Inside Chalk Four, the Falcon was white-knuckling whatever he could hold onto. His troop was to a man doing the very same. The Chinook was flying a maddening trajectory that none of them had ever experienced. It pitched, yawed, rolled, bumped up, and dove like a machine possessed. At one point, it literally seemed to spin 360 degrees like a frisbee, all trying to avoid anti-aircraft ordnance coming from the ground — horrific!
There were bulging eyes in the helo, all looking at the Falcon. Falcon kept his composure, clicked on his radio PTT, and said something to the effect:
“Hey guys… ok, this seems pretty bad, but as bad as it might seem, we are going all the way in. Just keep your heads together and gut it out. When we get to the ground, I’ll be there to help you get out and show you which way to go — ON ME!”
The palpable pressure was relieved from the men a little, allowing them to take a full breath again. After the assault, more than one man on Chalk-4 assured the Falcon that if he had not offered out those words of encouragement, they might have snapped. Those were the more junior men of Falcon’s troop, but even the junior men in Delta are seasoned beyond the norm for Special Operations pipe-hitters.
And the Falcon tended silently to the matter of holding his own sanity.
On the periphery Chief’s Strike Eagles, Fighting Falcons, Hornets, Tornados, and Harriers all ruthlessly Tom-thumped their designated target sets, all on time and on target. I could do no greater justice to the moment than CWO Greg “Gravy” Coker’s own words:
“It was a sight to behold — my goodness! We dropped three-quarters of a million tons of bombs in 15 minutes.”
The Chinook assault force reported their position at the designated five minutes out from touch down. The supporting fighter/bomber air armada cleared out while Gravy and the crews kept pounding targets of opportunity along with the helo approach. Gravy said a quick prayer for the assault force — Take up the Full Armor of God, EPH 6:10-17; they were scarcely one minute out from touch down.
Greg’s AC-130 orbiting south of Gecko began to take fire from an S-60 anti-aircraft battery. He assessed that in fact the rounds coming up at his plane did indeed “look like flaming basketballs — MAN!” It was futile for the battery as the gunship was over 6,000 meters away — out of the range of the S-60. The overall excitement level in the aircraft was ratcheted up a good bit as the port and starboard watchers called in-ground fire directions and the pilot pulled some aggressive maneuvers to avoid fire.
It was, in Greg’s own words, just so surreal. They identified another wicked anti-aircraft battery, a ZSU-23/4, and immediately pounded it into a flaming yard sale. Other armored vehicles and ground personnel were making a bee-line toward Objective Gecko to get into the fight. Chief’s Spectres lit up BMP Armored Personnel Carriers (APC), T-55 Main Battle Tanks (MBT), and dismounted infantry. The scape looked like a junkyard that Godzilla had just barged through and kicked the shit out of.
A hyper Chief Coke worked his control station, intermittently jumping up to dart into the cockpit to check on his pilot buddy Swede. He ran back to his station to control, plot, and bark out strings of instructions through his radio. Noting a five-second lull in action, he bolted up and skipped back to the men at the gunner stations to pat them on the back and insist they were doing just a bang-up (no pun) job, then back on station controlling, plotting, and barking again.
As planned, supporting preparatory fire was shifted to avoid the assault force’s short and final approach.
“Here they come! Keep your eyeballs peeled boys — this is it!” Chief Greg called over the radio to all concerned.
The final approach was lit up like the New Year’s Eve ball on Times Square. Small arms fire shot up from every direction as the skilled Night Stalkers drove right through it to their objective, flight crews squirting 3,000 rounds per minute from their miniguns at their adversary below.
At the 30-second mark to touchdown Chief cleared the DAP gunships in hot to cover the landing of the assault force. DAPs punched enemy gunners out of towers and buildings with Hellfire missiles, 30-mm chain guns, and 17-lb Hydra-70 rockets. The DAPs laid down original smoke and fire to any pitiful fool on the ground showing up with an AK-47 or an RPG to a DAP fight. The ground was so well-tilled from minigun fire that you could have planted a decent crop of potatoes down there.
The six Chinooks of the assault force had flown 1,000 miles to touch down on a tiny piece of ground within a less than 30-second window of time accuracy. With that, Call For Fire (CFF) priority was handed off from the airborne force to Delta’s Leon Hansen with the ground assault force. The Night Stalkers had brought their usual nerves of steel with them on the assault as they do with every mission they fly. The two flying spare Chinooks peeled away from the formation to loiter in orbits to the south of Gecko.
But a desert landing (or takeoff) is perilous, even in daylight. There is always the threat of losing all visual reference in a brown-out, where dirt and dust are introduced at 100 MPH to the landing solution and create what Greg describes as:
“trying to fly with a black Glad trash bag over my head while people are shooting at me.”
By Almighty God and with honor,
geo sends
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**This fantastic piece of work by Geo Hand was previously published on SOFREP. It is presented again here today in case you didn’t see it the first time. – GDM
***Do Geo a solid and pick up a copy of his book, Brothers of the Cloth, his collection of stories about the Delta operators he served with, men of honor.
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