I remember that night well - the evening before was the tragic SCUD strike on the warehouse in Dhahran that killed so many, and brought the reality back that the Iraqi's were firing ballistic missiles at all of us in Qatar.
I was at work in the hangar when our sirens sounded, I quickly put on my gas mask and exposure suit (normal procedure, although chemicals were never detected at any time) and headed for the nearest shelter, which happened to be an open-topped sandbag berm. That night I was the only one in there and as the base sirens died away I could hear the sounds of sirens across Doha itself - the only time I'd ever heard them. It sounded exactly like the old recordings of London during the Blitz in the summer of 1940, and eerie, lonely wail, echoing across the city.
I already knew why the sirens had sounded, and what the projected target was from our Intel people (it was all of us in Doha, military and civilian) so I sat there in my little bunker, looking through my gas mask, and out from under my helmet to the NNW. Within minutes, there was a faint, but definite descending streak of light, followed by a low, deep, BOOM. The missile struck in Doha's bay, not far offshore of the Sheraton.
It was the last SCUD missile fired during the Gulf War, although it wasn't the only SCUD to strike Qatar. Several weeks earlier another missile struck in the desert, as I recall, to the northwest of Doha (some photos are at: http://www.lucky-devils.net/index30.htmlbr>
I remember that night well - the evening before was the tragic SCUD strike on the warehouse in Dhahran that killed so many, and brought the reality back that the Iraqi's were firing ballistic missiles at all of us in Qatar.
I was at work in the hangar when our sirens sounded, I quickly put on my gas mask and exposure suit (normal procedure, although chemicals were never detected at any time) and headed for the nearest shelter, which happened to be an open-topped sandbag berm. That night I was the only one in there and as the base sirens died away I could hear the sounds of sirens across Doha itself - the only time I'd ever heard them. It sounded exactly like the old recordings of London during the Blitz in the summer of 1940, and eerie, lonely wail, echoing across the city.
I already knew why the sirens had sounded, and what the projected target was from our Intel people (it was all of us in Doha, military and civilian) so I sat there in my little bunker, looking through my gas mask, and out from under my helmet to the NNW. Within minutes, there was a faint, but definite descending streak of light, followed by a low, deep, BOOM. The missile struck in Doha's bay, not far offshore of the Sheraton.
It was the last SCUD missile fired during the Gulf War, although it wasn't the only SCUD to strike Qatar. Several weeks earlier another missile struck in the desert, as I recall, to the northwest of Doha (some photos are at: http://www.lucky-devils.net/index30.htmlbr>
Mike