P. Rice
5/04/04
Collector Notes for the Easton Press edition of
Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down
Late in the afternoon of October 3, 1994, a group of elite U.S. Rangers and a Delta task force were sent into Mogadishu, Somalia on a mission to capture renegade Somalian warlord Mohammad Farah Aidid and as many of his lieutenants as could be rounded up. The carefully detailed plan called for the mission to be completed in less than an hour, but that plan went awry almost immediately in the violent chaos that ensued. For more than fifteen hours, the soldiers of Task Force Ranger were snared in a bloody struggle of survival that resulted in eighteen American soldiers killed and eighty-four wounded with over 500 of the native combatants killed and scores more wounded. This was the bloodiest and most sustained battle fought by the U. S. Army since Vietnam, but comparatively little attention was given to the event. America was in the midst of peace time, and the government was anxious to downplay any activities which might suggest otherwise. But journalist Mark Bowden understood that the story of the soldiers of Task Force Ranger was significant and profound, and he endeavored to construct the history of the events as seen through the surviving participants. Black Hawk Down is that story.
The men involved in the action were specially trained for the type of lightening quick strike that was designed to accomplish their mission. Most of the soldiers had participated in similar missions in the recent past, missions that were executed flawlessly with the skill and precision associated with the Rangers. When Mohammad Farah Aidid was purportedly holding court in a house next to the Olympic Hotel in Mogadishu, a main strike force was confidently sent on seventeen helicopters from the airfield base with a support convoy following on the ground. As they slid down ropes from the helicopters and landed near the target building, the Rangers immediately came under heavy fire. Thus far undaunted, they formed a perimeter while Special Forces troops assaulted the building in search of the quarry. Within minutes twenty prisoners were secured, although Aidid was not among them.
The prisoners were loaded onto trucks in preparation to be driven to the airfield, but before the mission could be completed as planned, a Black Hawk Super 61 helicopter, its tail damaged by a grenade, crashed in an alley about five blocks from the hotel. The prisoner extraction effort temporarily came to a halt as the Rangers rushed over on foot to provide cover for the crashed helicopter and to attempt to rescue the seven-man crew. The ground convoy attempted to join the rescue effort but was driven back by intense fire and subsequently ordered to return to the base with the prisoners in tow. Within minutes, Somali gunmen converged on the crash site and surrounded the Rangers.
As the situation near the hotel quickly deteriorated, a second Black Hawk crashed a half mile from the first. Two Delta Force operators, Master Sergeant Gary I. Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randall D. Shughart, were killed while protecting the surviving co-pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant. Durant would ultimately be taken prisoner and beaten, but he would be the only crew member of the second helicopter to survive; the bodies of the dead soldiers were mutilated by the mob of Somalis. Gordon and Shughart posthumously received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their heroic actions.
The bullet-riddled convoy wound its way back to the airfield with casualties and prisoners, leaving ninety Rangers stranded in the most hostile district of Mogadishu. The surrounded soldiers were under fire or the threat of fire throughout the night by an ever-present but largely unseen enemy force. The U.S. commander, General Thomas Montgomery, implemented a QRF (Quick Reaction Force) to transport the besieged Rangers to a sports stadium where helicopters could safely be assembled. Initial efforts were severely hampered by the Somali gunmen, but seventy vehicles finally reached the Rangers just before dawn. Many of the surviving Rangers were forced to run through heavy fire in order to get to the pick-up point and be taken to the stadium, a remarkable climax to a horrific and violent excursion.
Mark Bowden’s dramatic narrative provides a minute-by-minute account of the ordeal, and in the process he captures the terror and excitement of combat without any attempts to gloss over the terrible realities of war. An award-winning journalist with the Philadelphia Enquirer, Bowden’s superb journalistic skills are evident throughout Black Hawk Down. His text draws upon extensive personal interviews conducted with participants from both sides, and his research includes classified combat audio and video transcripts in addition to relevant government and military records. The result is an extraordinary documentation of a relatively unheralded but unquestionably significant moment in American military history.
Handsomely bound in genuine leather adorned with accents of 22-kt gold on the spine, this special Easton Press edition of Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down is printed on specially-milled archival quality paper and is designed to last for generations as a permanent addition to your Leather-Bound Library of Military History.