2011 Chinook shootdown in Afghanistan

On 6 August 2011, a U.S. Boeing CH-47 Chinook military helicopter, Call Sign "Extortion 17," was shot down while transporting a quick reaction force attempting to reinforce an engaged unit of Army Rangers in Wardak province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan.^[6][7] The resulting crash killed all 38 people on board—25 American special operations personnel, five United States Army National Guard and Army Reserve crewmen, seven Afghan commandos, and one Afghan interpreter, as well as a U.S. military working dog.^{[8][9][10][11]} It is considered the worst loss of American lives in a single incident in the Afghanistan campaign, surpassing Operation Red Wings in 2005.

Prelude

In March 2009, U.S. forces (10th Mountain Division) established a base in Tangi Valley after it was noticed that Taliban fighters were exploiting the coalition forces' small presence in the area. U.S., French and Afghan National Police forces carried out a three-day sweep of the area after which the area was deemed secure. In April 2011, due to a decrease in troop levels U.S. forces abandoned the base (Command Outpost Tangi) and turned over control of the base to Afghan forces. However, Afghan forces never assumed control of the base which was seized by the Taliban shortly after the departure of U.S. forces.^[12]

U.S. forces continued to carry-out operations in the area (mostly via helicopter/special forces) encountering resistance from Taliban fighters on several occasions. For example, on 8 June 2011 a CH-47D was engaged from five to six locations (i.e., points of origin) which fired 14 RPG rounds at the helicopter forcing the crew to abort the mission.^[13][14]

Event timeline

After US intelligence services revealed a possible location of a senior Taliban leader by the name Qari Tahir in Tangi Valley, Wardak province, Afghanistan,^[15] a mission to apprehend or neutralize him was launched on the night of 5/6 August 2011 from the forward operating base in Logar Province.^[15] It was led by a platoon of 47 U.S. Army Rangers with a troop of 17 U.S. Navy SEALs kept in reserve in case of need.^[15][16] The Ranger platoon was transported to the area via two CH-47D transport helicopters (one of them was the accident helicopter) and supported by two AH-64 Apache helicopters and an AC-130 gunship as well as additional intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft (ISR).^[15] The mission was deemed high risk.^[15]

• 22:37 local time, 18:07 UTC/GMT/Zulu time^[17] the two CH-47D helicopters carrying the U.S. Army Ranger platoon departed the forward operating base.^[13][14]
• 22:58 5 August 2011 (Afghanistan Local time), 18:28 UTC/GMT/Zulu time^[17] the two CH-47D helicopters successfully landed and disembarked the Rangers at the designated location near the compound where it was believed Qari Tahir was located.^[15] The helicopters then successfully exfiltrated and returned to base.^[15] As the Rangers approached the target compound ISR aircraft observed several people leaving the compound.^[15]
• 23:30 one of the two AH-64 Apache helicopters observed and engaged a group of eight Taliban fighters some 400 meters northwest of the target compound killing six.^[15] A second group was observed by ISR aircraft as well but was not engaged.^[15]
• 01:00 6 August 2011 a group of Taliban fighters (who fled the compound shortly before the Rangers arrived) which initially consisted of just 2 people had by now increased in size to 9–10 fighters. The group then split into two groups, three Taliban fighters took a position in a stand of trees while the remaining 6–7 men entered a building located some 2 kilometers from the target compound. Believing that Qari Tahir may be in the group the special operations task force commander and the Immediate Reaction Force commander decided to employ reserve forces (U.S. Navy SEALs) in order to engage this group as well.^[15]
• 01:50 the Aviation Brigade Commander approved a new landing zone which would be used to infiltrate a 17-man Navy SEAL team (the landing zone had been examined for a previous mission but never used).
• 02:00 special operations task force commander and the Immediate Reaction Force commander determined that the Navy SEAL team should be supported with additional elements increasing the size of the team to 33. It was decided to use both CH-47D helicopters but the entire team would be transported in a single CH-47 with the second remaining empty in an effort to mitigate the risk of a second helicopter approaching the landing zone.^[15]
• 02:22^[15] – 02:24^[13] 6 August, local time, 21:54 UTC/GMT/Zulu time, 5 August,^[17] the two CH-47D helicopters (one of them carrying the SEAL team) took-off from the forward operating base^[13][15]
• six minutes prior to reaching the landing zone the empty CH-47D left formation (as planned) and the CH-47D carrying the SEALs proceeded to the landing zone alone. The helicopter entered the valley from the northwest unlike earlier that night (during the U.S. Army Ranger platoon insertion) when it entered from the south.^[15] The helicopter flew without external lighting and made its last radio transmission stating it was one minute away from the landing zone. The helicopter then descended to an altitude below 150 feet (>50 meters)^[18] and slowed to a speed of 50 knots (58 mph, ~90 km/h) as it approached the landing zone.^[15][19]
• 02:38 – 02:39 August 6 local time, 22:9 August 5 UTC/GMT/Zulu time^[13][15][17] the helicopter was fired upon and shot down by a previously undetected group of Taliban fighters. The group fired 2–3 RPG rounds from a two-story building from a location some 220 meters south of the helicopter. The second round struck one of the three aft rotor blades of the helicopter destroying the aft rotor assembly.^[15][20] The helicopter crashed less than 5 seconds later, killing all 38 people on board.^[15] Some 30 seconds later one of the AH-64 Apache helicopters in the area reported: "Fallen Angel".^[13] Some sources state that at the time of the shootdown the two AH-64 Apache helicopters were engaged in tracking another Taliban group and were thus unable to provide surveillance (of the landing zone and infiltration route) as well as fire support to the inbound CH-47D helicopter carrying the Navy SEAL team.^[16][21]
• 02:45 the Rangers secured the initial compound and detained several people and then began to move (on foot) towards the crash site^[15]
• 04:12 U.S. Army Rangers reached the crash site but found no survivors. Several minutes later a 20-man Pathfinder team (specialised in downed aircraft rescue and recovery) arrived at the site as well.^[15]
• by 16:25 all of the remains were taken from the crash site via ground convoy and transported to Combat Outpost Sayyid Abad
• in the afternoon of 6 August a flash flood swept through the area washing away parts of the wreckage. The CH-47D airframe does not contain "black boxes" (allegedly only the MH-47 variant is equipped with a flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder),^[22] though they are often erroneously discussed/referenced in the media.^[15][23]
• the recovery of wreckage from the crash site lasted until 9 August 2011^[15]

Initial accounts

The U.S. military helicopter carrying special operations forces to a night-raid in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, was most likely brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade, according to military officials.^[11][24]

General Abdul Qayum, the police chief of Wardak, said the military helicopter was shot down around 1 am Saturday after a U.S. night assault on a house in the village of Jaw-e-Mekh Zareen in the Tangi Valley that had lasted at least two hours.^[11] Local witnesses reported that at least two helicopters had taken part in the U.S. special forces attack on the compound, killing eight Afghan insurgents, but that just after the helicopter had taken off again it was fired upon from a separate position. Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said: "The US chopper that crashed last night was shot down by the Taliban as it was taking off. A rocket fired by the insurgents hit it and completely destroyed it."^[9][24]

A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, confirmed that eight of the movement's fighters had been killed in the assault on the compound. He said: "They wanted to attack our Mujahideen who were in a house, but our Mujahideen resisted and destroyed a helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade."^[9]

Later accounts

Subsequent reports stated that the U.S. military helicopter had been delivering reinforcements to personnel of the 75th Ranger Regiment, another special operations unit, when their night raid on a compound to kill or capture a senior Taliban leader went awry.^{[3][25][26][27]} During the battle US forces observed a small group of Taliban trying to flee the scene. The group probably contained the commander and a few of his bodyguards while the remaining Taliban fighters offered resistance in an effort to buy the group enough time to escape. In order to prevent this US forces called in for support.^[28]

Other reports alleged that the Taliban had laid an elaborate trap for U.S. special operations forces, luring them in with false information. A senior Afghan government official, speaking anonymously, said that Taliban commander Qari Tahir had fed U.S. 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. That's the only route, so they took position on either side of the valley on mountains and as the helicopter approached, they attacked it with rockets and other modern weapons. It was brought down by multiple shots."^[29]

Deaths

The deaths included:^[30]

• 15 United States Navy SEALs from the Naval Special Warfare Development Group's Gold Squadron^[31]
• 7 Afghan National Army Commandos, part of the Afghan National Army
• 5 U.S. Naval Special Warfare support personnel: Two EOD technicians, one MWD Handler, one Cryptologic technician and one Information systems technician.^[31]
• 3 U.S. Army Reserve personnel from the 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment
• 2 U.S. Navy SEALs from a west-coast based SEAL team.^[31]
• 2 U.S. Army personnel from the 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment, part of Colorado Army National Guard^[1][2][32]
• 2 U.S. Air Force Pararescuemen from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron
• 1 U.S. Air Force Combat Controller from the 24th Special Tactics Squadron
• 1 Afghan civilian interpreter Sayed Jawid Sadat
• 1 U.S. Military Working Dog

The 31 American deaths represent the greatest loss of U.S. military lives in a single incident in the, by then, decade-long war in Afghanistan that began in 2001.^[3][24][33]

Fifteen of the Navy SEALs that were killed were members of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU),^{[9][11][24][34]} while the other two Navy SEALs killed in the helicopter shootdown were from an unidentified West Coast-based SEAL unit. The five other Navy casualties were NSW (Naval Special Warfare) support personnel; in addition to these, three AFSOC operators, one Combat Controller and two Pararescuemen, all members of the 24th Special Tactics Squadron, died in the crash. Their deaths are the greatest single loss of life ever suffered by the U.S. Special Operations community in the 24-year history of the U.S. Special Operations Command.^[31][35]

A source from the Navy's special operations community described the reaction as, "Shock and disbelief. There's no precedent for this. It's the worst day in our history by a mile."^[31][36] The previous highest U.S. death toll from a single incident in the war also came from a rocket attack on a Chinook helicopter carrying Navy SEALs during Operation Red Wings on 28 June 2005. In that incident sixteen Navy SEALs and Army special operations troops were killed and three more SEALs were killed in subsequent fighting on the ground.^[9][11]

Subsequent events

On 10 August 2011, the U.S. military claimed that the insurgent who fired the rocket-propelled grenade had been killed only two days afterward in a 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.^[37]

During the same Pentagon news conference in which he announced that the F-16 airstrike had taken out "less than 10" of the insurgents involved, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) commander in Afghanistan John R. Allen said the military investigation into the helicopter downing would also review whether small arms fire or other causes might have contributed to the downing.^[37]

Following the withdrawal of U.S. forces in April 2011, Tangi valley became a major staging area for attacks on Kabul (located just 60 miles away). Tangi valley remained under Taliban control until April 2013, when over 1000 Afghan security forces personnel launched an offensive in an effort to clear the area of Taliban fighters.^[38]

In October 2011, US Central Command (CENTCOM) announced that an investigation carried out following the shootdown concluded "that all operational decisions, linked to the incident, were deemed tactically sound". The article states that the helicopter crashed after a RPG round impacted the aft rotor assembly.^[15]

In 2013 Jason Chaffetz said he would hold an investigation of the United States House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security into the matter.^[39]

Controversy

Air Force Captain Joni Marquez, who was the firing officer on an AC-130 gunship which accompanied Extortion 17 on the final flight, claimed that the gunship was denied permission to engage Taliban on the ground. Captain Marquez contends that had the AC-130 been allowed to fire on enemy insurgents on the ground, Extortion 17 would not have been shot down. ^[40][41]

See also

• 1994 Black Hawk shootdown incident
• List of aviation accidents and incidents in the war in Afghanistan
• List of deadliest helicopter crashes

References

External links

• For many Afghans, US helicopter crash confirms Taliban momentum, Christian Science Monitor, 7 August 2011
• Copter Downed by Taliban Fire; Elite U.S. Unit Among Dead, New York Times, 7 August 2011
• Impact on special forces of Navy Seals helicopter loss BBC News, 8 August 2011
• US says Taliban who shot at US helicopter dead BBC News, 10 August 2011
• {DoD releases the names of the fallen}: The stories of those who lost their lives in Chinook crash CNN, 12 August 2011
• Portraits of Navy Seals killed in Helicopter Crash Yahoo News, 12 August 2011