![]() ![]() The first round missed the helicopter, but the second hit one of the rear rotor blades, exploding and severing it 10 feet in. “The insurgents had no way of knowing the helicopter would be coming in, at the speed it was coming and at the altitude,” Ed Darack, author of The Final Mission of Extortion 17: Special Ops, Helicopter Support, SEAL Team Six, and the Deadliest Day of the U.S. When it was between 100-150 feet off of the ground, traveling at only 58 MPH, unseen enemy fighters emerged from the tower of a two-storey building carrying rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers on their shoulders.Two rounds were fired at roughly the same time. Randy Florendo / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain)Īt approximately 2:30 AM, Extortion 17 began to make its descent toward the landing zone. James Lindermen of Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment, fires a rocket-propelled grenade during a mission rehearsal exercise at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany. Hidden fighters with rocket-propelled grenade launchers US Army Spc. One of the Extortion 17’s pilots, David Carter of the Colorado Army National Guard, was one of the most experienced helicopter pilots in the US military at the time, having banked over 4,000 hours of flight time. This equaled 30 US military personnel and eight Afghan nationals. Other passengers onboard Extortion 17 were Navy Special Warfare support personnel US Air Force, Army Reserve and Army National Guard members Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) commandos and an Afghan interpreter. Months earlier, the group had been involved in the raid that took out al-Qaeda founder, Osama Bin Laden. ![]() Seventeen were Navy SEALs, 15 from the Gold Squadron of the Special Warfare Development Group – better known as SEAL Team 6. There were a total of 38 individuals onboard Extortion 17. Air Force / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain) (Photo Credit: Senior Airman Anthony Nin Leclerec / U.S. Thirty-eight boarded Extortion 17 Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter pilots from the 159th General Support Aviation Battalion. Extortion 16 would fly empty, hovering nearby in case help was needed. The hope was they would arrive and act so swiftly that the Taliban would have no time to react. The commander also decided that, in order to get all of the reinforcements on the ground as quickly as possible, they would fly on the same helicopter: Extortion 17. An Immediate Response Force (IRF) commander decided to up the reinforcement count from the predetermined 17 to 32, bulking up the core Navy SEAL team. As more enemy fighters gathered, reinforcements were called in. However, they’d been unable to locate him. Three hours after leaving the choppers, the ground forces had secured the compound and detained many of Tahir’s fighters, with the help of support helicopters. The position was a mere 20 miles from where the helicopters took off. The US forces involved used two CH-47D Chinooks – callsigns “Extortion 16” and “17” – to transport 47 ground troops with the 75th Ranger Regiment to a landing site near Tahir’s compound. It was believed his position as a senior chief connected him to upper-echelon Taliban leadership in Pakistan. The objective for the mission was to capture or kill Qari Tahir, a senior Taliban chief in Tangi Valley. William Tremblay / ISAF Headquarters Public Affairs Office from Kabul, Afghanistan / Wikimedia Commons CC BY 2.0) The beginning of the ill-fated mission Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter from the 101st Airborne Division taking off after dropping supplies at Forward Operating Base Baylough. Prior to the mission, the deadliest incident was June 2005’s Operation Red Wings, which resulted in the deaths of eight US Navy SEALs and eight US Army Special Operations aviators. When the Boeing CH-47D Chinook helicopter was hit, all 38 onboard were instantly killed. On August 6, 2011, the final flight of Extortion 17 resulted in the single deadliest incident for the US military during the War in Afghanistan. ![]()
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