Day of the Rangers: The Battle of Mogadishu 25 Years On

by Leigh Neville

  A Somali gunman popped up behind them and sprayed them with AK47 fire. Both were wounded, Martin fatally, with a round hitting him under his helmet at the base of his skull. “The battalion surgeon, the First Sergeant and two soldiers from 1st Platoon moved into the intersection under fire to give them aid. Nearby, soldiers laid down heavy suppressive fire until the casualties could be pulled into the relative safety of a depression next to a building.”14

  At this point, the Malay APCs were stationary and refusing to move forward due to the weight of enemy fire and concern for their missing comrades. The infantry they carried had dismounted and were fighting block by block up National and Hawlwadig. An Mk19-equipped Humvee from the Military Police was brought forward and used to silence the key enemy firing points outside the Olympic in a hail of 40mm grenades. This effort got the convoy moving again and the force headed up Hawlwadig whilst the dismounted 1st Platoon headed east toward the Super 61 crash site.

  0155 HOURS: LINK UP BETWEEN TFR AND LEAD QRF ELEMENT; ENSURE GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY PERSONNEL PRIOR TO MOVEMENT & CUT KIA OUT OF ACFT.

  One of the lead squads from 1st Platoon spotted the infrared strobes that the Delta operators had placed around the perimeter of the crash site through their night-vision goggles and knew they were close. With the 1st Platoon soldiers shouting “10th Mountain, don’t shoot!” to avoid fratricide, the defenders responded with “Rangers!” Moments later, the lead element met up with the Rangers protecting the intersection to the west of Super 61.

  Captain Drew Meyerowich of the 10th Mountain met with Captain Steele, who was apparently reluctant to give up command to the rescue force and tried to tell Meyerowich where to place the APCs. Meyerowich was clear to Steele that 10th Mountain was in command of the rescue effort, particularly in light of their recent experience conducting a similar operation at the Courage 53 crash site. Delta Lieutenant Colonel Lee Van Arsdale intervened before the situation became even more heated and told Steele simply: “Mike, let them handle it. They are in charge.”15

  Several APCs were brought forward and stopped near the intersection to allow the Task Force Ranger wounded to be loaded on board. Although the firing had decreased, mainly due to the arrival of the convoy which had now attracted many of the enemy combatants, the occasional RPG was still being fired at the stationary APCs. Captain Meyerowich’s A-Company of 2-14th deployed around the perimeter of the crash site to reinforce the Task Force Ranger personnel.

  One of the A-Company soldiers was wounded by an RPG fired from a nearby building and an AH-6 swung into action. “An attack helicopter hit the building with [miniguns] and 2.75-inch rocket fire. I thought the helicopter was firing on our position until I saw the tracers hitting the building only 50 meters north of our position,” related Ferry. “The expended shell casings dropped into the perimeter. I had never been so close to an air strike, and all of us were plenty scared. For the next several hours, aircraft continued to fire all around our position 35 to 60 meters from us.”16

  The 10th Mountain and Task Force Ranger perimeter continued to receive intermittent volleys of RPGs and largely inaccurate small-arms fire all through the early hours of the morning. The RPGs would be met by return fire and a hastily vectored AH-6. At Super 61, the men worked frantically to free Wolcott’s body whilst still under enemy fire.

  0249 HOURS: NO BODIES FOUND AT CRASH SITE #2 (SUPER 64) & NO ONE ANSWERS TO AIRCREW’S NAMES IN VIC (4 X AIRCREW PLUS 2 X DELTA SNIPERS SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE).

  As 10th Mountain linked up with the Rangers and operators at the first crash site, 1st Platoon soldiers from Whetstone’s C-Company, accompanied by three Delta operators and guided by an OH-58D overhead, had made their way into the shantytown surrounding the crash site of Super 64. They were immediately contacted by the enemy as they began making their way through the maze of structures but fought their way through, using their night vision to engage the enemy. Finally, Super 64 was in sight.

  Whetstone recalled:

  Super 64 lay diagonally across a small courtyard, pocked with holes from the earlier gunfight as the Super 64 crew and the Delta sniper team tried to hold off the Somalis. John M had a list of the guys that should have been at this site. Under sporadic fire, we began calling out those names that will haunt me forever: Frank … Cleveland … Field … Durant … Shughart … Gordon … Using NVGs, we followed blood trails over 100 meters into the dangerous darkness. The feeling was horrible; there was nothing, no sign of life, no remains in or around the aircraft.17

  The 10th Mountain soldiers helped John M and his two Delta RTOs recover sensitive materials from the Black Hawk and finally set thermite grenades in the wreckage. The men collapsed their perimeter and fell back to the waiting 3rd Platoon who were guarding their exfiltration route back onto National Street. Struecker, at this point commanding one of the Ranger Humvees on National, sadly recounted: “Some operators went on foot to the Durant crash site to confirm no one was left or no one was alive and they came back and said, ‘Everybody’s gone, everybody’s missing.’”

  For Lieutenant Hollis’s squad from 2nd Platoon, A-Company, trapped for several hours near the immobilized Condors, salvation finally arrived in the form of Whetstone’s C-Company. AH-6s had been vectored to rocket surrounding buildings but Hollis’s situation remained dire, surrounded by Somali militiamen. Whetstone requested a visible signal to direct his men. Hollis fired a red parachute flare into the sky and they established they were perhaps a kilometer apart. Whetstone needed the Condors on National to fight through to Hollis’s position.

  Again communication difficulties between the Americans and Malays delayed any action for another hour as the Malaysians discussed and debated the situation because their battalion commander was concerned about further casualties due to the large numbers of RPGs present. Eventually Whetstone ordered his men to advance on foot and C-Company began a slow and deadly house-to-house fight to reach Hollis’s trapped platoon element. Hollis and his men were already moving toward C-Company and had fought some 300 meters toward them when Sergeant Cornell Houston, an attached Engineer, was shot in the chest and two other soldiers wounded.

  Hollis himself was attempting to shoot the gunman:

  Just as I ran out of ammunition and was changing magazines, the gunman moved around the corner and began shooting at my location. His actions gave the squad leader enough time to draw a bead on him and kill him. I was so eager to ensure he was dead that I grabbed grenades from the medic and hurled them into the building. We had no more shots from that gunman.18

  Another Somali opened fire from the north, suppressing one of the squads. One of the squad leaders fired an M203 flare round to mark the gunman’s location for close air support, but it hit the wrong building. An AH-6 that had arrived on-station engaged the marked building, destroying it. Hollis told his RTO to tell the AH-6 to follow his tracer and he stood up and emptied a magazine at the correct building. He recalled: “Little Bird came in perpendicular to our location, fired his 7.62mm [mini] gun, then his rockets, and the building disappeared.”19

  C-Company were now only 100 meters distant from Hollis and preparing to charge across the gap when suddenly two to three of the Malaysian Condors appeared behind them. The Malaysian vehicles pulled up near Hollis’s men, hosing the upper stories of the surrounding buildings with their twin machine guns and cannon. Hollis’s RTO had apparently been directing the Condors toward their location after their commander bravely disobeyed a direct order from his leadership and decided they must attempt to rescue his trapped countrymen and the embattled American infantry.

  Whetstone ordered C-Company to follow the Condors and they soon had Hollis’s men, including a number of critically injured soldiers, inside the APCs. Once everyone was on board, the Condors pulled out onto National Street and sped away, heading for the Pakistani-controlled soccer stadium to the north. Despite all efforts to halt their wild movement, the Condors kept going until they reached the stadium. They, and the 10th Mountain soldiers on board, were n
ow out of the fight. Sergeant Houston would tragically die from his wounds in Landstuhl, Germany several days later.

  At the Super 61 crash site the CSAR team, now reinforced by further Delta operators, were still working to free Cliff Wolcott’s body. Delta operator John M and the two other operators who had searched the Super 64 site had brought a diamond-bladed mechanical cutting saw with them to hopefully speed up the process of cutting Wolcott clear of the wreckage, but the saw was only making slow progress.

  0453 HOURS: ASSAULT [FORCE COMMANDER CAPTAIN MILLER] REPORTS HE HAS 200 DISMOUNTED, (QRF/ASSAULT FORCE/RANGER BLOCKING FORCE) WILL LINK W/TRANS[PORT] ON NATIONAL ONCE BODY RECOVERED.

  Norm Hooten’s F-Team who had earlier arrived at Captain Miller’s location were dispatched to assist with freeing Wolcott’s body from the wreckage:

  [Super 61 co-pilot] Donovan Briley had already been taken out of the aircraft by John Belman I believe and Cliff was still in the aircraft. When the bird crashed, the whole upper part of the Black Hawk had collapsed on him. Somalis are still shooting and throwing hand grenades over the wall at the aircraft. So basically we had to disassemble that aircraft and still couldn’t get him out. It was at that point that I linked up with [Delta CSAR medic] Bob M and [Delta sniper troop Sergeant Major] Rick W. At this point the vehicles had also arrived.

  Hooten recounted how they tried every means possible to free Wolcott:

  We started using manual breaching tools to rip that aircraft apart and that took a while, then we used the Humvees with fast ropes to try and pull the aircraft apart. There were [cargo] straps aboard the Humvees too so straps and fast ropes. Doing it in the middle of a gunfight is even harder. They were still out there harassing us but they couldn’t see what they were shooting at.

  Hooten knew that it was imperative that they complete their task before sunrise; the first hints of dawn were already visible on the horizon. Eventually Hooten and the operators were successful. “We got what we could of the body out and at that point the sun was coming up. I remember being in the aircraft and seeing the sky starting to turn – it added to the sense of urgency.”

  Kurt Smith reported:

  Dawn was falling over Mogadishu, and we didn’t want to be here when it got light. Lieutenant Colonel Lee Van Arsdale finally commanded, “Alright, enough of this. Get him out of there.” I reached down into the wreckage and managed to wrap the tow strap over his neck and under one of his arms. It was the best I could do. The Humvee pulled slowly as the tow strap began riding up under Cliff’s arm. I pushed his arm down fearing his arm was going to snap and spray blood all over me, but we were able to pull Cliff’s body from the wreckage after some difficulty. We then bagged Cliff’s remains and loaded him in the Humvee.20

  C-Squadron EOD technician Luke V, who was assigned to Delta in 1986 and stayed for over a decade, was assigned to place demolition charges on the remains of Super 61 whilst the complicated process of loading up all of the remaining Task Force Ranger and 10th Mountain personnel began. “It just takes a long time. I remember loading bodies and wounded onto the vehicles, you’ve got to coordinate the link-up … there’s a lot of stuff you’ve got to do to get moving. It’s a lot of coordination,” explained Belman.

  The wounded were loaded into the APCs that had been brought forward to the Super 61 crash site. The dead were strapped on top. Once Wolcott was freed, the plan called for the APCs to drive out with the wounded first. The 10th Mountain and Task Force Ranger would fall back to the intersection of National and Hawlwadig where the Task Force Ranger Humvees waited, positioned with the Pakistani tanks. They would then mount up in the Humvees and Condors for the ride out, destined for the soccer stadium.

  Mike Moser was loaded into a Condor. He recalled:

  Exfil vehicle for me was a Malaysian APC. Following the actual link-up with our element, my team had rejoined us by that point, and after some coordination we [the wounded] were ushered out into the street bit by bit for loading. The APC I entered already had a couple guys from our Sniper Troop.

  After I was loaded, we loitered there or perhaps a short distance away some considerable time for the extrication of 61’s pilots. I recall seeing the sky grow lighter and lighter through the Malay gunner’s hatch above me and thinking I’d much rather be making the run home in the dark. It was relatively quiet; I recall little firing during this time aside from maybe an incoming RPG or two, but one or two guys expressed somewhat heated frustration with the time it was taking to cut Cliff and Bull out. I later learned more about why this was so problematic.

  0530 HOURS: BODY RECOVERED. DESTRUCTIVE CHARGES SET ON HELO. AH-6S PROVIDING COVER FIRE FOR WITHDRAWAL FROM CRASH SITE #1.

  Now the race was on to get out of the city before the sun rose. Jeff Struecker and the Rangers were only too aware of what daylight would bring: “As the sun starts to come up it is noticeable, every minute enemy fire is picking up, more volume, more accurate … Everyone in the city knows where we’re at. Everyone who wants to kill Americans knows exactly where to go.” Tom DiTomasso added: “We defended that crash site all night long until the commander made the decision to leave at 5 o’clock the next morning. The Somalis started coming out again.”

  As the sky lightened, the Pakistani tanks abruptly started their engines and, without a word, drove off to the east, likely headed for the New Port facility. With the light came renewed Somali small-arms and RPG fire. One of the Task Force Ranger Humvees was immobilized at the intersection as they waited for their comrades to move from the Super 61 crash, down Hawlwadig, and to their location.

  Ranger Captain Lee Rysewyk later wrote:

  One RPG landed next to the GRF2 cargo Humvee with the Ranger weapons platoon leader, the cooks, and other headquarters personnel in it, disabling the vehicle and wounding four Rangers. One Ranger, Sergeant First Class Rick Lamb, complained of a massive headache. He had a small amount of blood coming from a scratch on the forehead, but he continued to fight. Later, the Ranger found out that he had a piece of shrapnel from an RPG lodge two inches into his forehead between the lobes of his brain.21

  Lamb recounted the incident:

  There was an RPG flash off to the right side. You could hear the guys in the back yelling RPG and everything slowed to where you could almost follow it with your eyes. It hit in the alleyway to my left. I can remember my head going back and watching a spurt of blood hit the running lights on the dashboard and I remember swearing under my breath and saying, “Damn it, I just got killed,” and everything went to a white pristine point of light, everything got quiet. I was almost feeling pretty good; you’re wet, you’re sweaty, it’s noisy, it’s stinky, and everything was feeling “nirvana-ish,” then I remember focusing on that white spot of light then thinking about my kid, what about my wife? Then the guys in the back hit me in the back of my head and yelled, “Don’t stop here, don’t stop here!”22

  Rick Lamb survived and later had surgery to remove the fragment. The veteran Ranger had previously served during Operation Eagle Claw in Iran and in Panama where he was involved in the hunt for Noriega. Most famously, he was also instrumental in the November 1984 defection of a Soviet citizen across the DMZ in Korea which resulted in a 40-minute firefight with North Korean troops who were attempting to kill the defector. He has since gone on to an illustrious career with US Army Special Forces.

  Also on Rick Lamb’s Humvee was Navy SEAL Homer N. This was the second Humvee that he had been traveling on to be destroyed. The SEAL luckily escaped without a scratch and was later awarded the Silver Star along with the other four SEALs for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while serving as a member of a US Navy SEAL Team, US Naval Special Warfare, assigned to Task Force Ranger.”23

  0350 HOURS: REEF POINT VERY BRIEFLY PICKED UP 2 X PLS [PERSONAL LOCATOR SYSTEM] IN VIC CRASH SITE #2.

  During the night, the PLS (Personal Locator System) built into the PRC-112 survival radios carried by the aviators on Super 64 transmitted at irregular intervals after their crash site w
as overrun. At one point, at 23:57 according to the logs, this led the JOC to suspect that Shughart and Gordon and perhaps some surviving aircrew may have managed to withdraw to the vicinity of the former Saudi Arabian Embassy compound south of the crash. Another log notes at 01:22 on the morning of October 4 that “friendlies believed to be in abandoned building approx. 100M south of old Saudi embassy.” Sadly, this was the movements of the Somalis who had stripped the bodies of their clothing and equipment, including the survival radios.

  One of the features of the PRC-112 is that it will continue to transmit a unit’s location if an aircraft within line of sight is equipped with the necessary equipment; the AN/ARS-6 Pilot Locating System. The AN/ARS-6 will “ping” the PRC-112, which responds with data on its location. As the Somalis moved around the city with the stolen survival radios, this process was continuing, giving “false reads,” and false hope, to the JOC.

  Later that morning, as Task Force Ranger were finally extracting out of the city, the log notes another possible PLS transmission at 08:15. At 08:45, they related: “Voice came in over beacon saying, ‘my arm is broken.’ Attempting to DF [direction find] source.” This may have been Durant, but it seems unlikely and was probably a ghost transmission. One final, heart-wrenching, log entry was made at 09:15: “Continued attempts to establish comms with Beacon station unsuccessful. Beacon being turned on or off.” This was the last recorded transmission from the PLS.

  Super 68 pilots Dan Jollota and Herb Rodriguez had transferred to the spare Black Hawk at the airfield and with a new composite CSAR team on board took off to look for any survivors from Super 64. “The soldier in me is always very optimistic that everyone is OK on the ground,” Jollota said. “So, when I analyzed Mike Durant’s site, I believed that those guys had successfully landed their aircraft and gotten out of the aircraft. I believed they were moving from their crash site … I spent the rest of the night … flying over that city, getting rocked by RPGs, looking for those guys only to find out later that the Somalis had found their radios and turned them on to give us false indications.”24