Share This: Rangers, Special Forces, and PJs were already moving up the mountain toward the crash site. Steven Smith, the flight engineer in the rear of Turbine 34, saw a smoke trail emerge from the tree line directly toward Turbine 33. The new mission, dubbed Operation Red Wings II, was to recover the fallen heroes and the lone survivor Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell. As he watched the two Chinooks taxiing onto the runway, he locked eyes with Russell, his platoon sergeant. Brady told his operations NCO to give him a minute to gather more information to get the next plan of action in place. As the lead aircraft descended, it became clear the LZ was on a steep slope of the mountain, making descent difficult due to the front rotors approaching the mountainside faster than the rear of the aircraft. Brady said it seemed like the whole base turned out to give the fallen a proper sendoff. Operation Redwing - Wikipedia Then there was NFL football player Pat Tillmans decision to give up his football career and become an Army Ranger. Believing the gunship could make it back on station in time for the insertion, Brady made the call to continue the mission. The Night Stalkers job was to insert the SEALs on a ridgeline where the terrain left few options for landing zones. We would have to drop a man down with a hoist in that hole of an LZ, Brady explained. Nope, I want you to take my spot as the operations officer and monitor from here, Reich replied. There were no survivors. As he approached the insertion site, Brady could see lights dotting the mountains below through his night-vision goggles. Im glad youre a thinking air mission commander and not simply one that takes a black-and-white view of the situation.. The extreme height of the trees made the full length of rope approximately 90 feet necessary. Al and Kip were on the ramp when the RPG impacted, Smith, who witnessed the horrific event, recalled. The men of the task force saying their final goodbyes to the fallen before they are flown home to their final resting place. Kind of like SEALs.. This was our small part in Operation Red Wings II. Graham watched from Turbine 34 as Turbine 33s ramp lowered and the crewman walked onto it to observe the landing zone below. Looking over the grim images for the first time, after an ABC News reporter provided them, Sam Kristensen said if conditions were ever safe enough and she had the opportunity to walk the ground where her son and his fellow warriors perished, "I'd be on the next plane -- a mother wants to know everything. Operation Red Wings Through the Eyes of the Night Stalkers - Coffee or Die As the Night Stalkers slept, the SR team was discovered by a numerically superior force of enemy fighters. Matt Rogie, left, and Matt Brady having jovial conversation in Bagram. It means you cant drift any direction without crashing.. The extreme height of the trees made the full length of rope approximately 90 feet necessary. Robert Thaler, courtesy of DVIDS. The plan was for the SEALs to fast-rope onto the ridgeline above the original LZ. Tasked with inserting the SEAL special reconnaissance (SR) team deep into enemy territory in unforgiving terrain, Brady knew the SEALs Lt. Michael Murphy, Petty Officer 2nd Class Danny Dietz, Petty Officer 2nd Class Marcus Luttrell, and Petty Officer 2nd Class Matthew Axelson had a difficult mission ahead. Many of the men suffered scorched hands from gripping the rope through gloves for such a long descent. All the men were anxious, angry, and ready to retrieve their brothers in arms. At the Bagram operations center, Major Stephen Reich approached Brady urgently, asking why he didnt follow abort criteria and fly back with the SR team after the AC-130 had to leave the airspace. Commander Erik Kristensen was a senior commander in SEAL Team 10 in Afghanistan and didnt go on as many ground combat operations as those in the platoons under him. It can go from 100 degrees to 50 in an hour, Brooks said. A new book released Tuesday tells the story of the efforts U.S. Army Rangers made in summer 2005 to recover the casualties of Operation Red Wings and to rescue the missions lone survivor, U.S. Navy SEAL Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell. Chief Warrant Officer 4 Matt Rogie arrived in Bagram just before the Night Stalkers came back after dropping off the recovery force. The members of the task force said their final goodbyes. We argued for what seemed like 10 minutes but was actually about 30 seconds, Brady recalled. Weve got two military-aged males, possibly armed, on the northernmost LZ, the crew reported. The fallen warriors were now on their way home. "It is very redeeming thing. Upload media. The JSOC troops, along with their newly arrived reinforcements, went to work recovering those killed in action as well as sensitive equipment that could not fall into enemy hands. Turn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? There were 100-foot-tall trees on all sides of the Chinook, and they were so close the pilots had no room to sway as they descended. 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. Commander Erik Kristensen died trying to rescue his fellow SEALs in the Operation Red Wings disaster 10 years ago. One of the SEALs even drew his pistol and attempted unsuccessfully to force the Chinook to land so they could try to save their friends. The League of Wives Memorial will be the first public memorial in the country to recognize military spouses, its planners say. Brady said it seemed like the whole base turned out to give the fallen a proper sendoff. Smith and the others in Turbine 34 watched helplessly as the Chinook full of their fellow aviators their friends crashed into the mountain and erupted in a ball of flames. The projectile flew through the open ramp of the Chinook and exploded inside. This was a desolate part of the Hindu Kush, and at night, you wouldnt really expect to see much, Brady told Coffee or Die. He went on to work in paramedicine for more than five years, much of that time in the North Minneapolis area, before transitioning to a career in multimedia journalism. Operation Red Wings was a pyrrhic victory U.S. victory. Then the realization hit: He was now in charge. Navy SEAL Lt. The only SEAL to make it out of the Red Wings incident alive, Navy Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell, went on to write the bestseller "Lone Survivor," which became a major motion picture of the same title last year. They ascended back into orbit and remained there for an hour until the task force commander ordered them back to Jalalabad. The news about the chopper crash came while the Kristensens were, coincidentally, attending the retirement of a Navy diver in Norfolk who had served under Ed during the recovery of the passenger jet in the ocean. You hope they could. In January 2003, Brooks quit college and within a few months, he joined the Army. Brady knew that surveillance aircraft going off station without backup was supposed to result in aborting the mission. Tim Graham standing by in Bagram. . Joshua is married with two children. It just didnt look good.. Grahams aircraft pulled off to the right to circle around and insert their payload of SEALs after Turbine 33 moved off to allow their entrance. Part of. The lone C-17 aircraft lumbered through the sky after departing Germany, a necessary stop on the way back to the United States. Coffee Or Die The C-17 closed its ramp and taxied down the runway and took flight. All of us were pretty broken up at that point, Rogie said. When I met him there on the ground in Jalalabad, Graham was fairly shaken to say the least, Brady recalled. As the task unit commander for SEAL Team 10, in which Murphy served, Kristensen decided to personally lead an assault force by helicopter to his last known location, where the younger officer had been tasked with finding a militia leader named Ahmad Shah. Kristensen Family. SEALs: Who's Had More Impact in the War on Terror? "That was the one part of the movie that I enjoyed. That's who Erik really was," said Jason Redman, who served in SEAL Team 10 as an officer with Kristensen at the time of the Operation Red Wings disaster and had once been in Murphy's platoon. The commandos would have to descend from a rope fast-rope while the helos hovered high above the trees. Kind of like SEALs.. Steven K. Young, courtesy of DVIDS. Kristensen and his SEALs were waiting on the ramp, standing in a circle. Back in the operations center, leaders were busy trying to figure out the SEALs last known location and calculating how many soldiers each helicopter could fly with. Grahams aircraft pulled off to the right to circle around and insert their payload of SEALs after Turbine 33 moved off to allow their entrance. "Erik did what any SEAL would do: go help SEALs in trouble," Navy Capt. "We would have to drop a man down with a hoist in that hole of an LZ," Brady explained. He and some of his fellow Night Stalkers felt the SEALs plan was too risky. For the Night Stalkers of the famed 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the war on terror continued. Were completely separate commands. After landing, Graham saw the same five Black Hawks that had peeled off earlier parked on the runway. The weather was turning bad again as they offloaded Marines to assist with security. Hes a person all those Jesuits wanted us to be, said Ismay, a fellow Gonzaga graduate. That mission, as fate would have it, would see Brooks and his unit tasked with rescuing Luttrell and recovering the 11 Navy SEALs and eight Army Nightstalkers killed in the special operations mission in Afghanistan on June 28, 2005. When the ramp lowered, the Night Stalkers on the Chinooks stood tall and proud for their fallen brethren as task force members boarded and began solemnly moving each remains bag to the mortuary affairs building. Three war-weary escorts one of them a SEAL and the other two Night Stalkers Daniel Bell and Chris Eicher sat off to the sides, grimly staring off into space. Russell went to work right away getting the crews together to prep the aircraft for the mission. They engaged in a fierce firefight, and at some point the task force lost contact with them. Troops searching for the KIA and survivors. Brooks said he felt inspired to record his first-hand account of the mission to rescue Luttrell because most war stories are about the fighting and the glorious victory of battle, but I think this kind of tells another side of war that kind of really doesnt get much attention., This was ugly, this was an ugly event, Brooks added.
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