http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19931006&slug=1724707
The Seattle Times
Wednesday, October 6, 1993
U.S. Force Didn't Have Backup Plan -- U.N. Spokesman In Mogadishu: `It Was The Worst We'd Ever Seen'
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post
WASHINGTON - Sunday's rout by Somali militiamen of a U.S. Ranger company, which suffered unit casualties unlike any the Army has seen since Vietnam, caught U.S. forces in Mogadishu without adequate contingency plans to rescue or reinforce the surrounded and outgunned force, according to details of the battle that emerged yesterday.
The 100 U.S. infantrymen suffered 70 percent casualties, a figure that sickened officers compared with a 1965 massacre in the Ia Drang Valley of Vietnam. So badly pinned down were the Americans in Mogadishu that they could not evacuate their wounded, including Ranger commander Lt. Col. Danny McKnight, for nine hours.
The mission seemed to epitomize the challenges of U.N. "peace operations" in the disorderly new world order: an uncertain chain of command, disparities in language and skills among various national forces and a political reach that exceeds its military grasp.
But some of the operation's key weaknesses were all-American.
McKnight and Maj. Gen. Thomas Montgomery, the senior U.S. commander in Somalia, did not anticipate a need for armored vehicles in the U.S. operation to snatch the high command of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, say officers on the Pentagon's Joint Staff and U.N. officials.
When three unexpected setbacks struck - U.S. helicopters were downed, the Rangers who arrived by air and road were surrounded, and reinforcements sent by road were ambushed en route - Montgomery had to improvise a rescue plan. What had been a purely U.S. mission suddenly required a multinational force with no overall commander.
The U.S. general had planned for backup by two companies of the U.S. "quick-reaction force," 200 soldiers, which would have been enough for most contingencies. But he did not expect, said one allied officer, that "the sky would come crashing down."
Once the intense firefight in a congested neighborhood had begun, Montgomery needed armored vehicles because rescue helicopters could not hover or land, and the Humvees and five-ton trucks of the U.S. quick-reaction force had no protection against Somali gunfire.
ASPIN DENIED EARLIER REQUEST
The U.S. general previously had made clear his awareness that his "thin-skinned" vehicles were vulnerable and had asked last month for M1A1 tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, U.S. military sources said. But that request, endorsed by the U.S. Central Command, was turned down by Defense Secretary Les Aspin. An official representing Aspin's views said he refused the request because he got conflicting advice, saw "no great sense of urgency" and was sensitive to possible backlash in Congress.
Montgomery made no advance arrangements for Sunday's raid to use armored vehicles already in Mogadishu with forces from other coalition nations. A senior U.N. peacekeeping official in New York said Sunday's search-and-seizure mission, which began about an hour after Rangers got word of the whereabouts of Aidid's aides, was a "very closely guarded operation," with prior word withheld from most U.N. commanders on the scene to prevent leaks.
The first of three UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters carrying part of the U.S. raiding force was shot down at 4:15 p.m. local time, and most of the remaining Rangers moved quickly to the crash site to establish a security perimeter. Other Rangers left the scene by road with about 20 prisoners seized from the Aidid meeting.
Somali forces then moved in and surrounded the Rangers, placing them under fire. U.N. officials in New York, eager to deflect congressional claims yesterday that the 28-nation U.N. force was slow to come to the Rangers' aid, said local commanders reported to New York for an hour that the Americans were "pinned down but holding their own."
The U.S. quick-reaction force, which had been designated for backup on a 20-minute alert, rolled west and north from Mogadishu's airfield about 6 p.m. But less than a mile from their starting point, the trucks and Humvees were ambushed near a traffic circle. With several wounded and no protection even from small arms, the 200 U.S. soldiers withdrew back to the airport.
By 7 p.m., its commander, Army Col. Lawrence Casper, decided his men could not get through to the Rangers without suffering unacceptable casualties unless they had the use of armored vehicles.
U.N. HELP ARRIVES SIX HOURS LATER
Only then, after dark and nearly three hours after the first helicopter was shot down, did the Americans begin to canvass their U.N. allies for help, said Maj. David Stockwell, the U.N. spokesman in Mogadishu.
"We linked them with 24 Malaysian armored personnel carriers, four Pakistani tanks and two armored personnel carriers and a company of armored Humvees," Stockwell said.
Stockwell said "it came together very quickly" and strongly disputed the report of a U.S. Army officer in Washington that "it took intense pressure from Americans to get the Malaysians and some Pakistani M-113s to deploy."
"I will grant you that in this international U.N. military we do not have the same command and control, the unity of command is a lot looser, so sometimes it takes some persuading," Stockwell said. But "the Malaysians performed magnificently."
Whatever the cause, about 4 1/2 hours passed between the first U.S. request and the departure of the Malaysian armor - with Malaysian crews and gunners but U.S. infantrymen inside - from the airport at 11:30 p.m. The reinforcements reached the Rangers two hours later.
