The Final Mission of Extortion 17

by Ed Darack

  “The mountain was very steep, meaning that the rotor blades would be really close to the rock as we backed up to the ledge,” Andy remembered, noting the 27-degree angle from the aft landing gear to the tip of the aft rotors. “So anything steeper than that we can’t do.” The slope appeared to be just slightly less than 27 degrees. Dave and Andy knew it would be tight, and they trusted their crew to keep their eyes on everything—rotors, mountain, landing gear, ramp, and the rock ledge.

  The pilot brought the Chinook down at a careful, even rate, with one of the crew counting off each foot closer to the rock on their descent. “We descended so smoothly that it was like listening to a talking clock. Perfect cadence because the descent was so smooth,” Andy remembered of Dave’s flying. “That’s hard enough to do at sea level. We were over two miles high.” Dave slowed the descent rate as he maneuvered the landing gear to within a couple feet of the ledge. The crewmember then counted off inches, as the pilots could not see how close to the mountain face the rotor blades were spinning—just a few feet. Dave lowered the Chinook a few more inches, compressing the tires onto the ledge.

  Just as the rescuers prepared to depart the Chinook, the helicopter’s weight shifted the rock ledge, which suddenly dropped, causing the helicopter to pitch nose-high, rocking the rear rotor system into the mountain. Crack! Crack! Crack! Within a quarter-second, all three aft rotor blades—which spun at a fixed rate of 225 rpm—impacted the rock face, hacking three feet off one, six feet off another, and eight feet off the third. The torque effect of the impacts lurched the aircraft hard to the right, throwing the forward blades toward the rock face. The unbalanced aft rotor system vibrated so violently that the two aviators worried that the gyrations might rip the pylon off the fuselage. “We were in an absolutely unsurvivable situation and about to go down. This was our last flight,” Andy recalled. He said a quick prayer just as the forward blades were about to strike the mountain, which would have resulted in the loss of all lift and the Chinook rolling a thousand feet down the mountain in a fireball.

  Dave, however, remained calm and collected. Prior to descending onto the ledge, he and Andy had identified suitable escape routes, a technique taught at HAATS. Just before the forward rotors slammed into the mountain, Dave dropped the thrust to keep the Chinook’s rotor systems spinning at full speed and then forced the cyclic, vibrating like a paint shaker, forward and to his left, diving the Chinook into the identified escape route. He could not fly the Chinook for more than perhaps a half minute before it would rip itself into pieces. Andy assisted the pilot by steadying Dave’s cyclic control and mirroring his control inputs. Dave nosed the Chinook toward a tiny meadow surrounding a small pond at 12,000 feet, flying below Little Bear’s West Ridge. In the hold of the aircraft, crew and rescuers scrambled to buckle themselves into their seats.

  Nearing the meadow, the pilot pulled maximum thrust to cushion their descent just before contacting the ground. Boom! The aft landing gear smashed onto a rock, and the Chinook lurched and began to roll to the left. Dave, however, corrected the roll and flopped the Chinook down at a level attitude, then shut down the aircraft, completing a half-mile flight with a descent of 1,000 vertical feet in less than 30 seconds. Just enough power remained after the shut-down for Dave to hail an overflying airliner, which passed word to Dave and Andy’s command, similar to Bryan Nichols’s actions at LZ Honey Eater when he contacted the Big Apple Chinook. Jumping out, the pilots, crew, and passengers found that the Chinook had sunk into a boggy meadow next to the tiny lake. “I just stepped onto level ground. Was the easiest egress out of a helicopter I’d ever had,” Andy said.

  “The Mount Blanca rescue was a testament to the amazing piloting skills Dave possessed,” said Major General Edwards. “He took a situation that by all reason absolutely should have ended in catastrophe and turned it into one where everyone came home without a scratch.”

  As Dave, Bryan, Spencer, Pat, and Alex listened within Extortion 17’s dark confines to the Tangi Valley operation unfolding over their radios, all understood that despite their past experiences and skill levels, some situations involve unknowns. Such possibilities, however, never swayed their resolve to press ahead with their mission. Pilot Bryan Nichols’s determination was only strengthened by his memory of the Honey Eater downing.

  “Mama! Mama!” one of Dave Carter’s brothers yelled, scampering into the family’s home on the outskirts of Oshkosh in rural western Nebraska. “Dave’s gonna fly off the shed!” Dave’s mother, Elsie, ran to the back door to see her son flapping his arms atop the peak of an old wooden outbuilding that leaned slightly to one side. He wore wings he had built by hammering together scraps of weathered lumber he had found lying around the backyard. Before she could say a word, the determined 10-year-old leapt into the air, flailing his arms until he slammed into the ground.

  The moment was not his first concerted attempt to soar, or his last. Unscathed, young Dave stood up, ready for another try. Despite a stern warning against trying to fly with homemade wings, the future Chinook pilot, fascinated with flight since he’d learned to walk, continued his efforts. “ ‘If birds can do it, so can I,’ ” his mother recalled her son saying. “He tried over and over. We lived in Nebraska’s Sandhill Country, and the ground is sandy. It’s soft. And that’s why I never had to take him to the hospital with broken bones. He kept trying, sneaking around behind my back with those wooden wings.”

  Elsie Carter had given birth to David Rudolph Carter, the second of three boys, on July 12, 1964, at a hospital at Royal Air Force Base Mildenhall, in the eastern English county of Suffolk. The family had moved to the facility because his father, a U.S. Marine, was stationed there, but just a few years later, she would take on the full burden of raising Dave and his two brothers on her own as a single mother. Young Dave, inspired not only by birds and flight but by the vistas and wildlife of western Nebraska, grew to love hunting and fishing. By remarkable coincidence, Elsie later moved the family to Hays, Kansas, Bryan Nichols’s home town, just prior to Dave’s high school years. There he continued his love for the outdoors, where he bowhunted geese and deer for the first time. He also began drinking coffee, a habit he learned from his mother—that was the source of his nickname, “Twitchy.” In 1983, at the age of 19, Dave joined an Army Reserve unit in Salina, Kansas, about 100 miles east of Hays, not as a pilot but as a military police officer.

  Laura and Dave Carter, 1985. Credit 21

  Dave also attended Fort Hays State University, where he met his future wife, Laura, in 1985, the same year that he joined the Kansas Army National Guard, with his sights set on becoming a pilot. A full-time student, Dave traveled to his unit’s weekend drills, and within weeks of joining the Guard he applied to Fort Rucker. Five months after he and Laura married, Dave began flight school. “He graduated from Fort Rucker in 1988, and then we moved to Fort Collins and Dave joined the Colorado Army National Guard,” Laura said. At first, Dave flew AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters and the UH-1 Iroquois (nicknamed the “Huey”), and then he moved into the Chinook.

  Despite Dave’s lifelong love of flight and his proven talents as a pilot, becoming a full-time Guard pilot was challenging at first. Yet, as was true of Bryan’s wife, Laura’s close personal support played an important role in helping Dave to reach his dream of full-time aviation. After the two had settled in Fort Collins, Dave landed a day job and flew nights and on weekends at his Guard unit’s base, Buckley, on the outskirts of Denver. “He was so driven to become a full-time pilot that he’d do just about anything to get into a helicopter cockpit,” Laura recalled. Up at six in the morning for his civilian job, he would drive to Buckley to fly additional flight training periods to maintain his requisite minimum cockpit hours. Then he would return to Fort Collins around midnight, sleep a few hours before working his full-time job, and then, three or four days later, return to Buckley. “It was draining on him, but he was happy because he was flying!”

  Dave Carter at Fort Rucker, Alabama, during h
is helicopter flight training in 1987. Behind him is a Bell UH-1H Iroquois. Credit 22

  Laura gave birth to their first child, Kyle, in the early 1990s and to their daughter, Kaitlen, a few years later. “My dad used to fly onto one of the fields at my elementary school in Fort Collins so the kids could see a real-life helicopter,” Kyle recalled. Dave landed once in a Huey and once in a Cobra, but never in a Chinook due to its size. Dave shared his love of helicopters with his children, teaching them to identify individual aircraft models first by sight and then by sound. “He was definitely born to fly,” said Kaitlen.

  Dave Carter holding his son, Kyle, in the cockpit of an Army AH-1 Cobra gunship during an airshow in 1993. The AH-1 was one of a number of Army helicopters Dave would fly. Credit 23

  The Colorado Army National Guard soon placed the talented aviator in a full-time position, and he, Laura, and their children moved to Aurora, Colorado. Within a few years, he progressed to instructor pilot, excelling due to his patience and calm demeanor, traits that served him during his most demanding operational flights, such as those at Little Bear Peak and in the Tangi Valley. HAATS senior commanders sought out Dave to work at the base as an instructor, a role he enthusiastically filled. HAATS would be Dave’s favorite instruction venue, where he taught helicopter pilots—not only from the Army and other U.S. military services but also from many ally nations—the art of “high, hot, and heavy” flying. Despite language barriers, they all shared a love of rotary-wing aircraft.

  Compassion and care for others formed the foundation of Dave’s personality. Despite his busy schedule, he would frequently check on his mother, Elsie, who had moved to the Denver area. “He’d do odd chores for me—like hang a picture, fix a leaky faucet—and the whole time he’d talk about recent flights, especially about HAATS courses he instructed.” He also spent as much time with his wife and children as possible.

  “One thing that’s really important to know about my father is his faith,” said Kaitlen, noting that he started each day by reading the Bible. Crewman Andy Bellotti also recognized Dave’s faith as a central pillar of his personal and professional life.

  In August 2006, Dave deployed with the first Army National Guard brigade to Iraq, in a unit composed of 3,500 soldiers and 135 aircraft, to participate in OIF. “We were there until August 2007,” said CW5 Pat Gates, Chinook pilot and chief instructor pilot at HAATS. Dave deployed with Pat, Andy, Major Tom Renfroe, and other Colorado Army National Guard pilots and crew of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment, the “Mile High Hookers,” based out of Buckley Air Force Base. The unit flew their CH-47D Chinooks to Fort Hood and then shipped them to Kuwait after predeployment training. In Kuwait, they reassembled the Chinooks for final exercises before heading into Iraq in early September 2006. There they relieved the 7th Battalion, 101st Aviation Brigade, based out of Logistical Support Area (LSA) Anaconda. Located 43 miles north of Baghdad and 13 miles southeast of Balad, it was also called Balad Air Base by U.S. military personnel, but the newly arrived Chinook pilots simply called it Balad or, jokingly, “Mortaritaville” due to the frequent attacks on it, usually by insurgents firing 82mm mortars.

  Dave and the other Bravo Company pilots and crew faced danger throughout their time in Iraq, both while at “home” at Balad and during missions, all of which took place at night. “This was during the height of the surge, so we kept busy. We flew every night,” said Tom. Dave and his fellow Chinook aviators flew all types of missions throughout the entirety of their Iraq deployment, from hauling newly arrived troops to their destinations to carrying spare parts to ferrying mail. Dave’s unit also supported 111 combat operations. While some of the passengers the pilots and crew flew on these raids were from conventional units, most were SOF. Like Extortion Company, out of FOB Shank, Dave’s Chinook Company in Iraq supported missions planned and executed by JSOC, called OCF-I for Other Coalition Forces–Iraq. Dave and others of Bravo Company flew some of the most dangerous missions of OIF during one of the operationally busiest and most violent periods of the conflict.

  Army Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, commander of JSOC during Dave’s and Bravo Company’s time in Iraq, had built the global JSOC operations center at Balad Air Base. While technically a subordinate command to SOCOM, JSOC units based out of Balad acted as a third force type, above and beyond conventional forces and traditional SOCOM components, executing some of the most complex raids in military history. Calling the Balad JSOC command center the “Mouse Maze” or the “Giant Puzzle Palace” due to its myriad corridors and matrix of screens showing operations throughout Iraq, Afghanistan, and the world, Dave and the other pilots of Bravo Company frequently visited the facility to help plan missions. Because of the complex and dangerous nature of the operations, like that supported by Extortion 17, each usually required between 4 and 14 helicopters, often a mix of Chinooks and Black Hawks, for troop transport. Not only did Dave fly these missions; he also planned and led the aviation aspect of all those in which he participated. Despite the danger, complexity, and frequency of these operations, however, no Bravo Company pilot caused a single accident during the entire deployment, a testament to the experience levels of the National Guard pilots and the detail with which Dave and others planned their operations.

  While Dave and Bravo Company skirted accidents, they could not avoid enemy fire. “I’d say, on average, each pilot got shot at or hit four times over the course of the deployment,” Tom recalled. Dave personally took fire six times, including a direct hit on his craft on Valentine’s Day 2007, when a 14.7mm antiaircraft round lodged in his Chinook’s Helicopter Internal Cargo Handling System. According to CW5 Pat Gates, Dave remembered the incident as a line of flaming “softballs” speeding toward his helicopter, each softball being a tracer round, with four to five unseen rounds in between.

  “That night there were four or five different weapons being fired at Dave’s Chinook from multiple positions. But I could hear him over the radio, and he was just as calm as could be, even when they got hit. Just steady and calm,” recalled Pat. From these OIF flights, Pat suggested, Dave gleaned a sense of where and how an enemy might set an ambush, a vital sixth sense both for planning and flying operations in places such as the Tangi Valley.

  Despite the types of missions Dave and the others of Bravo Company flew, the pilot never mentioned any of the dangers he faced to his family. “I never knew that he flew special operations personnel,” Laura said, “and I never knew he got shot at or that one of the Chinooks he flew got hit by an antiaircraft round.” Never wanting to upset his family, Dave downplayed the danger of his work even years after missions. “He made everything he did over there sound like it was no big deal,” Laura added, “but that was just part of his calming personality.”

  “I was only 13 at the time of the Iraq deployment,” said Kaitlen, “so I just didn’t understand the risk involved in his job.” The two spoke frequently via Skype during Dave’s deployment, and when the subject of his work emerged in conversation, Dave would minimize the level of risk or just explain that he could not discuss a flight. As with his wife, Dave never disclosed to his daughter that he participated in SOF raids or took enemy fire.

  Kaitlen’s most salient memories of her father’s deployment to Iraq did not involve anything related to combat. Instead she recalled a father-daughter book club the two started, each reading Rick Warren’s devotional book The Purpose Driven Life. After each chapter, they would compare notes over Skype. “I didn’t know what he was going through. I had no idea how dangerous his job in Iraq was. But he was able to put it all away and be a terrific dad to Kyle and me,” his daughter said, adding that in addition to his status as one of the world’s best military rotary-wing aviators, “he was also one of the best dads in the history of fatherhood.”

  In July 2011, CW4 Dave Carter departed the United States to join Bryan, Buddy, Kirk, and the others of Extortion Company. Just prior to his deployment, Laura and Kaitlen traveled to Fort Hood to visit Dave. �
��Those days that we got to spend with Dave were almost too good to be true,” Laura recalled. “Everything was falling into place so perfectly…almost too perfectly. I remember thinking, ‘This is really nice. Something’s up; this is too perfect.’ ” Both she and Kaitlen felt differently about Afghanistan than they had about Dave’s deployment to Iraq, and that worried them. Dave had expressed excitement prior to his Iraq deployment, yet during this Fort Hood visit, both Laura and Kaitlen detected a scarcely perceptible change in his usually calm and confident tenor. Despite their concerns, the two looked forward to an important event the following year, Kaitlen’s high school graduation, for which Dave planned to take a leave of absence to attend.

  “I was so excited for him to be there for my graduation,” Kaitlen said, “and he was, too.”

  While Extortion Company, with its uniquely capable Chinooks, crew, and pilots, enabled the mission in the Tangi Valley, another prime component of the assault force remained unknown and invisible to virtually all but those involved in its work. It synergized not only the entire mission but also all its individual components by “force multiplying” combat power, prowess, and safety, notably the security of the Extortion Chinooks during their flights. These shadow warriors perform the modern American military’s most secretive and esoteric work: the collection of data, analysis of which yields vital understanding for those who plan and undertake all aspects of combat operations.

  During the planning of the raid, commanders needed to discover the who, what, where, when, and why of their target. What are his name and aliases? Where is he from? What motivates him? Who commands him, and from where? Who will accompany him to the meeting in the target complex the Ranger-led assault force approached on the night of August 5–6? Where, exactly, in the Tangi Valley would he and his force locate themselves, and for how long? What kind of resistance, using what weapons, might the strike team face? What threats might Extortion 16 and 17 face as they approached the LZ?