Operation Red Wings: The Untold Story Behind Lone Survivor (Kindle Single) (SOFREP)
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The Rangers, most of whom were off duty, were simply paged to report to Battalion Headquarters. When they got to their company areas, they were told to pack their gear and get ready to go. Eighteen hours after receiving the first page, they were on the plane and heading for Afghanistan.
* * *
With forces already preparing to move to the Turbine 33 crash site, and the site being known already, the CRO’s primary focus became finding the four-man SR team. While Turbine 33 was well localized, no one knew exactly where the team was, or whether they were alive or dead. The assumption, for the sake of the operation, was that they were alive; if they were alive, it made it all the more urgent to find them and get them out. They were alone, off comms, and in enemy territory, and quite likely one or more of them were wounded. The longer they stayed lost, the greater the likelihood that they would wind up dead. In fact, three of them already were dead, but the JOC didn’t know that for certain.
The first priority, in addition to getting air assets up to search and attempt to make contact over the SAR (search and rescue) frequency, was to get inside the SEALs’ heads and try to ascertain where they would go, assuming they were still alive. To that end, the CRO had to go through all of their operational plans and materials, as well as their personnel recovery materials, which would provide information that only they would know, in the event they were found and had to be identified on the ground.
What had to be determined was what direction the team would go, based on their E&E (escape and evasion) plan, what retrieval point they would make for, and what equipment they had with them they could signal with. What was their SAR frequency? What nonradio signaling devices did they have? Moreover, he had to get to know the men themselves. He had to get into their heads, figure out how they thought, to try to determine what each one of them would do when alone and cut off, with everything having gone to hell in a hand basket. A man in a team will react differently from a man alone. Even if they had a detailed team E&E plan, there was no guarantee that if cut off from each other, they would follow it exactly. Personality quirks became extremely important.
He immediately ran into some serious difficulty. The E&E plan the SR team had left was vague at best—in fact, there hardly was one. There was a possible retrieval area, but actual E&E routes, especially in the brutally steep terrain of Kunar, weren’t there. The team might well have had a detailed E&E plan worked up before going out; they just didn’t leave a copy of it with the JOC. This made the CRO’s job considerably harder, as the “probability of area,” the zone where the lost team might be found, couldn’t be narrowed down without that E&E plan, unless they actually made contact with the team.
Determining how they might make contact was made even harder by the fact that the team had apparently not left behind an Equipment Density List, or the list of all serialized gear (including comms and other signaling devices), when they left on the mission. At least it couldn’t be found when the CRO requested it at the JOC. Eventually, however, some photographs of the team, taken just before insertion, provided some idea of the equipment they’d taken with them.
They had gone light on comms, taking only PRC-148 MBITR radios and a satellite phone. The PRC-148 is a small, light, individual VHF/UHF radio. It is technically capable of satellite communications, but the MBITR can also be notoriously unreliable. While lightening the load, especially in the terrain they were operating in, is usually a good idea, comms is a reconnaissance team’s lifeline. All four men, Murphy, Luttrell, Dietz, and Axelson, were members of SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1, a SEAL team that specialized in reconnaissance. They would have known this. While the reasoning behind their choice not to take a heavier-duty radio isn’t known for sure, it does raise some eyebrows among those with reconnaissance experience. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it could well be that they were familiar enough with and confident enough in the satellite-communications ability of the MBITR that they decided they could make do with it. The fact that comms failure contributed to their being cut off belies their confidence; in fact, at one point the only way they could make contact with the rear was with a Leatherman tool jammed into the antenna jack of a PRC-148.
To further expand his knowledge of the team, the CRO pulled all of their record files and began studying them. He interviewed other SEALs to try to understand the men’s personalities. By the time he was finished, he felt like he knew all four men personally. It only hardened his resolve to get them back. As a PJ before he was commissioned, he had always felt a kinship with the SOF operators out in the field that he might be called upon to go rescue in just such circumstances. He considered them his brothers just as much as teammates might consider each other brothers. It was more than an assignment to get these men back; it was now a personal mission. He had family up on that mountain.
Even before sundown on the twenty-eighth, another obstacle to making contact with the missing SEALs arose. At 1623Z, an AC-130 Spectre gunship orbiting Turbine 33’s crash site reported one individual on the ground with a strobe, a common identifying marker for Coalition forces. It was only the first of many false communication attempts by the enemy, attempting to draw the Combat Rescue forces into a trap.
Day 2: June 29
Rangers, Special Forces, and PJs were already moving up the mountain toward the crash site. It would take them until nearly midnight to reach it after the first attempt had been turned back by the weather, but the weather had eased up. There had also been the issue of theater command denying any further flights in the area. The loss of Turbine 33 had hit U.S. forces hard, and no one wanted to risk losing another bird on Sawtalo Sar. The CRO and the two 920th Rescue Wing pilots remained focused on the missing SR team.
Other Rangers and Special Forces were patrolling the surrounding valleys, looking for any sign of the missing SEALs. Marines from 2/3 were pushing down from the north, but 2/3’s chain of command had no contact with the JOC; while they were known to be operating in the area (it was their AO, after all), the CRO didn’t know exactly where the patrols were and had no contact with them. This disconnect would continue throughout the operation.
Throughout the day, there were more and more reports of attempted communication on the SAR frequencies, and aircraft were reporting visual signals as well. Few if any of these reports could be corroborated by satellite or national assets, and as the CRO mapped them out with pushpins on the map in the JOC, he saw increasingly clearly that the enemy was attempting to draw in the rescue forces. By the time the operation was over, there had been between fifty and sixty separate attempts at communication, either over the SAR frequencies or by visual signals, and spread over a radius of over 6 miles. It was frankly impossible that they were coming from the missing SEALs, as there were too many of them, spread too widely. While it was possible that some of the contacts were coming from one of the missing men, the rest of the white noise made it impossible to determine if such was the case, and if so, which one. As it was, the enemy’s spoofing tactics were never officially reported, although mention remains in the after-action review.
The CRO and the rest of the personnel in the JOC continued to attempt to nail down a workable probability of area. Unfortunately, with the terrain being as harsh as it is, the lack of verifiable contact with any of the SEALs, on top of the uncertainty as to their E&E plan, the task appeared hopeless. They didn’t even know which direction they might have gone—east into the Shuryek Valley, west into the Korengal (which was considerably more hostile to U.S. forces than the Shuryek), or even north or south along the ridge. They had to press on, hoping and praying that the SEALs were still alive, while constantly attempting to establish contact on every frequency on the team’s comms plan.
Rangers, Combat Controllers, and PJs finally arrived at Turbine 33’s crash site at 2316Z, set security, and began to recover the bodies, as well as any electronics, equipment, and weapons. The earlier reports of a survivor on the ground were belied, as they found the bodies of all sixteen men aboard, eight Night
Stalkers and eight SEALs. The crash being as localized as it was, on the relatively flat shoulder of the mountain, they didn’t have to go far, so they set a perimeter and went to work.
* * *
Meanwhile, it had taken some time, but the pilots finally had the go-ahead to go back up into the mountains to search from the air. CJSOTF had been reluctant to clear any more flights, fearing the loss of another helicopter after the shootdown of Turbine 33. Finally, with a stern warning to the pilots that the United States could not afford to lose another bird on that mountain, they were allowed to take off.
This time, the birds didn’t take off until after dark. Turbine 33 had been shot down trying to land in broad daylight, driven by the sense of urgency to get the SEALs out. The follow-on rescue effort would be more cautious, relying on the cover of darkness to keep the birds safe.
Skinny and Spanky flew patterns over Sawtalo Sar and the surrounding Korengal and Shuryek valleys, listening and watching for any sign of the missing men. Spanky was on the radio, calling out repeatedly, “This is Air Force Rescue. We are here to get you out. Please, show yourself. Make yourself known.” They flew close to the mountainsides, looking with night-vision goggles and the helicopters’ forward-looking infrared (FLIR) thermal cameras for any sign of the missing men. In the mountainous terrain, without a verifiable signal to narrow things down, it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Multiple times during the night, they heard the radio key on the SAR frequencies, but they could never nail down where the transmissions were coming from, or whether they were legitimate. Given the pattern that was developing in the JOC, most or all of them were SAR traps, sent by the enemy to attempt to draw the helicopters into striking range.
Several times, aircraft even saw infrared (IR) lasers signaling from the ground. It is still uncertain where exactly the enemy procured them, as Marcus does not recall signaling with his own laser at any time. Weapons captured from the dead SEALs by Ahmad Shah’s fighters did have PEQ-2 IR laser sights attached; it is entirely possible that these were the source of the spurious IR signals.
As dawn approached, the helicopters had to turn back to return to Bagram before losing the cover of darkness. There had been no definite sign of the SEALs, but they weren’t about to give up.
Day 3: June 30
At just after midnight, an elderly Afghan by the name of Shina arrived at the gate of Camp Blessing. When the interpreter reached the gate, he said he needed to speak to the marines’ senior officer, because there was a wounded American in his village. The interpreter ran to the Marine Combat Operations Center and found the commanding officer, telling him that the man said he had a wounded American in his village. The interpreter added that for anyone to venture out in the middle of the night in Kunar was extraordinary.
The marine lieutenant was unaware of what had happened on Sawtalo Sar less than two days before. He knew only that he had been instructed to prepare for a search in the nearby mountains. He ran to the gate and met Shina, a tired-looking, gray-bearded man from the Shuryek Valley.
Taking Shina to the FOB’s “tearoom,” the lieutenant had him served tea and a little food, then sat down to talk to him. Shina told him, through the interpreter, that an American doctor was in their village. He had been shot and appeared to be in bad shape. He went on to say that the doctor was treating himself. That suggested to the lieutenant that the “doctor” was a navy corpsman. The man handed over a note, written on Rite in the Rain paper, from Marcus, telling the Americans that he had been shot and that the villagers had taken him in and were taking care of him. Initially, the lieutenant couldn’t make out the signature, or much of the rest of the handwriting, and was confused that there was no real identifying information in the note, which he would have expected from an SOF operator who was isolated and on E&E. He took the note to the Combat Operations Center, scanned it, and sent it by secure e-mail to the marine operations officer at Asadabad, the closest major U.S. base.
The fact was, Marcus had not intended the note to serve as a “blood chit,” i.e., a reward for his safe return, but had expected to accompany Shina to Asadabad. The elder had instead left without him, apparently considering him too much of a hindrance on a trek over the mountains in his condition, having been shot in the leg. Shina had walked down the Shuryek Valley from Sabray to Matin, where he had hired a taxi for the ride up the Pech Valley to Camp Blessing. The tribesmen of the Shuryek had had more dealings with 2/3 than with anyone at Asadabad, and therefore trusted the marines more.
Shortly after sending the e-mail, the lieutenant called the operations officer by satellite phone. He explained what had happened and that he couldn’t make out the signature; he could read “Marcus” but not the last name. The ops officer, having been read in on the situation, confirmed that a SEAL named Marcus Luttrell was missing and instructed the lieutenant not to let Shina leave until they had gotten all possible information from him.
Because of the lack of identifying information in Marcus’s note, there was some doubt that it had in fact come from him. With Taliban activity in Kunar being what it was, and given the large number of faked SAR signals coming from the area, there was the very real risk that this was a fake, an attempt to draw U.S. forces into some kind of trap. When the note reached Bagram, it was handed over to FBI handwriting analysts, along with other samples of Marcus’s handwriting, in an attempt to ascertain whether the note was legitimate or a ruse. Meanwhile, the rescue forces continued searching and waiting for any other sign that any of the SEALs might be alive.
* * *
The Rangers and PJs at Turbine 33’s crash site had set to work gathering the remains and sanitizing the crash. The bodies were packed in body bags and dragged up to the new LZ while the Rangers held security. All weapons and sensitive equipment on the helicopter were either taken or destroyed. The Rangers had rigged what was left of the wreck with explosives to ensure that nothing of any value would be left for the enemy. As the MH-47 with the bodies and the recovery force lifted off, the Rangers detonated the explosives and reduced what was left of Turbine 33 to scrap.
There was later some concern that the remains of all sixteen men on Turbine 33 had not been recovered. This was likely due in part to the state of the remains (the helicopter had exploded on impact, and it was the middle of the summer in Afghanistan, where the bodies had been lying for two days already) and in part to the initial report from the Apache pilot of seeing a survivor. However, by July 6, all the remains had been identified by DNA analysis. All eight Night Stalkers and eight SEALs had been recovered.
Day 4: July 1
After exhaustive analysis, the note from Marcus was determined to be genuine. Finally, the probability of area had been narrowed down, and the search could become more focused. Air assets were still over the area constantly, though only going down toward the mountainsides at night. Dozens of resupply bundles were dropped from the air, containing food, water, cell phones, batteries for every piece of equipment the SEALs might have, radios, and other signaling devices. It was hoped that if one of the missing SEALs found one of these bundles, they would have a chance of contacting SAR assets, since it was assumed, based on the circumstances of the attack, that they did not have working comms.
Leaflets with encrypted survival information were dropped. Others promised a reward to any of the local tribesmen who came forward to Coalition forces with information that led to the rescue of any of the SEALs.
* * *
Around this time, the Rangers of 3rd Ranger Battalion arrived in the AO. They had reached Afghanistan a day before but had to go through all of the procedures for entering theater before they could be inserted to join the search.
For interpreters, the Rangers had with them members of the Afghan Counterterrorist Pursuit Team, a U.S.-sponsored Afghan special operations unit. The Mohawks, as they were called, would not only provide language support for the Rangers if they had to talk to the locals but were trained to fight alongside them.
However, the insertion went smoothly, without making contact with the enemy. The Rangers moved off the LZ, seeing what was left of the wreck of Turbine 33 as they passed it. Once away from the LZ, they set up a patrol base, getting ready to head out to search the surrounding mountains in the morning.
Day 5: July 2
With the FBI analysts’ confirmation that the note did indeed come from Marcus Luttrell, things began to speed up. The area of the team’s E&E had been solidified, and the search could be narrowed down to the Shuryek Valley and the eastern side of Sawtalo Sar. While the steepness of the terrain still provided plenty of challenges to the Rangers and Special Forces conducting the search, it was now workable. Furthermore, they now had a location and a contact for Marcus, and confirmation that he, at least, was still alive.
As soon as the note was verified at around 0200Z, Special Forces and Ranger personnel were immediately directed by the JOC to move to Objective Barracuda, which was the code name for the village of Sabray, where Marcus was being harbored by the local villagers, led by Gulab, the son of the village elder.