| SOMALIA - EAST AFRICA - 1992
Years of warfare among rival clans causes famine on a biblical
scale. 300,000 civilians die of starvation. Mohamed Farrah Aidid,
the most powerful of the warlords, rules the capital Mogadishu. He
seizes international food shipments at the ports. Hunger is his
weapon. The world responds. Behind a force of 20,000 U.S. Marines,
food is delivered and order is restored.
April 1993: Aidid waits until the Marines withdraw, and then
declares war on the remaining U.N. peacekeepers. In June, Aidid's
militia ambush and slaughter 24 Pakistani soldiers, and begin
targeting American personnel. In late August, America's elite
soldiers, Delta Force, Army Rangers and the 160th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) are sent to Mogadishu
to remove Aidid and restore order.
October 3, 1993: Midafternoon. Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann's Chalk
Four, a part of a company of U.S. Rangers assisting a Delta Force
commando squadron, was about to descend on a gathering of Habr Gidr
clan leaders in the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia. Today's targets
were two top Aidid lieutenants. Delta Force, the nation's elite
commando unit, would storm the target house and capture them. Then
four helicopter loads of Rangers, including Eversmann's men, would
rope down to all four corners of the target block and form a
perimeter. No one would be allowed in or out.
At 3:43 p.m., two advance AH-6 Little Birds made their initial
pass over the target, closely followed by a number of UH-60
Blackhawk helicopters. Below on the ground, a Somalian militiaman
waited until the helicopters had passed overhead. Then he leaned
his RPG up and fired at the aircraft from behind. There was a great
flash from the back end of the launcher and then the grenade
exploded into the rear of the helicopter, cracking the tail. From
the radio transmission:
"WE GOT A BLACKHAWK GOING DOWN WE GOT A BLACKHAWK GOING
DOWN"
"WE GOT A BLACKHAWK CRASHED IN THE CITY"
"61"
"Super-61 DOWN"
The body of the aircraft started to spin and the pilot struggled
frantically at the controls but could not hold it, and the
helicopter started to flip. It hit the roof of a building with a
loud, crunching sound, and then slammed on its side into the alley
with a great, scraping crash in a thick cloud of dust and rock and
smoke.
The subsequent rescue mission took more than 14 hours and the
battle was over by October 4, 1993, 6:30 AM. In all, 19 U.S.
soldiers died of wounds from the battle and another 79 were
injured. Casualties on the Somali side were heavy, with estimates
on fatalities ranging from 500 to over 2,000 people.
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