Black Hawk Down

Black Hawk Down

By: Mark Bowden

Black Hawk Down, by Mark Bowden is a book based on actual events that took place in Mogadishu, Somalia. The operation known as "Black Hawk Down" was code named "IRENE".

In October 1993, a group of US soldiers went to Somalia as part of a U.N. Peacekeeping operation. Their mission was to capture several top lieutenants of the Somali warlords Mohamed Farrah Aidid.

The operation started by an elite group of American Rangers and Delta Force soldiers who were sent to Somalia on a critical mission to capture a violent warlord whose corrupt regime had lead to the starvation of hundreds of thousands of Somalis. When the mission goes quickly and terribly wrong, the men find themselves outnumbered and literally fighting for their lives.

The mission was supposed to take about an hour. Instead, a large portion of the assault force was stranded through a long night in a hostile city, surrounded and fighting for their lives. Two of their high-tech MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters went down in the city, and two more crashed-landed back at the base. When the Force was extracted and the following morning by a huge multinational convoy, eighteen Americans were dead and dozens more were badly injured. One Black Hawk pilot Mitchell Durant, had been carried off by an angry Somalia mob and had been held captive for eleven days.

As they proceeded into their operation in Somalia, Delta Force paid an Iraqi to drive and park his car next to the building to identify Mohamed's location, but he was not there. Delta Force captured prisoners and loaded them into the convoy. While the convoy was loading, "Super Six One" a Black Hawk was shot down with an "RPG". At this point they had two objectives. They needed to rescue the prisoners and locate the crash site.

When the Black Hawk crashed, both pilots had died, but there was one Delta Force alive. The soldiers located the crash site and defended it while a "Little Bird" got the survived soldier out.

Meanwhile, another Black Hawk was shot down but this time one pilot survived, he had broken his legs