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

by Leigh Neville

“I talked to Aideed at great length about the day of the battle in Mogadishu and the tactics involved. And he made the determination that the helicopters were the vulnerability, or the center of gravity.”

  General Anthony Zinni, United States Marine Corps, Commander of the Combined Task Force, Operation United Shield

  In the wake of any battle come the inevitable questions. What were the failings? What could be learned that might prove useful in future conflicts? The battle of Mogadishu or, as the Somalis now call it, “Maalintii Rangers” or the Day of the Rangers, was no different. A number of important lessons were learnt from the October 3 battle which have since changed the way such operations are conducted and have saved many lives during the post September 11, 2001 Global War on Terror.

  There were also the equally inevitable controversies. Would the provision of light armor to Task Force Ranger have made a difference? What was the truth about alleged al-Qaeda involvement? Did the battle of Mogadishu make the White House and Pentagon gun-shy of deploying special operations forces throughout the rest of the 1990s?

  AC-130 SPECTRES

  “I remember thinking at the time ‘It’d be cool to have Spectre’ but I didn’t give it a second thought. Maybe ignorance is bliss.”

  SERGEANT MATT EVERSMANN

  Perhaps no single issue has generated as much controversy as the lack of AC-130 Spectre gunship support for Task Force Ranger. Trimmed from the force packages, there is little doubt that the AC-130 would have been a game-changer if it had been available on October 3. It is also an issue that understandably still raises the ire of Task Force veterans. Tom DiTomasso gave his thoughts:

  In my opinion, anybody that says that AC-130s and armored vehicles would not have mattered in Mogadishu is either lying or they have no idea of what they’re talking about. We could’ve dragged that helicopter out of the city with armored vehicles, and the AC-130s would have put a ring of fire around the second crash site. I think that was one of the strategic failures.

  Another survivor of the battle at the Super 61 crash site, John Belman, agreed:

  Spectre would have been extremely helpful once the first crash occurred and this thing became a massive firefight. Once it went from being a quick surgical hit in a semi-permissive environment to “We’re going into heavily defended very hostile territory in daylight.” It seems to me if you could have subbed in a Spectre instead of using the Black Hawks as sniper platforms, you would have had a higher firepower, safer resource.

  Particularly during the night when Spectre has the ability to see and paint targets and hit targets with a high degree of accuracy, I think that would have been very, very helpful. It could’ve helped the ground convoy out too – it could’ve passed directions more effectively and [with] the ability to basically hammer anything that might threaten the ground convoy.

  Gerry Izzo was equally adamant:

  The AC-130 absolutely would’ve helped. If we had had the AC-130, because the Delta operators and the Rangers all knew how to call for fire, they could’ve kept that AC-130 over the objective area and we could’ve then taken the [AH-6] gunships and sent them over to Mike’s crash site with the rest of the Black Hawks and maybe the [MH-6] Little Birds to get them out.

  Remembering the effect of Spectre during the UNOSOM II strikes on Aideed’s infrastructure targets back in June 1993, Izzo explained, “The AC-130 gunship was sorely missed. The Somalis were terrified of that thing because they had no defense against it. They could have blown those roadblocks, they could have hit them with 105[mm] shells … As that gunfire came raining down on them, the Somalis would’ve pulled back. They respected it, they were terrified of it.” Bill Garrison himself agreed in his Senate testimony: “The Somalis were petrified of the AC-130.”

  Karl Maier also thinks that the AC-130s could have proven hugely beneficial: “Number one: they can see a lot of things, they have great sensors. Number two: they could have used their 40mm or their 20mm cannon to isolate the siege area. Yes, it would have been very helpful. Both as a sensor and as a defensive weapon to keep people away from the area.”

  Danny McKnight wrote in his memoir of the battle: “I truly believe my five brothers-in-arms would be alive today had the AC-130 been available … I think Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart would have been able to render medical aid and provide the needed close-in security while the AC-130 kept the enemy from massing and overrunning the Six Four crash site.”1

  Amid such widespread support from the operators on the ground, why then was the AC-130 not deployed? During the pre-deployment exercises at Fort Bragg, Task Force Ranger personnel had trained with Air Force AC-130H Spectre gunships as a constant orbiting presence, providing an aerial safety net with their impressive firepower and sensors.

  Officially at least, it is important to note that of the three force packages discussed for the Gothic Serpent mission only “Cadillac,” the largest option, had integrally attached AC-130H gunships. The author has been unable to verify whether there were discussions regarding adding the Spectres to the other packages. Air Mission Commander Tom Matthews noted: “We planned to do it as we train. We got direction to make it [the force package] smaller. We resisted – we wanted to do it as we train.”2

  General Joseph Hoar, then head of Central Command, who had overall responsibility for operations in Somalia, did not support the AC-130 request, believing instead that the Task Force’s AH-6 Little Birds and the AH-1 Cobras of the QRF were sufficient. The justification was to limit the size of the American footprint at a time when the United States was attempting to disengage from Somalia and hand over responsibilities to the United Nations. Hoar confirmed:

  The AC-130s were dropped in view of the number of capabilities available to the Task Force. That was my recommendation up the line. My position was to give them what they needed and no more. If we weren’t careful, we would have had 1,000 troops over there. There was a three-way discussion among Downing, Powell, and me about the deployment of Little Birds, troop carriers [presumably the MH-60 Black Hawks], etc. I felt, and Downing agreed (he certainly told me he did), that we didn’t need AC-130s.3

  In fact General Downing, the then-commander of Special Operations Command and the parent command of the Joint Special Operations Command, seems to have preferred to have retained the Spectres, but conceded that the Task Force Ranger mission could be accomplished without them. He said: “The AC-130s were part of every package we looked at … We talked about the force package. I advised that I would like to have the AC-130s. General Powell advised that we needed to keep the numbers down … I said that I thought the AC-130s should be included and I so recommended since they were an integral part of the package.

  “But I also advised that the force could do the mission without them. I had the option to say don’t send the force without the AC-130s, but it was then and is now my professional judgment that they would have been useful but we could do the job without the AC-130 gunships as long as the helo gunships went with the force. I decided not to fall on my bayonet. I believe my voice was the most influential with respect to the force package.”4

  It is interesting to note that Downing seems to have believed that the AC-130s were part of all of the force package options presented, as did the Senate Armed Services Committee who conducted their own enquiry into the battle in 1994. With many documents still classified, as noted it has proven impossible to definitively state that the Spectres were or were not included in each of the three packages. “Cadillac” certainly included them.

  Undersecretary of Defense Frank Wisner who represented the Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, explained:

  I was aware of and supported the Joint Staff’s recommendation that AC-130s not be included in the force package because they were unnecessary and inappropriate for the mission especially considering the extensive collateral damage they could be expected to cause in an urban environment. I still believe that they were inappropriate for the mission due to the risk of collateral damage.5

  General
Colin Powell as then-head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff does appear to have agreed with Wisner, noting that the earlier deployment of AC-130s in support of the UNOSOM II force in Somalia, “wrecked a few buildings and it wasn’t the greatest imagery on CNN.”6 Powell also does not specifically recall AC-130s being a part of any of the force packages, but concedes they must have been. Aspin took a similar line and also argued that he “was never aware that AC-130 gunships were ever in a Ranger Task Force package. They must have been pulled out before the request came to me.”7

  The fact that the AC-130s would have likely been based in nearby Kenya and thus would not have increased the actual US footprint in Somalia would appear to call into question at least some of the arguments set forth by Hoar, Powell, and Wisner. Downing felt that the key sticking point was with the Joint Chiefs and the political leadership who were almost fanatically attempting to minimize the numbers but, for whatever ultimate reason, and a mixture of political will and fears of collateral damage seem the most likely, the AC-130s were not deployed.

  Until darkness fell on October 3, the AC-130s may have been of little assistance as the aircraft are typically forbidden from flying during daylight hours. During the 1991 Operation Desert Storm, Spirit 03, an AC-130H operating in support of Marine ground callsigns in Khafji, Saudi Arabia, was downed by an Iraqi SA-7 surface-to-air missile. Gerry Izzo believes that the threat level in Mogadishu for the Spectre was not as high, saying: “I don’t think they had heat-seekers [surface-to-air missiles] and the AC-130s could have stayed off-set and provided absolutely deadly fire support.”

  Ironically, after Gothic Serpent was aborted, the newly arrived US reinforcements to Somalia included a complement of Spectres. “We had four AC-130 aircraft in the theater; they were stationed in Mombasa [Kenya]. We could have kept AC-130s overhead 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if we wanted to. Sometimes we’d just keep them overhead and refuel them from KC-135s,” noted General Carl Ernst, who took over command of US forces in Somalia days after the October 3 battle.8

  The Senate Armed Services Committee report would later conclude: “It is difficult to understand the decision to omit the AC-130 gunships from the Joint Task Force Ranger force package. The AC-130s were part of all the force package options and were included in all of the training exercises. This decision is inconsistent with the principle that you fight as you train.”9

  ARMORED VEHICLES

  “We had guys driving in Somalia in Humvees and getting shot to shit. That’s ridiculous. If you’re going to be driving in an urban environment, you need armor.”

  SERGEANT FIRST CLASS NORMAN HOOTEN

  The use of largely unarmored Humvees, let alone Humvees without doors and the completely open cargo variant, was certainly a factor in the number of casualties suffered by Task Force Ranger. To their credit, the Humvees performed as advertised and survived being riddled with gunfire and RPGs, managing to limp home even after all tires were shot out thanks to their run-flat design. The use of the M923A2 five-ton trucks was understandable in the limited role of extracting prisoners but, once contacted by the enemy, these completely unarmored vehicles proved to be far less than optimal.

  Special operations forces working with armor was largely an unknown in 1993. Darby’s Rangers during World War II had famously operated with 75mm-equipped M3 half-tracks although their primary mission was to engage German armor, not to provide protection for the infantry. A decade following the Mogadishu operation, Delta itself formed “Team Tank” in the western Iraqi desert with an embedded platoon of M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks, again to deal with enemy armor. John Belman explained:

  We had not worked with armor in those days. The only vehicles we had in the Ranger Regiment were the RSOV [Ranger Special Operations Vehicle] Land Rovers which were completely unsuitable [for Mogadishu] and Delta had some desert mobility vehicles [Pinzgauer Special Operations Vehicles], they didn’t even have Humvees so they had to commandeer vehicles from the SF [Special Forces] Groups. None of us had ever worked with tanks. a) it’s a mindset shift and b) trying to coordinate that and make that effective takes some doing. Having said that, anything’s better than an unarmored Humvee.

  Along with the AC-130 controversy, the lack of armored vehicles is a constant theme when discussion turns to the battle of Mogadishu. Armored vehicles, whether wheeled or tracked, would have provided three powerful capabilities to US forces. One, the ability to punch through roadblocks that would defeat Humvees and other soft-skins; two, the capacity to extract wounded under armored protection; and three, the overwhelming firepower of even the 25mm Bushmaster cannons mounted in a Bradley turret, let alone the 120mm main gun of the Abrams, would ensure that any such force could fight their way into and out of the city.

  General Hoar had received a faxed request from General Montgomery in August for an armored battalion of tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. This had nothing to do with Task Force Ranger and was driven by Montgomery’s assessment of the increasing risk to his forces. Under Secretary Wisner, working for Aspin and who had been involved in the decision to cut AC-130s from the Task Force Ranger deployment, was hesitant about acceding to such a request in the face of increasing calls from the civilian leadership to decrease, not increase, the US presence.

  After receiving a lukewarm political reception to the idea of an armored battalion, Hoar discussed with Montgomery the idea of reducing the request to a company-sized group of four Abrams and 14 Bradleys. Montgomery agreed and the amended request was sent on September 14, including the rationale that the armor would be used to “deter or defeat militia/bandit attacks on US forces” and “provide a critical roadblock-clearing capability for our vulnerable thin-skinned vehicles.” He added that “I believe that US forces are at risk without it.”10 On September 23, the request was denied by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin.

  The US Army’s Somalia history notes:

  General Montgomery had discussed additional mechanized and armored units with CINCCENT [Commander in Chief, US Central Command] in August and had formally requested a mechanized infantry team with a platoon of tanks and an artillery battery in early September. However, CINCCENT deleted the artillery before forwarding the request to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and, despite the chairman’s recommendation for approval, Secretary of Defense Aspin disapproved the request in late September.11

  Defending his refusal to grant the request, Aspin later claimed that he was unaware that the request was based on force protection of US troops: “[it was] never put in terms of protecting troops; it was put in terms of the mission of delivering humanitarian aid,” he claimed in an interview with the American ABC television network.12

  Garrison admitted in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1994 that, even if armor had been available to him, he most likely would not have included it in the force committed on October 3. The entire plan was for the assault and blocking forces to complete their mission in under 30 minutes and be on their way back to the airfield before the Somalis could muster a concerted resistance. He did acknowledge, however, that armor would have improved the survivability and increased the speed of the eventual relief column.

  The question of equipping units like the Rangers and Delta with their own integral armored vehicles would be one that was thoroughly debated during the years since the battle. Even amongst veterans of the October 3 battle, opinions were mixed. Jeff Struecker, who drove out into Mogadishu three times on October 3, argued:

  I went to Afghanistan nine times and to Iraq five times, most of those with the Ranger Regiment and I was involved for almost ten years in the whole armor/Humvee debate. My job is to get on the ground with a gun and kill bad guys and armored Humvees or light armored vehicles are just a taxi-cab. What armor does is [it] sometimes gives a false sense of security – when things start to get crazy guys start to hunker down behind the armor because they don’t want to get shot. It can be a dangerous false sense of security.

  He does concede, however, there is a
place for vehicles in special operations:

  Make them fast and light and carry lots of guns and get the heck off the vehicle when the bullets start to fly. I’m not a big proponent of light armored vehicle carrying light infantry but I’m heavily in the minority. Everybody else was like, “If we can save a life why don’t we?” and I said that there was a psychological component to all of this. Rangers can employ GMVs [Ground Mobility Vehicles – a heavily armed SOF version of the Humvee] with great effectiveness in Afghanistan and Iraq – I’m a big fan of the GMV … but my experience in Somalia is that the vehicles are bullet magnets.

  Delta veteran Kelly Venden added another perspective to the debate:

  We are by nature a short-lived, no logistics train, operational group that goes in, takes care of business and leaves. The more robust [in terms of equipping with armor] we are, the more we lose our flexibility, our ability to react because now you need heavier duty aircraft [to transport the armor], you need ground support and mechanics [to maintain the vehicles], you need all these different things that take away from our ability to be that quick reaction, “we’re in, we’re out,” “we were never there” type thing. You know, “it was the local guys who did all the work.” Now there’s a signature that we have to try to break.

  Obviously the guys who were getting shot at would love to have armored vehicles but conversely that was never our mission. What happens is that you get comfortable having that capability – you get used to the protection and the lack of mobility and you start planning based on the capabilities of your infil vehicle rather than the capabilities of the Unit, you start limiting what you can offer to the Command [JSOC].

  Delta’s Norm Hooten takes another view:

  That was probably the single biggest thing out of Somalia. It was a lesson learnt that went on to save a lot of lives [but] that was not a done deal in the Unit, we had to fight to get Pandurs [six-wheeled APCs], even amongst guys who had been to Somalia. It basically tore the Unit apart. We fought [over the issue internally] for two or three years!