Hadn’t American commanders already learned at the battle of Tora Bora that they could pulverize enemy strongholds with a Heinz-57 variety of bombs, and somehow the enemy was prepared for the worst, and could survive it? It’s not as though Afghan fighters hadn’t had a couple of centuries to prepare the caves and shelters, updating them in recent years with concrete reinforcements. Is it not a clue to the resolve of a foe when you learn he is willing to haul tons of concrete up those mountainsides, not to mention thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition for rifles and heavy machine guns, plus RPGs, hand grenades, and other weapons of modern warfare? Was there not a lesson to be learned from the tunnels of Cu Chi in another war?
The Los Angeles Times interviewed the former CIA station chief in Pakistan, Milt Bearden, who said that the entire area where Anaconda played out was always the last redoubt for the local warlords. “When all else failed, guys would fall back there.” He added, “The Soviets took more casualties in this valley than in any setting since World War Two. It really is the home-field advantage drawn out to some exponential degree. There’s not a square kilometer that hasn’t been used for an ambush of somebody.”
Maybe General Hagenbeck didn’t read that CIA analysis. Maybe he thought he knew the territory. Maybe he even knew something that Alexander the Great didn’t know in 327 B.C. Or the British in the mid-1800s. Or the Soviet Union in 1987, when they lost 250 men in a single day of fighting against mujahideen, equipped, coincidentally by the CIA. If he did, it wasn’t passed along to his ground commander, Col. Frank Wiercinski, who told his forces they had two missions in Anaconda: “To defeat an enemy. And to never leave a fallen comrade.”
Right or wrong, it’s that last mantra that has sown the seeds of tragedy and pain for families of warriors who went back to get their fallen comrades in conflicts ranging from world wars to street-corner battles. Some pararescuemen say they couldn’t do their job without knowing that what happened in Somalia wouldn’t happen to them. They’re referring to the scenes of a dead American pilot being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Others acknowledge their obligation, yet state that they wouldn’t want their comrades to die merely to retrieve their body. It’s a sensitive issue to broach with people whose full-time job is combat search and rescue. But it’s apparent when the subject is raised that many of them have pondered it quietly, alone.
About the same time that the Chinook carrying the SEAL team was moving toward Takur Ghar, the PJs and aircrew from the 66th were in the middle of a crew swap. Caleb Ethridge had spent about twelve hours at Kandahar, trying to get the kinks in his back worked out, and then trying to get some sleep. He was more successful with his back, which got tended to by an orthopedic surgeon in the unit, than he was getting some rest. Aircrews sleep by day and work by night, and in theory, when they’re in “crew rest,” they’re not supposed to be disturbed. That theory doesn’t restrict the hundreds of others in the area whose job it is to build the infrastructure that would make the place livable. So between hammering, drilling, and sawing, Ethridge didn’t get as much sleep as he wanted, but he claimed to be rested and ready to fly.
At four in the morning, a pair of HH-60Gs left Kandahar and headed in the direction of Texaco FARP. More than an hour later, they were near the city of Gardez, when they were ordered to circle for a while, rather than proceed to Texaco and land. What they didn’t know at the time was that disaster had struck the SEAL mission.
The original plan had been to insert the SEAL team at night at a so-called “offset” location, then let them move up to the top of the mountain and establish a concealed observation post before the sun came up. Unfortunately, the helicopters assigned to the mission had maintenance problems, and a scheduled B-52 bomb drop forced them to delay even longer. They reached a decision point where the mission either had to be aborted completely, or they had to find a new LZ much closer to their objective. The choice the SEALs made was to proceed with a landing right on top of the ridge, assuring they could get the observation post in place before the sun came up.
While not the biggest helicopter flown by the American forces, the MH- 47E Chinook, with its fifty-two-foot-long body under tandem three-bladed rotors, each just under thirty feet long, is, like most helicopter models, especially vulnerable to ground fire during power-limited landings and takeoffs at high altitude. One well-placed RPG, long established as the antiaircraft weapon of choice for third-world fighters like Al Qaeda, can knock a Chinook out of the air.
The Army’s tactic for offsetting that vulnerability is to have the side-door gunners sweep areas adjacent to the landing zone with heavy fire as the aircraft comes in. That’s hardly an ideal solution to the problem, but it’s better than nothing. However, when the helicopter is on a special-ops mission to clandes tinely insert an observation team, announcing their arrival with even more noise than that created by the engines is not part of the plan. So they’re left armed with nothing more than intelligence reports that should contain reliable information about the threat level where they’re going.
Razor 3, the Chinook carrying the seven-man SEAL team plus an Air Force CCT, left Gardez close to dawn, accompanied by a second aircraft, Razor 4, that had a different mission down the valley. The two ships were to accomplish their tasks, then join up and fly back to base. It had been expected that at some point prior to the infiltration mission, an AC-130 Spectre gunship would survey the area to make certain it was clear. As the pilot of Razor 3 later said, “With a recon mission like this, you don’t want to land where the enemy is.”
One observation that’s been made by the troops who were on the ground during Anaconda is that the terrain is so difficult, and the choices therefore so limited, that it’s relatively easy to pick out the few spots that can serve as a landing zone for helicopters. The mujahideen did it when they were fighting the Soviets, often putting mines in the landing zone and setting ambush positions around them.
When Razor 3 came in to the small saddle at the top of Takur Ghar, the SEAL team prepared to exit off the rear ramp. At the head of the line was Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Neil C. Roberts. As the helo settled in, the crew spotted a heavy machine gun about fifty yards to the front, but it appeared to be unmanned. In Afghanistan, where mountain ridges are littered with abandoned weaponry, the presence of the gun caused only marginal concern.
Just as the SEALs were about to pour off the ramp, machine-gun fire erupted from several directions, followed by an RPG that came in from the left, penetrated the cargo area, and exploded. According to a version of the story reported in the Washington Post, which was allowed exclusive access to the participants in Operation Anaconda even after CENTCOM issued a ban on media interviews, the right rear crew chief shouted over the intercom, “We’re taking fire! Go! Go! Go!” The pilot applied full throttle, but the RPG had short-circuited the aircraft’s electrical power and damaged its hydraulic system at the same time that the gunfire had punctured oil lines and wires. The big Chinook wobbled and jerked as it lifted off, and as it did, Roberts went flying off the back ramp.
One of the other crew chiefs tried to grab him, but lost his balance on the oil-slickened ramp and slipped over the edge, dangling by his safety harness and tether. Fortunately the other crew chief was able to haul him back onto the ramp. But Roberts wasn’t on a tether, and he fell the ten or twelve feet to the snow-covered ground below.
According to the report in the Post, “The pilot, thinking an engine was out, sent the chopper into a dive, hoping to gain airspeed. Quickly realizing both engines were working, he leveled the chopper and tried to climb.
“ ‘The thing was shaking like an out-of-balance washing machine,’ he recalled. ‘There were holes in the rotor blades, and the hydraulics were doing some funny things.’ ”
Told that Roberts had fallen out, the pilot tried to turn back. But with no hydraulic fluid, the controls locked up. One of the crew chiefs grabbed the hand pump and started pumping quarts of hydraulic fluid back into the system. His act
ion brought the controls back, allowing the pilot to level out. But with his aircraft severely damaged, there was no way they could go back and try to pick up the fallen SEAL. Razor 3 limped out of the area, desperately looking for a safe place to land in the valley below. With its radio out, they couldn’t contact Razor 4, which was already waiting at the rendezvous point. Razor 3 finally landed at the north end of the valley, about four miles from the ridge top. Within minutes they got word that Razor 4 was on the way to pick them up. When it arrived more than half an hour later, the two teams discussed returning to the mountaintop to rescue Roberts, but with both aircrews on board, the ship would be too heavy to reach the ridge. Leaving the extra aircrew on the ground wasn’t an option; they were already receiving reports of enemy forces half a mile away heading toward them. The only viable option was to return to Gardez. There they dropped off the excess personnel and, with the original SEAL team and Air Force T.Sgt. John A. Chapman, their combat controller, on board, they headed back to the ridge top to find their teammate.
A short distance away, burning holes in the sky near Gardez, the pair of CSAR birds continued to circle. It was apparent from their radio contacts with Deliverance, the JSRC, that something had happened, but no one had yet told them what, and they certainly hadn’t been put on alert to go in to try to find Roberts. Ethridge says that the way the communications system is set up, they never get their information directly from a primary source. “Because we worked with JSRC out in Saudi Arabia, we get this big loop. We’re not talking directly to the commanders in Bagram. So there’s a lull in the time it takes information to get to us. So we’re circling, circling, trying to figure out what the hell’s going on. It turns out we were only about three miles away from all that stuff happening.”
They were so out of the loop that while the HH-60Gs were circling, they watched a pair of Chinooks—one of them obviously shot up and crippled—flying past them and land. Caleb Ethridge says, “They flew right by us, but we didn’t have their freqs; we couldn’t talk to them.” The CSAR crews were able to watch the recon team and crew board Razor 4, and take off in the direction of Gardez.
Finally, about an hour before sunrise, both HH-60G Pave Hawks headed back to Texaco to gas up. It was already apparent that even though they were close to the action, the command wasn’t going to let them in. “They just kept saying ‘Stand by, stand by.’ They don’t really know, either, what’s going on.
“I just remember being so tired, still tired. It’s freezing in the back—the windows have to be open. So we’re just cold, and wanting to sleep. You’re looking out, and you’re trying to scan and look for any gunfire or shooting at you, but can’t. I was wondering if I’m feeling this tired, how’re the pilots feeling? They’re flying this thing.”
Once at the FARP, all they could do was sit, wait, and pick up reports from one of the combat controllers who was monitoring what was going on. Later, they traded a case of MREs to the Army troops assigned to guard the perimeter for temporary use of a portable radio that would let them listen in to the action being reported on the SATCOM frequency.
About ninety minutes later, three Task Force 11 Chinooks landed, with about twenty-five special-ops types aboard each one. It was a joint operation mixing supersecret Air Force 24th STS operators, including PJs, with SEALs and other SOF teams. PJ Ethridge recalls that they immediately attempted to take charge, saying, “Everybody works for us!” That would have included the Apache gunships, the CSAR birds, and anyone else who might be able to offer some help.
Meantime, back at command headquarters at Bagram, a desperate effort was going on to put surveillance aircraft over Takur Ghar in an attempt to see what might have happened to Roberts. First on the scene was an AC-130 gunship that reported seeing what the crew believed to be the SEAL surrounded by four to six enemy fighters. The assumption at the time was that he had activated his infrared strobe shortly after surviving the fall from the helicopter, because the Spectre crew could see it though their NVGs. Within minutes, however, a Predator drone arrived and beamed a video picture back to Bagram—and to CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa—and the strobe was no longer visible.
Whether the Predator ever showed Roberts on the ground is questionable. The imagery was fuzzy and subject to interpretation. What they would learn forensically after his mutilated body was recovered was that he’d been shot at close range after attempting to engage the enemy with his SAW.
What is not known, either because the records of radio transmissions don’t exist or they’ve been sealed, is how much information about Roberts’s condition—if any at all—was relayed to Razor 4 as it flew back to the area where he’d been lost. And because they didn’t know if he was alive and hiding in the area, the gunners did not lay down suppressing fire for fear of hitting him as the big helicopter came in to land.
The plan was to put the helo down just long enough to let the SEAL team off, then retreat from the area. Al Qaeda had other ideas. About forty feet above the ground, according to the Post, the pilot saw the flash of a machine-gun muzzle off the nose of the aircraft. “I thought, ‘Oh, this is going to hurt.’ And then the second thought was, ‘How do I get myself into this?’ But we had to go. We had to put these guys in.”
Gunfire began hitting the aircraft, “pinging and popping through” in the words of one crew chief. In Bagram, Hagenbeck says he could watch Razor 4 land and the SEALs and Chapman rush off toward the enemy positions. He had little view of the enemy fighters on the television screen displaying live video from the orbiting Predator. They were apparently hidden under trees, dug into trenches, and obscured by shadows. Once again, low tech trumps high tech.
According to the Special Operations Command review of the action, Chapman saw two enemy fighters in a fortified position under a tree. He and a nearby SEAL opened fire. Then the Americans began taking fire from another bunker position about twenty yards away. That’s when a burst of gunfire hit Chapman, killing him.
As the firefight continued, two of the SEALs were wounded by enemy gunfire and grenades, forcing a decision to disengage, and as they moved off the mountain peak, one of the SEALs contacted the orbiting AC-130 gunship and requested covering fire.
In Bagram, the QRF was awakened shortly after word got back that Roberts had fallen off the helicopter. The commander of the Rangers jocking up for what would be his troops’ first combat of the war was Capt. Nathan Self, a twenty-five-year-old West Point grad, husband, and father of a five-month-old baby. His team was part of the 1st Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, out of Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia. Self had a reputation for training his men hard and long, wanting them to be ready for any mission they might get assigned. Now he and the unit’s noncoms knew that all that training was about to pay off.
Their initial orders were to board a pair of MH-47E Chinooks that were sitting cold on the airfield, but even as they were racing from their tents to the tarmac, the orders were switched. Two other Chinooks had recently landed and were still spooled up. By switching to those birds, they could save ten or fifteen minutes. Dashing to these aircraft, Self was surprised to find a special-tactics team already on board. PJ team leader Keary Miller, PJ Jason Cunningham, and CCT Gabe Brown had just returned from a mission and had yet to remove their considerable gear from the helo. The problem for the Ranger was that he didn’t know these guys, and despite the fact that they must have known their business or they wouldn’t have been on the bird in the first place, he had no desire to go into combat with complete strangers.
Self was already upset that the STS team his unit habitually trained with was already flying support for another task force mission, and that theater CSAR had assigned an available team to fly with him. About ten minutes before they were due to launch, his regular STS team showed up, having completed whatever mission they’d been on. Gratified, Self prepared to integrate them into his unit. That was when he discovered Miller’s team already on his bird, equipment strapped in, ready to fly.
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sp; The urgency of the mission left no time for pleasantries. Self made it clear that he had his own STS, ordered them off, and turned to deal with other matters. A few minutes later, when the pilots pulled power and the two-ship mission took off, the captain discovered, to his considerable consternation, that Keary Miller and his team were flying with them. Apparently the two STS team leaders had discussed the situation and decided, all things being equal, that since Miller’s team had their gear already on board and in place, they should take the mission.
The problem was, as far as Self was concerned, all things were not equal. And it was more than lack of trust or lack of confidence in guys they didn’t know. The theater CSAR teams didn’t work with the Rangers; they didn’t know how the assault teams were organized, didn’t know their procedures for exiting a Chinook under fire, didn’t know what to do once they did get off the aircraft, which way to go—left or right, front or back. These are the tactics, techniques, and procedures, the TT&P, that teams like the one Self commands drill and drill and drill until they can do them in their sleep. Each man learns not only his role, but the roles of his comrades, so that if one of them goes down, someone can immediately step in and keep the unit functioning.
Self wanted the STS team he was familiar with. Instead he got a unit he didn’t know, with a radio operator who didn’t know the Rangers’ command and control structure, didn’t know to whom he needed to be talking on the radio, didn’t know the proper frequencies, and didn’t know the call signs of the SEAL observation teams that were working the area they were flying into. None of this speaks to Gabe Brown’s skills or abilities as a combat controller; it was just one more example of a communications snafu that could cost lives.
Fortunately the situation, so far as communication was concerned, appeared not to be without a built-in solution. One of the men attached to Self ’s team was Air Force S.Sgt. Kevin Vance, an enlisted terminal attack controller. His bag of tricks included radios to direct close air support from fast movers and attack helicopters and artillery, which in Anaconda was limited to nothing with a bigger kick or longer reach than mortars carried by the infantry. The military command had decided that in the interest of being fleet of foot—or rotor—they wouldn’t utilize artillery pieces. It was a decision that the troops on the ground, under fire, would come to question. Before Vance was assigned to Self ’s platoon, he’d completed TACP training, Ranger School, air assault school, basic and HALO jump school, and pathfinder school. Once in country, he’d trained with Self ’s platoon and knew the drill, the command and control structure, and all the radio nets. Self wanted two radio operators on his team; in the event one was hit, he’d still have someone available to call in close air support. And if neither man was hit, the plan, in effect, gave the platoon leader an extra rifleman.
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