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

by Leigh Neville

  Jerry Bruckheimer wants to tell the story as accurately as he can but 18 hours into two and a half hours, there’s gotta be some leeway. All the movie people were pretty straightforward about how they were going to do it, what they were trying to accomplish, to the point where I’m like, “Okay, I can buy into that,” but I gotta be ready to make some explaining when somebody says, “Hey, Matt, you didn’t do that,” and I’m like, “Yeah I know, this is why it’s in there.”

  Gerry Izzo agreed: “I do know one thing with Sergeant Eversmann in the movie – they took what Sergeant Eversmann did, what Lieutenant DiTomasso did, what Lieutenant Moores did, what Lieutenant Lechner did … they took the actions of all four of those guys and they put them all into Eversmann. That’s fine because otherwise you’ve got too many main characters.”

  Izzo himself didn’t feature in the movie, as he laughingly recalled:

  Nobody played me. The closest that they came was when the Black Hawks did the assault and they’re coming out and you hear a voice on the radio say, “This is Super 65, my chalk is in, I’m going to holding” – what I actually said was “Super 65’s coming out straight up” because I was coming out of the dust and I wanted to let the two guys who were orbiting [know] that I was coming out straight up.

  Eric Bana’s character, Norm “Hoot” Gibson, was clearly based primarily on Norm Hooten but also included actions and dialogue attributed to other Delta Force personnel. We have already touched on the infamous “This is my safety, sir” scene earlier in the book, but “Hoot” Gibson is also shown carrying out an undercover reconnaissance mission in what appears to be the Bakara Market.

  Such operations were actually carried out by the Advanced Force Operations element of C-Squadron from the Operational Support Troop and by the Intelligence Support Activity/Office for Military Support.

  The same thing happens in the closing scenes when Gibson is shown getting prepared to go back out into the city to track down the missing in action members of Task Force Ranger.

  This mission was again the responsibility of the Operational Support Troop. Gibson’s opposite number, Jeff Sanderson, played by William Fichtner, was a composite of the Ground Force Commander Scott Miller, Matt Rierson, and likely another Delta operator, John M. All of the names of the operators were fictionalized for the film for personal security reasons.

  Along with the composites, there are a number of factual inaccuracies that crept into the script. Some of these are particularly jarring for veterans, as Gerry Izzo pointed out: “At one point in the movie they said ‘DiTomasso’s wounded and he’s out of action,’ and he [DiTomasso] said afterwards, ‘Like hell I was!’ Tom was wounded, but he continued to fight and to lead his men throughout the battle. He was never out of action.”

  The aerial vehicle intercept of Osman Atto was inaccurate – Gary Keeney was particularly adamant: “How that was depicted in the movie was bullshit, it was not factually correct. The only thing that was a little bit close was that they depicted him [Atto] as being extremely defiant and arrogant.” As we have seen earlier in Chapter 2, Keeney was a member of the Delta element that identified the captured Atto.

  In reality, the aerial intercept was against a single vehicle, a green Fiat, not a three-vehicle convoy of 4WDs as shown in the film. As depicted in the movie, Atto’s vehicle was initially engaged by Jim Smith firing his CAR15 into the engine block – not shown was the doorgunner on the Black Hawk adding the firepower of his minigun to the fusillade to immobilize the car. Atto later claimed the vehicle was hit more than 50 times.

  In the film, he is shown being captured cleanly with an AH-6 hovering in front of Atto’s vehicle after the sniper shoots into the engine block. As again detailed in Chapter 2, Atto’s bodyguard, Ahmed Ali, in fact raised his AK47 and was deliberately shot in the legs to disable him. Atto managed to escape the scene and take refuge in a nearby garage where Delta located him. He was then exfiltrated by Little Bird from the rooftop.

  During the assault on the target building, the landing locations of the Little Birds depicted were incorrect. In particular, at least one MH-6 is depicted landing on the roof of the target building, but, as we have noted, all landed on the streets surrounding the objective. The situation Eversmann’s chalk faced, at least two blocks north of their intended insertion point, is not shown. Similarly, when the operators were moving into the objective, the film depicts them shooting several Somalis. In fact all of the enemy personnel at the objective immediately surrendered once the operators burst in.

  Ranger Scott Galentine is shown as a member of Eversmann’s chalk as they move to the first crash site. As mentioned, this chalk was actually Chalk 2 under Tom DiTomasso and Galentine was actually wounded back at Eversmann’s blocking position. Their destination, Super 61, is depicted as having crash landed at what appears to be a major intersection rather than the far tighter alleyway to the north east of Marehan Road.

  The nature and extent of the wounds suffered by Tim “Griz” Martin were greatly exaggerated in the movie. He was not blown in half. Colonel McKnight was also nowhere near him when he was wounded, but he is shown, portrayed by Tom Sizemore, as being amongst the first to react. Eversmann, Keeney, and the Delta medics recovered and treated Griz. The circumstances of Dominick Pilla’s death are also incorrectly shown. As we have noted in Chapter 3, he was in the back of Jeff Struecker’s Humvee when he was hit, firing his M60, not manning the .50 cal. It appears as if Pilla’s death may have been confused with Cavaco, who was manning a heavy weapon when he was killed.

  Many of the scenes depicting Task Force Ranger members being wounded or killed are out of sequence with reality or are shown in a fictionalized light – Tom Sizemore playing McKnight again appears when Kowalewski was hit by an RPG whilst driving the second 5-ton truck. Sizemore’s McKnight is shown opening the door to the cab to discover the mortally wounded Ranger. In reality, as detailed in Chapter 6, this was Gary Keeney assisting an unknown Ranger Sergeant. On McKnight’s convoy, the movie also shows the Somali detainees in the back of Humvees, which did not occur – they were in the 5-ton protected by C-Team and their attached snipers.

  The arrival of the rescue convoy is another sequence that is factually incorrect. Tom Sizemore’s Danny McKnight is depicted being greeted by Mike Steele when it was in fact the QRC Company Commander. McKnight, wounded twice, had handed command of his Task Force Ranger element to Nixon and Van Arsdale. As mentioned in Chapter 8, Steele became involved in a verbal altercation with Captain Drew Meyerowich of the 10th Mountain before Lee Van Arsdale overrode him.

  Finally, the sequence depicting the Mogadishu Mile, whilst visually stirring, jars with reality. The movie shows a number of Rangers and operators running all of the way to the Pakistani-controlled soccer stadium. In fact, as noted in Chapter 8, the Rangers and operators ended up being extracted by ground vehicles after the commander of the 10th Mountain QRF realized there were still men left behind on foot. They did have to run down most of Hawlwadig and National, exposed to tremendous amounts of enemy fire, to meet the vehicles, and it was this movement that was christened the Mogadishu Mile. They did not run, however, all of the way out of the city to the stadium as depicted in the film.

  The film tries, in its closing credits, to make a connection between Aideed’s death and the retirement of General Garrison occurring within days of each other, perhaps hinting that Garrison waited until his adversary was dead before he felt comfortable hanging up his spurs. The idea makes for a suitably dramatic ending for the Hollywood version of October 3 but not surprisingly has no basis in reality. The prosaic but inevitable mountain of paperwork involved in retiring from the military can take months, if not longer, to wind its way through the bureaucracy, particularly for officers of Garrison’s rank.

  A number of scenes in the film were also added despite having never occurred in reality. The entire sequence involving two of DiTomasso’s men, M60 gunner Specialist Shawn Nelson and SAW gunner Specialist Lance Twombly, was fabricated in its en
tirety. Nelson and Twombly moved with their respective half-squads to the Super 61 crash site, Nelson with DiTomasso and Twombly with Yurek. The scene involving the deafness suffered by Nelson was correct, the result of Twombly firing his SAW near Nelson’s head.

  The scene showing Gibson and his team killing the crew of a technical mounting a recoilless rifle commanded by a fictional version of the leader of the local Habr Gidr militia, Yousuf Dahir Mo’alim, is also made from whole cloth. No such action occurred. As noted by numerous participants, technicals were not deployed during the battle, particularly during the evening when the skies were owned by the AH-6s. It is also questionable that the operators would have used choke holds rather than their carbines or grenades to disable the crew of the vehicle!

  There were several deleted sequences which added some historical scenes back into the movie, although these ended up being cut from the final production version. One shows a Delta element, most likely Norm Hooten’s F-Team, initially storming another building before they entered the objective. Another shows a Ranger SAW engaging E-Team in the objective building which, whilst still not completely accurate as E-Team were on the roof when this occurred, at least gives a nod to the dangers of fratricide.

  The film looks superb from a technical standpoint, helped in large part by the contributions of the Ranger Regiment and the 160th SOAR. The Black Hawks and Little Birds shown in the movie were flown by members of the 160th SOAR including a number of Mogadishu veterans. For the fast-roping sequences, the US Army loaned a number of Rangers to the production. The Pentagon also assisted by facilitating “boot camps” for the actors to immerse themselves in the worlds of the men they portrayed.

  A number of uniform inaccuracies in the movie were largely down to the film makers’ attempts to identify the different units and individuals for the audience. In particular, the addition of the names of the Rangers on their helmets was done for exactly this reason. The operators were also shown with longer than standard length hair and unshaven when in fact, to blend in with the Ranger component, they had Ranger-style “high and tights” and were clean shaven.

  There were also a number of weapon inaccuracies, although many less than a typical Hollywood war film. “One of the big things about the movie – when they would show those RPG rockets coming at everybody, those damned things were going at the speed of a model airplane. Somebody in a wheelchair or a walker could’ve gotten out of the way of those! Those things come at you [in reality] like a bullet. There’s no watching it coming in,” remembered Gerry Izzo, laughing. Likewise when Super 61 is shown being hit by an RPG team lead by Yousuf Dahir Mo’alim, the backblast would have killed or severely injured him and a second RPG gunner standing nearby if they had fired as depicted.

  Another, albeit minor, inaccuracy is that Dan Busch is shown using a CAR15 when in fact he carried and employed a SAW at the Super 61 crash site. In the same sequence, his fellow snipers Jim M and Steve D are nowhere to be seen, although Jim Smith is briefly depicted helping to carry Busch to the Little Bird. Additionally, Star 41 is shown landing within meters of Super 61 when in reality they had to land around the corner due to the tight confines of the alleyway in which the Black Hawk lay.

  Despite the laudable use of real Black Hawks and Little Birds, the production was understandably unable to source actual Condor APCs, so what appear to be Spanish BMRs were used in the film. Additionally no tanks were shown in the movie; again these would have been difficult to source, particularly accurate M48A4s as used by the Pakistanis. Pakistani M113s are depicted, complete with blue-helmeted crew in a rare nod to the United Nations forces involved in the rescue convoy.

  One inaccuracy in the film was seemingly forced upon the film makers by the Pentagon. Ranger company clerk John “Stebby” Stebbins, who featured extensively in the Ridley Scott film, and was played by Scottish actor Ewan McGregor, was found guilty of child molestation and the rape of his own six-year-old daughter in June 2000 by a military courts martial. He was sentenced to a minimum 30-year prison term. During the making of the film, the US Army requested Stebbins’ character be renamed and Scott complied, allegedly to maintain Army material support such as the provision of the Black Hawk helicopters, and called the character John Grimes instead.

  A number of veterans helped out with the film. Matt Eversmann noted:

  Jerry Bruckheimer and Ridley Scott were very smart and they hired Tom Matthews and Lee Van Arsdale. They had just retired. So Lee and Tom were there and they made sure shit was wired tight and I think the major reason it turned out as well as it did was because those two warriors were there. They knew the story and they lived the story and they made sure it was as accurate as you could probably get.

  Additionally the scene showing Star 41 landing at the Super 61 crash site was recreated by an MH-6 piloted by none other than Keith Jones, Karl Maier’s co-pilot on October 3.

  Izzo and Maier both thought that the depiction of the operators was very well done, including their disdain for structures of rank. Izzo: “William Fichtner and Eric Bana really captured how those guys are. They’re kinda these low key, confident, very informal … For years I would plan missions and I wouldn’t know if I was talking to a Sergeant, a Captain, or a Major!”

  In the final wash, the film for the most part manages a creditable job of explaining the battle in its medium as a Hollywood blockbuster. It also paid tribute to the fallen, particularly Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon. John Belman from the CSAR team summed it up well: “If you take it from the perspective that it’s Hollywood and they have to do certain things to dramatize the event, I think it was a decent portrayal of what happened.” Gerry Izzo agreed: “Mike Durant said one time that he’d give it an A+ for patriotism and a B+ for accuracy and I’d say that’s about right.”

  APPENDIX 2

  THE WEAPONS AND EQUIPMENT OF TASK FORCE RANGER

  Task Force Ranger were equipped with a range of standard US-issue and specialist small arms and equipment to accomplish their mission. The Rangers had some limited leeway in selecting equipment, adding scopes and sound suppressors for instance, but Delta could and did have almost unlimited freedom in choosing the right weapon for the job. In the close-range infantry fight of October 3, it is worth examining the small arms used by both Task Force Ranger and the Somali militia.

  Mogadishu was awash in small arms, mainly of Russian, Chinese, and former Warsaw Pact origin. The Somalis principally used the ubiquitous AK47-pattern assault rifle in 7.62x39mm from a range of manufacturers. The AK47 is simple to use and is extremely reliable, particularly well suited for militiamen for whom weapon maintenance was probably a low priority.

  Several interviewees noted that the Somalis tended to empty a magazine in the general direction of US forces, rather than using the sights. They also mainly fired from the hip or without looking, over or around obstacles. Karl Maier recalled a Somali emptying an AK47 magazine at him from close range and not registering a single hit. The Somalis managed to inflict casualties not through accuracy but purely through an overwhelming weight of fire.

  A number of 7.62x51mm Heckler and Koch G3 battle rifles were also seen in the hands of militiamen. The older semiautomatic Russian SKS 7.62x39mm carbine, and the Chinese Type 56 copy, were also used, but the AK47, with its capability for fully-automatic fire and larger 30-round magazine, was much preferred.

  7.62x39mm RPK light machine guns and 7.62x54mm PKM medium machine guns were employed, as was a limited number of 12.7mm DShK heavy machine guns, at least one of which was used to engage the casualty collection point near the Super 61 crash site. There appears to have been at least some form of organization to the SNA militia but it is unknown at what rate these heavier support weapons were issued.

  Along with the AK47, the most prolific weapons system in Somali hands was the RPG-7. Although the acronym is often mistakenly referred to as “rocket-propelled grenade,” it in fact translates from the Russian as “handheld antitank grenade launcher.” RPGs in Somalia included the RPG-7
and 7V along with the Chinese Type 69-I, distinctive for its folding bipod. As we have discussed in Chapter 4, it seems very unlikely that Somalia RPG rounds were modified to airburst in an attempt to engage Task Force Ranger helicopters and most likely were in fact operating as advertised, detonating at 920 meters.

  There appears to be no first-hand evidence of recoilless rifles used on October 3, although these were a common weapon platform on Somali technicals. Despite their depiction in the film Black Hawk Down, there were no technicals engaged in the October 3 battle. Some were seen, particularly early on as Delta operator Norm Hooten confirmed, but none played any role in the battle itself. As we have noted, technicals were jealously guarded by the warlords and Aideed knew that they would be prime targets for the AH-6 Little Birds.

  Along with copious numbers of AK47s and RPGs, the militia also seemed to have access to large numbers of hand grenades, although their provenance and reliability were open to question. Several veterans interviewed mentioned enemy hand grenades failing to explode. No grenade launchers were encountered, nor were any mortars, although the SNA certainly had both 60mm and 82mm Chinese and Soviet models, evidenced by the mortar strike with tragic consequences on October 6 against the Task Force Ranger hangar. There is no evidence that mortars were employed on October 3 despite dubious Somali claims that they intended to bracket the Super 61 crash site but decided against risking civilian casualties.

  The Rangers were equipped for the most part with the then-standard-issue Ranger small arms and equipment, with some notable exceptions. In terms of personal weapons, Ranger riflemen carried the US Army 5.56x45mm M16A2 assault rifle, an M16 variant that offered both semiautomatic and three-round burst settings. The three-round burst setting was largely shunned, with Rangers trained to fire aimed single shots. Whilst not ideal for urban close combat because of its length, its 20-inch barrel did offer greater accuracy and range than the shorter CAR15 carbine.