided bombs dropping down chimneys and slamming through the doors of various Iraq targets. These bombs gave the impression of clean, precise warfare. Some of these guided bombs allowed pilots to control them with a joystick and release the bombs a few miles from their targets. But of all the bombs and weapons launched in Iraq in the first Gulf War, only about seven percent were "smart." And even these bombs had shortcomings. Laser-guided precision weapons were accurate, but bad weather or clouds of smoke from burning oil fields often made it impossible to find targets. Worse, pilots needed to fly relatively low and within range of enemy fire. Just a decade later, 'Shock and Awe' used another advance in precision bombing—the Global Positioning System, or GPS. GPS guided bombs, such as the Joint Direct Attack Munition or JDAM, can be dropped from more than twice the altitude of earlier guided bombs and from farther away, helping pilots avoid antiaircraft fire. Tomahawk missiles guided by terrain recognition software and digitized maps, or the newest models directed by the Global Positioning System satellites, can find their targets regardless of weather conditions or smoke.

Soilders patrol the streets of Baghdad

On the evening of March 21, 2003, as the deadline passed for Saddam Hussein and his two sons to leave the country and avert war with the United States, the weapons of this hi-tech arsenal were launched. At 10:15 pm 'Shock and Awe' exploded onto television screens across the world. A National Geographic team witnessed the attack from the 10th floor balcony of the Palestine Hotel—one of three hotels the Iraqis had approved for journalists. The room provided a spectacular view of the Presidential Palace and some 20 other potential targets. What many television viewers did not know was that Saddam Hussein had forbidden broadcasting outside the Ministry of Information, and the hotels patrolled by Iraqi officials searching for banned equipment, such as video phones. "More than bombing, our tension comes from hearing that security people are sweeping the hotel for sat phones," National Geographic producer Charles Poe wrote in his journal. A bizarre testament to the precision of the weapons used during the first night of 'Shock and Awe' was that the streetlights still functioned. Electricity flowed to the city, including the Palestine Hotel where journalists frantically filed their reports. During the opening days of the war, even Iraqi government television was untouched and still broadcasting. Civilian casualties did occur, but the strikes, for the most part, were surgical. Some buildings were completely demolished, while neighboring structures were untouched. Some buildings remained standing while their innards were gutted. In others still, only individual floors were erased. On March 22, the producers saw what the military had advertised. They began filming anti-aircraft fire originating from the Republican Palace—Saddam's proudest residence. "Five minutes later," wrote Poe, "I got the best footage I will ever shoot as missiles thundered into the palace and blew it to bits. It was scary, for sure, but we were so far away and so well sheltered on our concrete balcony that we weren't worried about getting hit by pieces of wreckage." Even after several days of bombing the Iraqis showed remarkable resilience. Many continued with their daily lives, working and shopping, as bombs continued to fall around them. According to some analysts the military's attack was perhaps too precise. It did not trigger shock and awe in the Iraqis and, in the end, the city was only captured after close combat on the outskirts of Baghdad.