THE morning sun was up, the fog of war had briefly lifted. In the distance, a moving cloud of dust betrayed a column of armour on the move.

Twenty miles southeast of Basra, 14 Challenger 2 tanks of C Squadron, Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, were on their way to reinforce 3 Commando Brigade, Royal Marines on al-Faw peninsula.

They were not expecting tanks from the north; they had another mission in mind. But they had reached the position they were in only because of some speedy and brilliant bridge building by 28 Regiment, Royal Engineers, to get them across the obstacle of the Basra Canal.

Long-range spotters with the Dragoon Guards peered at the dust cloud; distinctive lumps on the distant armour immediately identified it as a column of Iraqi T55 tanks. The Scots crews were about to engage in the biggest — and most decisive — tank battle fought by the British since El Alamein in the Second World War.

The Iraqi column, which had moved south out of Basra, had already been pounded by air bombardment and artillery. Remnants were trying to disperse across open countryside. When the approaching armour had been spotted and identified, the Dragoon Guards, who had been travelling from west to east, split into two groups of seven tanks each as they closed in on the enemy.

One group came across a troop of Iraqi T55s in the process of being deserted as their occupants realised they were being overwhelmed by air and ground assaults. The other tempted the enemy into a “kill box” in a classic hunter-killer battlefield technique.

They lured the Iraqi squadron into believing they were being attacked only by a light infantry unit of commandos. But when the old Russian-built tanks made themselves visible in a wooded area, the Challengers moved in from the flank and began picking them off one by one at a range of about 1,500 metres.

“This was shock action. It was 14 against 14, and the score was 14-nil,” a military spokesman at UK National Contingent headquarters in Qatar said after the brief encounter, which is now regarded as one of the most decisive actions by ground forces in the war so far. “It was nothing less than a suicide mission by the Iraqis; it had no military logic,” the spokesman said.

The T55s, an upgraded version of an old Soviet warhorse dating back to 1955, stood little chance against the Challengers. The British tanks opened fire simultaneously, firing up to six rounds a minute with deadly accuracy while still bouncing over the rough ground at 25mph.

Their advanced stabilisation system, the best of its kind, keeps the gun steady and aimed even when the vehicle is jolting over rocky terrain. The T55s, which cannot fire effectively on the move and have to stop to take an accurate shot, had no chance.

Inside the 61-ton Challengers, the gunners were using the world’s most sophisticated tank targeting system, using a console similar to that on a PlayStation computer game to pick out targets at will. Commanders say this system is loved by young crews used to the non-stop action of computer battle games.

But this was no game. The Challengers were firing depleted uranium shells that drill through armour to create a vacuum and incredible heat inside the target, sucking all air and life from it.

Inside the Challengers, the well-rehearsed, clinically efficient process of aiming, loading, firing and reloading was repeated 14 times. The encounter was over in a matter of minutes. All 14 Iraqi tanks were destroyed, and all 14 British, each with a four-man crew, escaped unscathed.

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