Wayback Wednesday: Invasion Of Grenada 1983

Posted on October 25, 2023

Forty years ago, today…this happened during my senior year of high school. I remember it well. I also enjoyed Heartbreak Ridge in 1986, even though the scene with the pay telephone and the credit card call for fire support, that actually happened, was the 82nd Airborne Division, not the Marines. ~Vic

The United States Invasion of Grenada began at dawn on October 25, 1983. The United States and a coalition of six Caribbean nations invaded the island nation of Grenada, 100 miles north of Venezuela. Code-named Operation Urgent Fury by the U.S. military, it resulted in military occupation within a few days. It was triggered by the strife within the People’s Revolutionary Government, which resulted in the house arrest and execution of the previous leader, [the] second Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, [leading to] the establishment of the Revolutionary Military Council, with Hudson Austin as chairman. The invasion resulted in the appointment of an interim government, followed by elections in 1984.

Wikipedia Summary

Grenada gained independence in 1974. Maurice Bishop became [Prime Minister] as a result of a coup in 1979 and, he had pursued left-wing policies with Soviet and Cuban aid since then. In Washington, D.C., he was seen as a communist collaborator and a new airport under construction in Grenada was deemed a transfer point for weapons destined for Latin American revolutionaries. Bishop’s assassination, by a more hard-line Military Revolutionary Council on October 19, 1983, was taken as the signal to act. Publicly justified by the need to protect U.S. students in Grenada, Operation Urgent Fury was hastily thrown together. The only resistance was likely to come from a contingent of Cubans, claimed to be construction workers by Havana.

Britannica

♦ The Invasion of Grenada (The History Guy/April 20, 2019)
♦ Operation Urgent Fury: The 1983 US Invasion of Grenada (War History Online/Nikola Budanovic/December 2, 2017)
♦ How Grenada Reshaped The US Military (Informal Institute For National Security Thinkers & Practitioners/Phil Kukielski/September 8, 2013)

US Invades Grenada AP Archive

Heartbreak Ridge Trailer