Chapter 5
November 19, 1997
Black Hawk Down
Table of Contents
Who's Who
Where are they now?
Timeline
Book Reviews
Movie Updates
Night Stalkers
Memorial Wall
Quotes
Memorial Poems
Guest Book
Speeches
Ranger Memorial
Hall of Honor
Articles
Ranger Gregg Gould
Jeff Raycher
Poems
Heroes
Our Loss
BlackHawk Down
Toy Soldiers
Brothers to the end
Tommy
To his Comrades
In Memorium
Unfortunate Losses
Not for fame
In Honor of Fallen
Night Stalkers
Navigation
NightStalkers.com
Night Stalker Assn.
JUST AFTER he had leveled the Somalian crowd with his M-60, leaving the street strewn with bodies, gunner Shawn Nelson heard the approach of a Blackhawk. It was Super 61, Cliff Wolcott's bird.
Chief Warrant Officer Wolcott was a funny guy whom everybody called Elvis because he affected the hair, walk and talk of his musical idol. There were guys in his unit who had known Elvis for years but would scratch their heads if you asked them about somebody named Cliff Wolcott. His exploits were legendary. He had flown secret missions behind enemy lines during the Persian Gulf war, refueling in flight, to knock out Saddam Hussein's Scud missile sites in Iraq.
On this mission, Wolcott's Super 61 had delivered a Chalk of Rangers and was now flying a low orbit over the target area in central Mogadishu. The bird's two crew chiefs were blasting targets with their mounted miniguns, and two Commando snipers in the rear were picking off Somalian gunmen. Every time the sleek black copters moved overhead, it gave the guys on the ground a good, protected feeling the boys called "a warm and fuzzy.''
As Wolcott's Blackhawk passed overhead, Nelson's eye caught the distinctive flash and puff of an RPG - a rocket-propelled grenade. He saw the rocket climb into the helicopter's path. Then came a thunderclap. The bird's tail boom cracked, the rotor stopped spinning with an ugly grinding sound, and a chug-chug-chug coughing followed. The whole helicopter shuddered and started to spin - first slowly, then picking up speed.
"Oh, my God, you guys. Look at this!'' Nelson said to the Rangers crouching with him. "Look at this!''
Wolcott's bird moved directly over them, spinning faster now.
Pvt. John Waddell, gasped, "Oh, Jesus.'' He fought the urge to just stand and watch the bird go down. He turned away to keep his eyes on his corner, watching for Somalian gunmen.
Nelson couldn't stop watching. The helicopter started to tilt as it hit the top of a house, then flipped over as it crashed into an alley, on its side.
"It just went down! It just crashed!''
The disbelief in Nelson's voice echoed the feelings of every soldier on the corner.
"What happened?'' called First Lt. Tom DiTomasso, the Chalk Two leader, who came running.
"A bird just went down!'' Nelson said. ``We've got to go. We've got to go right now!''
He knew the six men inside the Blackhawk needed help immediately - before Somalis got to them.
Word spread wildly over the radio, voices overlapped with the bad news. There was no pretense now of the deadpan calm of radio transmissions, the mandatory military monotone that said everything was under control. This was dreadful shock. Voices rose with surprise and fear:
We got a Blackhawk going down! We got a Blackhawk going down!
We got a Blackhawk crashed in the city! Sixty-one!
Sixty-one down!