Gulf War Trivia
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67 free Gulf War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Gulf War trivia quiz covers the 1990-91 conflict from Saddam Hussein's 2 August 1990 invasion of Kuwait to the ceasefire that ended the 100-hour ground war on 28 February 1991. It takes in the diplomacy (Resolutions 660 and 678, James Baker's 'Tin Cup Trip', Margaret Thatcher telling George H. W. Bush not to go wobbly), the buildup of Operation Desert Shield, and the 42-day air campaign and ground offensive of Operation Desert Storm. You will find questions on the commanders and politicians, from Norman Schwarzkopf and Colin Powell to Tariq Aziz and April Glaspie; on the weapons and technology that defined the war, including the F-117 stealth fighter, the Patriot and the Scud, GPS and the M1A1 Abrams; on the battles of Khafji, 73 Easting and Medina Ridge; and on the aftermath, from the Highway of Death and the Kuwaiti oil fires to Gulf War syndrome, the uprisings and the no-fly zones. It ranges from questions any news-watcher of 1991 will remember to details for serious military history buffs. Every answer has been checked against primary sources, chiefly the Wikipedia articles on the war and its battles, and each explanation adds one further detail. Play, see your score, and share it with the history buffs in your group chat.
30 of 67 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US president sent troops to Saudi Arabia in August 1990?
George H. W. Bush
George H. W. Bush. Victory pushed his approval rating to nearly 90 per cent, yet he lost the White House to Bill Clinton in 1992.
Q 02After Saudi Arabia, which Arab country sent the largest force to the coalition?
Egypt
Egypt. The Arab world split over the war: Egypt sent tens of thousands of troops to fight Iraq, while Jordan, Algeria and Sudan took Saddam Hussein's side.
Q 03Operation Desert Storm was the attack, so what did the US call the months of troop buildup that came first?
Operation Desert Shield
Operation Desert Shield. It was announced as a purely defensive mission to guard Saudi Arabia, but in November the force was almost doubled so that it could go on the attack.
Q 04What name did Iraqi officials give the 1991 Gulf War?
Mother of all battles
Mother of all battles. Saddam Hussein's boast gave English 'the mother of all' everything, and the American Dialect Society voted the phrase its Word of the Year for 1991.
Q 05What did Britain call its military operations in the 1991 Gulf War?
Operation Granby
Operation Granby. It was then the largest deployment of British troops since the Second World War, and its armoured division took about 7,000 Iraqi prisoners during the ground advance.
Q 06Iraq invaded Kuwait while deep in debt from an eight-year war against which country?
Iran
Iran. Iraq had borrowed billions from its Gulf neighbours to fight it, and Saddam argued the loans were payment for protecting them; Kuwait's refusal to cancel the debt fed the crisis.
Q 07Iraq accused Kuwait of slant-drilling into which giant oil field straddling their border?
Rumaila
Rumaila. After annexing Kuwait, Iraq redrew the map so that the north of the country, the Kuwaiti end of the oilfield included, became part of a neighbouring Iraqi province.
Q 08Which US ambassador told Saddam Hussein the US had 'no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts' in 1990?
April Glaspie
April Glaspie. She said it eight days before the invasion, but Saddam's deputy Tariq Aziz later insisted Iraq had 'no illusions' that America would stay out, whatever she had said.
Q 09Which cousin of Saddam Hussein was made governor of occupied Kuwait in August 1990?
Ali Hassan al-Majid
Ali Hassan al-Majid. He was already known as 'Chemical Ali' for ordering poison-gas attacks on villages in northern Iraq, crimes for which an Iraqi court had him hanged in 2010.
Q 10Which permanent UN Security Council member abstained in 1990 on authorising force against Iraq?
China
China. By abstaining instead of using its veto it let Resolution 678 pass by 12 votes to 2, giving Iraq until 15 January 1991 to leave Kuwait or be forced out.
Q 11Which British prime minister told the US president it was 'no time to go wobbly' over Kuwait?
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher. She said it by telephone in August 1990 but never led Britain in the war: she resigned that November, and John Major was prime minister when the fighting began.
Q 12Which former heavyweight champion flew to Baghdad in 1990 to ask Saddam Hussein to free American hostages?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali. Saddam was holding Westerners at military sites to ward off attack, and Ali was one of several famous visitors who pleaded for them; every hostage was freed by the end of the year.
Q 13Which country pledged up to 100,000 troops to the coalition after Baker visited Damascus?
Syria
Q 21Which stealth aircraft became famous for its raids on Baghdad in the Gulf War?
F-117 Nighthawk
F-117 Nighthawk. It had already flown in combat over Panama in 1989, but it was the Gulf War, where radar-evading design let it reach the capital's thick ring of anti-aircraft defences, that made the angular black jet famous.
Q 22Which unit's AH-64 helicopters fired the first shots of the Gulf War on 17 January 1991?
101st Airborne Division
101st Airborne Division. Eight of its Apache helicopters slipped into Iraq before the bombers and destroyed two early-warning radar sites, opening the door for every plane that came in after them.
Q 23Which Israeli city did Iraq hit with Scud missiles during the Gulf War?
Tel Aviv
President Hafez Assad had a personal enmity toward Saddam, who 'had been trying to kill him for years'.
Q 14Which two countries stayed out of the fighting but paid billions toward the cost of the Gulf War?
Japan and Germany
Japan and Germany. Constitutions drawn up after their defeat in 1945 kept their soldiers out of combat abroad, so they paid instead; Japan alone gave about $13 billion.
Q 15Which US Army general commanded the coalition forces in the Gulf War?
Norman Schwarzkopf
Norman Schwarzkopf. He staged Marine landing rehearsals so that Iraq would expect an attack from the sea, then sent his main force through the desert instead.
Q 16Which film follows American soldiers hunting stolen Kuwaiti gold just after the Gulf War ceasefire?
Three Kings
Three Kings. George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube play soldiers who slip away to steal the gold, then trade it to get Iraqi refugees to safety.
Q 17Who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War?
Colin Powell
Colin Powell. He advised that America should fight only with overwhelming force, clear goals and a way out, conditions soon known as the Powell Doctrine.
Q 18Which PR firm did the Kuwaiti-funded group Citizens for a Free Kuwait hire to win American support for war?
Hill & Knowlton
Hill & Knowlton. Its star witness, a tearful 15-year-old called Nayirah who described babies taken from incubators, turned out to be the Kuwaiti ambassador's daughter, and her story collapsed.
Q 19Which human-rights group endorsed, then withdrew, the false story of Kuwaiti babies taken from incubators?
Amnesty International
Amnesty International. It repeated the claim in a report before the war, and senators cited the story when voting; once Kuwait was free, no evidence could be found and Amnesty retracted it.
Q 20Which ship-launched American cruise missile first saw combat in the Gulf War?
Tomahawk
Tomahawk. Warships fired about 300 of them, beginning in the war's first hours, and after that debut the ship-launched cruise missile was used widely in America's later conflicts.
Tel Aviv. Saddam hoped that Israel would hit back and that Arab states would then quit the coalition rather than fight on Israel's side; under American pressure, Israel held its fire.
Q 24Which Israeli prime minister agreed, under pressure from Washington, to hold back from retaliating for Iraq's Scud attacks?
Yitzhak Shamir
Yitzhak Shamir. He agreed to hold fire so that Arab states would not walk out of the coalition, and in exchange Washington rushed American missile-defence batteries to guard Israeli cities.
Q 25Which US missile-defence system failed to stop the Scud that killed 28 Americans in a Dhahran barracks?
Patriot
Patriot. After four days of non-stop running, a software fault had let the battery's clock drift by a third of a second, enough to lose the Scud; later studies also cut its claimed success rate sharply.
Q 26Whose national anthem at the 1991 Super Bowl, sung days into the Gulf War, became a hit single?
Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston. The country was ten days into the war, and demand was so great that her label released the anthem as a single, though the vocal the crowd heard had been recorded in advance.
Q 27Which river did the coalition's flanking force reach to cut off the Iraqi army's retreat from Kuwait?
The Euphrates
The Euphrates. Helicopter-borne American troops landed deep inside Iraq and cut the main highway along the river valley, shutting an escape route for the army in Kuwait.
Q 28Which Saudi border town did Iraqi troops capture and briefly hold at the end of January 1991?
Khafji
Khafji. Saudi and Qatari troops, backed by US Marines and air power, took it back within days, a win the coalition's American commander said taught the Arab allies that the Iraqis 'were not 10 foot tall'.
Q 29Which ill-fated SAS patrol was sent into Iraq to hunt Scud launchers?
Bravo Two Zero
Bravo Two Zero. Three of its eight men died and four were captured; the one who got away, Chris Ryan, and the patrol's leader, writing as Andy McNab, both turned the mission into books.
Q 30Which Soviet leader asked Washington to delay its attack on Iraq for one last appeal to Baghdad?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev. James Baker recalled that less than an hour before the bombing began Moscow relayed the Soviet leader's personal plea for a delay; Baker replied that too much was already in motion to call it off.