Action begins with an email

War began at Central Command not with a bang but with a whimper.

At the heart of the American operations, in the Joint Operations Command, a secure electronic message was received from the White House.

Immediately, US commanders ordered the strikes to begin, passing secure emails to their ships and submarines in the Gulf, and the HQ of the stealth fighter squadron.

Only a handful of people saw it and a tiny number of other people knew - among them Air Marshal Brian Buridge, commander of the British detatchment.

Operation Iraqi Freedom had begun - not with a rousing speech or a signal, but a single press of a key on a laptop.

Within minutes, stealth fighters from nearby Al-Udaid airbase screamed into the sky, carrying their deadly load of 2,000lb bunker-buster bombs.

But the people of Doha, just minutes away from the base, slept on without knowing that the first movements of the war were flying over their heads. And further up the Gulf, cruise missiles shot from their launchers on ships and submarines, unseen by all but those on board.

At Central Command virtually no one outside the inner circle of Joint Operations Command knew that action had begun. Many were still asleep as the missiles were launched.