Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Mission Creep has turned a US force sent to Somalia to help with famine into one hunting a warlord.
Chapter 2: What led to the mission creep in Somalia?
And now the task force is going after his top men in a mission which will go disastrously wrong. Well, welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.
And I'm David McCloskey.
David, last time we set the scene, Somalia, 1993, a country where the states collapsed, famines killed hundreds of thousands, clan politics and mission creep with these US forces starting from feeding starving people into hunting the warlord, Mohammed Farah Aidid, who's in command of the Somali National Alliance.
Now, we left it on October 3rd as Task Force Ranger TRF was departing from its base after this tip-off that some of Aidid's top lieutenants were going to be meeting in the middle of Mogadishu.
Chapter 3: How did the Task Force Ranger's mission begin to unravel?
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Chapter 4: What roles did the Delta operators and Rangers play in the operation?
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Chapter 5: How did the environment of Mogadishu impact the mission?
The Restless Classified listeners also benefit from 10% off HP business technology with code T-R-I-C-10. I think it's useful to have a reminder on this force that the Americans have sent out. There are four teams of Delta operators that are going to be inserted on these little bird helicopters. They are the ones who are going to hit the compound and snatch up the two lieutenants.
We then have the Rangers on Blackhawks who are coming in and are going to take the corners around the target, essentially set up a perimeter cordon to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. They're doing that while Delta does its work inside the compound. Then, once the snatch and grab is complete, everyone will be extracted via a ground convoy, which is headed for the same position.
So everyone, the Delta operators, the Rangers, all the prisoners, will get loaded up on trucks and into Humvees, and they'll head back to the base. Also along is a combat search and rescue Blackhawk. that is loaded up with these guys called PJs, which stands for para-jumpers. They're essentially daredevil medics, I guess you could call them, who are there to provide first aid.
They also have tools with them, like saws and things they can use to cut people out of wrecks. There's the command and control Black Hawk that's carrying the commanders of Delta Squadron and the Night Stalkers. The Night Stalkers are the group of pilots that'll be flying everyone in to the target site and then kind of orbiting to provide air cover as this mission unfolds.
So it's 3.32 in the afternoon, and it's only a few minutes flight time to the target, isn't it?
It is.
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Chapter 6: What challenges did the convoy face during their extraction attempt?
It's not a long flight at 3.43 p.m. Operators insert at the target building. They breach the door. And this is the amazing thing, Gordon. I mean, within 90 seconds, they have their prisoners. Jumped up. They have the two lieutenants, two of Aidid's lieutenants, 22 other Somalis as well. They flexed, cuffed them. They photographed them by 3.50 p.m. So they'd been out of base for just 18 minutes.
It's done. The mission's complete. The snatch and grab went perfectly, and they've got the guys that they wanted to get.
Chapter 7: What critical decisions were made by the command during the chaos?
And it's worth pausing here, I think, just to say that the intelligence that came from the agency was accurate. ID lieutenants were there. The Delta guys went in as they are trained to do. I mean, this is why Delta exists. You see in the Maduro raid most recently, which was conducted, the key ground element was Delta Force.
This is the kind of thing they do, is bust in to a place and quickly capture the people who are inside, who are high value targets. And that is done perfectly.
But there's going to be a series of disasters. And I guess that's what makes this so fateful. It's not just one thing, but multiple things are going to go wrong. And the first one is a ranger who, I mean, it's an astonishing story, but he is going to fall from the helicopter.
That's right. So the Rangers, as we said, this is an air infiltration. And the way the Ranger teams, they call them chocks, by the way. So there's four chocks of Rangers, about 12 to 15 people apiece.
Chapter 8: How did the second Black Hawk get shot down?
to come in to secure the perimeter. And this is the part the pilots, the night stalkers in the memoirs seem, this is a stressful part because what happens is those helicopters are hovering 60, 70 feet above the street and the rangers fast rope down. I mean, quite literally, there's a thick braid of kind of nylon rope
And they're not attached to the rope or the helicopter, are they? They are literally just using the rope to go down. It's not a kind of safety harness or anything else, is there?
Yeah, there's no harness. So you can imagine they're wearing thick gloves because basically your hands feel like they're on fire by the time you get to the bottom, but you're just roping down. And one of the rangers...
falls it falls 70 feet is it clear why he falls because in the film i think it's it's implied that there's a kind of rpg coming nearby the the helicopter kind of you know moves and then he falls but whatever the reason i mean he goes headfirst 70 feet to the ground i mean you just can't imagine what that is like to fall that fast in i guess you know equipment as well so he's going to be heavy
Yeah, and each of these guys are carrying, you know, probably 50 plus pounds of gear as well on top of their bodies. So he's alive though, which is amazing. I mean, he's alive, but he's bleeding from the ears, the mouth, the nose. He has catastrophic brain trauma and he needs to be evacuated immediately or he'll die. That happens as the Delta guys are conducting the snatch and grab, right?
That happens on the fast rope. in this Ranger Falls. Now, simultaneously, the ground convoy, led by a guy named Lieutenant Colonel Danny McKnight, who was played in the film by Tom Sizemore, who I think at this period, Gordon, in Hollywood in kind of the late 90s or I don't think you could have a war movie in Hollywood that did not include Tom Sizemore in it.
I think that was sort of contractually required. But Sizemore plays McKnight in the film. These are the 12 vehicles that are tasked with extracting everyone. The convoy is immediately in trouble when they leave the base. Immediately in trouble. And you see this in the film. I mean, they start taking fire immediately. pretty much once they get right out onto the street.
And this is going to be an interesting part of this story and a really, really impactful one, which is navigating in Mogadishu is really, really difficult. There are no street signs. The photo maps that they've studied at the base that are drawn from aerial reconnaissance are really tough to use once you're out in the city. Things kind of look... the same everywhere.
There's almost like this urban blight that has afflicted the entire city as a result of the civil war. And so as a result, just driving short distances in Mogadishu, to say nothing of the roadblocks and the fire from the militia, driving and navigating in Mogadishu is really hard.
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