0:00 I watch as an RPG it exploded just behind me. What I don't know is that Navy SEAL Neil Roberts is headed toward the back as we're rotating and the crew chief in the back grabs him you know, like, "I got you." And out they go. You'll watch four guys run as planned to the defilade position and one guy alone beelines it for the bunker. He's a new guy, but this is kind of a heroic thing. He's charging a machine gun nest. He says, "Sir, we got a guy to the left." I said, "Is he armed?" He said, "I don't think so. If he pops up again, kill him." Because if he's friendly, there's no way he's popping up again while we're sitting here. And so Slab says, "Okay, we're going." Right? So, he takes the headset off, puts his helmet on. While he's doing that that guy pops up again from a different position and I watch as an RPG slowly comes at me. It was like in that movie Black Hawk Down, they show the RPG sort of like a lava lamp kind of sparking at you coming in. And it was like slow motion and 1:02 it exploded just behind me. If the guy had aimed a little bit more to the right, he'd hit the the left fuel tank and we probably would have exploded on the spot. If he'd aimed just a little bit forward, he would have got me, in which case we're not going anywhere. But he hit right at the mini gun and it went through the ammo can and out the other side and exploded in the aircraft. And because the doors were all open, there's not that overpressure and everybody was just sort of, you know, stunned. You know, stars going around, little tweety birds. And uh all of the electric dies. Right? So, the There's three electric systems in a Chinook. They're all geographically separated so that you can't one bit of damage can't hit them all. And with the hit with the machine gun fire and the RPG all three lines got hit and all the electrical went out. And the problem with that is the mini guns at that time were AC powered electric, meaning they run off the aircraft power. Now they run on batteries. They're done. You can't shoot, right? 2:03 So, we're now defensive. Uh everybody's still on board. But I'm wondering, did the did the SEALs start getting out? Are they back up? We never talked about that uh in this particular instance cuz usually they go, "Ah, if we start getting off, you got to stay till we're all off or we'll get back on." I didn't know what they wanted. And Slab was unconnected so I couldn't talk to him. And the crew chief in the back and the way at the back of the ramp, so like uh you know, we're getting hit and you can hear like tink tink tink tink tink, you know, as the bullets are hitting the aircraft and he's like, you know, "Fire in the cabin, fire in the cabin. Go go go." And we start I'm like, "All right." So, I take the controls and the aircraft still runs. There's just no electricity, right? And we can still talk, that's on the battery. So, I I rotate and take off and because the engines are on like a backup reversionary they call it they droop a little bit at that altitude, it's like 12,000 ft. And so I can hear the droop, meaning I probably lost an engine. So, now I know I can't hover with one engine. With only one engine, we're going to drop like a rock back to the thing. So, I 3:02 I rotate over and I dive down the mountain. Right? 30° nose low, dive down. What I don't know is that Navy SEAL Neil Roberts is headed toward the back as we're rotating and the crew chief in the back grabs him you know, like, "I got you." And out they go. Neil falls about 12 ft to the about hip-deep snow and the crew chief is on a tether and he's hanging beneath the aircraft, but I don't know that. But I'm diving I'm literally on the treetops because the DShK is shooting at us. And so I'm trying to get down below his potential for you know elevating the gun down and uh I don't know. I'm This guy's feet are tickling the freaking trees. And the other crew chief in the back sees him pulls him up. Right? There's hydraulic fluid everywhere, you know, so it's very slippery back there cuz the bullets had the transmissions and some other things. And uh the crew chief's telling me, "Sir, we're we're okay. The engine's running, you can level off." So, now instead of crashing at the base of the hill, I level off. We're at 9,000 ft. 4:06 And uh they say, "Sir, we lost a man." I'm like, "What do you mean you lost a guy?" I'm in total denial. I'm like, "Give me a head count." They're like, "Sir, we don't have to give you a head count. We just watched him fall out the back." Neil Roberts fell out of the helo. Almack crash helped crash landed controlled crash landed the helo right in the middle of the Shah-i-Kot Valley. Slab gets out >> [clears throat] >> immediately calls me gives me a sitrep what happened. Uh and in that sitrep it's I'm going back up. So, you know right off the bat, he he never no one was telling him to go up and you know, no one had to cajole or convince him. He was going back up. Well, that helo is not airworthy, so another helo comes to pick them up. And remember what's happening here back to context, you know, Slab's I'll go now to go back and pick him up, right? So, the context of moment matters. Uh so, the helo picks him up, takes him 5:07 right to Gardez. It's only a minute and a half, 2-minute flight. We're we're uh the Gardez safe house is exactly 7 km from the center of the valley. So, touches down at Gardez to wait for another helo, an airworthy helo to take them back up. Um so, I'm I'm at the base of Takur Ghar uh so to speak, you know the the base and about a half mile away. So, I can see Takur Ghar uh from where I'm standing. I have live line of sight. I'm talking you know, I can talk to the top of the mountain with line of sight. No one's up there right now. But the AC-130 is narrating what he sees and unfortunately, you know, when we look at the tapes uh there were a lot of missed opportunities there. The enemy's just you know, nonchalantly walking around uh in the open. At one point uh about 30 guys surrounded 6:10 Neil's body and we know why. They were taking his equipment. One of the guys uh who is later gets killed, a guy named Redbeard, we called Redbeard, is wearing Neil's Gore-Tex pants uh laying there dead with his pants on. So, you know they're they're tapping into this bonanza material. But we're not, you know, there's no high resolution feedback and I you know, I don't even I don't have a predator video. I'm walking around um you know, I in the Shah-i-Kot Valley. Chapman, you know, the uh CCT, they're out there. They're already talking. Uh they've set up a perimeter. We've got an M16 machine gun still. And um you know, he's talking to the AC-130. He goes, "Razor 04 is on the way." You know, they know where we are now. And they're headed our way. And I was on the ground about 45 minutes. And uh they're like, "Hey, we're going to You know, I I get my GPS out, I plot the map where we are. And Slab's like, "All right. You guys stay here, we're going." I'm 7:11 like, "Where are you going?" The top of the hill. I'm like we're a good 10 km away. You're not getting up there right now. He's like, "No, it's right there." I'm like, "No, it's that one." Cuz we'd flown, you know, a good 3 minutes, you know, at 100 miles an hour. We got a pretty good distance away. So, he's like, "Ah." What about Razor 04? Can they take us up there?" And I said, "I don't know what he's got for gas. I don't know his lift capability." So, he gets there and he says "Uh listen, I can't take all of you at once like as in my air crew and the SEALs back to the top. So Slab's like "Can you guys just stay here and we'll come back and get you?" So, Slab gets back to Gardez, the other aircraft picks him up. Now all these TOCs, Bagram, which is 50 miles away, Masirah, which is 1,000 miles away in a time zone are going beehive. You know, this is we got a crash, you know, we've got uh a man missing. We're going to launch a rescue 8:12 operation. And you can hear they're they're trying to get inject themselves. So, Jimmy gets on the radio and uh he goes, "Roger, sitrep follows. Uh the enemy is surrounding uh >> [clears throat] >> um Roberts right now bunching up. Uh if we uh hit them right now with the AC, we should we should uh be able to either disperse them or kill some of them." He was making a recommendation. The Air Force one star I told you about gets on the radio, goes "Stop getting all emotional on the radio. Why don't you just get off the radio?" Hit the bad guy positions. They're like, "Well, there's a friendly up there. We're not going to shoot." And then they agreed to shoot, but they didn't. So, when Jethro comes in, he's taking heavy fire from the DShK. Damn. And so he breaks off and he comes around the mountain. And he's like, "You've got to put fires down on that or I'm not going to get out of there." And the guy's like, "Yep, yep, approved." And they come in and they fly up the 9:14 mountain like almost like a a go plat kind of thing. They kind of come in, they drop up and they drop in. And the AC doesn't shoot. There's the I I know now they were fighting in the aircraft about whether they should support or not, but the aircraft commander, because they'd killed friendly the day before just wasn't having it. What's going on, what we now know because uh we've got tapes, the tapes from the radio. So, they switched the sat frequency and this they put So, he's the commander and this is another point. The guy they put on is a major. He's a field artillery major. He's never commanded controlled anything before, much less a complex multi-unit infantry battle, cuz that's what this is now. You call it special ops, but we're battling like infantrymen on a mountain and down in the valley and using fire support uh to reach out and touch the enemy. 10:15 Puts this guy on, and this guy is confused. He doesn't even know He begins injecting himself in the battle. He doesn't even know that Roberts fell off on top of Takur Ghar. He thinks he fell off in the middle of the valley where that Al Mack put the helo down. About 50 m from that helo is a mortar platoon. So, he immediately begins obsessing telling the AC-130s grid, you know, 1 2 3 4 5 6. I want you You're cleared hot. I want you to waste them. And the AC luckily the lead AC pilot heroically he's He knows He knows Roberts fell on the ridge. He knows that that grid he's talking about is in the valley. It's not where Roberts is on top of Takur Ghar. And they're like, you know, 5 km away from each other. They're not uh right next to each other. So, he continues talking these guys in trying to get them to open up. This is a 11:15 101st mortar platoon. And luckily he gives the approval of fire in the uh AC-130. You hear the pilot say, "Negative negative. We're not you know, we're not going to do that. Do not fire on them." Then he straightens him out. At the same time, the guy is telling everybody everything flying, "Okay. We're going to assault this mountain. We're preparing for an assault. Uh how many shooters you got on board?" First thing he calls is an HH-60 which is a medevac helo. "How many shooters you got on board?" It's a female Are you [ __ ] >> pilot. She's a good pilot, squared away. Uh "None really. How many guys got guns?" "We all got guns." "Okay, you're all shooters now." Holy [ __ ] A medevac helo. >> kidding me? >> No, and he's saying assault and he's He ended up saying it I counted 15 times on the three tapes. And major major point here. 12:16 In the in infantry and special ops, words matter. Ever especially words that describe offensive tasks. Assault is what you do when you have enough people, enough firepower against a position you can overwhelm. This is a bunker five stories above them through the snow. They've got nobody. Slab's team is not assaulters. They're sniper reconnaissance guys. They got SR-25s. I I believe he had plastic helmets on there, too. They have no uh Kevlar on. Uh they're kitted light like snipers. >> should be. Yeah. [ __ ] sniper. But he's telling them assault and he's telling everybody assault. Slab's aircraft lifts off. So, their aircraft has purple sat. Chapman, who is a CCT, you know, no I don't know exactly and 13:17 I've asked Slab if he knew what he was doing and he said, "No, I don't." But I believe he was plugged in to the intercom on the aircraft. And if you're on the intercom, you can hear the comms, especially the purple sat. So, Chapman, who's a new guy and he's an Air Force CCT, is hearing this assault assault assault, which is, you know, beyond belief. It's the last thing The plan that we made that Slab ran by me was they fly us up. We're not going to land in the same spot. There's a defilade position up there. We're going to move to the defilade, contact the AC-130, and then do a recon by fire and begin picking off targets from our defilade. It was a beautiful spot surrounded by rocks. Uh and that was the plan. But now I'm no longer talking There's no one to talk to because I can't talk to Slab. He's in the aircraft. Uh I can I could have talked to the uh 47s, but they'd switched freaks. So, I'm thinking, 14:19 "Wow, why why is nobody talking anymore? You know, there must be something going on. They might must be in internal comms and they must be stuck at Gardez." QRF's got to launch. We got guys on the mountain. Uh Al's been shot down. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, uh the general who took over the battle in Bag Ram launched the Ranger QRF. The Ranger QRF who's That's your job, QRFs. You wait around and then during firefights you're get ready. They ran into them. They said, "We need to get the QRF forward right now." The QRF uh commander captain goes, "What's the mission? Where are we going?" "There's no time. Just get in the helicopter. We'll tell you when you get to Gardez." Well, the helicopter they get in has no satcom. >> [snorts] >> So, these Rangers from First Battalion get in this helicopter to come on a mission they know nothing about. They don't even know Roberts fell out of the helicopter. So, [ __ ] they're flying 15:20 forward to Gardez. They pause in Gardez. And then I hear this this radio transmissions on the line of sight say, "Uh tell the AC they need to stay until the QRF gets here." And I get on the radio and I go, "QRF? What what's going on with the QRF?" "The QRF is inbound. They're like 5 minutes out." Now I hear the whop-whop of rotors. Here they come. They They So, they're going in on short final. The AC is pulling off saying, "I've been ordered off." I tell the AC-130, You [ __ ] >> and this is a quote. I say, "If you you are I am Ulta 01 on the ground force commander. I'm ordering you to stay on station. If you leave station right now, they're going to blow that helicopter out of the sky." When we watch the tapes later, that 16:21 aircraft was already on its way back when that when that tape's playing and they're already on their way back. So, they're gone. Now here comes Here comes the QRF. So, the Rangers Nate Self and his guys get on Razor 01 02 and they head right back. Except they think they're coming to me at the Chinook where I crashed, right? I got a radio check from Gardez. It was Makal 30 Charlie, which is uh John Chapman. The Charlie is the suffix for RTO. He He's a CCT, but he was there RTO and CCT. And so, you know, he told me we're loading up Gardez, take off, ETA 10 minutes or so. I was, "Roger that." So, off they go. Isn't that Al's aircraft? Why are we going this way? Why are these coordinates somewhere else? And they don't really know what's going on yet cuz we haven't been able to talk. And um so, the flight lead decides that uh 17:21 he doesn't know what's going on. He's getting conflicting information. So, he sends Razor 02 to Gardez to just sort of let him sort things out, maybe talk to me in person. So, they come in. I go run over the aircraft, fill them in. And right about the time Razor 01 gets there, the AC-130 leaves. And he takes an RPG to the right engine. So, if you can imagine the mountain like this, I was on this side of the mountain and was able to take off and dive down. He's on this side of the mountain starting to flare for landing. He loses his engine. And he pancakes on this side. So, he doesn't have the distance to dive over. He's on the objective. Heavy machine gun fire. The Rangers take heavy casualties. And the air crew is all shot to pieces. Uh our friend Phil Svitak, the flight engineer, is shot just below the the body armor and he dies on his gun defending the aircraft. Um the copilot after the fact turns out he had like, I 18:22 don't know, five or six rounds in his armor right at his heart. Didn't penetrate? He got shot in the hand. Like he went He got his M4 out of the mount and he goes like this to to fight with it and his hand is is limp. And once again, that's their story to tell, but So, in the meantime, I'm down at Gardez and we're uh we're building speedballs for them like uh ammunition rocks, water, that kind of stuff. And um the idea is they're going to fly over with with a good Chinook and they're going to just kick this out the stuff out, at least resupply them. Uh cuz, you know, they don't have a lot of stuff. It's only half of a a Ranger squad, right? The other half's in Razor 02. And like four of them were killed Damn. on impact, right? And the crew chief The crew is all injured, every one of them except one has been shot. You know, only one died, but the rest of them are seriously injured. And um it turns out 19:24 Everything on top of the mountain kind of settles down. And we're going to go the guys are going to go get them. Not me. I'm down at the the fob. And they're going to go get them in the daylight. And then somebody comes up around the backside, shoots them up with a machine gun from further than they can shoot with their M4s. And uh that's when Cunningham is hit the the PJs. And um Nate Self, team commander, is on the radio and he's like, "We got another one hit. You got to get Kazawak here or we're going to lose a guy right now. And I remember when that happened, I looked over at the CIA guys and I said um they looked at me like I knew what was going to go on and I said uh they're not going to launch another aircraft. We just lost three aircraft in the same LZ. They're not going back till dark. And like, but that guy's going to die. And I said another aircraft seven crew members on board maybe Rangers they're going to wait till dark. And that's what they did. They told him no. He couldn't uh couldn't have an 20:26 aircraft. And you know, Cunningham did die on the mountain there. If you look at the video, the video that's on the internet and um and the more videos will be coming out. The actual videos unedited that showed the full sequence of events. So, when you see them, everything becomes clear about what happened. Uh the on the video, you watch the 47 lands in the exact same place it tried to land the first time. So, all this gibberish on the radio he's doing, he never tells them and oh yeah, remember, do not land on the same spot. But they do. They land on the same spot. Ahem, luckily the the enemy decided to just wait and shoot once the aircraft took back off to try to knock it down again. So, it disgorges Slab's team, Mako 3-0. And you can watch on the video and it's on the internet right now. You'll watch four guys 21:28 run as planned to the defilade position and one guy alone bee-lines it for the bunker. When I first saw that, I didn't know what happened. So, after everything happened, I'm I'm jumping forward a little. The 2 days after it happened, I flew back to Bagram to watch I wanted to see the tapes. Uh that's when I first watched the AC-130 and the Predator videos. When I see this guy get out of the helo and go right to the bunker, I'm like, I thought it was Slab. And if it wasn't Slab, I thought I you know, I didn't know even know that you know, I didn't even wasn't even thinking he's got a CCT with him or anything. I'm like [ __ ] what are you doing? Cuz one guy is going right for the bunker. Well, what I believe is that you know, Chapman is a junior guy. He heard over and over, I told you 15 times we're going to assault. This is an assault. So, he gets off that helo. He's 22:29 new. Remember, this is 2002. There hasn't been a war. So, everybody is a new guy in actuality. Uh we've been out there a little at least a little while. We've been sneaking around. So, we're a little more, you know, attuned to things. But everybody else is new. So, all the little things that became second nature uh like getting off a helo and making sure you never stray from the guy in front of you. And you know, as an RTO, uh you just follow your leader. And if that's a team leader, you follow that team leader. That radio is your weapon and it it's the most effective weapon up there. But I believe he was uh confused. It's cold it's cold it's dark snow's blowing. You've gotten off many helos and you know how easy it is to be just temporarily disoriented. But if you've also been listening to this cacophonic you know, uh 23:30 gibberish and this assault assault assault. He's [ __ ] thinking the plan changed. We're assaulting the bunker. And off he goes. And uh you know, I point this out and I mean it. He's a new guy, but this is kind of a heroic thing. He's charging a machine gun nest. So, Chappy heads up. Slab goes right after him. And you watch on the tape and it's you know, the guy in the tape says he the team leader never catches up with him. Well, duh, because he's going up five stories through a foot and a half of snow. You're not going to catch a guy uh who's ahead of you up going up five stories in a foot and a half of snow. And everyone's on adrenaline. Chappy makes it all the way up there uh to the top. In the video, they call it bunker two. It's not a bunker. It's a stove. It's just a cut out into the ground surrounded by rocks. In the video, they say he first clears bunker two. Uh it's not a bunker. There's no one in it. There's no You can see the heat 24:31 signatures of everybody up there. You can see the donkey uh still alive up there. So, Slab follows up. Chappy goes down right you know, right when Slab gets there. Uh uh And they're under withering fire. Slab brings the rest of his team around cuz they followed up too and starts trying to position them. They're on a rock, the big boulder. Uh couple guys they're spread out like they should be. Four guys, two two. And uh another guy gets hit. Another one of Slab's guys gets hit. He's on top of the boulder, rolls down hit in the leg. So, now Slab's got one dead, one non-ambulatory injured. And he said, and they're under crossfire 27:59 from three directions. Behind And there was nowhere to go. Because the my flight engineer had gone on board tripped on one of the bodies, fell on top of uh his good friend face to face. You know, and realized who that was. And he he would go no further. He got up. He snapped his vest into the side of the aircraft, you know, where you can snap in. And nobody could go any further forward. So, now I had nowhere to go. So, I I see one little spot and I kind of shimmy myself in next to one of the guys. Ramp comes up. They take off. And as I'm sitting there, I realize um it's Neil Roberts. And uh [ __ ] man. we're side to side you know, in the back on the floor. And I look at him and I was like the luminescent dots on his watch his watch was kind of going like this. And I was like is he alive? I mean, he was obviously dead. But my mind was playing tricks in the 29:00 blue light. >> No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like comment and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.
