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By Captain Robert A. Doss, U.S. Marine Corps
Marine Corps KC-130.
The arrival of 1991 found Amphibious Group Two and the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade wrapping up their fourth month in the Middle East. The USS Guam (LPH-9), with Marine Medium Helicopter Squadrons (HMM) 263 and 365, and elements of 1st Battalion, 2d Marine Regiment, left the Persian Gulf to conduct night-vision goggle training and support Maritime Interdiction Force operations in the North Arabian Sea. A detachment of HMM- 263 helicopters on board the USS Trenton (LPD-14) recently had intercepted two defiant Iraqi vessels, the infamous Ibn Khaldoon and the Ain Zalah, for U.N.-sanctioned boarding and inspection by an embarked naval raid force.
President George Bush’s 15 January deadline for the Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait loomed ominously.
We remained uncertain that the Gulf War would begin in two short weeks, even as we continued to prepare intensely for it. Our force literally had issued arctic gear for a NATO deployment on one August day, replaced it with desert gear the next, then departed for the Middle East a few days later. For the Marines in the Brigade responding to these rapidly changing events, the words “every clime and place” from the Marines’ Hymn rang true.
Rumors always find a home on board ship, and, as day turned into night on 2 January, a new one started about trouble in Somalia. The country was being torn by a brutal civil war that ravaged the capital city of Mogadishu. The U.S. Embassy was under a furious challenge, as rebels and government forces roamed the streets outside, leaving a wake of terror and indiscriminate death and violence. When our aircraft were recalled to the ship that evening, we learned we were headed to Somalia to conduct a noncombatant evacuation operation to rescue Americans and foreign nationals. Other navies, air forces, and commercial carriers had attempted evacuations, but the fighting drove them away.
As the Guam and the Trenton started south, information about the threat, evacuees, and landing zones hadn’t yet begun to arrive; no one knew the embassy’s location and there were no maps. The first messages we received from the embassy detailed the desperate situation there. Each message provided a small piece of the planning puzzle, but kept us wondering if we were doing enough and doing it in time. Missionplanning cells worked feverishly to construct a plan for the embassy’s evacuation. Fortunately, problems with communication and coordination never materialized; aviation, ground, and Navy units on the Guam had developed a rapport in the preceding months that supported close cooperation.
The messages from the embassy gave the unmistakable impression that they were written from cover beneath a desk as the fight raged nearby; one message reported that a rocket-propelled grenade had slammed into the compound, while others described automatic- weapons fire and armed aggressors being repulsed as they scaled the walls of the compound. The ships were
Proceedings / Naval Review 1992
A CH-53E returns to the Guam with a load of evacuees on the morning of 5 J.~«ar,. « to T,'«on and .ho Com c.n.mu, .0 steam toward Somalia.
the dark, and we could turn off all of our aircraft lights and become invisible to those on the ground, depriving hostile forces ot much of their precision. Nevertheless, any advantage gained by flying invisible at night would be lost by meandering flights searching for a darkened landing zone (LZ) over hostile positions.
To make matters worse, the LZ was described as extremely sandy and
If we flew into Mogadishu at night we could do so under the cover of darkness; but, there was a risk that a night mission, if discovered, might be mistaken for a sneak attack on behalf of one side in the civil war or the other. Night-vision
compound as dawn broke, i ne nrsi with unspecified obstacles .
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rivil war or the other. iNigru-viMun .
goggles would permit us to see in (and presumably troop concentra- . , i a * oil tinns'i A thousand meters to the lett
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licopters there would be a challenge.
As the value of the day option began to hold sway, more messages arrived describing further mayhem around the embassy grounds. The randomness of the violence convinced us that our helicopters likely would be targeted if seen, and, with the report that the fighting slowed at night, the decision was made—we would go in at night.
A night operation posed more dangers than a daytime mission, but they were dangers over which pilots could exercise the most control. At this point, the night option also made better tactical sense. Since we were a force that presumed a capability to strike at night against Iraq, there was no reason to balk at a night strike into Somalia.
At 2330 on 5 January, the first ot two waves of five armed CH-46s, led by aviation mission commander Lieutenant Colonel R. J. Wallace, prepared to launch from 30 miles at sea.
making best speed, but despite the intensity with which we planned, we could not forestall those who threatened our embassy and diplomats.
Our course paralleled the coast of Somalia, a lengthy stretch of shoreline just north of Kenya that leads to Mogadishu.
In the very early hours of 5 January, on the heels of another frantic message from the embassy, we moved to within the range of the CH-53E helicopter, with its aerial refueling capability. The message from the embassy indicated that the compound was in danger of being overrun—with the logical implication that the evacuation effort would be lost as well. Two giant Super Stallions from Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 461 on board the Trenton were loaded with troops and sent on a 466-mile overwater night flight to reinforce the compound and assist with the evacuation; Operation Eastern Exit was begun.
After two en route aerial refuelings by Marine KC-130s from VMGR-252 and 352, the helicopters arrived in the compound as dawn broke. The first of more than 300 miles and another aerial refueling away. Italian C-130s started another evacuation effort at the airport, but increasingly bitter fighting kept them from returning to Mogadishu that day.
Mission planning on board the Guam continued. The timing of the main evacuation was a key concern, as the team considered a daylight mission, it also developed a night alternative. Daylight would afford us the opportunity for an evenly paced hands-above-the-table evacuation. If we could be recognized as a neutral third party attempting an overt evacuation of innocents, we might proceed unmolested. The likelihood of locating the embassy in the daylight also was considerably better than finding it at night, particularly since pilots had only recently obtained black-and-white l:50,000-scale maps and a few photographs of the embassy grounds for navigation.
Once in the air, Mogadishu was easy to see through the night-vision goggles. While the sky at sea was clear, the city itself was overcast; Mogadishu still had electrical power and flashes of a gun battle and occasional tracer ricochets were visible from the sea. The initial point (IP), the point at which the flight intended to cross the beach, would not be easy to find, but the importance of flying over it on the first crossing was not lost on anyone. A thousand meters to the right would take the flight directly over known surface-to-air missile (SAM) and anti-aircraft artillery sites
tions). A thousand meters to the lett would take the flight off the edge of the map.
The flight crossed the IP as planned, descended to 100 feet, and slowed to 80 knots (92 miles per hour). Lieutenant Colonel Wallace spotted the infrared strobe light that ; marked the LZ off the nose of his aircraft and transitioned to land. The decision to put a little distance between aircraft during this final transi- | tion proved critical, because the LZ was more confined than anticipated and each helicopter browned-out in the whirling sand and debris swept up by the rotors just prior to landing, with barely a reference to the ground and no sight of other aircraft.
When the dust settled, we were rewarded with a view of what we were there for. Through our night-vision goggles, we could see groups of civilians huddled near an embassy building. The evacuees moved quickly in organized groups of 15 to board the helicopters. Once they were seated, the aircraft launched and signaled the second wave of five aircraft to begin its ingress.
Aircraft passed each other in the night—five “Thunder’ aircraft from HMM-263 returning to the ship and five "Rugby” aircraft from HMM-365 inbound to Mogadishu. Continuing the process, Rugby departed the embassy with evacuees and Thunder prepared to launch from the ship and re-
Proceedings / Naval Review 19lJ
turn to the city.
Suddenly, the silence on the radios was broken by a call from the embassy saying we’d been ordered to cease the evacuation and leave Somalia or be shot down. Since we had begun the evacuation with the understanding that the environment was hostile, this new threat didn’t change our mission. Crews did double-check their body armor, and some reiterated procedures for the transfer of flight controls between pilots and rules of engagement to the gunners.
Moments after Thunder’s departure from the ship, the overhead Air Force AC-130 reported that his radar warning receiver detected an active SAM system to the west. We continued to the embassy; the situation would only worsen if we delayed. Near the LZ, helicopters received SAM radar-search indications from the east, but our flying at such low altitudes and airspeeds prevented these radars from acquiring and locking on our helicopters.
The evacuation continued—one more load for Thunder and another for Rugby. As the number of evacuees dwindled, the security force began to shrink and collapse the defensive perimeter in the embassy compound. While final head counts were taken and the last helicopter prepared to leave the LZ, armed soldiers massed at the embassy gate. Gunners were prepared to repel an attack, but none materialized. When we were certain no evacuees remained, the last aircraft left Mogadishu.
The State Department later reported that the embassy was sacked, its doors blasted down with grenades soon after the evacuation was completed. Two days later, Italian C-130s and a French warship evacuated more foreign citizens from the city. Heavy fighting kept the Italian C-130s from returning until 12 January, when they completed their evacuation.
Each aircraft passenger manifest told a story. One listed the names of Kuwaiti and Soviet diplomats, another roster contained the name of a woman who had been shot, another named the Sudanese ambassador’s wife, who was about to give birth, and still another manifest included a woman who boarded a helicopter with a parachute draped around her—the only personal belonging she had salvaged from her home. As nearly 300 men, women, and children from 30 nations moved to the aircraft elevator on board the Guam, the ship looked like an international bazaar, with a curious assortment of apparel from various cultures and countries.
At 0300, after a final accounting of evacuees and troops, the last two helicopters landed and Operation Eastern Exit was finished. The ships turned north and headed out of Somali waters, back toward the Persian Gulf, back to that other “clime and place” where, 11 days later, another mission was to begin: Operation Desert Storm.
Captain Doss, currently a flight instructor in HT-8 at NAS Whiting Field, was one of the air mission planners and a CH-46 pilot during Operation Eastern Exit. In July 1990, he reported to HMM-263 to augment the squadron for a NATO deployment, which was preempted by a hasty deployment to the Middle East with the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade on board the USS Guam, which was interrupted by the special operations mission in Somalia.
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