The Rest Is Classified - 144. Black Hawk Down: The Bloodiest US Battle Since Vietnam (Ep 3)

Episode Date: April 5, 2026

How long will the Battle of Mogadishu last? Can the soldiers survive until daylight? And will the Rescue Team come in time to save the soldiers?  Listen as David and Gordon reach the climax of the story of Black Hawk Down. ------------------- THE REST IS CLASSIFIED LIVE 2026 at The Rest Is Fest: Buy your tickets ⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠ to see David and Gordon live on stage at London’s Southbank Centre on 4 September. ------------------- Sign-up for our free newsletter where producer Becki takes you behind the scenes of the show: https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠ or join on Apple Podcasts. ------------------- Get a 10% discount on business PCs, printers and accessories using the code TRIC10. Visit https://HP.com/CLASSIFIED for more information. T&C's apply. ------------------- EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal ➼ ⁠⁠https://nordvpn.com/restisclassified⁠⁠ Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠[e-mail] ⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books. Join the declassified club at the rest is classified.com. Two Blackhawks are down. Dozens of American soldiers are wounded, but how long will the battle of Mogadishu go on for? Welcome to The Rest Is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey.

And David, we have been deep in this remarkable story. story of events in 1993, October 1993, the story, I guess, memorialized in the film and the book, Black Hawk Down, but which marks this battle which took place inside the Somali capital. And we left with things going pretty badly wrong for the Americans, didn't we? We did. So the rescue convoy, the lost convoy we talked about on the last episode that had fought its way essentially in circles through Bogotishu, internet. attempt to get to the first down Black Hawk has gone back to base, taken so many casualties,

eight dead, over half the convoy wounded, they've gone back to the Rangers airbase. Now, there's an assault force, which will come to later, that has moved on foot from the target building, an assault force of Rangers of Delta Force operators, moving on foot trying to get to that first down Black Hawk to secure the crash site. So they're moving on foot to that. There are two Blackhawks down. Super 6-1, which is the first bird that went down, and Super 6-4, piloted by Michael Durant, which is in a separate crash site. Now, there have been a rescue convoy dispatched from the base in an attempt to go out into the city and reach these crash sites that has had to turn it back because it just encountered withering fire and roadblocks from Somali militia on its way out of the base.

So let's go to the crash site for the second black hawk, which is super six four. Above in an orbit watching this scene is yet another black hawk. And on that black hawk, which is providing overwatch, so there are, as we discussed last time, two cannons on that black hawk that are firing at militia. There's two Delta Force snipers that are also on this black hawk circling above Michael Durant's crash site. And their names are Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shugart. They're both Delta Force operators. And they have seen the crash. They've seen Somali fighters converging on that second crash site. And they have also seen, importantly, that somebody is alive

down in the wreckage of that second Black Hawk. And Gary Gordon radios the Delta Squadron commander, who's overhead in this command and control Blackhawk and says, let us insert down to the crash site to defend the crew. Now, of course, given the number of Somali militia that are converging and frankly just ordinary Somalis who might be converging on this site, this is not something the Delta Squadron commander is really keen to approve because it's maybe veering toward a suicide mission. Yeah, because there's two guys, yeah?

Exactly. They know there are crew chiefs in that Black Hawk that's rotating in orbit overhead. There's another Delta Force sniper up there. But that Black Hawk has actually also sustained injuries. It's still in the air. And so there's only two guys, Gary Gordon and Randy Shugard, who could actually be inserted at that second crash site. And there's a back and forth between General Garrison, who's back at the Joint Operations Center

and the guys who were running the air and ground mission from that command and control Black Hawk. And eventually they decide to let. Gary Gordon and Randy Shugart fastrope down in and see what they can do to defend this second crash site. I mean, the men know what they're doing and they know what they're volunteering for. They seem eager to go, but it does feel like from the outside, like an almost certain suicide mission, the odds of two of them against what feels like the city converging on them, but they seem up for it. And they drop directly into the battle, don't they? This episode is brought to you by HP.

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Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Gary Gordon was described as a serious career soldier who, quote, saw opportunity where others could only see danger. And in the about an account in the book, Blackhawk Down, both guys, I would say, seem a bit excited by the prospect of getting into it and being able to defend the crash site. So the helicopter hovers just long enough to let them fast rope down. They're in a street, maybe a block or two from the crash site. then that Blackhawk pulls away and Gary Gordon and Randy Shugart are alone. They move toward Durant's crashed helicopter. They're covering each other as they advance, engaging targets as they present themselves.

When they reach Super 6-4, they pull Durant from the wreckage and position him where he has some protection. And Durant is not in good shape. I mean, his femur is broken and so are several vertebrae on his back. So they can't move them very far with that. Can't move them far. Very easily, yeah. And what Gordon and Shugard do is they take up positions around the aircraft and essentially

try to create interlocking fields of fire. And for maybe 15 to 20 minutes, Gordon and Shugard hold the Somali militias back. And these are two exceptionally proficient marksmen, right, probably some of the most proficient at the U.S. military. I think this is depicted quite well in the film of just it is a massive convergence of Somali militia around that site. From all sides, yeah. From all sides.

I mean, there's the two Delta operators, you know, Gordon and Shugart, there's Durant who's got a weapon, but who is, you know, incapacitated essentially in immobile. And there are so many Somalis who have converged on them because you think the other crash site had more survivors. And it was supported initially by the combat search and rescue aircraft. that had actually been able to insert some additional people to help defend that site. That has not happened at this second site. So the defense is much thinner.

Their ammunition is obviously finite. There are so many Somali militia who are converging on the site. And, you know, the exact sequence of this last stand remains a little bit unclear. We have the recollections of Michael Durant, recollections from those who were there that day who might have seen bits and pieces of this from the air. The Sibali accounts of this last stand vary. But in the Mark Bowden account, Michael Durant hears Gary Gordon cry out in kind of anger and pain,

then he doesn't hear his voice again. And I should say one of the reasons why it's a little confusing is because Michael Durant doesn't know these guys. He's seen them around, but he doesn't personally know either of the two guys who have stepped forward to defend him. Now, once Gary Gordon is hit, Shugart, Randy Shugart, comes back to the position where they've set up Michael Duran and asks if they have more weapons inside the Black Hawk. And the crew chiefs carry weapons. And so Shugart goes, he fishes those out. He likely gives Michael Durant Gary Gordon's rifle. Gary Gordon is dead. And then Shugart heads to the other side of the

chopper to defend the position against the advancing Somali militia. And over the chaos, Michael Durant hears Shugart cry out in pain, and then it's silence. And eventually, Durant runs out of ammunition on the new weapon he's been given. And he has a pistol on his person. But as the crowd is closing in, he essentially says it's pointless at this stage. And he folds the pistol right over his chest and just waits for the crowd to come and take him. And then the Somalis, I mean, pull him out. And, I mean, they beat him pretty brutally, don't they?

They hit him in the face with the rifle. It breaks his nose, shatters the bone around his eye. You know, he's already got the kind of broken back. You know, his femur is broken. They strip him down. I mean, it is, in a way, it's interesting that he lives, isn't it? That they don't just kill him with the crowd. But there had been the order from ID'd and his lieutenants hadn't there to say, take Americans alive.

So it does seem like, and you see that a bit in the film version as well, that some in the crowd do want to kill him. But there are people who say, no, no, no, the value of capturing an American is so great. Let's make sure we get him alive. So he is taken alive. But, you know, Gordon and Schuagard are dead and their corpses are also taken away. Gordon and Schuagard are dead. The crew chiefs from the downed black hawks. are dead.

And the Somali accounts, again, there's some ambiguity, even now, more than 30 years later, about exactly how this transpired. But the Somali accounts suggest that some of the bodies, Gordon Schubert's bodies, are cut apart by the mob and that body parts are paraded around. Now, all of this, as you know, Gordon, I mean, Durant alive has value. and as we'll see, the bodies of those dead Americans also have value. Yeah, it's going to have consequence. Yeah.

But Durant is alive. Durant is alive. He's carried off and he eventually passes out. Okay, so that is one of the crash sites where Durant has now been taken away. But let's go back to the first of the crash sites, which was Super 6-1. That's where you've got the larger body of, I think it's Rangers and Delta operators who are there and who are on foot. And they're trying to establish a defensive perimeter effectively around that, around the first of the downed helicopters, although I think calling it a perimeter is a bit generous. I mean,

they're trying to create a perimeter to keep people away from it. But it's a pretty chaotic situation, isn't it? Very chaotic. And I would say that in the accounts of this part of the battle, there's a mixture of pockets of this kind of assault force that is headed from the target building to the first crash site on foot in order to defend that crash site and to allow for time to extricate the pilots, the wounded, any survivors. It's really a mix of pockets of the Rangers and Delta fighting and then other pockets that almost seems like they're kind of in a way, you know, just trying to keep their heads down. And so it's a very, it's a very confusing and confused situation made more confusing by the fact that up to this point,

in Task Force Ranger, the Delta operators and the Rangers are working together, but also not really. You think about the way they were going to take this target down. The Rangers provide that kind of perimeter security. The Delta operators do the snatch and grab. They're coordinating with each other, but they're not collaborating on a mission, exactly. Yeah, I mean, there's tension, isn't there, on the ground, between the two different sides and who's doing what and who should take the lead, I think. you know, it's an interesting kind of facet of the way Delta Force operates is that, you know, as we're reading off the ranks of these Delta Force guys, none of them are particularly high ranking, right? Because it's kind of this brotherhood in arms. They don't think about this stuff.

The Delta guys don't refer to each other by rank. They refer to each other by first name. That's not the case with the Rangers. There's a bit more of like an army hierarchy and kind of rigidity to the way the Rangers operate, even though they are an elite unit relative to Delta force. And so as this assault force has moved on foot from the target building to the first crash site, the kind of who's in charge question and frankly in this muddled and chaotic situation where everyone is being shot at. I think it's fair to say that the kind of command authority breaks down relatively quickly. And it feels very much when you read the accounts, like it's those little pockets of guys and it's a bit of every, it's not every man for himself,

but everyone's kind of split up and trying to figure out as best they can how to get to the, how to get to the site. Now, it's worth saying that the Ranger company commander, guy by the name of Captain Mike Steele, technically is in command of this mixed force. Now, Steele is a professional officer. He's 32, which makes him ancient in comparison to many of his men. He had been an offensive guard on Georgia's National Championship football team. and he is portrayed in the film, Gordon, Becky, our producer has noted this, by Jason Isaacs,

who plays Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films. Yeah, top British actor. Exactly. Steele is trying to make decisions about the defensive positions, ammunition distribution, how do you evacuate the casualties and at what priority? And we talked about this. He's finding himself in conflict in some cases, with the Delta guys. Now, when you mix this ground force of about 80 guys who took off from

on foot from the target site to get to that first crash site, you mix that with the people who had arrived at the crash site from that search and rescue helicopter, plus the crew, there's about 99 men on the ground near that Super 6-1 crash site. Now, by the time they get there, two of the Delta operators have already been killed in the firefight. And, Several rangers are injured, some very severely. They all set up this kind of perimeter, again, as a loose word, but it's kind of an L-shaped formation south of the crash site. And they've commandeered buildings to do this, and you can't, you see this illustrated vividly

in the film. In some cases, they just kick the doors down to homes, because people are living there. It's a neighborhood. And flex cuff and essentially imprison Somali families who are living in these homes so that the Rangers and Delta guys can get inside and have some form of cuff. So you have this situation where you've got these positions that the Delta operators and rangers have and just terrified Somali families who were like sitting on their couch in the living room. Yeah. You know, listening to gunfire.

And interestingly, in the in the Netflix documentary, Gordon, that came out, they actually interviewed some of these Somalis. Pretty terrifying. Terrifying. In that perspective of your house is being shot up by both the Americans and Somali militia who were, you know, who were trying to kill. the Americans. I mean, just, just awful stuff. Now, the key to the American position is to try to expand this loose perimeter to give them better firing lines. And this is another case where there's tension between the Rangers and the Delta operators, because frankly, the Delta operators know how to do this really, really well. And most of these guys have been in combat before.

and many of the Rangers have not. And so you can see friction in some cases, but then at other cases, instances where the Rangers just kind of glom on to the Delta guys because they see them as a form of security. Like they know what they're doing. And meanwhile, around them, I guess we should say, the attacks are really coming in.

And the Somali seem to attack in waves almost, you know, rather than it being random, coordinated assaults from those Somali militias and the others, alternating with smaller probes to kind of test the American defenses, try and work out where they are, where there might be weaknesses. And you can imagine this is kind of exhausting for those defenders who are just sitting there, waiting to some extent, not knowing when the next wave will come, where it's going to come from, what strength it's going to come from, what angle they're going to get shot from,

you know, with also their comrades around them as well and worried that you could potentially hit one of them. So it's brutal, isn't it, in terms of geography of that firefight, which is going to lead to to a lot of the, I think, eight of the 11 Rangers in one group are hit. And there's no chance in Medevac. You can't land a helicopter in the middle of this. You've got more and more getting injured and no way of getting them out. You have these little bird helicopters that are making gun runs throughout the night to keep the militia at bay. And the reason, we should be clear, the reason that the Americans are not overrun, because you think, okay, well, 99 Americans, many of whom are grievously wounded, how could they actually hold a position against thousands of Somali and Maloney? and irregulars who have just taken up arms, the answer is that you have, you have air superiority. I mean, throughout the night, these little bird helicopters are just going through the area

gunning down militia positions to keep, to keep them at bay. But inside these houses, you know, that are essentially the perimeter, the medical situation is getting increasingly desperate, right? So there's dozens of wounded. It's striking, again, you read these accounts, you know, you say wounded, well, what does that mean. I mean, it means in many cases, it's like fingers are shot off. It's a mixture of stuff where in some cases, it's like, okay, I'm kind of cut up in other cases. It's, oh, someone is going to die if they do not receive medical attention within a few hours. Now, the medics that are

there are trained for kind of field stabilization, not to do surgery, right? So they can stop bleeding with tourniquets and these kind of, they have these, in one case, they have these kind of rubber pneumatic pants that they put on someone to apply pressure, right, and stop the bleeding. They can treat the shock with IV fluids, manage pain with morphine. Interestingly, the medics had also tried to train the Rangers over the course of this deployment in how to do basic field dressing. And in some cases, it actually taken goats to the air base and shot the goats in order

to have the Rangers then essentially try to field dress the goat. Wow. Poor goats. I mean, that seems like there are other ways, surely, of learning your medical care without having to shoot a load of poor Somali goats. But there we go. But they can't repair damaged organs. They can't transfuse blood, right? The medics have IV bags that have fluids, but they don't have blood. And throughout the entire evening, everybody's operating under the assumption that a ground convoy is coming to get them. Yeah. And meanwhile, you talked about it turning into evening. We're heading into evening and into dark now. And the city is alive around them. There's fires, burning tires for roadblocks. One of the interesting problems is it was supposed to be a one hour mission, as we said at the start, just a quick one hour mission in daylight. So they didn't bring their night observation devices, which you might have normally carried with you if you thought you were going out for longer, but they're heavy. and difficult. So they hadn't, in many cases, brought them along, which is a potential advantage they might have had at night, is not going to be there for them.

It's also at this time that some strange things start to happen during the battle. So in one instance, a donkey pulls a cart through an intersection that is being riddled by gunfire, but it emerges unscate. And I think you actually see this represented really accurately in the film Blackhawk Down. And we should say we'll do a bonus episode on our take on the film, film for club members. We'll talk in part about that. Now, there's another instance where a gray dove

nonchalantly lands in the middle of the firefight and kind of scratches at the dirt and then takes off. And I think, you know, it's interesting when you read the recollections of the soldiers who were there. It's interesting to think about what happens to the human mind in combat, because this is a point in the battle where everyone has been out for hours. Everyone is thirsty. Everyone is exhausted physically. Many of them are severely wounded and most have killed people. Pity is gone. And for many of the men, it's interesting, not all of them, but for many of them, fear kind of goes away, right? Many of them do recall still being afraid, but you see incredible courage. But some of them are so wired in that they don't even notice terrible injuries. I mean,

in one case, the company clerk had a golf ball-sized piece of metal in his foot, and he didn't know. That's crazy, isn't it? Others get really jumpy and panicky. Others have remarkable moments of kind of mental clarity. One of the soldiers, one of the Rangers recalls he's taking cover behind a rock and he's being shot at. And he decides, he remembers deciding right then as he's taking fire to re-enlist in the army for four more years. Like, that was the point where he decided to do it. You know, others experienced this kind of sensory overload because the sound, the smell,

the smell of the blood and the gore, something that is brought up. And you see this in the Rangers talking to the doc, you know, the Netflix doco, like the coppery, stinky smell of the blood. They're so overloaded by the battlefield that they just kind of mentally fog over as well. Yeah. And then as we do hit in all, might fall. Another problem, as well as all the wounded, they're running out of ammunition, which is inevitable, I guess. I always wonder that when you watch these films, you look at how many

rounds they're firing. I mean, you kind of think, how do you not run out? How is it possible to carry that many rounds? I think each Ranger begins the mission with 730 round magazines. That's only 210 rounds. I mean, I just, I don't see how you wouldn't burn through that really quickly in a battle like this. There were pockets of this group who were in a firefight and then like a hundred meters down the road or even less, it could be quiet because the firing angles that the Somali militia had weren't able to reach you. Right. So there was this tremendous gap in experience of some people who would have fired off a tremendous amount of ammunition in a short period of time and then others who did it. And so people will borrow from others. Exactly.

So you get stories of people borrowing magazines from others when they're running low, I guess. But the ammunition is a massive problem. I mean, a firefight with rifles lasting maybe 10 minutes could consume three to four magazines. A machine gunner operating a heavy machine gun during an attack could use a 200 round ammo can in less than a minute. And one of the Rangers at that first crash site, you know, basically said that within the first hour, he had gone through eight 30-round magazines, and he's, again, you know, taking ammunition from other people around him who weren't firing. Now, the resupply that's happening via other Blackhawks, via those little birds is bringing in ammunition through the night. They're bringing in ammunition.

They're bringing in water. They're bringing in IV bags. I mean, interestingly, we talk about two Black Hawk helicopters down in this battle. There were another two that were essentially rendered inoperable and in one case basically crash landed at the Ranger base because they were so shot up while doing these resupply runs. But the Little Bird pilots are doing these runs but now you've got nighttime coming in and I guess I mean this must be eerie

because from the accounts you start to hear the Somalis chanting in broken English Ranger die tonight. Nobody coming for you you die in Mogadishu, which is obviously the chance designed to really put the pressure in. Idid is able to bring in more and more fighters, isn't he, from across the city. Now that you're stuck in this almost like a siege, a kind of chaotic siege without a clear perimeter at times, which means that you're getting more and more of these Somali teams trying to look for a way in past the firing lines that the Americans have set up. Yeah, the Rangers are in rough condition. I mean, two of them are in particular.

bad states. One will soon die, but again, there's no path for the ground convoy to reach them. And the commanders don't want a risk of medevac that might wind up getting another helicopter shot down. Inside the positions on this perimeter, this kind of a loose L-shaped perimeter south of the crash site, you have rooms where the wounded are essentially piling up, right? As the Somalis continue to probe these positions as the Americans defend them. I mean, in some cases, we talked about water being dropped in. Water becomes so scarce in some parts of this parameter that some of the Rangers drink from the IV bags that the medics have just to get some liquid into their bodies. And I think the question on everyone's mind, as this night wears on,

is where's the rescue? They're talking on the radios with that command and control helicopter, And at some point, the ETA for the convoy, the rescue convoy, becomes a joke. And the rangers on the ground will just say, oh, they're on their way. And then they'll start almost darkly laughing because the convoy has not arrived. So there with that gallows humor of waiting for the convoy, but the ammunition running out and the night closing in and the chants from the Somalis about the Rangers going to die. Let's take a break and when we come back, we'll see how that team fares under fire. Where are my gloves? Come on, heat.

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Frankie Munes, Brian Cranston, and the rest of the family reunite in Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. After 10 years avoiding them how and lowest demand Malcolm be at their anniversary party, pulling him straight back into their chaos. Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. A special four-part event, streaming April 10th on Hulu on Disney Plus. Well, welcome back. We're in nighttime now with the team under fire around that first crash site. American and UN commanders, though, at the airport are still trying to work out how to get to them, how to get a convoy to them. And I think it's quite interesting, isn't it?

Because that also gets to one of the fundamental problems of the mission, which is the slightly confused command structure, particularly the relationship between the US and the US. as well as within the US side between different teams. And that is going to be one of the challenges in terms of getting a rescue organized. The first attempted rescue, which had been a purely American operation using Humvees and trucks, was scrubbed when the commanders realized to that point that they didn't have enough operational vehicles to actually manage the rescue. The ground convoy that returned, that lost convoy that had circled around and eventually gone back to base, you could imagine those vehicles are not in great shape. Many of them are not usable for a rescue, right? Two of the vehicles actually never made it back, and those that remain

are barely functional. So you're not taking these things back out. This is where the decision by the U.S. Secretary of Defense, remember this in the first episode, that a request had been made by General Garrison, who's in charge of Task Force Ranger, for armored vehicles and for an AC130 gunship. And it had been denied, hadn't it? both of those had been denied. Because of optics. That's right. Because it was supposed to be a humanitarian nation-building mission, not a kind of aggressive military task force, but it's turned into one, which is the mission creep problem. So what do you do? Well, the task force ranger commanders turned to the UN forces, specifically to the Malaysian contingent for armored personnel

carriers and to the Pakistanis for tanks. This injects, let's say, some complexity into the rescue operation because the Malaysian commander needs to get permission from Kuala Lumpur. The Pakistani commander needs to request approval from Islamabad. The UN command structure that they're all under needs to approve and coordinate this. And you can imagine the number of phone calls and handoffs and consultations with some very high-level officials in all of these capitals and at the UN Central that needs to happen to get this approved. Because it's, I mean, it must be a weird call to go, for the national capital to get a call going, the Americans, you know, the greatest military in the world, need bailing out,

which on the one hand, you go, well, things must be pretty bad if the Americans need bailing out and they want us to go in to help them. But they will get that approval. I think it'll finally come around midnight, but obviously that takes some time. Well, and new problems just keep emerging. The Malaysian and Pakistani forces have never trained with American forces. They need to figure out, well, will the drivers of these vehicles? Will they speak English?

Will we be able to communicate with each other? They use different radio frequencies. They use different tactical procedures. This is a complex urban rescue operation that's going to be conducted under heavy fire. And you have to coordinate all of these different facets of it. Who's in charge? Another question, right? Who commands it? Should it be an American officer since Americans are being rescued or a UN officer, since it's primarily UN forces conducting it?

Or is it the senior national commander of whichever nation is providing the vehicles, right? So there's time lost to this debate. Well, meanwhile, back at the super 61, quote, unquote, perimeter, the medical situation is deteriorating. You know, soldiers who were stable through the night are beginning to crash from blood loss and shock and lack of proper treatment. is one respite, though, as the night wears on, the volume and intensity of Somali fire does begin to decrease. And the kind of AK-47 fire becomes more sporadic. And seriously, it's because the cot, the stimulant, the stimulant drug, the stimulant drug that they chew is wearing off. This is why so many of the raids up to this point, all of the raids up to this point, had taken place at night when militiamen were not hopped up on the drug. And there is a direct correlation between

military age males and Mokadishu chewing cot and being very trigger-happy. So as that wears off, I mean, it's honestly, it's like a stimulant cycle, right? These militiamen are aggressive and fearless in the peak hours, and then they get sluggish as it's metabolized, and then they're recharge by morning. So you have pockets of silence in the night. But for the Americans, I mean, they've been awake for what, you know, 20 hours through the night. I mean, they must be exhausted. I mean, it almost gets harder, doesn't it? I mean, I think everyone knows this. When it does go quiet, because the possibility is to relax, but I guess you can't really do that. But at this point, they're kind of holding the perimeter, I guess. What I think is interesting, it's only around now,

isn't it, that news gets to Washington about how big a battle is actually underway in the middle of Mogadishu. It's only now that they learn that something really big is going down in Somalia. I was struck in Reedy the accounts of this at the contrast between the pictures of President Obama and his senior advisors watching the bin Laden raid, or Trump and his senior advisors watching the Maduro raid with essentially official Washington having absolutely no idea what was going on. Yeah, they don't know what's going on. It's amazing, isn't that? The National Security Advisor only gets the barest of outlines as Washington is waking up that morning. And importantly, the American government is distracted because something much bigger

is going on in Russia, where former President Boris Yeltenson is fending off a kind of right-wing coup d'etat attempt. So President Clinton, has a morning press conference that day, he doesn't even mention Mokadishu. And then he flies off for a two-day speaking tour in San Francisco. So the contrast of just what's going on in Washington with the disaster on the ground couldn't be starker. And meanwhile, that convoy is assembling at last. And I think finally around 2 a.m. on October the 4th, the rescue force is going to depart. So it is going to be this really interesting multinational force, which is coalesced at the Pakistani base of the stadium,

and there's over 70 vehicles. So it's a pretty significant force, isn't it? With four Pakistani M48 tanks, 28 Malaysian condor, armored personnel carriers, also the American Humveys with heavy weapons. 500 men. I mean, they pulled together all the remaining rangers, Delta operators, seals, you know,

everyone they can get hold of to go and do this with cobra gunships in support. So it's a pretty big team. But as we were saying before, that also is going to make the command structure a bit complex when you've got all these different UN and American forces. And you can see the kind of Americans are bound to say, well, you know, this is a rescue mission for American forces. So we've got to be in charge of it. But actually, technically, it's now a UN force. And within blocks of leaving the Pakistani stadium, it's taking fire predictably.

The Somali militias have expected this. They've primed the route. So there's burning tires, blocking intersections, there's disabled vehicles lining the narrow streets. They have rocket-propelled grenade, RPG teams positioned in second-story windows that have great firing angles onto the vehicle roofs. And so the first Malaysian casualty, again, the Malaysians are driving the armored personnel carriers, occurs about 10 minutes in. Almost straight away, yeah. Almost right away. An RPG penetrates the side armor, and two Malaysian soldiers are killed instantly. Seven more are wounded. Now, that damaged armored personnel carrier blocks the street. Convoy needs to

maneuver around it while under continuous fire. Other Malaysian APC drivers stop to evacuate casualties. This creates traffic jams that prevent everyone else from moving. Several more vehicles are hit during the pause. There's a theme here we've seen with all of the convoy action we'd have. had that stopping is bad. You do not want to stop. You get hit when you stop. The Pakistani tanks, of course, are much more resistant. They're armored. So they're much more resistant to RPG fire, but they're even vulnerable in certain areas. At the rear, the armor's thinner. One tank takes an RPG hit on the engine deck. It catches fire and it needs to be abandoned. The crew has to evacuate. You know, and I think it does bear mentioning. We usually don't, don't mention,

the fact that this was actually a multinational rescue contingent that went in to evacuate these Americans. Yeah, I do find it interesting than a lot of the accounts, or at least even in your memory of what happened and how it's talked about, the fact that, you know, Pakistanis and Malaysians are killed at this point on the rescue mission for the Americans is often kind of glossed over as everyone focuses on the American side of the story. But let's go back to what's happening at the crash sites themselves, which the convoy is trying to get to. Well, one piece of the convoy, which is led by a Delta operator, peels off and heads to the second crash site, the site where Michael Durant, hours earlier, had been carried off. Now, Durant's gone, the bodies of his crew, and the two Delta operators who had fast-ropped in to protect Durant, Shugard and Gordon, they're gone too.

There's blood, there's tattered clothing. There's tons of spent ammo everywhere. this group questions locals who are around there, you know, where have the, where are the Americans, right? And they don't get any useful information. They actually call out everybody's name, don't hear anything back. And then this group sets thermite grenades and the down Black Hawk to destroy it because there's sensitive avionics and gear on board that they don't want anyone else to have. And this goes up in a ball of white flame, and this crew then heads to the other site. Now, the main contingent gets to the crash site in the early morning hours of October 4th. And the Somalis, of course, have concentrated forces around the site,

knowing that a rescue convoy would be coming and kind of in some ways being able to direct that convoy's route in by blocking certain entrances and exits to the area of the neighborhood where the Americans are pinned down. The convoy, now, though, is not just Humvees and kind of cargo trucks. We've got the tanks. And so the Pakistani tanks are, you know, they're firing their main guns at buildings where they're taking fire from, walls are collapsing, roofs are caving in, fires are starting from the explosions.

And when the convoy stops and the hatches begin to open and Americans begin to pour out, the accounts from the Rangers who were there, I mean, it's like they can barely believe. Yeah. that the rescue has finally arrived. And now we have hundreds of Americans that are concentrated in just a few blocks of South Mogadishu. And the aim is to get as many, I guess, of the wounded into those armored personnel carriers.

That's the first priority is to get those wounded out. But there's so many wounded. I mean, it's a problem of just space, isn't there? And actually transporting them and moving them. The other priority, which actually is going to be the thing that makes the waiting even worse because the convoy will just wait and wait and wait and wait for hours, is they're not going to leave anyone behind. And in the pilot's seat of that first downed Blackhawk is the body of Cliff Wolcott. And as we talked about in the first episode, when that Black Hawk

crashed, the body of it essentially crumpled around him. So now you've got to get him out. It takes hours of ugly work with saws to cut the body loose from the crash site. They basically have to pull the instrument panel apart to get Wolcott out. The airframe is lined with Kevlar, eats through the saw, so they have to just go in and destroy this panel. And the weight really begins to grate on many of the men who were there. Because now they're just, you know, here's the rescue convoy, and they're just, they're still just sitting there waiting to get Cliff Wolcott's body out, right? And the sun is about to come up.

Everyone's fearful of the, you know, darkness setting in, but in a lot of ways, sunrise is going to be worse, because it's going to be a lot easier for the militia to see you in daytime. As the sun starts to come up, the streets reveal how chaotic and bloody of a night this has been. Because the streets are littered with bodies. We mentioned that donkey that had crossed the street unscathed with his cart. He did not, it's sad to say, make it through the night. The poor donkey was shot while tied up to his cart.

But by sunrise, Cliff Wilcott's body is finally cut loose and they're ready to go. and then we have yet another exasperating setback because as all of the soldiers, and remember there are soldiers here from the UN contingent who are from the U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division, as these soldiers have reboarded the armored personnel carriers, some of the Malaysian drivers just, they're taking fire, of course, and they've been there for hours, just drive off, right? They just drive off, leaving a contingent of the Ranger and Delta Force stranded right where they'd been fighting the night before. So 5.45 a.m., Monday the 4th of October, the sun is up,

and there's maybe 60 or so remaining rangers and delta operators who are going to need to run this distance alone without the cover of the vehicles. It's extraordinary, isn't it? Because they've been waiting for that convoy. The convoys come, and then the convoy's gone without them. And now they realize they've got to still get out on foot. So let's stop there. And when we come back for the finale of this four-part series on Black Hawk Down, we'll see how that long night turns into this run for their lives through the streets of Mogadishu for this group of Ranger and Delta operators. And we'll also look, I think, at how what happened that night and over that battle cast such a long shadow over American decision-making for the years to come. But a reminder, of course,

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