Operation: Phantom Fury

November 2004 — U.S. Marines (with Army units) move to clear Fallujah in Operation Phantom Fury. It’s one of the heaviest urban fights since Vietnam: close, chaotic, and deadly. The city is layered with insurgent defenses, booby-traps, and everything from well-dug sniper positions to ambushes inside houses. Tactics that worked earlier had to be adapted on the fly; small units relied on combined arms, rehearsed clearing drills, and brutal grit