Task Force Ranger
On 23 August 1993, Task Force Ranger flew into Mogadishu, Somalia. Washington had sent it after a command-detonated mine killed four US military policemen on 8 August. Its mission was to capture the leadership of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid.
The task force combined Delta Force operators with a reinforced company of the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, and helicopters of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment — MH-60 Black Hawks and AH/MH-6 Little Birds. It was commanded by Maj. Gen. William Garrison, who reported through a separate chain to US Central Command rather than to the UN force in Somalia.
The raid
On 3 October 1993, just after 3:30 p.m., Task Force Ranger launched a daylight raid on a building near the Olympic Hotel and the Bakara market to seize senior members of Aidid’s organisation. According to the US Army’s Combat Studies Institute, the operation involved about 160 men, 19 aircraft and 12 vehicles and was designed to take under an hour. While the commandos cleared the target, Company B of the 3rd Ranger Battalion, organised into four “chalks”, secured the approaches. Twenty-four Somalis were captured.
Two Black Hawks down
Then the plan broke. A Black Hawk designated Super 61 was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade; both pilots, Chief Warrant Officers Cliff Wolcott and Donovan Briley, were killed. Twenty-eight minutes later a second Black Hawk, Super 64, was hit in the tail rotor and crashed about a mile away. Everyone aboard except the pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant, was killed.
Two Delta snipers, Master Sgt. Gary Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Randall Shughart, volunteered to be inserted at the second crash site to protect the wounded crew. Both were killed defending it. On 23 May 1994 they were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. Durant was captured and released on 14 October 1993, after 11 days in captivity.
The night and the relief convoy
Rangers and Delta operators fought through the night around the first crash site. A relief convoy — Malaysian armoured personnel carriers, Pakistani armour and soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division — reached the first crash site around 2 a.m. on 4 October. By 6:30 a.m. all US forces had been evacuated, about 15 hours after the raid began.
Eighteen US service members were killed in action and more than 70 were wounded (the Department of Defense gives 73; other counts run higher). A Malaysian soldier was killed in the relief convoy, and Malaysian and Pakistani troops also took casualties. Somali losses are disputed: estimates run from several hundred dead to, by US Army estimates, up to 1,000. Two days later a mortar round hit the task force at the airfield, wounding 13 US soldiers, one of whom later died.
On 6 October President Bill Clinton and his advisers decided that US troops would leave Somalia within six months. The last left in March 1994.
Joining the 75th Ranger Regiment today
The Rangers who fought in Mogadishu came from the 75th Ranger Regiment, and the regiment still selects its soldiers through its own course. Today that is the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP), a two-phase programme of five and three weeks. Soldiers from staff sergeant up attend the three-week RASP 2 instead. Candidates must be on active duty.
Before RASP, candidates must pass a pre-RASP Army Ranger fitness test: 41 hand-release push-ups, a 2-minute 35-second plank, a two-mile run, six pull-ups and a six-mile ruck march. During RASP they also face a 12-mile ruck march with a 35-pound rucksack, a 15-metre swim in full uniform and a five-mile run in under 40 minutes. Ranger School is a separate, voluntary course — but, in the Army’s words, necessary to lead in the regiment.