| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: WoT |
| Full story of SEAL mission in question (helicopter crash) |
| 2011-10-25 |
| By the time the CH-47 transport helicopter descended to 150 feet above an unprotected landing zone in Afghanistan around 2 a.m. on Aug. 6, the element of surprise had been lost. Hours earlier, two other Chinooks had deposited 47 Army Rangers at another nearby landing site, undetected. The landing triggered a nighttime ground and aerial firefight that raged for several hours as a few Taliban “squirters,” as the military called them, tried to escape from the targeted compound and regrouped with other fighters. A bevy of surveillance and attack aircraft buzzed overhead, telling the Taliban in a collection of mud-brick homes in Tangi Valley that they were suddenly in the middle of Afghanistan’s 10-year-old war. When the third chopper — carrying 38 passengers and crew, and one dog, in a reinforcement known as an “immediate reaction force” — approached, a small group of Taliban on a rooftop stood ready. They fired rounds of rocket-propelled grenades. One clipped a rotary blade, sending the CH-47 into a violent spin and then a fiery crash. All onboard died, including 17 elite Navy SEALs. The loss of so many high-echelon special warriors drew criticism from some in the special-operations community. They said it was a needless waste of lives, a highly risky mission to round up or kill a relatively few enemy forces that the Rangers and air power could have subdued. As funerals for the fallen sailors played out in small towns across America, ArmyBrig. Gen. Jeffrey Colt and a team of specialists had landed in Afghanistan for a full-blown investigation. He would determine the cause of the crash and whether commanders made the right call. In his report summary, Gen. Colt, a helicopter pilot who had served in Army special-operations aviation, disagreed with the mission’s critics and cleared the commanders. He said the decision to load all the reaction force onto a single helicopter was “sound.” He said the “squirters” might have included the mission’s original “Objective Lefty Grove”— a Taliban leader named Qari Tahir. His summary does not tell the whole story. U.S. Central Command released hundreds of pages of interviews and exhibits that showed there were at least two tactical moves that came in for second-guessing. |
| Posted by:Sherry |
| #1 Gen. Colt disagreed with the mission's critics and cleared the commanders. Would you do it again? |
| Posted by: gorb 2011-10-25 13:34 |