[url]http://www.msnbc.com/news/756682.asp[/url]

An excerpt:

     "The Rangers were supposed to exit down a back ramp in an order they had practiced countless times. Those on the left would assemble outside on the left side of the chopper. Those on the right would assemble right.
      But the moment had turned into a mad scramble to get out in whatever order they could. One ranger, Spc. Marc A. Anderson, was shot and killed while still in the helicopter. Two others - Pfc. Matthew A. Commons and Sgt. Bradley S. Crose - were gunned down on the ramp.
      At 21, Commons was the youngest in the group, with a reputation as a good-humored, enthusiastic soldier. Crose, 22, a leader of one of the platoon’s four-man teams, was a quiet professional. Anderson, 30, was a former high school math teacher who had awed his fellow Rangers with his knowledge of weaponry. Now they were dead.
      The surviving soldiers peeled off in different directions, wheeling around in the knee-deep snow, scurrying for cover behind whatever rocks they could find and firing on enemy positions.
      The enemy was concentrated in two spots 50 to 75 yards away, looking down on the chopper from dug-in, fortified positions atop the ridgeline. Two or three fighters were shooting from the left rear side of the Chinook - at about the 8 o’clock position. Staff Sgt. Raymond M. DePouli, the first Ranger out, began blasting away at them with his M-4 assault rifle.
      “I saw the guy shooting at me, I saw the tracers. I got hit in my body armor,” said DePouli, a squad leader. “I turned and dumped a whole magazine into him. Then I just got down prone . . . to make sure nothing else came over the hill.”

Dammit!  I just got to the end of it & now have to wait until Saturday to read about the rescue...   This story is a good reminder that despite the relative return to normalcy back home, there are men & women still risking their lives for us across the globe...

I hate to sound like a monday morning quarterback, but if our boys were taking incoming from superior number hostiles, where was the platoon or more of hard-chargers ready to back them up?

I keep forgetting...REAL war is not the movies.  Most participants do not have Disney endings.

We can only hope that the enemy does not have the resources to bring the war to us.

Panz
[bounce]

We should not forget that the Al Queda is a formidable enemy and we/our leaders should not be under-estimate their abilities. They have the home court advantage, plus they have lots of battlefield experience when they were fighting the old Soviet Union.

Now that I have had a chance to read & digest this story, it seems that it is the common problem of having different branches of the US military and co-ordination. It seemed like something out Black Hawk Down all over again.

Remember the Adage NO Battle Plan ever survives the first contact with the enemy. But regardless , God Bless, we are doing pretty well.

Ben

Great story.  Thanks for the link.

Regardless of whether the mission planning was poor or not, one thing is for sure...those guys on the ground performed in a manner nothing short of astonishing! What a fight that was. After reading that story, it seemed almost everything went wrong, but yet these guys adjusted and kicked the enemy's ass. I cannot even begin to express how proud I am of what these soldiers did. I am sure they deserve the medals mentioned. And the way this article was written was awesome as well! MSNBC is beating the pants off CNN as of late. I can't wait to hear the rest of the story tomorrow. This sounded as wild as the stories of combat I have read in a book about Green Berets in Vietnam.

I didn't hear any complaints about the 5.56's poor stopping power or reliability problems with the M-16 either. It sounded like they just emptied the magazine into the enemy anyway, so it really wouldn't have mattered. Guess the body armor and helmets did what they were supposed to do also, otherwise more of them would have been killed and wounded. At any rate this was one hell of a fight and our guys performed well...even though they were surrounded, outgunned, in the enemy's backdoor and fighting them while they were in fortified positions. Not bad at all. To the SEAL's, Rangers and Air Force special ops troops, I salute you.

Equipment Faulted in 'Anaconda' Losses
Military: Gen. Tommy Franks rules out human error in an ecounter with Al Qaeda
that resulted in deaths of seven Americans.
From Associated Press

see complete story at:
[url]http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?id=119392[/url]

Here is a picture showing one MH-47E at the hilltop

[img]http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May2002/020524-D-6570C-003.jpg[/img]