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

by Leigh Neville

  His Little Birds waited with rotors spinning: “All I had to do is pull pitch and I can get into the air right away.” The MH-6s stood by in case they were needed to extract the assaulters and their prisoners. They were also standing by for other contingencies. Maier continued:

  If they needed a quick CASEVAC [casualty evacuation] then we could do that, we don’t have any [flight] medics with us though so we’re not the primary on that.

  I heard the call first. Super 61 and 62 were both doing that mission. I heard the call that Super 61 got hit and was going down. So I looked over in that direction and I saw him spinning and I saw him go down but he disappeared beneath the level of the buildings. I knew about where he was and he was maybe a mile away from me. So I immediately took off and started heading toward there.

  It’s just an intuitive reaction. I started heading in there, and I’ve got to be honest with you, I thought my whole flight came with me. I think they started to but as I got closer to the downed aircraft, Colonel Matthews called me and said I could not go in there. I guess he didn’t want to risk another one. I hadn’t found the aircraft yet. I was flying around looking for it frantically and I was stalling for time. Finally I came back [to Matthews] and said, “I’m already there.” I admit that I said that and I wasn’t yet. So he came back and said, “Okay, only one” or something like that. I think that’s about the time that the rest of my flight turned back and we were by ourselves.

  At the target building, immediate preparations were made to move to the crash site on foot. Kurt Smith was briefed by his team leader Norm Hooten: “Norm briefed the team ‘A helo has crashed; we need to go secure the site.’ ‘Where’s it at?’ I asked. Norm gestured to the northeast, ‘Over there somewhere.’ I knew better than to ask for more details. They simply weren’t available and weren’t of immediate importance anyway. We excelled at adapting to the unknown.”

  Gary Keeney explained:

  Once that bird went down, it wasn’t long before Scottie Miller turned to Matt Rierson and said “Matt, you and C-Team are going to take these 24 prisoners, with two snipers [from 3 Troop], and you’re going to get in the convoy and take these guys back to the airfield. The rest of us are going to move by foot to that crash site and secure that crash site.” That’s almost word for word.

  Gerry Izzo recalled: “We were wracking our brains saying ‘Can they get to a vacant lot, can they get to a rooftop, and we’ll land and get them out of there?’ They knew that the area was too hot to bring helicopters in.”

  “Sergeant Joe Thomas, my Forward Observer, he was talking to Super 61 when they got shot down. He was bringing them in to observe a large crowd that was building to the north of our position. When the bird got hit and spiraled down and crashed, the crowd saw it too and began running toward the bird,” Tom DiTomasso remembered.

  The Wescam Ball on the OH-58D helicopters transmitted a live video feed to Bill Garrison and the JOC. On it they saw two of the Delta snipers on board, Sergeant First Class Jim Smith and Staff Sergeant Dan Busch, somehow managed to extricate themselves from the wreckage. Matthews in the C2 helicopter saw “a guy crawl out of the wreckage of Super 61, one of the operators who was in the back, and take up a defensive fighting position at the corner of the building to protect that crash site. And that happened within probably 30 seconds of the crash.”7

  In the crippled Super 61, Jim Smith came to, concussed but thinking of his priorities:

  My main concern is that we were immediately receiving enemy fire. Dan left the wreckage almost immediately and I wanted to get out of the wreckage to assist him with protecting our mates still in the wreckage. There initially was an exchange between Jim M and myself concerning if he was okay and coherent as he received a severe head injury. Initially Jim M was a bit incoherent for possibly 8 to 10 seconds and then he regained full consciousness and got busy directing actions on the ground.

  Staff Sergeant Dan Busch, who served as a Ranger with Bravo Company before passing Delta’s Operator Selection Course, was first out of the wreck and immediately opened fire with his SAW on the Somalis who were already surging toward the crash site. Busch knew from his training that his shooting was critical in those first few moments to slow the enemy’s advance and give the CSAR team overhead in Super 68 the chance to insert into and secure the crash site.

  Busch and Jim Smith moved a short distance to the intersection west of the crash site to better engage the Somalis swarming toward Super 61: “Initially Dan and myself, and a bit later [Sergeant First Class] Steve D set up a defensive perimeter. Dan’s actions saved all of our lives with his quick reactions and putting himself in harm’s way to protect our lives as we initially sorted out the aftermath of the crash.”

  Smith was soon engaging targets: “I shot initially the two that Dan had engaged and then another four …” After firing at a number of enemy with his SAW, Dan Busch was hit in the stomach below his body armor and collapsed against a wall. Delta Medic Sergeant First Class Bob M later recounted: “One of the survivors engaged the Somalis rapidly, took well-aimed shots, and killed perhaps 10 of them before he went down, mortally wounded, hit in the pelvis and abdomen.”8

  Boykin was watching from the JOC: “One West-cam [sic] monitor showed the alley. I saw two men crawl out of the wreckage, stumbling and disoriented. Gunfire immediately pinned them against the wreckage. I saw Delta operator Dan Busch firing back. Somalis fell dead in the alley but not before one of them shot Busch. He grabbed his belly and slumped into the street.”9 “Dan received one gunshot wound, which I did not witness, to the pelvic region and was unconscious when I got to him. Dan was lying in a small defilade so I left him there until a time I could recover him. Dan was out of harm’s way so to speak,” remembered Jim Smith.

  Smith then had his own close brush with friendly fire:

  Our sister helicopter [Super 62] almost killed me with minigun fire. A friend was on the gun and he saw Dan lying in the street. He saw my rifle sticking out from around the corner of a wall and started to fire at me with the minigun. I remembered hearing the buzz of the minigun and having ceiling tiles rain down on my head. Later in the hospital, my mate told me that he almost killed me. At that point I had forgotten about it. During the arc of travel of the helicopter he saw it was my rifle and me and when he identified that it was I, he got off the trigger immediately.

  Moments later Smith was hit by enemy fire:

  I was shot a few minutes into the event, as I was the only person defending the crash site because Dan was [now] injured and unconscious. An assailant who came from the front of the helicopter and fired an extended burst from an AK on full auto and hit me with one shot. I received only one gunshot wound to the left shoulder. I then shot him.

  Sergeant First Class Steve D had also by now emerged from the wreckage despite suffering a concussion and severe back compression injuries. Smith remembered Steve D moving to him to treat his gunshot wound:

  After I was shot, I saw Steve and he checked my shoulder wound and then took up a security position. [Along with his CAR15] I was carrying an M21 semi-auto rifle [but] I did not use it but Steve used it as his 5.56mm ammo ran low. After the crash, it was in the wreckage and later Steve retrieved it and used it – he was holding the rifle by the pistol grip as the stock was broken off.

  At this point, Karl Maier’s Little Bird, Star 41, appeared overhead and immediately landed. Maier explained:

  We flew over it [Super 61], I think we did one circle around it and then landed really quickly with our tail rotor just barely into the intersection. We landed in a street that was perpendicular to the one that they crashed in. I couldn’t see the aircraft after we landed but it was to my left rear.

  I did see that two guys had gotten out of that crash and they were taking blocking positions on the corners so they were to my right rear [Busch and Smith] and there was one other guy who was left rear and I kept waving at him – his face was swollen and bloody. I tried to get him to come to the aircraft and he just shook hi
s head no, he wasn’t coming because he pointed behind him and tapped his head which meant there were still people back there. So he wasn’t coming.

  The man with the swollen face was Sergeant First Class Jim M, the third Delta sniper on board Super 61. Jim Smith recalled: “I did not see Jim M outside the helo. I think he was trying to get the crew chiefs out of the wreckage and checking on the pilots.” Although severely wounded, Jim M would stay at the crash site to protect the helicopter until the Rangers and CSAR element could arrive to secure the location. “He stayed and was part of the siege all night. He was a brave guy, he was obviously hurt but he stayed there,” said Maier.

  “They’re hurting but they’re moving and shooting. I can’t say enough about those guys. They are real professionals – I’ve never worked with anyone quite like them. They were doing what they needed to do, trying to secure the crash site.” Star 41 had taken fire upon their approach and now that they were on the ground, that fire increased although much of it was thankfully woefully inaccurate. Maier continued:

  We were taking a lot of fire, they were sticking their heads over walls and around corners. You know you’ve seen when a non-professional combatant picks his rifle up and sticks it over his head and just starts spraying? I mean there was a lot of that going on. All I had was my MP5 [submachine gun], I was returning fire when I could see them but we’re basically sitting on the ground waiting for somebody to come to the aircraft. It was starting to look like that wasn’t going to happen and I was getting ready to make a decision.

  I shot a couple of guys that ran around the left front of me. The first guy, he came around the corner, he’s probably 50 meters from me, he’s got his rifle, it’s an AK and it’s down by his waist and he just pulls the trigger and starts waving it around. I literally closed my eyes and when he ran out of bullets I was like, “Okay, I’m okay” and I shot him. It was pretty scary.

  Maier was typically self-deprecating about his own marksmanship: “The MP5 was doing the job. I went through a lot of ammunition – I’m not a good infantry guy so I went through a lot of bullets!”

  Each of the MH-6s typically carried a Delta-modified M249 SAW in the rear that was used by the assaulters. Once the operators dismounted from the pods, the SAW was left behind with the aircrew who could employ it in an emergency such as the one Maier and Jones now faced. Maier explained:

  It was in the cargo compartment and I have to admit I forgot it was back there! Later on I thought about it and was like, “What was I thinking? I could’ve grabbed the SAW!”

  I said to [co-pilot] Keith, “Where are they at?” and he turns around and goes “Okay, one of them [Busch] has got shot and is laying in the intersection” and he [Keith Jones] said to me, “I need to get out, can I get out?” I said, “Well, if you have to, but hurry up!” So he got out and he ran back there. In the meantime Dan Busch is shot and Jim Smith had picked Dan up and was carrying him on his shoulder toward the aircraft and then he got shot.

  A medical report later noted that “Sergeant Jim Smith was shot through the meaty part of his left shoulder (under his Kevlar vest).”10 Despite being hit, Smith managed to struggle toward Star 41 with the semi-conscious Busch. Keith Jones was outside the aircraft firing his 9mm M9 Beretta pistol at the converging Somalis. Maier recalled watching Jones trading fire with the Somalis:

  He was like James Bond running around out there! As a matter of fact, at one point he came back to the aircraft and we traded ammo – I was using a lot of the MP5 magazines and he needed more pistol ammo so we traded. As we were doing that we just looked at each other and laughed as if to say, “What are we doing!”

  Colonel Matthews in the C2 Black Hawk was all the while urgently calling upon Maier to get Star 41 out of the danger zone. Maier recounted:

  I said to him, “I can’t, my co-pilot is not in the aircraft and I’m not leaving without him.” He just said “Oh”! I guess he was up high in the C2 bird and he could see the crowds converging and by this time Keith is out of the aircraft, I’m already in a gunfight out of the cockpit with some guys around the corner and he’s telling me I’ve gotta get out of there.

  Smith was struggling with Busch:

  As the Little Bird landed, I ran out and got Dan and dragged him to the bird. Initially I dragged him two-handed with me traveling backward. But I was receiving fire so I had to shoot an assailant down the street and then I dragged him with one hand and then shot my rifle with the other hand. Once at the Little Bird, I attempted to load him but I could not with his bodyweight, his equipment, and my wounded shoulder and I dropped him just short of the door.

  Jim Smith knew via his Motorola radio that a Ranger ground element were inbound to their location and decided to hold on to assist with defending the perimeter until they arrived: “I waited to exfil to the hospital with Dan until the Rangers were at our location. Dan was loaded and I was outside the bird until the Rangers arrived. There were no other severely wounded that needed to be extracted.”

  Maier reported:

  Keith got Dan in the back and then Jim in the back and we could get them out of there. When we got him [Dan] in the back, he didn’t look good. I was really worried about him. As soon as I saw him I was thinking we had to get him over to the MASH. Unfortunately Dan didn’t make it but Jim did.

  Tom DiTomasso’s Chalk 2 were the closest to the crash site and the young Lieutenant had immediately contacted Captain Steele to request permission to move toward Super 61. Steele still didn’t have communications with Eversmann’s Chalk 4 due to ongoing problems with their radios and was likely concerned to keep the blocking positions in place until they could all move as a group toward the crash site.

  After some discussion Steele agreed with DiTomasso’s compromise. He would split his chalk in two, leaving one in place to hold down the northeast blocking position while he personally led the other half to the crash site. DiTomasso related:

  By this time, Staff Sergeant Yurek had come over to my position. I told him to keep his team at the blocking position. I took Specialist Nelson’s M60 team and Staff Sergeant Lycopolus’s team, a total of eight men, and started moving toward the crash site. As we started running, I noticed that the crowd to our north had also seen the crash. They were paralleling our movement with the same intent: to get to the crash site first.

  Chalk 2 took off at speed, moving first north and then turning right, to the east, past the parking lot that they had cleared earlier. They ran through a gauntlet of enemy fire from all directions for three city blocks until they finally broke through to Marehan Road to approach the crash site. DiTomasso was faced by an unexpected sight. He recounted:

  It seemed like every window and door had a weapon firing from it. As we made the last turn, I was shocked to see that a Little Bird had landed in the street just behind the downed helicopter. Bullets were popping off the walls and ground from every direction. As I stumbled over two dead bodies, I could see one pilot firing his weapon from inside the cockpit, while steadying the aircraft with one hand on the joystick. He was pointing his weapon in our direction, until he realized it was us. I tapped my head to question the headcount, a typical Ranger hand and arm signal; he shook his head no ... To me this meant that he didn’t have all the men from the crash site. I saw him put two men on the helicopter. Years later, Karl told me that he didn’t know what the arm and hand signal meant, so that’s why he shook his head!

  Maier was just as surprised by DiTomasso’s arrival. He said:

  By this stage I think we were [on the ground] just shy of ten minutes, somewhere between seven and ten minutes. I couldn’t believe it was that long. It seemed like an hour! Everything seems to slow down and you get very focused. While all this was all going on, I had been shooting at guys who ran around the corner shooting at me. I’m leaning out the door shooting back and forth at these guys and then looked to my right and there’s Lieutenant DiTomasso coming around the other corner!

  The arrival of Chalk 2 almost ended in friendly fire. No
one had informed Star 41 that the Rangers were on their way and the sudden appearance of DiTomasso and his men surprised Maier, so much so that, spotting movement out of the corner of his eye, he brought up his MP5 ready to fire:

  I hadn’t had any trouble out of that corner [the right side or southwest] yet so I wheeled around and was just about to shoot him through the right windshield when I recognized the Kevlar [helmet]. He put his hands up, his eyes got really big because he knew what had been about to happen! He tapped his helmet to ask me for a head count [as Maier later realized] so I shrugged and pointed to my left rear to give him the direction. I was really glad to see them, I’ll tell you that!

  So we loaded up Jim and Dan and we pulled out and we were supposed to bring them back to the JMAU [Joint Medical Augmentation Unit, JSOC’s field surgical unit run by Doc Marsh] but when I saw Dan I made the decision I was going to take him to the hospital over at the UN compound because they had a true MASH there. So we went over there and landed and the docs came out, and Keith got out and helped get Dan and Jim out. The Colonel in charge came over to me and said, “What’s going on?” I said, “It’s gonna get busy.”

  The courage shown by Maier and Jones was remarkable. Mike Durant indicated that it was entirely Maier’s call to go in and stay so long on the ground: “He was Pilot in Command of his aircraft and it’s his discretion to do what he believes is right in a situation like that. I have always felt that Karl’s actions that day were at least worthy of consideration for the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

  1631 HOURS: MH-6 EXFIL 2 X WIA FROM CRASH.

  DiTomasso continued:

  When that Little Bird took off, we ran underneath it and one of the crew chiefs [likely Charlie Warren] was standing in the middle of the street with his hands over his face and his face was all bloody and the Somalis were beating him with sticks. We pushed all of the Somalis off that guy, grabbed on to him, and we moved him to the crash site.