Somali
As Somali men work to the unload cargo nets of sacks of wheat, a U.S. Marine CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter delivers another load to a field outside the Somali village of Maleel Jan 23, 1993. The helicopters are flown by the famous "Red Lions" of Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 363 of Tustin, Calif.
(PHCM Terry C. Mitchell, USN)

Views from Somalia

Remembering America's mission in Somalia almost 30 years ago.
By Jon Hoppe
August 2022
Naval History Magazine
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On 3–4 October 1993, 19 U.S. servicemembers were killed and many more wounded in the Battle of Mogadishu—a raid on a Somali marketplace to capture two lieutenants of warlord Mohamed Farrah Hassan Aidid that went horribly wrong. United Nations Operations in Somalia had been ongoing since early 1992 in an effort to stabilize the region wracked by civil war, but the fallout from the mission, chronicled in Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War, ultimately led to the reevaluation of the United Nations Operation in Somalia and to the eventual discontinuation of that international intervention. The instability and civil war there have been ongoing ever since.

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Jon Hoppe

Jonathan L. Hoppe was the Digital Assets Administrator at the U.S. Naval Institute from 2015-2019. Before he started with USNI, he worked in historical research and archives. He has a background in art conservation from the University of Delaware and a Master of Library and Information Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh. You can visit his personal site at hoppejl.wordpress.com.

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