Back in 1993 during a raid in Mogadishu (Somalia) the second Black Hawk to be shot down Super Six Four came under attack from an angry mob of Somalians, some of the crew members had survived and had armed up preparing to take defensive positions, two Delta snipers Shughart and Gordon (also known as D-boys) were dropped in to defend the crash site.
With no backup coming (and the fact they were outnumbered by dozens of skinnies) and only with their own guns and not much extra ammo they went right into the middle of the battle!
But coming under bitter attack they eventually ran out of ammo and ended up dead like the rest of the crew (except the pilot Durant), the story has been confused over the years and I'm going to try and illustrate what exactly happened over those 15 minutes after the Durant had been shot down!
I will use screen shots from the 2001 film (directed by Ridley Scott) and extracts from the 1999 book by Mark Bowden to show my point.
Text from the novel about the post crash of Super Six Four:
He picked up his weapon, an MP5K, a little German 9mm sub machine gun. The pilots called them SP's or Skinny-poppers.
Durant realized that with his leg and back broken he would be unable to pull himself out of the chopper. He pushed the piece of tin roof away from him and revolved to defend his position through the broken windshield. Durant remembers seeing Frank sitting in the doorway opposite, about to push himself out, it was the last time he saw him.
That's when Shughart and Gordon showed up.
He didn't know either of the Delta operators well, but he recognized their faces. Seeing them gave him an enormous sense of relief. It was over. He figured they were part of of a rescue team. His next thought had been to get the radio up and operating, but now, with his rescuers already on the ground there was no need. Shughart and Gordon were calm. There was gunfire, mostly from the choppers overhead. The D-body reached in and lifted Durant out of the craft gently, one lifting his legs and the other grabbing his torso, as if they had all the time in the world, and set him down on his side by a tree. He was not in great pain. With the airframe and a wall joined behind him, and a wall to his left that ran all the way back behind the tail of the chopper, Durant was in a perfect position to cover the whole right side of the aircraft.
That's when in the book from Durants point of view (since he was the only real survivor) the mob got a lot bigger and hundreds of skinnies begun to move to the position of the crashed helicopter.
Mike Durant still thought things were under control. His leg was broken but it didn't hurt. He was lying on his back, propped against a supply kit by a small tree, using his weapon to keep back the occasional Skinnie who posked his head through the clearing. There was just about a fifteen-foot space between the wall to his left and the tail of the chopper. Durant admired the way the Delta guy had positioned him.
He could hear firing over on the other side of the helicopter. He knew Ray Frank, his copilot, was hurt but alive. And there were the two D-boys and his crew chief, Tommy Field. He wondered if Tommy was okay. He figured there were at least four men on the other side of the bird and probably more from the rescue team. It was only a matter of time before the vehicles showed up to take them out.
Then he heard one of the operators - it was Gary Gordon - cry out that he was hit. Just a quick shout anger and pain. He didn't hear the voice again.
The other one - Randy Shughart - came back to Durant's side of the bird
"Are there any weapons onboard?" he asked. There were. The crew chiefs carried M-16s. Durant told him where they were kept, and Shughart stepped into the craft and rummaged around and returned with both. He handed Durant Gordon's weapon, a CAR-15 loaded and ready to fire. "What's the support frequency on the survival radio?" Shughart asked. It was then, for the first time that it dawned on Durant that they were stranded. The pilot felt a twist of alarm in his gut. If Shughart was asking how to set up communications, it mean he and the other guy had come in on their own. They were the rescue team. And Gordon had just been shot!
The book states that Durant heard Shughart cry out among the roars of the mob that raided the crashed helicopter, Durant was nearly killed but later simply taken captive and was lucky to be released three days later, even though it was assumed in the novel that Gordon died first it is not exactly fact since even Durant himself isn't sure who died first.
Many believe it was Shughart but if it was him Gordon would have given Durant his M-21 a very distinctive weapon instead of the CAR-15, is it also stated that Gordon would never give up his CAR-15 if he was still able to fight.
In Durants own book A Company of Heroes Durant says he only heard Gordon say "damn it I'm hit," and not long later Shughart coming around and giving him a CAR-15.
In 2001 during the invasion of Afghanistan a GPS tracker was discovered with the name G Gordon written on it, it was for a long time believed that it was Gordon's one he had used in Somalia and had been somehow smuggled to Somalia but it was later turned out that it wasn't in fact Gordon's GPS but was from another helicopter pilot lost earlier in Operation Anaconda.
Labels: battle of mogadishu, black hawk down, books, gary gordon, mike durant, movies, randy shugart
