Black Hawk Down

On the afternoon of October 3, 1993, Task Force Ranger went into Mogadishu, Somalia, on a raid that was expected to be quick. The force combined Delta Force operators, Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and the helicopter crews of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers. It was part of Operation Gothic Serpent.

Then two Black Hawks, Super 61 and Super 64, were brought down by rocket-propelled grenades, and the raid became a fight to reach the crash sites. Delta snipers Master Sergeant Gary Gordon and Sergeant First Class Randy Shughart asked to be inserted at the second site to protect its crew. Both were killed, and both received the Medal of Honor, the first awarded since Vietnam. The pilot, Michael Durant, was captured and released in mid-October.

A relief column of about a hundred vehicles, American, Pakistani and Malaysian, reached the trapped men at about 2 a.m., and the last were out by 6:30 on the morning of October 4. Eighteen Americans died.

In the picture, two soldiers in helmets crouch over a third who is down on his hands and knees in a rubble-strewn street, while another stands over them with his rifle ready. Behind them a helicopter burns among broken walls, its rotor drooping, and black smoke fills the sky. A rifle lies in the dirt at lower right, and the whole scene is in brown, amber and soot.