In connection with the anniversary date - 18 years and 7 months - I wanted to talk about the remarkable events of 1993 that took place in the capital of the Somali Republic. Ranger Day was a resounding failure of the international peacekeeping operation in Somalia, hurting the prestige of the US Delta Special Operations Forces.
Despite the tactical success - the capture of the top officials of the "shadow cabinet" of General Aidid, that day the American contingent suffered significant losses in manpower and equipment, which ultimately led to the withdrawal of American troops from Somalia in the spring of 1994. The strategic victory went to the fighters of Mohammed Farah Aidid, who, feeling themselves victors, further tightened their policies.
Civil War
The weakening of financial and military support from the USSR in the late 1980s put the Somali Revolutionary Socialist Party and its leader, Muhammad Said Barre, in a very unenviable position - one on one against Islamic extremists and representatives of all clans of Somalia. Trying to save the country from chaos, Barre carried out several brutal operations against the rebels: the loudest was the aerial bombardment of the city of Hargeisa, during which up to 2 thousand inhabitants died. Alas, nothing could save the situation; by January 1991, Somalia was turning into an apocalyptic nightmare. All attempts to "sort out" the situation with UN forces and disarm the Somali militants were unsuccessful.
One of the key figures in the civil war was Muhammad Farah Aydid, the former chief of staff of the Somali army. Aidid formed a strong group of like-minded people around him and, having enlisted the support of Islamic radical movements, established control over some areas of the country. From the very beginning, he had a sharply negative attitude to the intervention of the UN forces in the conflict, declaring open war on the "blue helmets". After the death of 24 Pakistani peacekeepers in March 1993, a new UN resolution # 837 was adopted, according to which the peacekeeping command decided to carry out an operation to detain Aidid: the capture of one of the militant leaders and the defeat of his forces should have a sobering effect on the rest of the field commanders.
US aviation intervened in the conflict, using AS-130 Spektr fire support aircraft. In two weeks, UN troops with air support destroyed the headquarters and radio station of Aidid, seized weapons and military equipment. During the raids, a significant area previously controlled by Aidid was cleared of militants, but it was not possible to achieve full success. Aidid disappeared, a bloody partisan war broke out.
Rangers on the hunt
In August, the most interesting events of that history began - the Rangers task force arrived in Somalia, consisting of:
- platoon From the special squad "Delta"
- 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment
- 160th special aviation regiment "Night stalkers", equipped with helicopters UH-60 "Black Hawk Down" and ON-6 "Little Bird"
Also in the "Rangers" group were fighters of the special forces SEAL ("Navy seals") and the search and rescue crew of the 24th special squadron - a total of about 200 personnel. The task is to capture or eliminate General Aidid and his closest entourage.
Even before the arrival of the main Ranger forces, Operation Eye over Mogadishu began - reconnaissance helicopters circled continuously in the sky over the Somali capital, controlling the movement of vehicles.
Based on intelligence information from the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA), a CIA unit operating in Somalia, the rangers conducted several unsuccessful raids and ambushes. Each time, Aydid disappeared without a trace, and information about his whereabouts turned out to be outdated. This negatively affected the state of the special forces - without meeting anywhere serious resistance, they lost their vigilance. Unsuccessful crossings on the hot streets of Mogadishu exhausted the personnel, the soldiers did not understand the goals of the operation, they were irritated by the passivity of the leadership and the ban on opening fire.
Meanwhile, the situation was getting more complicated - on September 15, a light reconnaissance helicopter was shot down over Mogadishu by an RPG grenade. The first alarm call was ignored - the commander of the Rangers, General Garrison, considered it an accident and did not take into account the use of RPGs against air targets by the militants when planning subsequent operations.
On October 3, 1993, agents figured out the whereabouts of Omar Salad and Abdi Hasan Awal, prominent accomplices of General Aidid. Both field commanders were hiding in the Olympic Hotel, located in the heart of the Bakara market. The unkind place received the nickname "Black Sea" from the commandos.
The Rangers began to prepare to leave. After a while it turned out that the local agent got scared and could not drive up to the house he was looking for. Again, due to poor intelligence work, the Ranger units were one step away from attacking the wrong target.
The Somali agent drove his car through the Bakara area again. Above, from the US Navy Orion, it was closely watched by cameramen. This time, the African stopped exactly in front of the house where the leaders of the militants were and opened the hood, simulating a breakdown. He did everything as taught, only closed the hood of the car too quickly and drove away from an unsafe place - the operators did not have time to fix the coordinates of the house.
The agent was ordered to do it all over again. For the third time, he drove up to the house where the leaders of the militants were hiding and opened the hood (it’s strange how they didn’t shoot him). Now there should be no mistake - the agent pointed to a building one block north of the Olympic Hotel, in the same place where air reconnaissance spotted Salad's Land Cruiser in the morning.
This story speaks of the quality of the work of the American intelligence services in Somalia - they often had to rely on untrustworthy people and unverified information, and local "super agents" did not have any serious training.
Hawks over Mogadishu
A swarm of black helicopters soared over the surf of the Indian Ocean. The commandos of the "Delta" group flew on 4 light MH-6s - "little birds" could safely land in the narrow quarters of the city and the roofs of houses. A group of rangers in 4 Black Hawks was to drop with "fast ropes" at the corners of the block and form a security perimeter.
The paratroopers were covered by 4 AH-6 attack helicopters with machine guns and NURSs on board. Another Black Hawk Down with a search and rescue team patrolled in the air over the Bakar market. The situation in the area was monitored by 3 Kiowa reconnaissance helicopters and a P-3 Orion loitering high in the blue sky.
General Garrison's proposal to allocate AS-130 Spektr fire support aircraft with 105-mm howitzers and 40-mm automatic cannons was ignored - according to the Pentagon, the use of such powerful weapons does not correspond to the status of a “local operation” and could lead to an escalation of the conflict … Accordingly, requests to reinforce the Rangers with heavy armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles were rejected. Anticipating unkindness, the general nevertheless ordered the equipping of helicopters with unguided rockets. In order to somehow protect the "Black Hawks" from fire from the ground, the technicians spread body armor on the floor of the landing cockpit and the cockpit.
After the landing, the helicopters were supposed to patrol in the air, covering the special forces with fire. To do this, the crew of the Black Hawks, in addition to two regular airborne gunners, included 2 Delta snipers.
As part of the ground convoy, 9 armored Hummers and 3 five-ton M939 trucks were moving. During the breakthrough to the target, it turned out that the trucks that did not have constructive protection were shot even from Kalashnikov assault rifles. The better-protected Hummers, however, were unable to ram barricades and were often helpless in the narrow streets of Mogadishu.
The commandos left on the basis of dry rations, bayonets for rifles, night vision devices, everything superfluous for a short, as expected, daytime raid. The subsequent events of October 3 turned into a continuous battle that claimed the lives of many American soldiers.
Fighters of the "Delta" group without loss landed on the roof of the militants' headquarters, rushed inside, killed a few guards and captured 24 people. The rangers were less fortunate - already upon disembarking one of them, 18-year-old Tod Blackburn, fell off the rope and was seriously injured. Militants and crowds of local residents, indistinguishable from each other, began to quickly gather to the place of operation. The roar of firing increased, and grenade launchers were used. From time to time, Minigans fired from somewhere from above - when a six-barreled machine gun fires, individual shots merge into a single roar, as if during the operation of a turbine. The fire from the helicopters kept the militants at a distance.
Despite heavy shelling, the convoy was able to break through to the captured building in time. Three vehicles had to be allocated for the urgent evacuation of the wounded Private Blackburn, two more ("Hammer" and M939) were destroyed from the RPG-7.
Five minutes later, an event occurred that changed the entire course of the operation - a Black Hawk Down (call sign Super 6-1) was shot down from a grenade launcher. The explosion damaged the tail transmission and the car, spinning furiously, crashed into a dusty alley. This was not just a helicopter crash. It was a blow to the invulnerability of the American military. Black Hawks were their trump cards. Crowds of Somalis had already fled to the crash site of the "turntable" - the Americans were well aware that angry residents would tear the pilots to shreds. Spetsnaz, having loaded the prisoners into trucks, rushed to the fallen Black Hawk Down.
A couple of minutes later, an AN-6 landed in an alley near the downed helicopter - the crew of the Little Bird managed to pull out two wounded from under the smoking debris. Under intense fire, the helicopter took off, carrying the rescued soldiers on board. The dead pilots were left lying in the downed Ebon Hawk.
Soon the search and rescue "Black Hawk" (more precisely, its modification HH-60 "Pave Hawk") delivered 15 special forces and medical personnel to the crash site - having shredded the wreckage with special equipment, they took out two still living airborne gunners. At the time of loading the wounded, the rescue helicopter received an RPG-7 grenade on board. Somehow taking off, he barely reached 3 miles to the nearest point controlled by the American military.
Black hawks fall like plums
As soon as the ground convoy moved through the rubble in the streets, taking prisoners to the American base, a rocket-propelled grenade caught the tail rotor of another Black Hawk (callsign "Super 6-4"). The pilots, alternately turning off the right and left engines, tried to stabilize the flight. The helicopter, prowling in wild zigzags, moved towards the base, but, alas, did not hold out - the tail transmission was completely unbalanced: the rotation was so fast that, falling from a height of 20 meters, the helicopter managed to make 10-15 revolutions before hitting the ground. The Black Hawk Down crashed a couple of kilometers from the Bakar market.
By this time, half of the soldiers from the special forces unit that remained in the city had been killed and wounded, the only search and rescue group was busy evacuating the Super 6-1 crew. The helicopter fell at a distance from the main forces and there was nowhere to wait for an ambulance.
Suddenly, two snipers from the crew of the Super 6-2 helicopter - Sergeants of the Delta Group, Randall Schuhart and Gary Gordon, decided to land at the crash site to protect the surviving members of the Ebon Hawk crew. "Super 6-2" promised to stay in the air and cover them with fire from his "Minigans", but as soon as the snipers were on the ground, a grenade flew into the cockpit of the "Super 6-2" - the helicopter barely flew to the area of the port of Mogadishu, where it collapsed, becoming the fourth incapacitated Ebon Hawk of the day. By the way, this helicopter was lucky - there was no enemy in the area of its emergency landing, so the crew was quickly evacuated.
Shewhart and Gordon were left alone in the middle of an angry sea of militants. Under the wreckage of a downed helicopter, they found a living pilot with broken legs. In the operations center at the American base, the tragedy was watched - a picture was broadcast in real time from a tracking helicopter soaring high in the sky. A new convoy of 22 Humvees was urgently formed, but there was an acute shortage of personnel - even staff workers had to be sent to Mogadishu. Alas, the convoy was unable to break through to the crash site of the second Black Hawk Down, stumbling upon impassable barricades and fierce Somali fire. After shooting 60,000 rounds of ammunition, the soldiers returned to base. Shewhart and Gordon fought off the Somalis for a while, until they were swept away by the crowd. A tracking helicopter reported: "The crash site was captured by the locals."
With the onset of darkness, it became clear that the Americans were seriously involved - there was no way to evacuate the 99 people remaining in the city (including the wounded). The soldiers barricaded themselves in several buildings, breaking through to the base without the cover of heavy armored vehicles was suicide. The onslaught of the Somalis continued unabated. At 8 pm "Black Hawk Down" (call sign - "Super 6-6") dropped the besieged supplies of water, ammunition and medicines, but he himself, having received 50 holes, barely limped to the base.
The American command was forced to turn to the UN peacekeeping force for help. At night, a rescue convoy of 4 Pakistani tanks and 24 armored personnel carriers of Malaysian peacekeepers moved in the direction of Mogadishu. All night long, over the place where the Americans were hiding, fire support helicopters circled - during 6 combat missions "Little Birds" shot 80,000 cartridges and fired about a hundred unguided rockets. The effectiveness of the AN-6 sorties remained low - light helicopters without a specialized sighting system could not effectively hit point targets in pitch darkness, firing at squares.
The rescue convoy reached the besieged special forces only at 5 am, on the way, examining the crash site of the Super 6-4, but did not find any survivors or bodies of the dead there - only charred debris and heaps of spent cartridges. There was not enough space for everyone in the armored vehicles - some of the soldiers had to flee, hiding behind the sides of the armored personnel carriers. Thousands of Somalis watched the fleeing Yankees from the alleys of the dilapidated city. This was their day. This was their victory.
Outcomes
In total, the US military lost 18 people killed; 74 were seriously injured. Remembering their losses, the Americans somehow forget to honor the memory of those who saved their lives - 1 Malaysian tanker from the rescue convoy was killed, 2 more Pakistani peacekeepers were injured. One American pilot of the Black Hawk Down, Michael Durant, was captured, from where he was released 11 days later in exchange for two captured Somalis. The exact losses of the Somalis are unknown, although General Aidid gave the following figures - 315 people were killed, 800 were wounded.
In general, the massacre in Mogadishu is an unremarkable battle, which became famous only thanks to the gorgeous movie "The Fall of the Black Hawk Down". Such operations, with heavy losses and worthless results, are a regular event in military history. The main reason for failure is disgusting planning without considering existing realities and with false intelligence. The American command was well aware that the special forces would have to face the many times outnumbering enemy forces, but did not allocate heavy weapons and ground attack aircraft to cover them. The Americans went to Mogadishu as if on an excursion, forgetting that General Aidid was a graduate of the Soviet military academy, and among his closest circle were experienced militants from the Middle East and Afghanistan who had many years of experience in guerrilla warfare.
From this whole story, 4 points can be noted for the future:
Firstly, there is no more reliable means of covering soldiers than heavy armored vehicles, at the same time, tanks on the streets of the city without high-quality infantry cover turn into easy targets (which was proved by the storming of Grozny-95).
Secondly, fire support from helicopters that do not have structural armor is a risky undertaking, which has been known since the days of Vietnam.
Thirdly, light maneuverable helicopters can be very useful in assault in urban areas. Flying through the narrow labyrinths of streets and sitting down on any "patch", small "turntables" can provide invaluable assistance when quickly landing on the object or evacuating the wounded.
And, perhaps, the last important conclusion - as a result of such shameful operations, responsible persons should be amicably sent to the tribunal. Having commanded a barge in Kolyma, the fathers-commanders may learn to think about things when planning operations that they would not like to remember.
Graphic material - stills from the movie "The Fall of the Black Hawk Down"
The official name of the military "Hammer" - HMMWV
