Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

The narrative shifts back to the American troops, where Specialist John Waddell looks up from the fighting to see a Black Hawk twisting strangely in the air. Nelson saw the RPG hit the helicopter’s tail. He knows it will crash. 

Pilot Ray Dowdy felt the hit to Black Hawk Super Six One but did not think the RPG had seriously damaged it. He is a brave pilot, whose legendary exploits and hundreds of secret missions have endeared him to the men. Like the other Rangers, when the crowds grew too thick for him to identify the shooters, he began firing into the crowd. When a Black Hawk had gone down in a previous incident, Somali mobs had mutilated the corpses of the men inside, and Dowdy feels justified in shooting civilians.

Super Six One crashes in an alley, clipping the roof of a house on its way down. 

Over the radio, the Rangers shout about the Black Hawk crashing. Bowden notes that “There was no pretense now of that deadpan military cool” (80). 

Super Six One hit the house of Abdiaziz Ali Aden, one teenager in a house of 11 children. Prior to the Super Six One’s descent, Aden hears the fighting and exits to see dead people in the streets. He watches the militiaman shoot the RPG that downs the helicopter. After it crashes, he runs into the house to find his family trapped under a sheet of their tin roof, but they are unharmed and he frees them. They all go to a friend’s house, worried that the helicopter might explode. On the way, Aden sees a Ranger kill both a man and a woman. He “curled himself up tight and wished he was someplace else” (83).

General Garrison watches the crash on the screen at the compound. He knows that regaining the initiative will result in more casualties. Because he can see men crawling out of the helicopter, he knows that they have to mount a new offensive to help them. A mission that he had designed for speed is now stuck. Thousands of Somalis are converging on the plumes of smoke from the crash, and Garrison watches the ring of bodies closing in on the American troops. He sends word to the 10th Mountain Division troops in the city to mobilize. This decision will pit 150 Americans against thousands of Somalis. 

Nelson runs in the direction of the crash, desperate to help. Lieutenant DiTomasso follows him with eight Rangers, after ordering half of Chalk Four to stay behind and draw fire. Three blocks away, Nelson sees that a “Little Bird,” or smaller helicopter, has landed in an alley so tight that its blades are almost touching the walls.

Chief Warrant Officers Karl Maier and Keith Jones are piloting Black Hawk Star Four One. They land, and Somalis immediately attacked. The Americans meet with Nelson and DiTomasso, and together they drag a wounded man named Busch away from the downed helicopter. Jones gets on the radio and says, “Four One is coming out” (87).

Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant knows that the two pilots from Super Six One, nicknamed Elvis and Bull, are probably dead. He is surprised that the RPG managed to hit the Black Hawk and take it down, given the awkward nature of shooting an RPG into the sky, and the near indestructibility of the Black Hawks. He regards its loss as “a one-in-a-million event” (88).

Durant is part of an elite group of pilots known as the Night Stalkers, and he specializes in high-risk missions and methodical training. He continues circling and watching the conflict, waiting for orders, because “breaking discipline meant becoming a greater hazard than the enemy” (90).

Admiral Jonathan Howe learns of the raid and the downed helicopter. After serving as the deputy national security adviser for President Bush, he is in Mogadishu acting as Boutros-Ghali’s “top man” (91). Howe shares much of the responsibility for bringing the Rangers to Mogadishu after becoming obsessed with Aidid. Howe believes that removing Aidid from command will solve most of Somalia’s problems. When he had arrived in Mogadishu, he had seen it as a “country not just at ground zero, but below zero” (92). After months of failing to capture Aidid, Howe persuaded the Clinton administration to send in Delta troops and Rangers. As he observes the raid, he hopes “there would be more of an appetite in Washington to get rid of this upstart warlord once and for all” (97).

Abdi Karim Mohamud is a Somali secretary at the US embassy compound. He is also a spy for Habr Gidr, his clan. After the Abdi House attack, his idealism about the UN mission crumbled, and he stayed at the embassy to gain information. On the day of the raid, he goes home to find his father, brothers, and sisters hiding in their courtyard. Abdi joins the crowds heading toward the market, the site of the heaviest fighting. He’s frightened by the gunfire and hides in a friend’s house.

Staff Sergeant Dan Schilling was in the convoy’s lead Humvee when the fighting began. When Super Six One goes down, his commanders order him to the crash site with six Humvees and two flatbed trucks. It is only five blocks away, but “[t]hey were driving into the bloodiest phase of the battle” (101).

Durant is to fly Super Six Four where Super Six One should have been. He circles low over the city, and it is hard to make sense of the fighting below or see who the enemies are. On his fifth circle, “his chopper hit something hard” (103).

Sergeants Jeff McLaughlin and Casey Joyce rejoin Chalk Four after transporting Blackburn to the medic. McLaughlin is firing at a Somali fighter when the convoy passes behind him, and he gets into a vehicle driven by Private Tory Carlson. They reach the five remaining able-bodied men of Chalk Four a hundred yards away. Eversmann puts his wounded men into the vehicles, and the convoy head toward the crash site. The men in the back of the convoy still don’t know that the chopper went down and think they are driving back to base. A woman holding a baby runs out of an alley aiming a pistol, and Spalding shoots her.

Pilot Mike Goffena sees the RPG that hits Super Six Four’s tail rotor. He radios Durant to describe the damage to him. At first, Durant doesn’t feel that anything mechanical is wrong, then the tail rotor evaporates. The helicopter begins to shake and spin. Durant manages to land the Black Hawk hard, but it is a flat landing, “which meant there was a chance the men in the helicopter were still alive” (108).

Yousef Dahir Mo’alim saw the man who fired the RPG. He is part of a 26-man militia group that came running from another village when the fighting began. Mo’alim is a veteran soldier, and his men are considered bandits and “fearless fighters.” Mo’alim knows that taking down a helicopter is the best way to fight the Americans, who have one weakness: “they were not willing to die” (110). Clan members are always ready to die, and they see retreat as a sign of weakness. When the second Black Hawk goes down, Mo’alim and his men run toward the crash, hoping to kill any surviving Americans.

Pilots Harrell and Matthews watch the convoy, which must stop at every intersection because there is a new ambush waiting for them at the end of each block. The pilots try to direct the convoy down streets without roadblocks. In the convoy, McKnight learns that the second Black Hawk has crashed, and officers order him to steer the convoy to the second crash site to help.

An RPG hits the third vehicle in the convoy, knocking its passengers out onto the street, severely injuring two of them. Delta Master Sergeant Tim Martin loses the lower half of his body in the explosion, and Private Adalberto Rodriguez loses most of one thigh to shrapnel. Somalis shoot Sergeant Casey Joyce in the back, critically injuring him, and they shoot and kill Corporal Jim Cavaco.

Harrell radios McKnight and accidentally gives him the wrong directions to the crash site of Durant’s Black Hawk Super Six Four.

As the convoy moves, “Some of the men were at the breaking point” (119). Some of the Rangers have their heads down and are shaking, not looking at the fighting.

Private Carlson has been shot in the leg. He looks at the wound, and “One second he was paralyzed with fear and pain, and the next, he had stopped caring about himself” (120). He tells himself he will go down fighting, even if all he can do is help the men around him.

Private Ed Kallman is driving a Humvee in the convoy. He keeps telling himself, “This is not supposed to happen” (121). He doesn’t understand why they aren’t getting more help. An RPG hits his vehicle, and he regains consciousness seconds later outside on the ground. He runs after the convoy.

At each intersection, Eversmann sees lines of Somalis firing at them. Eversmann feels that “these people must have no regard for their own lives. They just did not care” (125). 

A bullet ricochets through Spalding’s open Humvee window, hitting him in the knee. Seconds later, in the same vehicle, another bullet strikes Maddox in the helmet. He survives but is temporarily blind from the impact.

Othic is in a truck driven by Private Richard Kowalewski. A two-foot-long missile enters through a window and pierces Kowalewski’s chest without killing him. His truck crashes into the one in front of it. Several of the vehicles are low on ammunition. Nearly half of the 75 men in the convoy sustain wounds, and eight are dead. Things were not going as planned: “It was 5:40 P.M. They had been battling through the streets now for more than an hour” (131).