You never want to use the same landing zone twice, Darack said. With a keen understanding of the propaganda value of downing Coalition helicopters, the Taliban single them out as targets. A hearing was set to get answers to questions surrounding the high-profile shoot-down of an American helicopter in Afghanistan and how the remains of the fallen service members were handled. The following passage, published in The Navy Times, seems to support that assertion. [12][13], Six minutes prior to reaching the landing zone, the empty CH-47D left the formation as planned. 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). Privacy Statement For helicopter crews in Afghanistan, the most dangerous times are landing and taking off. Extortion 16 flew empty. But we are still sending people to another country to fight, and we need to understand why were doing that, he said. Landing in deserts or mountainsides, the helicopter rotors kick up clouds of sand and dust, causing brownouts that can blind a pilot. Lee had just flown the night before on a similar mission with one of the pilots, David Carter. Captain Marquez claims that had the AC-130 been allowed to fire on the remaining enemy insurgents, Extortion 17 would not have been shot down. They may have seen Extortion 17 and its landing zone through their own night vision goggles or simply aimed by sound alone. 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. It was the day we learned our son Aaron and other American warriors had lost their lives in a helo crash in Afghanistan. He knew the pilots and crew members aboard Extortion 17. Directors Karl Horstmann Stephen Spivey Writer Stephen Spivey Stars Sean Hannity Raj Kala August 2011 Attack on U.S. Commanders frequently request CH-47 Chinooks to insert troops. On this night, Aug. 6, 2011, something went terribly wrong. But at least you should care about them and appreciate what were asking of them.. According to officials, the team included 17 SEALs, five Navy special operations troops who support the SEALs, three Air Force airmen, a five-member Army air crew and a military dog, along with. The shooters origin remains a mystery. Insurgents fired at the Chinook, severed one of. Whether enemy fire brought down the Chinook or a tree strike would never be known for sure. Lee earned his wings at Fort Rucker, Ala., then deployed to Pakistan, where he did humanitarian missions, learning to fly into and out of mountainous terrain. The military has worked diligently to more tightly integrate gunship escorts with transport craft, according to Brady. [43][44], American rules of engagement were tightened by Gen. Stanley McChrystal in 2009 in order to improve American counterinsurgency strategy. The missions commanders decided to insert another team to go after Tahir while the Rangers held the compound. The night before he left to go to Fort Hood, where he would board a plane to Afghanistan, the biggest event of the 10-year war occurred: Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan during a raid by Navy SEALs. The duo may also have had no ties to Tahir or any of his suspected fighters, and attacked the helicopter on their own. So many unsettling details are coalescing with the resurgence of Extortion 17. One of the things I vowed, I will never forget. In mid-2011, combined with a U.S. Army aviation battalion, they had spent weeks conducting operations nearly every other night in Wardak and surrounding provinces south of Kabul to capture or kill Taliban forces, disrupt attack plots, and deny them sanctuary on this strategic approach to Kabul City. Photo by Sgt. He grew up in Tyler, went to Texas A&M;, joined the Corps of Cadets and stared in shock at the news that two planes slammed into the World Trade Center and another into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Thirty-eight boarded Extortion 17 Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilots from the 159th General Support Aviation Battalion. Buy images; Sell images; 130 Extortion 17 ideas | extortion, seal team 6, navy seals Extortion 17 119 Pins 9y K Collection by Kim&Pauly Us Soldiers Troops Fallen Soldiers Military Personnel Military Men American Soldiers American Heroes Naval Special Warfare Fallen Heroes [2][38], On 10 August 2011, the U.S. military stated that the insurgent who fired the rocket-propelled grenade had been killed only two days afterward in an F-16 airstrike, saying only that intelligence gained on the ground provided "a high degree of confidence" that the person was among those killed in the airstrike from two days earlier, but providing no other details. Its crazy how many times I can think of where me or the guys I was with had to do that.. Lees second deployment started in May of 2011. The theories suggest that Afghan forces leaked information to the Taliban about the mission. Senior Chief Robert James Reeves was one of those Americans. Less than five seconds after the RPG round hit, the helicopter spun uncontrollably, plummeting into a dry creek bed and erupting in a ball of fire that killed all on board. Night Stalker pilots and crew rigorously train for nighttime raids, like the one in Juy Zarin. Six weeks later, at around 10:40 p.m., an assault team of Army Rangers and Afghan special operations forces were dropped into an LZ on a mission to capture or kill a Taliban commander named Qari Tahir, who had been responsible for a series of attacks and ambushes in the Tangi Valley, not far from Shank. Extortion 17 was the call sign of a special operations mission in Afghanistan on Aug. 6, 2011, that responded to an Army Ranger unit engaged in a firefight with the Taliban and in need of backup. Commentdocument.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id", "a62b75e7a99f5de39e28d378788f7ec9" );document.getElementById("c08a1a06c7").setAttribute( "id", "comment" ); Content on this website is free to use and share, but please provide a link back to Spec Ops Magazine as a source. The two may have been those who escaped Apache cannon fire, or they may have split away from either of the groups that formed after the start of the raid. The call sign for the Chinook was Extortion 17. Stock photos, 360 images, vectors and videos. In fact, the conflict was heating up. Carter and Nichols continued the descent. "[31][32] NBC News reported that the Pentagon released the names of the 30 Americans killed. Lee remained in Afghanistan flying combat missions for another eight months before returning home in the spring of 2012. [9][10][11] After a 20-minute flight (around 23:00), the two Chinook helicopters landed near the compound ostensibly containing Tahir, offloaded the Ranger platoon and returned to base. The U.S. Navy SEAL task force assigned to conduct operations in Tangi Valley was well conditioned to the dangerous operating environment. Winds whipped through the fir trees. Pinterest. Lee, now a captain, was placed in command of a Chinook helicopter unit at Forward Operating Base Shank. A senior Afghan government official, speaking anonymously, said that Taliban commander Qari Tahir had fed American forces false information about a meeting of insurgent leaders and fighters waited for the helicopter from both sides of a steep valley: "The Taliban knew which route the helicopter would take. 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. 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. You also want to come in from a different direction for the element of surprise.. But the CH-47D has neither a flight nor voice recorder, only an engine performance data recorder for maintenance. ", "Taliban laid trap for Chinook: official", "Honor Roll: Remembering the 30 U.S. There was a lot of experience in that cockpit, the flight engineers and the door gunners. Mission commanders, believing that Tahir was likely among one of the groups, deployed an Immediate Reaction Force (IRF) to interdict them while the Rangers held the compound. 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. Faced with the possibility of confronting nine or 10 Taliban fighters, planners increased the reinforcement team from 17 to 32 men, formed around the 15-man SEAL group. | by FighterSweep Staff Apr 25, 2017 Retired Air Force Captain Joni Marquez is claiming the Pentagon hid the truth and lied about the circumstances that led to a Chinook helicopter crash that. It was reported that the Taliban fighters had no information of the helicopter's flight path and that they had been in the right place at the right time. He was assigned to the 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment (General Support Aviation Battalion), New Century, Kansas, Tech. It requires the highest level of skills from the pilots because they are some of the most dangerous operations.. The helicopter fell from the sky, killing all 38 on board. Don Brown, a former U.S. Navy JAG officer stationed at the Pentagon, and former Special Assistant United . And I condemn anyone who would dare denigrate the flag of the greatest country in the world which is made so by the heroic actions of these great men. 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,. 2017 The Dallas Morning News. On his right wrist, he wears a bracelet with the names of the five crew members of Extortion 17. Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six is a 2015 non-fiction expose, written by best-selling author and former U.S. Navy JAG Officer Don Brown, about the 2011 Chinook shootdown in Afghanistan of a United States Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter. Naval Special Warfare support personnel, two EOD technicians, one MWD Handler, one Cryptologic technician, and one Information systems technician. 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. The hardest LZ Id ever been into, Lee said. Its the worst day in our history by a mile.. Located in a remote and dangerous province in eastern Afghanistan, the base was the target of near-constant rocket attacks from Taliban insurgents. Among the 38 occupants inside the Chinook were some of the most highly trained and battle-seasoned fighters in the U.S. military, including 15 commandos from the Navys SEAL Team 6, the unit that three months earlier had killed Osama bin Laden. No one is planting victory gardens, and were not rationing. [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." [7][20][21], Fifteen of the Navy SEALs that were killed were members of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU),[5][22][20] while the other two Navy SEALs were from an unidentified West Coast-based unit.