Helicopter Wars | The Taliban Gambit! | Season 1 Episode 1 | Full Episode

deep in afghanistan the taliban ambush a u.s navy seal team now in mortal danger i can remember just pleading over the radios please make yourself known show yourself this is air force rescue we are here to pick you up helicopter rescue from a mountain ledge is the seal's last hope and i was thinking wow this is pretty small are we gonna land here i'm like holy crap if we you know bump over 15 10 feet whatever it may be we're going to hit that wall the special operation's own rescue helicopter has just been shut down now it's up to the u.s air force reserve to take on a mission where the best of the best have already failed america cannot afford to lose another helicopter on that mountain high above the gulf of mexico a u.s air force pave hawk helicopter is low on gas hey good afternoon jolly one once just off patrick south along the beach i'd like to transition your key if we can to the south these volunteer pilots are with the 920th rescue wing the only reserve rescuing in the u.s air force it's a vital skill they'll need to fly combat search and rescue missions in afghanistan i came in the air force 23 years ago to be a rescue helicopter pilot that's been a dream of mine even since i was in high school everybody has their choosing in life and that's just something that i wanted to do [Music] today jeff mccrander is commander of operations in this unique aviation unit for several months of the year they fly active duty in war zones before many of them return to their civilian jobs in the summer of 2005 two helicopter crews from the 920th are nearing the end of their tour in afghanistan we'd have maybe a couple two three day turnover and then be home and we already had plans for the fourth of july and and parties and unfortunately none of that happened there's all good war stories starting with there i was so there i was getting ready to take a shower and my roommate comes running in and says hey the radio just went off and they want you to report to ops right now with a three-day bag this three-day operation will be a daunting challenge they are to locate a covert four-man navy seal team high in the mountains of the hindu kush while attempting to assassinate a high-ranking al-qaeda leader the seals have been caught in a taliban counter-attack finding themselves completely surrounded they call for help a chinook packed with special operations troops sets off to extract them in broad daylight just as the helicopter makes its approach a rocket-propelled grenade bursts through the open rear door exploding the fuel tanks everyone on board is killed it's the single biggest loss of american life in the afghanistan war reeling from this devastating blow to their rescue effort special operations command turned to the reservists of the 920th rescue wing for help their community a very proud community that doesn't like to ask for help from outsiders and so the initial reception was was i was a little bit cold oh i got a smart pack for you i i think that they definitely look down on us question our training our crews our capabilities she's gonna check i spent a lot of time interacting with the ops officer uh there and you know and and uh while educating them on our capabilities and what we really brought to the fight and and why we we were the right people to be up there doing what we were trying to do our confidence was high that if there was somebody there and they were alive we were going to find them skinny will be leading his men into the same valley where the taliban shot down the chinu but instead of the lumbering chinuk skinny's crews will be flying one of the most sophisticated helicopters in the world a toned-up version of the famous black hawk we call it a pave hop the pave hook is a rescue pilot's dream this is our hydraulic hoist that has 200 feet of cable using its in-air refueling probe the pavehawks pilots can fly non-stop for 14 hours another great thing about the aircraft is this clear turret and color weather radar its infrared camera and color radar enable it to fly in virtually any weather day or night and it has anti-missile defenses it's a very awesome helicopter i like to think rescue really is one of the most specialized operations in the air force i mean based on our training and our tactics and that kind of thing we always like to think of ourselves as special too each rescue helicopter trains with a crew of six two pilots a flight engineer a gunner and two para rescue men in the back the pararescue men or pjs are elite graduates of the so-called superman school we're used to the exciting things jumping on airplanes and scuba diving and shooting and running and in the middle of the night and just doing wild things pjs are among the most highly trained emergency trauma specialists in the us military it's the pjs who will be first out of the helicopter when they reach the landing zone shortly before nightfall skinny's two crews set off for their search for the seal team but they have limited information on where to look this dangerous mission will test their skills to the limit combat rescue missions have preferably flown under cover of darkness by hugging the ground at night it's almost impossible for the enemy to see or hear them approaching to enable the pilots to see in the dark they wear night vision goggles these image intensifiers amplify the available light from the moon and the stars by up to 5 000 times onto a green phosphor screen the human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color [Music] with the goggles on the helmet and in i'm gonna get the diopter setting when i first started flying goggles and pilot training it was uh it was very difficult to try to look through what i envisioned as toilet paper tubes you have zero peripheral vision you constantly got to keep your head on a swivel it just was difficult as you can see they're out away from my eye but over time as you got more and more goggle experience it starts becoming second nature and now of course we don't even think about it if it's cloudy or over cursed they can also use their infrared camera to navigate the mountain passes at night it detects heat even when there is absolutely no light having been baked all day by the sun the ground registers as a glowing image in the cockpit eight hours into their search high up in the hindu kush mountains the rescuers are still looking and listening for any signal that could locate the seal team because you know you hear the radio key and you're like oh they're right here you know they've got to be close by but it's just finding a needle in the haystack those mountains were six seven eight thousand feet high and a lot of area to cover they fly as close as they dare to the mountainside the faint clicking on the emergency frequencies suggests someone down there is trying to make contact i can remember just pleading in my in my mind please please and and we were even doing it over the radios please make yourself known show yourself do anything because you know this is air force rescue we are here to pick you up we were very concerned about what we would call a sar trap you know where the bad guys now maybe have captured these guys and are using their signaling devices to lure the helicopters in to shoot them down and they had obviously demonstrated an ability to shoot down us helicopters in that area because we were searching the same area where they had just shot down a us helicopter despite fears of being lured into a trap they do not want to abandon the surge they know that if they don't find the missing seal soon the taliban surely will it's been a long night for the combat search and rescue crews after hours of searching they've still not made contact with the missing seal team they returned to base before sunup takes away their cover of darkness shortly after dawn there's a breakthrough stop right there an old man arrives at a remote marine base with a handwritten message from a navy seal the seal's name is marcus luttrell he reveals that he is the sole survivor of the four-man special forces team the others have been killed in an ambush and he is badly wounded latrell is being sheltered in the old man's village which has been blockaded by the taliban within hours the helicopter crews have a satellite photo of the mountain village where the trail is hiding now skinny must devise a rescue plan first to pick up the trail then to recover the bodies of his fallen comrades as a flight lead you know you feel a lot of responsibility because all these guys are your guys and it's your job to get them in and get them out so they can get back to their families and and you know it's just one of those things where you kind of stand there and say a prayer it's like oh lord please don't let me screw this up this is the moment every combat rescue pilot dreams about yet dreads it's when they must put to the test their years of training on combat missions their tactic is to use two helicopters to protect each other flying into a dangerous landing zone or lz is a skill they practice back home in the arizona desert most of our training is to be able to get into and out of an lz one as fast as we can and two having tactics where we can cover each other the lead aircraft makes a fast low level pass over the landing zone to draw enemy fire it then pulls up hard and high leaving the second aircraft to slip in for the pickup working together the entire crew guides the pilot into the trickiest spots by relaying back to him every obstacle in danger if you do that in a smooth coordinating relaxed manner we all work together so we know how we think and if you hear a person's voice starting to get a little shrill you know who they are that what the problem is that there is a problem [Music] [Music] these maneuvers are difficult enough in arizona in daylight but flying into the afghan mountains at night they're extremely hazardous particularly with the taliban lying in wait to shoot down another helicopter [Music] on this mission skinny decides he will go first in the lead helicopter and drop a glow stick to mark the landing zone for spanky this is the first time he hears that he will be landing in the second helicopter to pick up latrell and that's when my heart sank my comfort level shifted if you will now i frantically started uh paying more attention to the brief uh looking uh harder at the landing zone we couldn't really tell the the angle we didn't really understand the sh sheer steepness of the terrain for some of the pavehook crew it's their first deployment with combat search and rescue they seriously underestimate the challenges that lie ahead one of our senior gunners came up to me and he was like do you know that some of us wait our entire careers for one of these i had no idea what he's talking about i was just going back to get a couple pairs of underwear and toothbrush and toothpaste and uh i really didn't know what i was getting into piece of cake not gonna be a problem at all because it looked like a big football field we're like hell yeah we'll come into a run on landing we just figured hey this is like a big deal for the more experienced crew members the fear of failure is all too real you start thinking about your family about my four little boys at home and my wonderful wife and just saying you know if not just for them don't screw up now i know the route we're taking i realize where we're flying through we're flying in the same area the same valley that the chinook had just recently been shot down and what i found out again that day was that it's within about two uh miles from the location where we watched a guy on the mountain shoot an rpg at our aircraft and it actually went between the lead and a trail aircraft so the rpg went right in the middle of our two aircraft and uh i'm thinking to myself wait a minute uh they've shot at us once the next time they shot at somebody they shot him down we're flying back into that exact same area i guess it became real at that point this time the u.s command is leaving nothing to chance one of the biggest combat rescue operations ever mounted in the war is underway task to rescue the trail and retrieve the bodies of his fallen comrades on the ground army rangers creep towards their target in the sky apache attack helicopters and a10 warthogs will target the taliban positions a giant refuelling aircraft will provide backup and flying high above the whole operation a spector gunship at the moment of rescue this will illuminate the landing zone with a night sun a giant infrared spotlight invisible to the naked eye but clear to everyone wearing night vision goggles with so many people involved radio chatter crowds the airwaves intensity of the calls got louder and louder and quicker and until it was at times some guys it seemed like we're screaming on the radio it's very tempting just to pull up the radios but you know you gotta keep your ears open it is just constant chatter it's hard enough to hear your crew let alone assets that aren't even on the same continent everybody wants to know the status what's the status what's the status [Music] as the pave hawks speed on to their destination one call penetrates the radio chatter a new location for the pickup point [Music] their coordinates for the survivor have changed by two kilometers in this steep mountain terrain a difference of two kilometers could mean landing on a valley floor or on a cliff face that that sparked a little helmet fire for me we're inbound we're freaking three minutes out from the lz and i'm like i don't need a grid coordinate right now because i i can't come in focused inside this aircraft and put that in fast enough i couldn't tell any difference there's no difference in distance there's no difference in time and at this point even with my helmet on i'm sure i was pulling what little hair i had left out despite the last minute confusion from command hq skinny tells his co-pilot jp they have to go in an extra decimal place on the end of the coordinates has almost jeopardized the entire mission it turns out due to a misapprehension of what the scale of the maps and the coordinate format that they were using the actual objective did not change the two kilometers that we were told it changed precisely two meters on the map now skinny and spanky make their final approach they turn off the main river valley and begin a steep ascent the moon isn't up yet and clouds shrouding the mountains are blocking what little light there is from the stars once we turned up the canyon it seemed to get darker there was uh not very much illumination at all our goggles were basically almost shutting down uh because of that [Music] now to see in the dark they have to rely on their infrared camera [Music] the small screen displays the residual heat from the mountain rocks outlining the horizon ahead we pretty much were hugging the terrain because we're climbing now because we've been in a river valley we're trying to climb up to the elevation of where the lz was and so we're climbing up and trying to follow the contour as best we can keep and it's all on my side so that the mountains all on on the right hand side of the aircraft but then as we got closer um we started seeing seemed at first like like lightning but we realized it soon realized it wasn't that they're covering the sound of our rotors with a large gunfire u.s friendly gunfire you can see some of the the rounds impacting the ridge you know about a mile off from where we were below them a battle rages between us forces and the taliban the valley is alive with infrared marker strobes these bright pulses are only visible with night vision goggles every ranger on the ground and us aircraft in the sky identifies themselves in this way [Music] everybody in their right mind is uh turning on their strobe light and saying hey i'm a friendly don't shoot over here ir strobe looks a lot like you know muzzle flashes it's really hard to keep your calm and not be trigger happy they are entering a dangerously hot war zone to reduce the risk of being hit by enemy fire they begin evasive maneuvers yanking and banking through the twists and turns of the valley but as they climb higher up the mountains the air becomes thinner so the performance of the helicopter's rotor blades is drastically reduced the only way to maintain their roller coaster ride is to lose weight and the only way to do that is to dump fuel so i opted just to dump fuel where we were growing and unfortunately uh it wasn't unpopulated the local afghanis actually sleep outside during the summer months so but i had to make that decision i want that extra buffer and i remember saying as as my co-pilot reached up to uh flip the uh safety wired thing uh this is for penny and the boys i remember as spanky scans ahead the strobe flashes continue to pepper the mountainside this is really bad it's scary dark but at least the landing zone is going to be illuminated but there's no sign of the spotlight spanky is expecting the infrared night sun on board the spectre gunship cannot burn through the cloud layer to illuminate the landing zone i remember the gunship very loudly screaming halos negative burn negative burn the helicopter's landing zone is shrouded in total darkness deep in afghanistan a massive combat search and rescue mission is closing in on its target navy seal marcus latrell on the ground a battle is raging between u.s forces and the taliban in the air the helicopter pilots have a problem on their final approach to the pickup point they're flying blind the spectre gunship flying high above is still unable to shine its infrared spotlight through the layers of cloud flying much lower the a-10 warthogs begin attacking the taliban positions one warthog pilot spots a gap in the cloud and with split-second timing pinpoints the landing zone with his targeting laser it's just a a beam of light exactly where i needed to land i was like the finger of god like ah there's a lcd that's how we got a really good side what the lz looked like this landing zone is no football field it's a tiny shelf packed from the side of a mountain to be honest it was kind of a it was the size of an lz that i don't think pilots would even land in the daytime if they if they really had the chance i mean i was thinking wow this is pretty small are we gonna land here i'll come around flight leader skinny prepares to drop the glow stick that will mark the spot where spanky is to land in the second helicopter ignoring all the gunfire skinny scores a bullseye with the glow stick and banks steeply away to draw enemy fire if the taliban take the bait the path should now be clear for spanky and helicopter number two to make the pickup approach once he calls on the approach then we give him altitude airspeed and we're looking at the ground looking for obstacles and they're clearing us into the lz you're listening to the pilots talk amongst themselves and you've got the engineer and the gunner they're all discussing is it such an interactive process to fly a helicopter you wouldn't believe it but especially in that context it was unbelievable [Music] i never got the sense it was gonna be that tricky i knew it was gonna be a bit hairy as commander spanky takes the controls for the final approach i remember dave gonzalez had his hands up on the throttles in order to go to emergency lockout to give us uh more power if that was the gas 2 000 case power's good setting up for the the landing i thought you know i think i think it's actually going to work and then it all went south in a hurry you can feel the pitch change you can feel the pitch in the blades you can hear the the engines um even though my adrenaline had been going my heart started beating a little bit more it was like okay okay here we are let's just stay focused you know all the way up to that point all the way up to where we were 10 feet above the ground everything was nice and calm and then brown out in the last seconds of the approach the downwash of the rotors whips up a blinding cloud of desert dust and that's probably a helicopter pilot's worst nightmare up in the mountains on a very dark night in a very tight confined space browning out and now losing all visual references now i can no longer see the strobe lights on the lz and if i can't see the strip lights on the lc the pilots can't see the circle lights on the multi and that becomes a problem we've got instruments to kind of tell us our drift but it's just we we can't fly with our eyes closed and it feels like you've got your eyes closed if i was drifting and tried to bring it down on the ground my tires would hit and i would inevitably most likely roll over in a brown house it's hard to tell whether the helicopter is drifting to left or right a pilot landing blind on an uneven surface risks rolling over the first wheel to touch the ground becomes a tipping point that can trigger disaster it's very easy for the helicopter to continue and pivot on that point roll over blades hit the ground and that's all she wrote as they brace themselves for touchdown spanky's crew are all on maximum alert i remember looking to my left and i could see a wall from the mountain and i just saw that i'm like holy crap if we you know bump over 15 10 feet whatever it may be we're gonna hit that wall then spanky saw on his side a 1500 2000 foot drop off on a narrow ledge in a brown out there's little room for error i started drifting unfortunately left towards the rock face where my rotors would hit and inevitably crash and then we'd have a bigger problem on our hands i told the guys in the back i'm like if you guys are praying guys you might want to pray now being in the business as long as i have i know that helicopter crashes are nasty and there's one thing you can do to kind of maybe save yourself and it's lay down because at that point i figured we're gonna hit we're gonna crash by now spanky should be safely on the ground but he's still hovering blind in the dust completely dependent on directions from his crew you can hear the pilots just back and forth stop left stop right stop left you know and it just continues that pilot has controls coldpot and it was it was uh it was an orchestra of i don't know how to explain it i had noticed the tail gotten somewhere between two and a half to five feet of some of the trees i i told the pilot and as i was kind of turning around the aircraft and i had to get my bearings about me and figure out which was left and which is right to him to me to the aircraft and so it got a little confusing if you got a nice calm person in the back saying hey man stop right you need to come a little left you're gonna put a little left correction in when you've got somebody in the back screaming stop right stop right you're gonna you're gonna react to whatever you're hearing in the back because this could be some big tree there and you really want to get the aircraft away the warning showed to avoid hitting the wall of the trees make spanky pull the aircraft hard right at the same moment gonzo fearful of the drop-off on the other side goes to the dual controls to prevent spanky over-correcting i just put my hand up by the stick because i was expecting a huge correction and i just kept spanky from making that my technique is when i come into the lz 10 feet off the ground look for a reference a rock anything that's not going to blow away and i went down and looked and i didn't see i just didn't see nothing it was just dust things started going in slow motion i knew we were gonna crash and i knew i was gonna let everybody down everything starts rolling through your head mission preparation your family your kids and just the the sense of grief and failure like we came here to pick this guy up that needs our help and now i'm going to crash and roll down the mountain but right when i felt that all was lost when the dust cleared just enough i couldn't see the ground i couldn't see the rock face i couldn't see anything but that terrace that was on my left side came in front of me and about 50 feet 40 feet off my nose i could see what i could describe as a hanging pot as a child on our back patio where my mom had these pots that hung out on our porch if you will and that the plant would just drape off of it and when the wind blew the leaves would rustle and stuff and that was the only thing i could see i couldn't see the ground i couldn't see the village i couldn't see the rock wall i couldn't see anything but this blowing bush it was a hover reference that i had that could tell me left or right or up or down and i instantly was able to get control of the aircraft into a solid hover only when the dust settles do they realize the incredible tightness of the landing zone we were probably less than two feet from the edge i wouldn't even have done this in tucson during the day probably uh it would just have been stupid yeah i wouldn't have done it even during the day [Music] we landed their job is done well for the meantime my job begins so we jump out and as we're coming out i see something directly straight behind the tailbone whatever this is coming at us we don't want it to get anywhere near the helicopter you have to kind of protect the crew as well it's part of the deal so i see what looks to be a man big guy and uh he's wearing uh afghani clothes we call them man jammies and one of the things that went through my head was if we're an american let's just say an american we're dressed up their chances are they're not gonna walk up to a tailbone they know it's a helicopter i'm gonna go around and that's just a rule you don't go near the tail road so at this point in time i had to think quickly and i drew my weapon and my plan was to shoot him because at this point he was a threat to me uh a second individual comes out from behind him so now i'm thinking okay i've got two guys that are threats i'm just gonna shoot both i literally had my finger on the trigger and then immediately and think thank god the third person comes out from behind and the third person was clearly clearly united states military i'm looking at him now i'm this close i know he's american this is a u.s ranger and he quickly indicates which of the men is littrell to check his surprise latrell is dressed in afghani clothes and also able to walk i immediately instinctively uh go into an authentication role one of the things i'd memorized was his favorite superhero was spider-man uh he also had his dog's name now i really only needed to ask him one question but i went ahead and asked him both but anyway i asked him what's your favorite superhero and he looked at me like what what are you talking oh yeah i know okay he uh he told me with spider-man excellent same with me my favorite superhero as well once marcus luttrell's identity is confirmed they realize he needs urgent medical attention they will have to fly him back to base before attempting to locate the dead bodies of his friends there's still a battle going on like literally a hundred meters from where we are i mean it's it's literally as we sit there and i'm thinking we haven't left yet what's what's going on here and they're waiting for me so i i hit the mic and i said go go go and they were like all right and then we were up and at i it straight up and then just dove off of the cliff into the dark hole then of course all the chatter came back on the intercom everything was going crazy i looked at marcus i started talking to him he sat in a corner he was kind of surreal at this point i kind of realized that we just we just rescued him and this guy you know in in all of his buddies are dead [Music] so as i look into marcus i got my night vision goggle and i'm focusing it i'm just i just want to get a good look at him and you can see the look in his eyes you could just see the intensity that this guy had been through and uh i don't even know how to explain what i saw but it was pretty amazing i tapped him on the shoulder i shook his hand i said welcome home brother [Music] with only five minutes of fuel remaining they just make it to a forward base where they deliver marcus latrobe his legs full of shrapnel a seal to the end he insists on walking to the medical unit [Music] we landed back in jalalabad and i'm just like man just looking at spanking like oh yeah man we did it we're done [Music] that's when everything started hitting me the pjs in the back especially porchecchi was hooping and hollering he was standing outside my window pounding on the the glass and i just remember thinking they have no idea how close we were to crashing and and i don't think they fully realized just how close they were to balling it up on the mountainside and that's when the wave of adrenaline left me and i i just i just start shaking spanky's thoughts are now 7 000 miles and half a world away [Music] all i wanted to do uh was talk to my wife penny [Music] it was saturday morning for her and she was at the fabric store buying fabric for curtains and it was just so amazing to talk to her and hear her voice and let her know that i was safe and she said did you just do what you've been training for over 10 years to do and i kind of got emotional and uh i told her to stop it there's guys right outside this tent that uh whatever so i'm wiping my eyes telling her i'm all fine and and uh but it was it was a great feeling to to know that i did do what i'd been training to do for all those years that a lot of people don't get that opportunity for skinny and the men of the 920th rescue wing there is one last job somewhere on that black mountainside lie the bodies of three navy seals to bring them home the rescue crews will fly into one of the most hostile environments they've ever encountered having saved navy seal marcus latrell the 920th rescue wing prepares for an even riskier mission since the civil war every effort has always been made to recover and identify the bodies of american soldiers the bodies of latrell's fallen comrades lie in terrain so steep it's impossible to land instead the helicopters will hover to allow the pararescuemen to repel down but there's an added complication flying at night in the high mountains of afghanistan the air is so thin the rotor blades do not generate enough lift to allow the fully equipped rescue helicopter to hover this becomes particularly acute when attempting to hover over steep slope hovering near a flat surface causes the flow of air through the rotor disc to slow down known as ground effect this makes hovering easier pilots think of it as a cushion of air but a helicopter hovering over a steep slope as it will have to on this mission no longer benefits from ground effect to achieve the same amount of lift it will either need more power or less weight otherwise it will be in trouble before they take checky and the power rescue men back in again they'll need to drastically reduce their load how do you lighten these helicopters well you take these big heavy fuel tanks off you take these big heavy machine guns off we thought it just might work they pulled everything off of that helicopter that wasn't nailed down and they pulled off some things that were nailed down i made the hard call to say we're gonna pull all the weapons and ammo off too i was like what what what do you mean you're gonna take the guns i was told in tech school that when you deploy you'll never take your hand off the weapon well that didn't really work out so well i even went so far as to remove the body armor in the back of my vest just because that's really heavy um of course i didn't tell anybody that because that's a no-no at their pre-flight briefing at bagram air base a senior officer reminds skinny of the fate of the downed special forces chinook he basically said america cannot afford to lose another helicopter on that mountain i mean those were his words to me where we were going in the 47 had crashed just on the other side of the same mountain that we were about to go and hover on this time it's skinny will be making the pickup in the middle of the night they fly out to the place where u.s rangers on the ground have found the bodies of the seals we entered a hover i think it was about 85 feet but you have to understand it was 85 feet above a point that was on a very very steep incline and there were basically about 40 to 60 foot trees all around the lz but there was a fairly clear area that was just big enough for me to kind of snuggle down inside of that where you know i'm kind of looking at the top of the trees out my window so here i was looking straight out of the aircraft trying my best to to keep skinny away from drifting towards these trees as he he's getting calls from both crew members in the back as to exactly where to place his hoist hook surrounded by gunfire the pjs now repel down to locate the bodies so you're on the side of a mountain with night vision guards and you're trying to tie knots and you've got gloves on and you're trying to negotiate rocks then you get to the site where the body is you've got to tie in you hope that you're able to secure the body so it doesn't you know it could literally fall hovering above the pjs the pavehawks engine strain to maintain lift you've got rock slides from the top of the mountain coming down on you and you got to remember you're a combatant in a four-time theater so you've got to post teams all around to secure that operation so you don't necessarily have to worry about shooting when somebody else hopefully will be shooting for you so there's a lot going on as ground troops exchange fire with the taliban the pjs secure the bodies it's time to bring the last men home and lay them to rest i realized halfway halfway home it's fourth of july and uh i said you know you don't get much more patriotic than this someone i wish it was me but it was not uh had the forethought to take uh two american flags it was a wonderful touch in the and a wonderful service that these guys did covering the body bag with the american flag to hail them appropriately that was a pretty emotional moment to realize that what we had just been through you know these guys had been through a lot more obviously and made paid the ultimate price for for their their activities but i mean here we had just gone through all this stuff to get these i mean it was it was kind of an emotional breather it was still dark when we landed back back at bagram i remember and of course we landed and we taxied in there was a group of people that were standing around and i remember these folks basically when the doors open they all snap to attention because they see the flags there [Music] with outstanding bravery the men of air force reserve combat search and rescue have saved littrell and recovered the bodies of his comrades we're rescue guys we always want to bring everybody back alive if we can i mean there's a little bit of pride in me to know that that i i helped bring him back to his family uh you know even though i would have rather i mean as rescue guys would rather bring them all back alive if we could that just wasn't in our cards that day to be able to do that so it was a huge honor for me to know that skinny trusted me enough to send me in to do quite frankly that a lot of us never will do in our career and uh i thank him for that even as mere reservists even as guys that spend most of their time you know at thirty thousand feet rather than thirty feet in the air even with guys that are that are more often concerned with peanuts and dr pepper rather than getting a guy out of a combat situation when we're called upon you know we're just as capable just as just as effective as any active duty unit could possibly be for their heroism each crew member of the helicopter rescue team was awarded the air force medal spanky now helps devise the latest rescue procedures [Music] checky is training to be a doctor and skinny now has four squadrons under his command [Music] [Music] you

Channel: DangerTV

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Keywords: the taliban gambit, taliban gambit, helicopter wars, helicopter wars season 1, helicopter wars season 1 episode 1, helicopter wars full episode, helicopter wars full episodes, helicopter wars full episodes online, danger, dangertv, danger tv, Danger, Danger TV, DangerTV, dangertv special forces, dangertv special forces training, special forces, special forces training, special forces helicopter training, helicopter training, helicopter warfare, warfare, army helicopters, afghanistan

Id: 6Cdfxeb_2P8

Length: 50min 17sec (3017 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021