Delta at Mog
25 years ago, American special operations forces fought a brutal 17-hour battle in the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. Here, four Delta Force survivors of ‘Maalintii Rangers’ – the ‘Day of the Rangers’ – discuss their experience
Four Delta Force survivors of the ‘Day of the Rangers’ share their experiences
“OPERATION GOTHIC SERPENT CULMINATED IN WHAT HAS BEEN DESCRIBED AS THE ‘LONGEST FIREFIGHT INVOLVING AMERICAN TROOPS SINCE VIETNAM’”
3 October 1993 will forever be remembered as the date of the Battle of Mogadishu. Filmed as the Hollywood blockbuster Black Hawk
Down and based on Mark Bowden’s best-selling book of the same title, ‘Operation Gothic Serpent’ culminated in what has been described as the “longest firefight involving American troops since Vietnam”. A small force of US special operations forces, principally drawn from the Rangers and Delta Force, battled several thousand armed Somalis as they attempted to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades.
For Delta, the Mogadishu mission began months earlier, as they were warned of a possible upcoming operation to capture Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed. He had become a thorn in the side of the United Nations humanitarian operation in Somalia, ambushing UN peacekeepers and pilfering supplies intended for the civilian victims of the drought and civil war that had ravaged the East African nation.
Retired Sergeant First Class and now Dr. Norman Hooten (who provided the basis for
Eric Bana’s character in Black Hawk Down) remembers, “That mission grew from one or two teams. It went to Charlie 1 Troop of C-squadron, and it grew and grew until it was a whole squadron plus.”
Along with the C-squadron operators, Rangers from B-company of 3rd Battalion, 75th Rangers would provide the muscle to secure the target area, while Delta conducted the mission of capturing Aideed. They would be flown into
action by the 160th ‘Night stalkers’ in heavily modified Black Hawks and Little Birds. Together they would be known as Task Force Ranger.
The early missions were aimed at capturing Aideed himself. Retired Delta Staff Sergeant Michael Moser explains that Task Force Ranger had two principal templates to capture Aideed: “These two templates were; vehicular convoy intercept, and building assault. The intelligence apparatus that would trigger a stand up of the task force would include some information as to whether our HVTS [high-value targets] were likely to be in transit [vehicle intercept] or static [building assault].”
After intelligence showed that Aideed had gone into hiding, Task Force Ranger switched to a new target set – his Habr Gidr aides and lieutenants, in the hope of disrupting Aideed’s organisation and potentially leading them to the man himself. On the morning of 3 October, the task force received actionable intelligence that Abdi Hassan Awale and Omar Salad Elmi, two top advisers to Aideed, were meeting that day near the Olympic Hotel in downtown Mogadishu.
Captain Scott Miller, Delta’s ground force commander that day (currently Lieutenant General Miller in command of US forces in Afghanistan) noted, “3 October was a Sunday, which was traditionally a down day for the task force. The idea was a quick in, secure the target, then quick out.”
The plan was straightforward. The 160th would land Delta and the Rangers at the target site. Delta would conduct the capture while the Rangers manned blocking positions on surrounding streets. A Ranger ground convoy in trucks and Humvees would drive to the target site and evacuate the combined Delta and Ranger force along with their prisoners. Time on the ground was to be no longer than 30 minutes to negate any organised resistance by the Somalis.
At 3.42pm that Sunday afternoon, the first Little Bird touched down, depositing its Delta team into the street outside the target building. The tremendous amount of dust kicked up by the helicopters reduced visibility to a bare minimum. Hooten recalls, “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 (0.6-metre) fast-rope!”
Unusually, Hooten could hear gunfire as he and his team raced towards their objective: “As the bird lifted off you could already hear smallarms 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.”
Retired Delta Sergeant First Class Paul Leonard’s C-team were the first into the target building: “C-team entered the building first. The first room to the right, which only had curtain for door cover, and [fellow operator Sergeant First Class] Gary Keeney and I cleared the room and found the guy we were looking for that day, probably Salad. I threw him to the floor in the main room.”
Once the prisoners were secured, Delta gave the all clear and the Ranger ground convoy moved forward. As Delta loaded the prisoners onto the trucks, the amount of fire was
increasing. “We were taking a lot of fire already. Bullets were coming in the window. When we were going back down the stairs I said, ‘This is going to be a nightmare as people are shooting at us already,’” recalls Leonard.
The main convoy was preparing to depart when one of the orbiting helicopters, a Black Hawk with the radio callsign ‘Super 61’, was shot down over the city. Hooten says, “I was on the east side of the building and saw it start to spin, so I didn’t see the impact of the RPG, I saw the aircraft lose control and crash. We could not see the aircraft once it crashed because of all the rooftops. It was a little further away than we thought.”
Immediately, Hooten, Moser and the majority of the Delta element set off on foot towards the crash site. Leonard and Keeney were assigned to guard the prisoners on the ground convoy. At the crash site, Sergeant First Class Jim Smith, the Delta sniper team leader and one of four Delta snipers who had been on board the stricken helicopter, came to: “My main concern was that we were immediately receiving enemy fire. [Staff Sergeant] Dan [Busch] 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. I shot initially the two that Dan had engaged and then another four.” Moments later he himself was hit: “An assailant 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.”
As Smith and the other snipers held off the Somalis racing to the downed helicopter, Hooten and Moser fought their way towards the crash site. At one point they went a block too far, and as they corrected, “That’s when [Sergeant First Class] Earl [Fillmore] got hit, and that one burst of fire that hit Earl Fillmore actually hit Mike Moser in the arm as well. When Earl got hit we all returned fire immediately, and as we were returning fire Mike got hit through his right forearm.” The Delta and Ranger element were forced to strongpoint buildings to treat their wounded.
At the crash site, a Little Bird had courageously landed near the downed helicopter, and Smith carried the grievously wounded Busch towards it: “As the Little Bird landed, I ran out and got Dan and dragged him to the bird. Initially I dragged him twohanded, with me travelling backwards. But I was receiving fire so I had to shoot an assailant down the street, and then I dragged him with one hand and shot my rifle with the other hand.” Smith and Busch were loaded into the Little Bird and a frantic dash was made to save Busch’s life, but he sadly died soon after at the field hospital.
As the Little Bird lifted off from the crash site, the combat search and rescue (CSAR) helicopter arrived overhead, and its mixed Delta, Ranger and US Air Force team fast-roped
“I HAD TO SHOOT AN ASSAILANT DOWN THE STREET, AND THEN I DRAGGED HIM WITH ONE HAND AND SHOT MY RIFLE WITH THE OTHER HAND”
to the ground as the first Ranger squad, on foot from the target building, rounded the corner and began to establish defensive positions around Super 61.
Moments later, disaster struck once more, as Moser describes: “I heard something odd and looked skyward to see a Black Hawk fly over us at approximately 75-100 feet (23-30 metres) above ground level. The tail rotor had been damaged and the fin was dangling. The bird remained airborne and continued in the direction of the airport beyond my sight.”
Another Black Hawk, with the callsign Super 64, had been hit by an RPG, and it crashed southwest of the target building. With the
CSAR team already committed and Somalis surrounding the second crash site, a pair of Delta snipers overhead in another Black Hawk – Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randall Shughart – volunteered to be inserted. The two snipers bravely held off the Somalis for some 20 minutes, until Gordon was shot and killed.
Hooten remembers with sadness: “I remember when I was going towards the first crash site, I got this phantom call from Randy Shughart, and he was like, ‘Where you guys at?’ and I said, ‘We’re on our way to the crash site.’ [Shughart said] ‘How long you going to be before you get here?’ I said, ‘Hopefully five minutes.’ I didn’t know about the other crash site, we didn’t know that another bird had gone down.” Moments later, Shughart was shot and killed and the Somalis swarmed the helicopter, capturing a pilot, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Mike Durant, and mutilating the bodies of the aircrew and its Delta defenders.
The Super 61 crash site was finally secured as the Sun went down but continued to be under attack all night as the task force worked to free the body of Chief Warrant Officer Class 3 Cliff Wolcott, trapped in the wreckage. “We got what we could of the body out and at that point the Sun was coming up. I remember being in the aircraft and seeing the sky starting to turn – it added to the sense of urgency,” recalls Hooten.
With Wolcott recovered, the task force finally departed in a joint US and UN convoy including armoured vehicles. As the vehicles were fully loaded, some men were forced to endure the ‘Mogadishu Mile’, running out of the city until they were eventually picked up by Ranger Humvees. “I can distinctly remember being in a gunfight and then being in a friendly neighbourhood where everyone was cheering for us. It was like crossing a line – from running down the street shooting at every intersection and then linking up with 10th Mountain and into an area where all the Somalis are on the side of the road cheering – it was just surreal” remembers Hooten.
Task Force Ranger had suffered 16 killed – five from Delta, five from the 160th SOAR, and six from the Rangers – and an incredible 83 wounded. A sixth Delta operator would be tragically killed days later by a mortar strike at their airfield base.
“THE TWO SNIPERS BRAVELY HELD OFF THE SOMALIS FOR SOME 20 MINUTES UNTIL GORDON WAS SHOT AND KILLED”