Black Hawk Helicopter - Night Stalker Documentary / WHD

[Music] third of October 1993 afternoon a group of blackhawk helicopters fly a team of Army Rangers into a busy market area in downtown Mobile Edition their mission to capture two lieutenants of the Somali warlord Mohamed Aidid but the mission suddenly goes wrong very well we've got five aircraft down and these are flown by our best pilots we are struggling as a crew to get that aircraft on its wheels how did I do that I have no idea I caught a glimpse them just as they were crashing a huge dust ball I had looked from a distance that nobody could survive that type of accident 18 American soldiers are killed 76 of wounded hundreds of Somalis are dead the events of that day have since become legend you find out that some of your best friends in fact didn't make it out and it was it was pretty devastating using rare archive film and reenactments battle stations flies with one of the most sophisticated helicopters in the US Army the black hole Vietnam the combat helicopter comes of age it was here that the world famous American Huey changed the form of modern wolf thousands of Furies provided a platform from which massive fire Vietnam was the first air mobile at that time the Huey was a remarkable helicopter and the army seized upon it in Vietnam to provide that air mobility role but the Huey was designed basically as an aeromedical evacuation machine and it just didn't have all the capabilities that the army found was necessary in Vietnam by 1972 plans for future conflicts turned away from the jungles of Southeast Asia and looked towards Cold War strategies for the planes of Europe so in January the US army issued a tender for a new multi-role frontline helicopter with a crew of four the next generation of helicopters had to be capable of lifting 11 men were equivalent weight of cargo up to 4,000 feet with a cruising speed of 200 miles per a long time ago a great man has the idea for something like a helicopter his name was Leonardo Divinci Igor Sikorsky had devoted his genius since the first world war to the development of the helicopter in 1939 he had designed the world's first working helicopter and it since produced over five thousand for military use but in the 1960s Sikorsky was devastated when his company lost the vital Huey contract to the Bell company business was getting less and worse after the Korean War conflict subsided our deliveries began to shrink dramatically to the point when in 1977 we did not deliver a single helicopter to the US government we could not miss out on army business because the army represented the the greatest biggest users for helicopters in August 1972 the boeing vertol and sikorsky companies were selected to produce prototypes for the new army helicopter it was a matter of life and death for Sikorsky from a business point of view we simply have to be one of the winners so what the company did is set up two design teams I was fortunate to head one and another wonderful designer headed the other and then the same day we presented top management with what our concepts would be for the Black Hawk helicopter the first prototype was flown in October 1974 six weeks ahead of schedule the army had specified crashworthiness as a key requirement and with this the helicopter was able to carry heavier loads than anticipated by June 1976 testing was complete with flights logged hot and high from desert to arctic conditions but late at night on August the 9th 1976 disaster struck ray Leone received a call about a crash at Fort Campbell it was a call he would never forget I remember being awoken about one o'clock in the morning saying that one of our prototypes had crashed and of course to me it was like receiving a call from a local hospital about your son or daughter involved an automobile crash they wouldn't tell you any details just you better get here quickly and we got there August 10th in the morning and we got out to the woods where the aircraft was you couldn't really even see the helicopter until you were fast asleep on it that's how dense the woods were and we learned what had happened was that there was a full crew 14 army young people in our prototype flying at night the skin of the rotor blade had come loose and caused violent vibration the pilot had no choice but to crash-land immediately but he did a remarkable piloting job he came straight down chopping trees all the way down and cut down about 40 trees with the rotor blades big trees and landed kind of hard but he landed okay turned out the only injury was when one of the occupants took the squad leader jumped out of the helicopter he ran smack in with a stump of a tree that the rotor had cut down and he got a little bruise well the very next day on August 11 the army team came in and put on four new main rotor blades put on a new tail rotor cranked up the engines and my god and it took off like the Phoenix and you couldn't imagine the relief that we had knowing there were minimal injuries to the army crew and the aircraft was still flyable the near disaster was a stroke of luck for the sikorsky design team sikorsky was now able to offer conclusive proof the new helicopters ability to survive a crash finally in December 1976 Sikorsky was declared the winner and awarded the much-needed helicopter contract the American military now had the world's most advanced wind turbine and battlefield helicopter a unique flexible design packed with electronic warfare systems was intended for Air Assault Word Air Cavalry and medevac missions it will go down in history as the black hawk and become renowned for its role in special operations as the Night Stalker 1978 the Black Hawk frontline helicopter flies in service for the first time at this cutting edge technology is still untested in the field of battle the high-speed Black Hawk has an exhilarating low-level flying capability the first time you get into an aircraft like that it's a feeling of I've just grabbed hold of a rocket ship I mean really it because it's such a difference in the in the complex cockpit and the capabilities of the aircraft it's far beyond anything you've experienced before it's fun to fly it'll do anything it'll give you every bit of the performance that it's supposed to in just a little bit more it's big it's roomy it's versatile it's got a great sound the power from the rotor system the massiveness of the airframe and just power and strength there was much more powerful in [Music] the sophisticated Blackhawk was packed with the latest avionics weapon systems in addition the helicopter was fitted with two machine guns operated by the crew chiefs its outstanding versatility required new skills of flying and crew coordination there are two sets of controls and for all intents and purposes they're exact duplicates of each other there is no pilot and command station you could be piloting command from either the left seat or the right seat it really doesn't matter when it comes to aircraft control it is whoever is on the controls crew coordination is probably one of the most important aspects that we in the regiment and as pilots need to develop and maintain you have to have a lot of trust and confidence in respect for each position no one position on the aircraft is more important than the other when I say left or come right or come up 50 feet or come down five feet they really have to do that there will never be a landing where the crew chiefs not out the window looking down saying 20 feet 15 feet 10 feet two feet tails on the ground we clear down that's what you would hear during a typical approach [Music] by 1981 the army had found a perfect match for the advanced capabilities of the blackhawk the Special Forces the hundred and sixtieth Special Operations Aviation Regiment became the night stalkers capable of striking undetected by undertaking covert missions anywhere in the world specialist crews were trained in night vision navigation and advanced flying techniques using night-vision goggles and forward-looking infrared we're basically a pioneer behind the night vision systems back in the late 70s and early 80s very very stressful it's ten full trying to navigate land shoot all those things compounded at night you've got shades of green and those shades of green are telling you different things about the terrain the ground the water your speed your height closure rates angles and you have to fly quite a few hours to be able to read your screens or your MDGs night vision goggles and get actual feel for how they work and what you are looking at and how that actually relates to what it is in the ground in the daytime you're using a combination of what you can see through the night vision goggles and then underneath the night vision goggles to whatever's around you in the cockpit cos you need both pieces of the puzzle if you will didn't able to control the aircraft one of the most dangerous things that crew chief could do especially in Special Operations is the night flying confined space trying to get into a space I can barely fit a helicopter it's difficult but once you've developed those skills it's the only way to fly at night you have to have them Blackhawks and night-vision goggles hit the army pretty much at the same time and there's no way that we could do the missions that we do now and since then without night-vision goggles in 1983 the Blackhawks faced their baptism of fire in October the u.s. invaded the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada believing that Soviet and Cuban advisors were intent on building a military base operation urgent fury had begun America had vivid memories of being on the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis some 20 years earlier I had just gotten to the unit I was only there for about a month and I was brand new to the Blackhawk I only had about 15 hours total in the aircraft it was all very new at Harley didn't know anyone in the unit so I was very very uncomfortable going into this and we took off at night I can't remember how many aircraft we had I want to say about eight and headed for Grenada which was about an hour and 20 minutes away in an aircraft that has two hours and 20 minutes of fuel and flew over the water at night no horizon and hazy we had been up for two days straight getting there very nerve-wracking and we got we got to Grenada just about maybe a half hour after they're probably right around sunrise and then about four o'clock in the afternoon we flew our first mission due to delay is delivering their night vision equipment Blackhawk crews had to operate in broad daylight flying troops into battle and evacuating civilian hostages from the revolutionary forces I had one of the few aircraft that had a Vietnam veteran pilot on board and I was very happy to be with him and I remember it at one point I took my fingers and I put them under my legs because I didn't want to look down and see if they were shaking and I thought well that's probably a good thing to do because you need to take the controls if he gets hit we did that assault and three more assault bringing people in by the end of the operation the American forces had captured more than 600 Cubans the overall failure of poor intelligence had made the operation costly in terms of personnel and equipment over the three-day campaign the blackhawks had not been used to their full potential flying by day rather than taking advantage of their specialized night flying techniques had made special operations chaotic urgent fury had lived up to its name a lot of the main lessons that we learned in Grenada was yes we absolutely have to be able to operate these aircraft at night much more effectively we have to modify these aircraft the cockpit lighting and we have to really embrace the whole idea of night vision God the clandestine eyes of the night stalkers were soon to be tested halfway around the world on the battlefields of Arabia Desert Storm on August the 2nd 1990 Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein occupies neighboring oil-rich Kuwait to his surprise the West react swiftly and President Bush forms a coalition determined to ask the Iraqi forces half a million American and coalition forces assembled in the desert under the command of general Norman Schwarzkopf On January the 17th 1991 Operation Desert Storm the mission to liberate Kuwait began with a huge aerial bombardment against Iraqi military targets [Music] Navy Seahawks and Blackhawks were on the scene to rescue any pilots shot down during the bombing campaign most people think about the desert as being a place that's very hot and it was in the summer but in the winter at night it got very cold in fact there was one particular mission where we flew through a sandstorm then flew through a snowstorm and then when we returned to the airfield where our forward support base was it was fogged in to the point where is about a quarter mile visibility the Black Hawk liked the desert the desert is is a hard environment to learn first off it's unforgiving our mission profiles kept us relatively close to the ground and you will plow into a sand dune that you swear you were 50 foot or 100 foot about but somehow it jumped out in a [ __ ] of the time it took to to learn how to fly over the desert varied from a few hours to sometimes months when the Iraqis began to fire missiles against coalition military sites and Israel several Blackhawks were sent on hunt and Destroy missions to track down the missiles and their mobile launchers one remarkable mission took place in late February 1991 when Jim Crisafulli is regiment of night stalkers had infiltrated a team of Special Forces deep into Iran but things went awry and one of the teams that our regiment had put in had gotten compromised a young Iraqi girl had discovered one of the teams and they had come under fire now they needed to be extracted every second count we're talking about three men surrounded by 200 miles either way of an unfriendly country and bad guys we ran to the aircraft and we had him spun up and as we moved the airplane over to make room for a formation launch we looked over and the second aircraft was on fire that's not good we were we were obviously concerned we knew they were gonna scrap the mission because a daylight mission single ship 200 miles into Iraq was zero survivability or certainly very very low Randy and I were clamoring we said we'll just go without him we'll just go without the authorization we waited they said go and we went and that airplane took off I got a bad at help when we cross the border we didn't hear around fire you note here with 100 45 decibels anyway so we dropped it down to 20 feet and then 15 feet and then we moved it down to 10 feet the f16 providing air support relayed an urgent message the Special Forces were under heavy fire and running out of ammunition if Crisafulli wasn't there in 10 minutes there'd be no point showing up that's bad you look at the map there's got to be a shorter way and like everything else the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and that's what we did we crossed over at least a brigade sized Iraqi unit and all we saw was flashes and pieces of equipment and heads turning up we crossed him at 15 and 20 feet people's by the time they turned around to see what was going on we were gone crossed over one dune and you could you could smell the dust and the heat in the air and the engines we were running hot and everybody was was focused and calling out perceived bad guys turn left turn right and at about ten feet I saw small dune we cruised directly over the dude and literally out of the blue there was a donkey directly in front of me and he seemed huge and I bumped the collective back up and I went straight over his head now a donkey even the tallest donkey is probably only five maybe six feet and we damn near slammed directly into him so we are pretty well [Music] as we're heading into the target area we were thin 5 kilometers we knew there was a large set of power lines so as I turned radiuses we're gonna go under we're gonna go under and he repeated he said we're going under and everybody goes okay we're going underneath and as we got closer and closer we wound up seeing a smaller set of power lines that was directly under the major set of power lines I said and I can't go under I can't go under going over miraculously Crisafulli escaped hitting the power lines suddenly the crew chief spotted the team below I finally see him and here's the bravest man in the world Jeff Sims is standing on the berm on the edge of a ditch and he's waving a vs 17 pound in the middle of a firefight surrounded by bad guys there were bodies all around it people idiot engaged and eliminated you don't get that correct by accident radios wanted to know what was going on the minis kept producing the noise buying about 4,000 a minute times - I saw the probably the best way for us to position the airplane was to slant it back down around about Southwest and that would place us in between most of the Iraqi ground fire and Jeff Crisafulli thought he was there to pick up six operators but there were only three I'm thinking of God we left three on the ground where are they where are they it's just they're not here we're there's only three let's go and everybody seemed to scream in unison let's go the airplane - still taking hits flight controls took hits rotor blades were taking pants we took off under cover of the dustcloud the Special Forces made good their escape for their heroic actions Jim Crisafulli and co-pilot Randy Stevens were decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross Jeff Sims leader of the Special Forces team was awarded the Silver Star for several weeks the allies kept up the aerial bombardment on Iraq Saddam's war machine was battered but not broken Schwarzkopf now prepared for a major ground assault to finish the job off at 4:00 a.m. on February the 24th 1991 the ground war was launched it was led by the largest helicopter assault in history 300 helicopters spearheaded by Blackhawks lifted 5,000 airborne troops a hundred and ten miles deep into a rocky territory the operation was a stunning success thousands of Iraqi soldiers were taken prisoner within a hundred hours the ground war in Iraq was over the Blackhawk operation with a hundred and first Airborne had proved the value of a rapid heliborne assault and not a single American had lost his life for two years the Black Hawk helicopter and its crews enjoyed the accolades of total success from the Gulf War but all that was about to change the night stalkers next wish would become a nightmare that would haunt America to this day Mogadishu Mogadishu Somalia 1993 it began as a great humanitarian mission and became the costliest battle for US troops since Vietnam Somalia had suffered from years of terror by rebel warlords and now the beleaguered country was in the grip of a major family America had joined a UN peacekeeping force of 38,000 troops in June 1993 local warlord Mohamed Aidid forces killed 24 UN peacekeeping troops whilst they were patrolling the streets of Mogadishu America responded with a series of snatch-and-grab raids and Aidid strongholds led by Blackhawk night stalkers with US Special Forces [Music] October the 3rd 1993 a further mission is planned to capture I deeds top to lieutenants the American joint operational command use live TV and radio equipment from observational helicopters to control the operation and to produce publicity pictures for the world's press so it is decided to go for a daylight assault on the target house Operation Irene is planned to take less than one hour but the mission is fatally flawed without a doubt we all prefer to go at night all the things that we had give us a tactical advantage at night in the daytime it becomes a fair fight nobody wants a fair fight in a military operation you want as much advantage as you can possibly put into the mix and by going at night that gives us that advantage we wanted to do every single mission that we could at night they were available during the day we went after him during the day but we would prefer to hit every target at night for the Black Hawk crews this mission on the target house is filled with danger this one was as hazardous as any we had flown the dust conditions were as bad as they had been anywhere else it was in a place called the Black Sea which is where most of the enemy was located there were no landing zones an alleyway in a city like Mogadishu is not big enough and we knew that we couldn't plan which doesn't limit us in putting people on the ground because we're flexible we can do what's called a fast rope insertion but it limits us in how we get them out so we knew that there was additional risk on this mission and I think everyone sensed that as we walked out to the aircraft but we still felt that it was an acceptable risk when we took it on on the afternoon of October the 3rd 8 Blackhawks lead an air Armada of 19 aircrafts 12 vehicles and a hundred and 60 Delta and Ranger forces into the heart of Mogadishu the trail helicopter is known as super 6 to the mission of my crew we carried that we were in super 6 - we carried Delta operators onboard who would actually go into the building to capture the people they were going after and secure them to bring them back to the base once we dropped off our operators my responsibility on my gun was to take out any type of threat to the ground forces - either to the Rangers or to the Delta lot Delta operators with the miniguns bleeding for Blackhawks and carrying a range of blocking force to prevent Somali reinforcements from arriving is Mike Durant in super 6 for Mike elected to bring us to a hover thinking it would just be a few seconds I would tell you it probably was maybe 30 seconds maybe a little bit longer it felt like an hour you know we're just hovering in broad daylight over the city yes we're blowing up a tremendous amount of dust we're kind of making a smokescreen for ourselves it was a very very very uncomfortable very very vulnerable feeling we were very successful in implementing putting our operators where they needed to be at the target so they could perform their mission and in fact their mission went well they captured and detained everyone that they needed - that was in that building and it was until after that when he went to get out of the facility and that we started running into problems we got everybody in where they needed to go departed the area went north of the city and for all intents and purposes we were done because we couldn't go back in to do an extraction we knew we were just a contingency force at that point when the worst of all contingencies happen about 40 minutes into the mission cliff Wolcott and Donovan Briley's aircraft was shot down by what we think was a rocket-propelled grenade the first thing the nation I had that there was a problem was when super 61 call that they had been hit and we're going down I caught a glimpse I'm just as they were crashing huge dust ball I had looked from a distance that nobody could survive that type of accident and I heard that we have a Black Hawk Down we have a Black Hawk Down and they were start saying it's crashed I just remembered tensing up in the aircraft making well weather is where there's one RPG there's gonna be another one and I really thought the jig is up now they're gonna get us and I just remember thinking guy she's guys at hurry up and get out of the store super 6-1 is shot down by small arms fire from the Somalis killing both pilots a little bird crew makes an incredible landing at the crash site and drags out the two survivors taking them to the u.s. hospital by now American special forces vehicles on the ground are being shot up on all sides by the local somali forces Paul Shannon witnessed the Black Hawk Down and now his aircraft under the command of Michael FINA comes under fire I was hit both hands on the minigun skinny for targets and all sudden my hand left hand hit my chest and I rolled off the seat in the back of the aircraft Gary Gordon went to his little backpaki head and whipped out an IV and I'll never forget it I told him I was okay that you know I didn't eating IV it was just a you know hopefully a minor wound it wasn't bleeding real bad I want to make sure that he had ample time to do even shoot shoot out the back and not worry about me Brad hawlings took my spot on the gun he was one of the operators in the back and he began to shoot the minigun he gave me his rifle to shoot out the back and that's where I took up a position now I had a rifle in my hand and I'm sitting kind of vulnerable in the back it's not a lot of time to reflect and saw a lot of things coming at us and knew it was probably inevitable that if we stayed you know in the flight pattern were party bound to eventually get hit the Somalis had become experts with the RPG launchers and now victim number two is in their sights Mike Durant and his crew are busy providing fire support to the Rangers trapped below join the orbit with super 16 just a few minutes maybe two or three that he was in the air and all of a sudden he called and he said lo six boards him six fours here we only made it around the pattern probably four or five times and we were hit by what we think was a rocket-propelled grenade also right in the tail I can't remember exactly we were a couple of exchanges back and forth he said I'm heading for the airfield I thought in my head that this is a flyable machine everything looks okay inside it's made to take this kind of punishment if I land here I'll have to crash it intentionally because there are no landing zones so I'm gonna have to just crash it in an alleyway just for the sake of getting it on the ground we were flying for about five seconds when the tail completely disintegrated and about three feet of the vertical fin way along with it all of a sudden then he called six boards going down Mike is not an easily rattled person the tone of his voice I felt like I had been electrocuted I'm hearing that and I thought this he's in bad shape he's either got flight controls are not responding now or he's in freefall the only thing I could see was brown earth and blue sky everything else was a complete blur once I brought that nose up because we were pitching forward we ended up in a flat spin at 70 feet the only thing going through my mind at that point is stay upright get the aircraft on the wheels it's designed to absorb impact but only on the wheels if you land on its side or if you land upside down all those safety features are totally worthless so we are struggling as a crew to get that aircraft on its wheels how did I do that I have no idea Sunday October the 3rd 1993 Special Forces helicopters real a shocking live pictures from the war-torn streets of Mogadishu America's worst nightmare is unfolding a hundred and sixty Delta and Ranger forces are fighting for their lives pinned down by hundreds of armed Somalis in the heart of the city like hawks super six one had been shot down super six four had taken a hit and along with his copilot Rey Frank pilot Mike Durham was struggling to control the aircraft as soon as the tail came off I made a radio call stating that we had lost the tail rotor and we were going in hard then I remember looking over at Ray saying something about we better pull the engines off he knew exactly what he was already doing it but the truth of the matter is the centrifugal force was so severe that he could not keep his arms up to shut those engines off it actually drove his arms down so we ended up with one engine at about half power and one at about idle power he called again he said six ports going in hard and just before he just screamed Gray's name I really thought that I don't remember actually hitting the ground but we hit very hard hard enough that even with all the safety features on the Blackhawk and as rugged as it is my femur or my thigh bone still snapped and two on the seat when we hit the ground amidst the wreckage mike durant and ray franks lie unconscious crew chiefs Tommy field and Bill Cleveland are also severely injured they will not last long without help nobody was there to help them they were basically on their own fortunately the bad guys weren't there yet there was very few around that area mic goofy no in super 6 - flies over the site to drop into Delta Force snipers our back Cedars Randy Shughart Gary Gordon - Medal of Honor winners across the permission to go in we initially tried to infill Randy and Gary as close as we could to super 6 board a mic and raise aircraft but due to the heavy debris that was littered on the ground there it flew up in the rotor system and you picked a little more suitable spot they're still cluttered with debris and they held about a four to five foot hover and I tapped Randy and Gary on the shoulder and Gary gave me a thumbs up and a little smile and he jumped out we collectively defended the crash site for about 20 or 30 minutes before everyone else was killed and we were overrun at Mike Durant's crash site both Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon are killed in a ferocious firefight with Somali soldiers the best my knowledge what happened to Gary and Randy as they were just overwhelmed with just an abundant force that just overtook him they took out as many as they could and we're down on ammo some of the crew members had already been killed Mike [ __ ] was on one side aircraft with one of the operators you know other operator was on the other side of the aircraft and he was hit they heard he was hit and they redistributed ammunition and amongst the people that were alive and they were just overtaken and everybody was killed except for Mike Durant whole Shannon now sat in the back of super 6 - his hands shattered by Somali gunfire is to have a remarkable escape the rpg-7 came in on the right side of the aircraft impacted right underneath the crew chief window the rpg-7 took off Brad's knee his right knee basically was was gone he fell back on top of me off his seat I was knocked unconscious for maybe five ten seconds kind of hard to tell the copilot was knocked unconscious so basically everything relied on my caffeine has skills as a pilot he had tons of horns and sirens going off in his helmet so he was constantly trying to find a place to put his down he thought we were gonna crash right there in the city as well so he picked out a road that he was just gonna set us down and as we started to sin he started to pull and collect a little bit more power to realize that we were still able to maintain flight and what the pilot had seen was the Newport facility there weren't any boats there so the unloading area was clear and we came in and did racing aircraft landing they had triple height ceiling and containers and we were sliding right for a wall of those and fortunately we stopped in the nick of time before he ran into those meanwhile the remaining Blackhawks can only watch as Mike Durant the sole member of the crew to survive the crash fights for his life at this point we've got five aircraft down and these are flown by our best pilots shortly after this one of the commanders on the ground called and said I've got two wounded guys during a dive if I don't get him out of here Colonel Harrell who was in the commanding patrol aircraft called and said I can't send in any more helicopters the area is still too hot just hang on we're gonna get some tanks to punch through to you with them in armored vehicles emotionally for me overstated too much but here I am now prepared to do this and that we've been let off the hook and on the one hand I was relieved that we were now not probably going to get shot down and killed on the other hand we desperately get in and help eventually blooded and shocked by the chaotic nightmare the Rangers and Delta forces are rescued by a un armored convoy the captured and tortured Michael Durant was later paraded to the world on TV when you're initially captured you're fearing for your life the highest priority is survival or are you gonna make it through the next few minutes Mike Durant [Music] you crave for information about what went on around you where is everyone else what's their status did they survive I didn't know that no one else at our crash that had survived until I was released whether we survived or not they were going to get us all out of there and I knew that and that that provides you some sense of security you feel like maybe you're almost not alone knowing that that everybody's out there and they'll do what they can I can't explain why I wasn't killed but it is a miracle it's a miracle it's luck it's whatever everybody that assesses the situation happens to believe I guess but I did some things that may have helped facilitate my survival but a lot of it was certainly out of my hands all we knew at that point when we came back from the mission that day about Mike and Ray was that they were down and they were missing in action we didn't find out until the rest of the world found out and the videotape of Mike when he was in captivity in the videotapes of them and dragging the bodies through the streets we were horrified we were enraged that that is what had happened to them we wanted revenge probably more than anything else those were our friends these weren't people that we just knew casually these were guys that we'd known for years people talked about being a band of brothers and you know you're closer to these people and brothers and it was maddening 18 American soldiers had been killed and 76 wounded hundreds of Somalis have died after five days of intense negotiations Mike Durant was released there's two joy and being released and then you find out that some of your best friends in fact didn't make it out and it was it was pretty devastating took a long time to get over that bitter lessons had to be learned the night stalkers had been used in daytime missions not by night is intended but Mogadishu is also remembered for the incredible bravery of the Task Force soldiers and the exceptional flying skills of the Blackhawk aircraft the Blackhawk has been in service around the world for 25 years with its advanced technology this outstanding helicopter will remain in the forefront of battle in the era of electronic warfare but for the men who crew it the Blackhawk is something more it is a machine of strength ensuring success in the face of adversity I truly believe I owe my life to the design of the Blackhawk we hit the ground very hard there's no question that in many other types of helicopters it would not have been a survival craft if not for the design of that aircraft I wouldn't be sitting here today [Music] you [Music] well I know exactly when I was about 13 years old I believe and a friend of my father's was a warrant officer in the Army actually he was in the National Guard at the time but he had been in the Army and he worked for a company that flew helicopters for hire they would do whatever if anybody needed a helicopter for whatever purpose they would provide the helicopter and the crew and go out there and do work then he had to move an aircraft one day and he invited me and my father to go along with them and we flew I'm from New Hampshire and we flew over some of the mountainous parts of New Hampshire on a beautiful day and I remember it was a three seater and I was sitting in the front seat and right next to Joe who was flying and I just remember thinking this has got to be the greatest job in the world and and it it turned out to be I never lost sight of that goal for the rest of my life I realized that somehow I wanted to be able to fly and if maybe if I had flown a jet for the first flight I would have thought that was the way to make a living but it happened to be a helicopter and I really enjoyed it and I enjoyed that flight and enjoyed having a career doing that I found out in August of 1992 that we were going to deploy to Somalia very little time to prepare I was at work we got pulled in to a briefing where we were told we were gonna go and we were gonna go in a matter of hours so I ran home to grab a few things that I needed in the and then headed back out to the airfield and we we went forward there were high risk elements on this particular mission it was daytime we didn't like that it was in a place called the Black Sea which is where most of the enemy was located we didn't like that either there were no landing zones although a Blackhawk can fit into a lot of places an alleyway and a city like Mogadishu is not big enough and we knew that we couldn't land which doesn't limit us in putting people on the ground because we're flexible we can do what's called a fast rope insertion but it limits us in how we get them out you're limited then to either ground vehicles or rooftop extractions so we knew that there was additional risk on this mission and I think everyone sensed that as we walked out to the aircraft but we still felt that it was an acceptable risk and we took it on none of these flights were very long we were based right there in the city essentially so we were on the target within 10 minutes probably there was more resistance on this one right away this one was as hazardous as any we had flown the dust conditions were as bad as they had been anywhere else in fact we had one of the aircraft who would go around because he couldn't find the landing site on the first attempt and that's just a standard contingency that we practice and we breathe if you can't get into where you're trying to go just like in a commercial plane they're gonna go around and give it another try the the direction that you turn what you do if you have to make it go around is all pre briefed and pre-planned so everybody knows what's happening there's no confusion on anyone's part but it was it was a riskier venture I think than anyone we had gone on before because of all those factors I was flying again in this particular case ray and I had been alternating who was on the controls from mission to Mission this happened to be my day to fly and I was flying and he was he was doing all the copilot duties and I remember going in there having a very hard time finding the target again because it was so dusty but getting to the right intersection and being essentially blind except for being able to see the top of a telephone pole right down by my right foot if I hadn't had that telephone pole reference I probably would have had a difficult time maintaining my position over the the fast rope insertion point but I had it and again with the help of the guys in the back giving me last terminal guidance as you as you might describe it to move directly over the intersection we got everybody in where they needed to go the part of the area and went north of the city and for all intents and purposes we were done because we couldn't go back in to do an extraction we knew we were just a contingency force at that point when the worst of all contingencies happened about 40 minutes into the mission cliff Wolcott and and Briley's aircraft was shot down by what we think was a rocket uh grenade and they crashed in the city I'm an eternal optimist and knowing the level of training those guys had and what kind of pilots they were it never occurred to me that they would not do anything but successfully land that aircraft on the ground and we'd see him later on during the debrief in fact I didn't know that they had died in the crash until I was released again not a not a good situation but well within things that we had planned we had a search and rescue aircraft on call to react to this they did react we extracted some of the people on the ground with another aircraft seemed like the situation was brought into control when our aircraft got called in to take their place we were called into the target area to provide fire support aerial fire basically for the troops on the ground while they conducted their mission well the firing the shooting had gotten pretty intense at this point and when we flew in there the other challenge for us was we didn't know where any of the friendlies were and you know the cardinal rule is if you don't know where your friendly forces are you don't shoot and we armed the guns but we had a discussion among the crew on the way in is about a three minute flight and I remember telling Tommy and Bill look you know things are chaos down there we're not going to shoot around until we figure out where everybody is and unfortunately when you've got small elements moving doorway to doorway in locations that have not been planned because now they're moving to the aircraft it's very difficult to sort all that out so in fact we never did fire around from our mini guns before we were shot down we only made it around the pattern probably four or five times the pattern being in orbit around the the target area and and we were hit by what we think was a rocket-propelled grenade also right in the tail where we're going through and this all happens in a matter of milliseconds you know it's a very compressed sequence but the when you play it back in your mind it's drawn out to in what feels like minutes is really seconds or even milliseconds but it felt like hitting a speed bump in a parking lot if you're driving your car about 20 miles an hour through a parking lot and you hit a sizable speed bump that's exactly what that RPG felt like when it hit the aircraft and I rolled it out looked around in the cockpit everything looked fine and a radio call came over the radio from the we call the air mission commander who's in charge of the whole air operation saying you've been hit you better put it on the ground well as you know as a pilot in command of the aircraft the control of that aircraft is your discretion and I thought in my head that this is a flyable machine everything looks okay inside it's made to take this kind of punishment if I land here I'll have to crash it intentionally because there are no landing zones so I'm gonna have to just crash it in an alleyway just for the sake of getting it on the ground and to compound that there's a firefight going on down here so I was faced with a decision to try to fly an aircraft that I thought was flyable of relatively short distance less than two miles to get to the airfield or crash in the middle of this firefight intentionally and it was pretty clear what the right decision was the piece of information that I did not have was the fact that that RPG had hit the tail gearbox and blown the actual gearbox housing apart and we had no fluid left in that tail gearbox and we had bent the drive shaft at tail driveshaft is turning at a pretty high rate of speed and any kind any time you got a drive shaft that's delicately balanced that now is bent or damaged it's only a matter of time before it totally disintegrates and that's what happened we we were flying for about five seconds when the tail completely disintegrated and about three feet of the vertical fin went along with it so in addition to now having a single rotor helicopter with no tail rotor we have a center of gravity problem because that's a lot of weight way back in the back far away from the center of gravity of the aircraft if you've ever pulled on a small airplane where the pilots ask you to move to the middle that's the center of gravity they in order to maintain within the regions of control of the aircraft you have to stay within a certain distance of what's called the center of gravity when you lose large components like the tail rotor that far from the center of gravity it causes the in this case the nose of the aircraft now to pitch down the the nose pitch down well the automatic reaction to a nose pitching down is to pull back and bring the nose back up unfortunately what that does in the helicopter really at any aircraft is it reduces speed well speed is the only thing that's going to help you when you have lost your tail rotor in a helicopter because that tail rotor is there to keep you from spinning and with speed there's enough wind coming across the fuselage to streamline you in the direction of flight if you're going fast enough well as soon as you slow down below a certain threshold it's completely out of control you can't stop it you're you're spinning so rapidly that the in my particular case the only thing I could see was brown earth and blue sky everything else was a complete blur the only thing going through my mind at that point is stay upright get the aircraft on the wheels it's it's designed to absorb impact but only on the wheels if you land on its side or if you land upside down all those safety features are totally worthless so we are struggling as a crew to get that aircraft on its wheels how did I do that I have no idea at that point it's all automatic if you talk to somebody that's been in a car accident they'll tell you the same thing they weren't thinking about brake ease off the brake steer it's all automatic it's whatever you've learned to do through your experience as a operator of an automobile it's the same thing in a crash you're not thinking a lot you're you're responding automatically to the things you know will help you in this case Ray and I did communicate during the crash sequence very briefly as soon as the tail came off I made a radio call stating that we had lost the tail rotor and we were going in hard then I remember looking over at Ray saying something about we better pull the engines off because that is the only way to stop the spin is to shut the torque off which is being created by the engines and he was already doing so he was as I said a very experienced aviator he had experienced something similar to this before in an accident at Fort Chaffee he knew exactly what to do he was already doing it but the truth of the matter is the centrifugal force was so severe that he could not keep his arms up to shut those engines off it actually drove his arms down so we ended up with one engine at about half power and one at about idle power we did I never saw it coming as I've said all I could see was brown and blue divided by the horizon line I never saw the ground coming so whether or not I pulled what we call pulled pitch to absorb the impact or not I can't tell you to be honest I don't remember actually hitting the ground but we hit very hard hard enough that even with all the safety features on the Black Hawk and as rugged as it is thus each stroke the landing gear everything else my femur or my thigh bone still snapped into on the seat when we hit the ground well first of all when you're initially captured there you're fearing for your life I mean that's that's we deal with everything in life is whatever has the highest priority is what you happen to be processing at the time and and when you're captured the highest priority is survival or are you gonna make it through the next few minutes over time that gradually dissipates and and things start to stabilize and you realize that death may not be imminent and now it becomes a psychological battle and how long am I going to be here am I going to survive long-term what happened to everyone else that's that's the thing that's really difficult is that you have no information if there's one thing you crave in isolation like that and I wasn't an ISIL solitary confinement or anything like that but when you're by yourself you might as well be because you have no one to communicate with is you crave for communication you crave for sending a message or you crave for information about what went on around you where is everyone else what's their status did they survive I didn't know that no one else at our crash site survived until it was released and that's aspectus amale's had told me that no one else had survived but you can't trust them they're the enemy so you have to listen to it and and there's always an element of doubt until you've got some kind of proof where that really is what happened because you never know what their agenda might be and what they're telling you I mean I suspected so because of the chaos at the crash site I figured that it they probably had not survived I knew bill and Tommy were injured I wasn't sure about Rey if anybody had a good chance to survive and it was Rey he had injuries that were similar to mine but as it turned out he didn't survive the firefight well it is certainly a psychological battle even with the injuries I had it's more psychological battle than a physical battle and what I tell people is although I had never thought I would be held for any extremely long period of time day five is day five whether you're going to be there for six months or five years you don't know and that's what makes it difficult and I think the big thing is not to get focused on the situation in its entirety you have to focus on small pieces it's like any other major event in your life that you can easily overwhelm you however if you break it into its components you can't it you can bite these pieces off one at a time so I think the main thing you got to realize is I just have to make it through today I mean that's that's lesson number one don't think about I can't survive six months here I can't survive three months here you have to think about I can make it to tomorrow and when tomorrow comes I'll figure that out when it gets here I mean that that would be the number one thing I would have to say in an overall strategy to survive something like this the other thing is you have to have faith in your comrades you have to have faith that you know if there's anything that can be done to get you out they're going to do it and and I knew that there was absolutely no question in my mind they could not have dragged those guys out of Somalia without getting all of us you know whether we survived or not they were going to get us all out of there and I knew that and it that provides you some sense of security you feel like maybe you're almost not alone know knowing that that everybody's out there and they'll do what they can

Channel: WAR - HISTORY - DOCUMENTARIES

Views: 636,740

Rating: 4.7763371 out of 5

Keywords: History of wars, world war, documentry, battleship, wwII warships, warships documentry, war history, documentry films, Battlefield, black hawk, black hawk helicopter, black hawk uh-60m, night stalker, black hawk night stalker, war helicopter, blackhawk helicopter, blackhawk in combat, mh-60 blackhawk, mh60k nighthawk helicopter, nighthawk helicopter, Black Hawk Night Stalker Documentary, black hawk flying, war, history

Id: lgXfiaHPhq8

Length: 60min 43sec (3643 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2019