The quick reaction force included SEAL Team 6 and other special operations personnel. His account of the brave pilots, crew, and passengers of Extortion 17 . The 30 Navy SEALs and other Special Forces personnel, along with the Helicopter flight crew because American Military and Political leaders threw these men under the bus the enemy was driving and then covered it all up with lies and deceit. It was a hard landing, but it would have been worse if they had landed tail first. Hi there! The "had Seal team 6 killed" is a likely reference to what's known as the "Extortion 17" incident, the August 2011 tragedy in which a Chinook military helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan,. 5 U.S. What we saw is that if the enemy knew where you were going to attack, they would back some guys with RPGs off 500 meters or so, to shoot during an ingress, Glover explains. Lee heard the call, and he knew what it meant. BUT the Chief Command and those who elected him will pay for there failure to seek Yahwahs guidance before going to war or to vote for a new president! [43][44], American rules of engagement were tightened by Gen. Stanley McChrystal in 2009 in order to improve American counterinsurgency strategy. [40], In October 2011, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that an investigation following the shootdown concluded "that all operational decisions, linked to the incident, were deemed tactically sound." Two were still alive." Troops in Afghanistan Defense Department officials and military leaders testified at a hearing on the investigation of the August 20111 death of 30 U.S. servicemen in. Connor Mendez, courtesy of U.S. Army. Regarding the downing of Extortion 17, all of the DEVGRU Operators aboard were members of the Gold Squadron. Campbell was one of 30 Americans killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, with the call sign Extortion 17, crashed in Afghanistan. We are here today at the request of many of the families of the fallen heroes aboard Extortion 17 to obtain answers to their ques-tions where answers can be found. There are a lot of bullets out there that say To whom it may concern,says Major Doug Glover, a U.S. Marine F/A-18D weapons and sensors operator who was a senior watch officer for the Marine air operations center in southern Afghanistan. Enterprise. He would eventually do two tours and become commander of a Chinook unit during his second deployment in 2011. American forces continued to carry out operations in the area (mostly via helicopter and using special forces), encountering resistance from Taliban fighters on several occasions. Editors note: This story originally appeared in October 2017. David Tarrant, The Dallas Morning News The pilots and crew of Extortion 17, however, had ideal experience and abilities for the mission that night. Six minutes from their estimated landing time, Extortion 16 broke away from the lead Chinook and orbited at a location close enough to help if needed. Operating with no lights save for the faint green glow of night vision goggles and cockpit instrument panels, the two helicopters, call signs Extortion 17 (one-seven) and Extortion 16, lifted into the darkness and accelerated toward a destination less than 20 miles west. The downing of Extortion 17 spurred a number of conspiracy theories, such as the idea that the shootdown was revenge for bin Laden's death. No evidence has emerged to support any of these claims. Photo by Sgt. Play FALLEN ANGEL Call Sign: Extortion 17. Having studied and directly observed the counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, Ive watched commanders and individual American troops consistently lean far to the side of restraint to encourage Afghans to side with American interests long after U.S. forces have left. The landing zone had been examined for a previous mission but had not yet been used. In order to speed disembarkation, all troops were loaded on a single CH-47D helicopter for transport; the other Chinook would approach the landing zone second as a decoy. But one thing that doesnt fade is never forgetting what they did.. Nearby, there were two enemy fighters with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. "Before Benghazi there was Extortion 17.. Saturday August 6 th 2011 was a day that changed the lives of my family forever. On Aug. 6, 2011, on the deadliest day in special operations history, 30 Americans, including 17 Navy SEALs, died when a Chinook helicopter crashed. Air Force C-17 Crashes Just After Takeoff in Alaska | Dangerous Aerobatics (With Real Video) TheFlightChannel 2.1M views 1 year ago Feature History - Chinese Civil War Feature History 1.9M views. On the Extortion 17 crash, credible journalism was produced on this subject by Ed Darack in his book, "The Final Mission of Extortion 17." The SEALs who died in the crash belonged to Gold Squadron, while the SEALs who killed bin Laden belonged to Red Squadron. Tangi valley remained under Taliban control until April 2013, when more than 1,000 Afghan security forces personnel launched an offensive in an effort to clear the area of Taliban fighters. [34] Kevin Sieff and Greg Jaffe of The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials confirmed the deaths, including 22 SEALs. It was the deadliest helicopter crash in the history of U.S. special operations. It would never return. August 6, 2017 marks the 6 year anniversary of the downing of Extortion 17, a bigger scandal than Benghazi in large part due to the fact that America lost 30 of its military personnel, including 17 Navy SEALs, the largest loss of life in the Afghan war. He said: "They wanted to attack our Mujahideen who were in a house, but our Mujahideen resisted and destroyed a helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. They reached the site at 04:12 and found no survivors. As they started their descent, Lee heard a loud popping noise. [22][20] Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, confirmed that eight of the movement's fighters had been killed in the assault on the compound. The helicopter made its last radio transmission stating that it was one minute away from the landing zone, then descended to an altitude of 100150ft (3046m) and slowed to a speed of 50kn (58mph; 93km/h) as it approached the landing zone. While classification veils the specifics of these tactics, particularly for special operations raids, manned gunships can detect potential threats through a range of sensors and immediately attack if needed. [25][original research? The suspicious August 6th, 2011, CH47-D Chinook helicopter crash in Wardak Province, Afghanistan which claimed the lives of 38 American military personnel.Of those 38 lost, 22 were members of Navy SEAL Team 6, the Naval Special Warfare unit responsible for the killing of notorious 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden . You never want to use the same landing zone twice, Darack said. In March 2002, two MH-47s were downed by machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire while close to ground level. Editor's Note: On August 6, 2021, 30 American military servicemen and a U.S. military dog were killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter - call sign Extortion 17 - was shot down in Afghanistan. I am so proud to be an American and I thank all of the families left behind to mourn their loss. See more ideas about extortion, navy seals, seal team 6. Extortion 16 flew empty. Explore. If this was survivable, that was the right crew to have. But even a precisely aimed shot fired from an unguided weapon by a seasoned fighter is subject to the ballistics-altering whims of atmospheric variation, subtle and undetected flaws in launcher or projectile, and uncontrollable environmental factors such as wind gusts, large temperature variations, or even particulates in the air. ", "Taliban laid trap for Chinook: official", "Honor Roll: Remembering the 30 U.S. As they made their approach, there was a line of thunderstorms nearby. Where was the Chinook's black box cockpit recorder? Every mission is potentially life-threatening. Neither did the risk he and his pilots faced every night. The tempo of the missions did not decrease. (Smithsonian Books, September 2017). On his right wrist, he wears a bracelet with the names of the five crew members of Extortion 17. The forward rotor system then tore off, stressed by the imbalance and the strain of carrying what would normally be a shared load. Petty Officer 1st Class Aaron Vaughn was one of the SEAL Team 6 operators who died in the crash. As the operation got underway, our airborne Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms, including an MQ-9 Predator, detected a group evading the Rangers, moving towards the north. "[5], Subsequent reports stated that on the night during which the helicopter had been delivering reinforcements to personnel of the 75th Ranger Regiment, another special operations unit engaged in a night raid on a compound to kill or capture a senior Taliban leader. [11] Seventeen U.S. Navy SEALs remained in reserve at the forward operating base. At the time of the Juy Zarin raid, the battalion had been flying in Afghanistan for about two weeks. Baseless Claim That Biden Ordered 'Extortion 17' Three months after the raid that killed bin Laden, Taliban fighters shot down a Chinook helicopter carrying 30 U.S. service members, including. The guy was incredibly skilled.. Why did it happen? And why was the fire control officer of the AC-130 Gunship flying above denied permission . Landing in deserts or mountainsides, the helicopter rotors kick up clouds of sand and dust, causing brownouts that can blind a pilot. On his first deployment, he felt fortunate to be surrounded by veteran pilots he could learn from. Theres no precedent for this. Lee had just flown the night before on a similar mission with one of the pilots, David Carter. Why was the black box missing from the crash site? These are the words of Billy Vaughn. With 38 people killed on board, it was the largest single-day loss of life in naval special warfare history and the largest single-day loss of life during the war in Afghanistan. The first round sailed past the helicopter. Thirty Americans perished in the blink of an eye, half of which comprised an entire 'troop' from SEAL Team 6's Gold Squadron. An Afghan official, speaking anonymously a few days after the attack, speculated that the Taliban had laid a trap, that they had purposely put out false information about a meeting involving the Taliban commander. Lee remained in Afghanistan flying combat missions for another eight months before returning home in the spring of 2012. Should the Apaches, or the AC-130 overhead, have fired upon the groups of suspected Taliban that gathered in the village after the raid began? The torque of the spinning rotor assembly, now catastrophically imbalanced, ripped the rear pylon off the Chinooks fuselage. There is a lot of controversy and discussion regarding the operators from the Gold Squadron who died abroad. The Chinook smashed into the ground, the force ripping off his goggles. A typical combat mission in Afghanistan leaves little margin for error, requiring Chinook pilots to land on tiny, makeshift sites on mountain slopes where any tree, bush or rock could be hiding an enemy fighter with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Sgt. On August 6th, 2011, the helicopter was fired upon and shot down by a previously undetected group of Taliban fighters. "It's a math problem. Monitored and controlled by a Joint Terminal Attack Controller at Forward Operating Base Shank via a General Atomics MQ-1 Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, all six were positively confirmed killed by the bomb strike and subsequent attacks by a Lockheed AC-130 gunship and two Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships. Capable of loitering overhead for hours undetected, small fleets of unmanned craft passed imagery to mission planners before and during the raid at Juy Zarin, allowing them to recognize individual fighters, learn their habits, pinpoint where they slept, and identify the types of weapons they carried. All rights reserved. Because unarmed villagers, unaffiliated with the Taliban, could also have been in those trees and among the groups milling about the village, the gunships could not have fired. Near the site of the Extortion 17 crash stands a memorial to Taliban fighters killed in the August 2011 battle during which Extortion 17 was shot down. Three hours after disembarking from the Chinooks, the assault force had secured the compound and detained a number of Tahirs men, but they hadnt found Tahir himself. We were told at that time we were the first unit to make it through a rotation without having anyone killed.. On the anniversary of the Extortion 17 tragedy, we remember the heroic men who were felled rushing into battle, as they had done hundreds of times . Its crazy how many times I can think of where me or the guys I was with had to do that.. The official statement from U.S. Central Command stated that a Taliban fighter scored a lucky shot with a rocket-propelled grenade. They heard a helicopter coming, they grabbed their RPGs, and they fired in quick succession, Darack said. As the ground assault force rushed toward Tahirs compound, Extortion 17 and 16 sped back to base, where they were refueled, and awaited word to extract the team, evacuate wounded, or race reinforcing troops to Juy Zarin. He presents the Final Flight of EXTORTION 17 (spoken one seven and seventeen), like a Defense Attorney or an investigator. August 6, 2022 marks 11 years since Extortion 17. This hearing also serves to Warnings from her crew to turn the Chinook back or cancel their mission went unheeded. Joining the 15 members of SEAL Team 6, two pilots and three-man crew inside Extortion 17: ten other Navy and Air Force personnel, eight Afghans and a combat assault dog named Bart. Classified reports, published by Wikileaks, teem with notes from pilots and crew of all types of military helicopters who saw RPG attacks throughout the war. While the goggles are better than nothing, they turn everything green, distort depth perception and limit peripheral vision. Extortion 17 and its 38 occupants would not return. As the Chinook CH-47 transport helicopter (call sign: Extortion 17) carrying 30 U.S. troops, seven Afghan commandos, an Afghan civilian interpreter and a U.S. military dog approached, the. The 30 American Servicemen killed in action (KIA) with the downing of Extortion 17. According to Glover, improved systems in place enable U.S. forces to monitor a target for days or even weeks prior to an operation, so they theoretically will know of even well-hidden potential RPG shooters throughout a village before transport helicopters first touch down. Following a scorched earth tactic may have killed the two shootersand possibly a greater number of innocentsprior to Extortion 17s return that night, but counterinsurgency doctrine dictates that such tactics lead to potentially far worse long-term consequences. Their deaths are the greatest single loss of life ever suffered by the U.S. Special Operations community in the 24-year history of the U.S. Special Operations Command.[5][22][15][23]. But over time, they became more disturbing, including one that suggested the Taliban had been tipped off by someone inside the Afghan government as revenge for bin Ladens killing. Terms of Use And while all military helicopters carry countermeasures for guided missiles, nothing can interdict the dumb luck of an unguided RPG round sailing through the air. He is the founder of Darack Research, a company that innovates unmanned systems, which grew out of his July 2014 Air & Space article Build Your Own Drone. It does not fly in a straight line, and there is no way to know what exact path it will takejust a fairly good idea of its trajectory.. Through sensors on manned and unmanned aircraft, U.S. forces observing the mud walls and terraces of the village saw new groups of fighters gathering and maneuvering. The crash killed all 38 people on board including 25 American special operations personnel, five United States Army National Guard and Army Reserve crewmen, seven Afghan commandos, one Afghan interpreter, and a U.S. military working dog. To address some unanswered questions, the committee received briefings, classified and unclassified, on the operational component leading up to the loss of the 30 servicemen and eight Afghan nationals and the postmortem handling of the 30 American servicemen on Extortion 17. He knew the pilots and crew members aboard Extortion 17. And thats fine; thats what you signed up for, Lee said. The missions commanders decided to insert another team to go after Tahir while the Rangers held the compound. The insurgents had no way of knowing the helicopter would be coming in, at the speed it was coming and at the altitude, Darack said. Several minutes later, a 20-man Pathfinder team (specializing in downed-aircraft rescue and recovery) arrived at the site. As Extortion 17 moved into final approach of the target area at 0238 local time, the Rangers on the ground watched in horror as it took a direct hit from an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade). During a previous deployment to Iraq, Carters unit flew dozens of similar raids, which he often planned and led, and gained a reputation for working well with special operations troops. Thirty-eight boarded Extortion 17 Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilots from the 159th General Support Aviation Battalion. The crash sent shock waves throughout U.S. special operations. Just three months earlier, members of a counterpart SEAL Team 6 squadron successfully raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden. The SEAL Team 6 community was devastated. A few minutes past 2 a.m.on August 6, 2011, at a dusty forward operating base40 miles south of Kabul, Afghanistan, the rotors of two U.S. Army CH-47D Chinooks began to turn. In The Final Flight of Extortion 17, Ed Darack debunks this theory and others and uncovers the truth behind this mysterious tragedy. To remove the risk of rocket-propelled grenades downing helicopters in Afghanistan 100 percent, youd have to remove the opposable thumbs of every fighting-age male in the objective area, and thats not how we win a counter-insurgency., Ed Darack Patrick D. Hamburger, 30, of Lincoln, Neb. "One. Don Brown, a former U.S. Navy JAG officer stationed at the Pentagon, and former Special Assistant United . Night Stalker pilots and crew rigorously train for nighttime raids, like the one in Juy Zarin. [9][11], Six minutes later, the Rangers concluded securing the compound, detained several people and began to move on foot toward the crash site. For Lee, there was no time to reflect on how close he had come to dying. In fact, the conflict was heating up. The SEAL task force was monitoring this activity, and they were soon called upon to deploy quickly into the northern end of the valley to intercept Tahir and capture him and those moving with him. [11], At 02:00, the special operations task force commander and the Immediate Reaction Force commander decided to add additional (non-SEAL) reinforcements, increasing the size of the team to 33. Save up to 30% when you upgrade to an image pack. Daniel L. Zerbe, 28, of York, Pennsylvania. Were handing rifles to 20-year-olds and asking them to shoot people. In the afternoon of 6 August, a flash flood swept through the area, washing away parts of the wreckage. The crash occurred in Tangi Joi Zareen, in the district of Sayd Abad in Wardak Province after it was struck by an. It just wasnt.. I thought I hit a tree,he said. Extortion 17 and 16 weren't MH-47s and their crews were not Night Stalkers. But Tahir and a group of his fighters escaped. Should the Apache pilots have fired into the stand of trees after the two fighters ducked out of sight? The 30 American deaths represent the greatest loss of U.S. military lives in a single incident in the decade-long war in Afghanistan that began in 2001. However, the Afghan government forces did not occupy the base, which was seized by the Taliban shortly after the departure of American forces. Around 02:23, the two helicopters departed the forward base. Intelligence had revealed Tahir to be the senior Taliban chief of the Tangi Valley region, with probable ties to upper-echelon Taliban leadership in Pakistan. The group fired 2-3 RPG rounds from a two-story building from a location some 220 meters south of the helicopter. Two investigations of the incident proved inconclusive. [11][24] These reports were erroneous; the CH-47D airframe does not contain flight recorders, although the MH-47 variant does have a flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. The Chinook is often used to assist in disaster relief, delivering food and water after earthquakes and floods. American intelligence officials identified this individual as "OBJECTIVE GINOSA." The second slammed into one of the Chinooks rear rotor blades and exploded, severing 10 feet of it. All content is protected by copyright and may not be used for commercial purposes without prior written permission. The mission had begun about four hours prior to the shootdown, when the two helicopters touched down side by side in Juy Zarin, a village in the bare rock-walled Tangi Valley of Wardak Province. Immediately after Ryan shared an intimate photo of his own, the cybercriminal demanded $5,000, threatening to make the photo public and send it to Ryan's family and friends. And to this day, people are still debating what really happened. Missions like this one to insert or remove an assault force are the military equivalent of a perfect 10 in the Olympics equal parts skill, experience and daring. This is the Group Burial for unidentified remains of casualties of the Chinook helicopter (CH-47D 89-00175) which crashed in Afghanistan on August 6, 2011. The following was transcribed from the above video press conference. It was a good crew, it really was. So many unsettling details are coalescing with the resurgence of Extortion 17. Photo by Jake Simkin for Coffee or Die Magazine. Intelligence on August 6th indicated Qari Tahir was in Tangi Valley, just a short helicopter flight from the SEAL base camp. 1h 33m "A U.S. Army helicopter carrying 30 Americans, most members of the elite Navy SEAL Team 6 is shot down in Afghanistan. At 23:30, one of the Apache support helicopters engaged in a brief skirmish with a different group of eight Taliban fighters 400m (440yd) north of the compound, killing six. A Black Hawk Down of the war in Afghanistan, the deadliest day for the U.S. in 12 years of that conflictand a military investigation that covered up evidence of an inside job by the Taliban. Thirty members of the American special forces have been killed in Afghanistan in the deadliest day of the 10-year war for US military personnel when the Taliban shot down . The resulting explosion destroyed the aft rotor assembly. Then they have to stick the landing. It is considered the worst loss of American lives in a single incident in the Afghanistan campaign, surpassing Operation Red Wings in 2005. At the pilots request, the AC-130 flashed an infrared spotlight, which could be seen only through night vision goggles, to light up the landing zone. We continue our work at the Museum so that theirservice and sacrifice will never be forgotten. August 2011 Attack on U.S. The SEALs who assaulted Osama bin Ladens compound were drawn from Naval Special Warfare Development Groups Red Squadron, according to several sources in the special operations community.. Their target: an Afghan named Qari Tahir and his group of fighters. Its the worst day in our history by a mile.. #neverforgotten #screwedbygovt #demmandanswers. The incident became known as "Extortion 17" after the helicopter .

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