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

by Leigh Neville

  1527 HOURS: ASSAULT FORCE ROUTE PASSED TO RECCE; BARBER FLIGHT WILL HAVE ROCKETS – NO PREPLANNED FIRES AT THIS TIME. CONVOY ROUTE (K4 – NATIONAL – OLYMPIC) 9 X HMMWV & 3 X 5 TONS: WILL DEPART WHEN HELO FORCE DEPARTS AIRFIELD.

  The extraction or exfiltration plan as it was known to Task Force Ranger was to be by ground. Several minutes after the helicopters lifted off from the airfield, the Ranger GRF convoy would leave the gate and head toward a holding location southwest of the objective, near the Olympic Hotel. The GRF was tasked with extracting both the assault force and their prisoners along with the Rangers from their respective blocking positions.

  There were 12 vehicles in all – nine Humvees and three five-ton cargo trucks – carrying a total of some 56 Rangers and attached personnel. The Humvees included two open-back M998 cargo variants, and the other seven were regular M1025 or “turtleback” models. All of the Humvees had just a week earlier been fitted with armored floor pads to improve crew survivability in the event of a mine strike. None featured any form of gun-shield or turret for the gunner, leaving the weapons crews dangerously exposed.

  Some of the M1025s were fitted with ballistic glass and armored doors courtesy of Delta but others lacked doors altogether. Some had also been modified in the field, taking the rear hatch off to facilitate firing behind the vehicle. Along with the Humvees were three M923A2 five-ton cargo trucks that had been reinforced with sandbags to provide some rudimentary level of protection to passengers. The M932A2s would arrive empty, tasked with moving the prisoners and the majority of the Rangers back to the airfield.

  Colonel Danny McKnight would command the GRF with Air Force Combat Controller Technical Sergeant Dan Schilling acting as his FO. Ranger Sergeant Jeff Struecker commanded the lead Humvee with a fire team of Rangers and would act as the primary navigator for the convoy. Struecker noted:

  It wasn’t common for McKnight to go out with the Humvees. Lieutenant [Larry] Moores and one of the squads went out across the city to pick up resupplies – that was pretty much a daily occurrence. If you were not on a mission, maybe you’d be on a resupply and miss the mission.

  I did supply convoys fairly regularly and we [also] did a number of patrols through the city to not demonstrate a standard template of how we did operations – I was [in] the first Humvees in all of those – but really my responsibility was to memorize the maps – it was a kind of tourist map of sorts and then there was a very thorough satellite image. My responsibility was to memorize the major points of travel in the city.

  Many of the young Rangers had no experience operating Humvees or in operating in a vehicle convoy. The Rangers were a light infantry unit and at the time had no Humvees on their organic table of organization. “Part of my job was to teach my men how to drive Humvees, how to drive under night-vision goggles, most of them didn’t have any experience with vehicle-mounted weapons systems. Some of that we did in the city and some of that we did in a little training area outside the city,” explained Struecker.

  Those Rangers with experience with crew-served weapons like the .50cal M2 Browning heavy machine gun or 40mm Mark 19 automatic grenade launcher crewed those mounted on the Humvees. Struecker added: “The Ranger company had three rifle platoons and there was technically a fourth platoon, the weapons platoon. That weapons platoon would be spread across the two rifle platoons that went in by helicopter and my platoon on the Humvees and a lot of those guys ended up using the heavy weapons systems on those Humvees.”

  A second Humvee manned by Rangers and commanded by Ranger Sergeant Danny Mitchell followed Struecker. Third in the column was another Ranger Humvee carrying McKnight and Dan Schilling along with FO Staff Sergeant Bill Powell, an interpreter, and two Rangers; McKnight’s RTO Specialist Joe Harosky who was driving the Humvee and Sergeant Mike Pringle manning the .50cal. Dan Schilling, as well as acting in his assigned role of Combat Controller, managed communications for McKnight with the C2 helicopter overhead and was a team medic for the vehicle.

  In the fourth Humvee, an M998 cargo variant with an open back and no armor, were the four SEAL Team 6 snipers along with two Delta operators, Sergeant John M, a sniper from 3 Troop, and Master Sergeant Tim “Griz” Martin, the squadron’s Master Breacher who had transferred across from B-Squadron. A Ranger manned the .50cal on the “Cutvee,” as the SEALs christened their vehicle. Their role was different in that they were tasked not to wait at the holding area along with the rest of the GRF but to proceed immediately to the target building and reinforce the assaulters. The three five-ton trucks and five more Humvees, all manned by Rangers, followed the SEAL and Delta vehicle.

  If McKnight’s ground convoy ran into trouble or was delayed, as on previous missions the Black Hawks might be called upon to conduct an in-extremis extraction. Indeed, Delta were concerned that the operators might have completed the capture portion of the mission before the ground convoy had a chance to arrive, particularly if it faced opposition or road blocks.

  Mike Moser on B-Team recalled: “We would intentionally mix things up between missions, partly to keep the Somalis guessing about our TTPs as best we could. We preferred the air exfil option so long as things were generally quiet.” Fellow operator Norm Hooten agreed: “We always had redundancy in our exfil plan. We had options to leave via helo, vehicle and, as a last resort, afoot.”

  If such an emergency option was needed on October 3, it would have been fraught with its own unique challenges. A Delta officer noted there was an antenna tower on the roof of the target building that Delta would have to destroy with demolition charges before helicopters could land on the roof. Gerry Izzo mentioned that, although the infiltration and exfiltration plans often differed, on October 3 “it was always infil by helo, exfil by truck and Humvee. There was no way to land on a roof or in a vacant lot with a Black Hawk to get everyone out.”

  As the Rangers and operators boarded their respective aircraft, Bill Garrison personally visited each helicopter to wish the units well, something he had not done before. Matt Eversmann was on his first mission as chalk leader and was feeling understandably nervous:

  Firstly, for me it was the first time being in charge on an actual mission. Second of all, I was on the headset with the pilots and believe it or not I’d never done that before. I’m sitting at the airfield and put on the headset and they were on the common frequency so everybody’s talking at once and finally one of the crew chiefs reaches over and sort of punches me on the arm and says, “Hey, the pilot’s talking to you.” I was like, “Holy smokes man, I didn’t even know he was talking to me!” so this is a kinda new experience for me in this particular situation being chalk leader.

  To the relief of Lieutenant Lechner, the Fire Support Officer who had been requesting their use for some time, the AH-6 Little Bird attack helicopters had now been loaded with 2.75-inch rocket pods in addition to their standard miniguns, another first for Task Force Ranger. The seven-tube 2.75-inch rocket pods were loaded with high-explosive warheads, not the fletchette variant the 160th SOAR sometimes trained with. Although superb in the anti-personnel role, the area of effect of the 2200 steel fletchettes in each rocket was highly dangerous to both friendly personnel and civilians caught in their beaten zone (the likely impact area of munitions). The high-explosive rockets, while still packing a significant punch, were more limited in their effect.

  1532 HOURS: HELO ASSAULT FORCE LAUNCHES.

  At 15:32 local time the codeword “Irene” was transmitted to all stations, the signal for launch. With the AH-6s in the lead, the 16-helicopter armada lifted into the air. Matt Eversmann recalls: “The helicopters en-masse take off from the airfield, fly out over the ocean to the south, come out over the desert, we’re going to do a big clockwise loop and the approach from the north. As I recall, it was only a short flight, it was only three or four minutes from takeoff to insertion.” The whole package flew past their intended target in an effort to deceive the Somalis of their intentions before turning as one and heading for the objective.


  Each aircraft was identified by a callsign followed by an aircraft number. The armed Little Birds operated under the callsign Barber, their unarmed brethren in the MH-6s were Star, whilst the Black Hawks were designated Super as their callsign identifier. Karl Maier explained that the callsigns held no special significance and changed regularly between operations: “They’re randomly assigned … computer generated. We fortunately got some good ones that trip. I’ve been on trips where my callsign was ‘Wimpy’!”

  As the Task Force approached their objective, the codeword “Lucy” was transmitted at 15:37, the signal for the assault to begin. The two AH-6 Little Birds swept down to overfly the target building to ensure there were no immediate threats like antiaircraft cannon, machine guns, or RPG teams visible that could target the helicopters carrying the operators and the Rangers.

  As the AH-6s – Barber 51 flown by Chief Warrant Officer Randy Jones and Chief Warrant Officer Hal Ward and Barber 52 flown by Chief Warrant Officer Larry Kulsrud and Chief Warrant Officer Tony Rinderer – approached the target, one of the OH-58D surveillance helicopters spotted a Somali machine-gun team near the objective, but they disappeared inside a building before the Little Birds could engage them.

  Craning their necks to spot any potential threats, the AH-6s screamed over the target and swung away into a low orbit. Following on their heels were the four MH-6 Little Birds led by Star 41, piloted by Chief Warrant Officer Karl Maier and Chief Warrant Officer Keith Jones. The MH-6s were unarmed and instead carried what the 160th SOAR referred to as “people pods”; folding external bench seats attached to either side of the airframe with two Delta operators sitting on either side. Along with the pods, each MH-6 was equipped with a fast-rope system should the Little Birds fail to locate a suitable landing zone.

  1542 HOURS: HELO ASSAULT COMMENCES ON TARGET/EXACT TARGET BUILDING UNKNOWN/CITY BLOCK WILL BE CLEARED.

  Perched upon the “people pods” of Star 41 were four members of B-Team. Michael Moser, one of the newest members of the squadron at the time, remembered: “At the time of the train-up, C-1-B [C-Squadron, 1 Troop, B-Team] consisted of five people; it was decided to detach one of us to another element, one of the Blackhawk loads, since the Little Bird load was maxed out with four assaulters.”

  Karl Maier in Star 41 was busy trying to identify landmarks:

  I had to navigate from photos, so I would pick prominent points, like on that particular day I picked the [Olympic] hotel as a reference as it stuck up above everything. I knew I had to turn a few streets short of that. Actually Cliff [Wolcott in Super 61] was in front of me to the left and he stopped short, he stopped at the wrong intersection. My co-pilot Keith was like, “Do I turn here?” and I was like, “No, he’s in the wrong place.” It’s not easy to do in a city like that, it’s a ramshackle city, everything looks the same – it was not easy to navigate in that environment. He [Wolcott] picked one block short, realized when I passed him I think and moved forward and got his people in the right place.

  With the MH-6s we land them right at the front or back door. The guys from where I landed probably walked three steps and he was at the door.

  Mike Moser remembers a short fast-rope from Star 41 into the alley directly to the south of the objective: “We had an uneventful infil, approaching along the axis of flight, then turning left to settle into an alley, boxing in the target. The alley was too narrow to accommodate the MH, [we hovered] approximately two to three feet off the alley’s dirt floor with his rotors humming one to two feet off the alley walls as we roped down.”

  Karl Maier said that he could hear small-arms fire already at this point:

  I didn’t see any RPGs then – lot of the times you can’t see those in the daytime but you can hear them going by. Didn’t get a whole bunch then that I remember, although I was kinda focused on making sure we got to the right target building. I did notice a lot of small-arms fire. In that place, everybody had a gun and every time we went out, it didn’t matter if we were going to do a mission or we were just flying around, we got shot at so that was nothing new. It was just another day.

  Behind Star 41 was Star 42 carrying C-Team. “Five members of a six-man team were deployed [on October 3]. Four of us were assigned to an MH-6 Little Bird, that was Matt Rierson, myself, Paul Leonard, and Mike F,” explained Gary Keeney. The team’s fifth member, Steve C, a Special Forces combat medic, was assigned to the Delta element on one of the trailing Black Hawks, Super 61. “On the Little Bird I sat front right on the outside pod, Mike F was behind me and on the opposite side of Mike was Matt Rierson, the team leader, so he could lean into the aircraft and talk to the pilot from his headset. Paul Leonard was directly opposite me on that left hand side.”

  1543 HOURS: SUPER 61 REPORTS GROUND FORCE HITTING THE GROUND; RECCE IS PROVIDING FLIGHT FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS TO GROUND FORCE.

  The dust clouds caused by the rotor wash of the helicopters made navigation particularly difficult. The brownout only increased as the following Little Birds and Black Hawks arrived. “Chalk 3, Star 43, had to do a go-around [because of the dust]. I was flight lead but even I was enveloped in dust. Chalk 2 had it even worse and by the time Chalk 3 got in there he couldn’t see anything so he did a go-around,” explained Maier. Super 64 pilot Mike Durant also recalled Star 43 not locating its insertion point: “One Little Bird had to go around, because the dust was pretty bad in this particular part of the city. They couldn’t see their landing area and they circled around, but again, it’s a contingency that’s planned for, so no real big deal.”9

  Kurt Smith aboard Star 44, the last of the Little Birds to arrive, recalled:

  I fought back my usual anxiety as the formation of aircraft circled the city to line up on Hawlwadig Road. As we descended into the objective area, I scanned for targets on the ground with my SAW. Somalis were running everywhere as the dust began to form from the aircraft rotorwash.

  In time, I could see nothing. I wasn’t sure if the aircraft was going to land or hover in place, so I stowed my SAW in the back of the aircraft and secured the fast rope, getting ready to throw it out. The brownout was so thick I could barely see ten feet in front of me.10

  Indeed in video footage from the surveillance helicopters, the Little Birds all but disappeared into the colossal dust clouds kicked up by their rotor wash.

  Star 42 also landed in the alley to the south of the objective and its team of operators took off swiftly heading for the objective. “The first Little Bird coming in with B-Team took a left and went a little further down the road due to the dust cloud. C-Team, the second Little Bird, landed right in front of the target building. E and F-Team were right behind in the other two Little Birds respectively,” remembered Paul Leonard.

  Leading the entry into the target building was Sergeant First Class Matt Rierson, a 33-year-old veteran operator who had previously served with B-Company of 2nd Battalion, 75th Rangers. Rierson was the team leader of C-Team. His men raced through the outer courtyard door and headed for the main door into the objective.

  As Star 44 carrying Norm Hooten’s F-Team descended, its main rotor struck a telephone pole. Hooten explained:

  Everyone hangs their own power poles in Somalia – there’s no official power company so somebody had put a pole outside of their little hut and we clipped the top of it going in. When that happened the bird went into a hover so instead of going directly in … normally Little Birds go in directly and land very quickly, [but] this bird’s kinda stopped its descent.

  Based on past experience, Hooten assumed the aircraft could not find a clear landing zone so immediately deployed the fast rope: “I remember the dust that had been kicked up from the lead birds going in was so bad that we couldn’t even see the ground. I thought we were roping, so I threw the rope and stepped off and I was on the ground. It was a two-foot fast rope!”11

  Hooten continued:

  There was debris and dust from every helicopter around us. You couldn’t see the building – the building was only at the edge of
the rotors. As the bird lifted off you could already hear small-arms fire. On the other missions the fire didn’t start until the exfil and it was unusual that you would receive any fire early on. We were already exchanging fire before we got into the house. You could hear the [Ranger] machine guns at the blocking positions exchanging fire on the perimeter.

  Hooten’s F-Team had landed further up on Hawlwadig Road north of the target building.

  By comparison, Moser on Sergeant First Class John B’s B-Team didn’t remember much incoming enemy fire at first: “I do not recall any small-arms fire … my impression was that it grew, sporadically at first, shortly after we began clearing our building. There may have been some engagements on the periphery, whether from our snipers, or the Ranger security folks.” His team proceeded to conduct an entry upon a secondary structure next to the meeting site: “Once on the ground, the B-Team objective was to clear a single-story building adjacent to the primary target building while the bulk of the assault element entered the primary structure.”

  Star 43 landed its operators on Hawlwadig Road on the western side of the objective moments later. E-Team led by Sergeant First Class Paul H initially breached into the wrong building, making entry on a warehouse. Realizing their mistake, E-Team quickly moved with F-Team to the courtyard that Rierson’s C-Team had already breached and swept into the target building.

  Hooten’s F-Team had also landed short of their objective, almost two blocks north of the target building, but got off the street as quickly as possible: “We moved directly into a building that was some sort of crude store. There were empty glass soda bottles in plastic crates stacked in the corner of the room. We ordered the Somalis to get down using the internationally recognized hand and arm signal: pointed rifle and an open palm lowered in a rapid downward motion,” one of F-Team’s operators later wrote.12