KORENGAL—LEARNING THE HARD WAY

When we took over the mission from the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade they were conducting resupply operations during daylight hours only. Flying in the Hindu Kush mountains on dark nights was like flying into a black hole, or as our pilots said, “It was like flying in a paper bag.” The 101st CAB had built a system of low-illumination routes, which they flew on dark nights. The routes were set up so that pilots could display them in the cockpit. A line on their moving maps depicted the route they were to fly. All they had to do was fly the line at the assigned altitude and they were guaranteed obstacle avoidance. This procedure effectively mitigated the danger of darkness. The routes were established in the most commonly flown valleys, which allowed pilots to essentially transition from forward operating base to forward operating base. Due to the risk, deviating from the routes was rare, but that was about to change.

Many of the FOBs in Regional Command East were air-centric. In order for the soldiers to survive they required routine aerial resupply. There were very few roads in Afghanistan and those that did exist followed the valley floors. FOBs built in the valleys, where roads could support them, were vulnerable to enemy attacks from high ground. Outposts built high in the mountains had the inherent tactical advantage of being on higher terrain but required helicopters to resupply them regularly, which resulted in risk to the aircraft. The enemy could pattern our resupply efforts very easily and plan aerial ambushes.

The General Support Aviation Battalion (GSAB), based out of Bagram Airbase, was tasked with the mission to resupply units in the Korengal Valley, despite it being in Pale Horse’s area of operations. The Pale Horse Chinooks were needed to resupply the even more remote outposts in the Kamdesh and Gowerdesh valleys, which lay far to the north in Nuristan Province. These missions were aptly named the Korengal resupply and the KamGow resupply respectively. The valleys in which these outposts resided were extremely narrow and long.

The 101st CAB’s Chinooks were CH-47D models. We deployed to Afghanistan as the first unit equipped with the new CH-47F model, which gave us the advantage of glass cockpits—digital instrumentation and multifunction displays. The instrumentation and multifunction displays in the CH-47F made it much safer to operate at night. Initially, we didn’t realize that the enhanced capability of the CH-47F enabled us to change the ways in which we executed missions. Sometimes it takes a significant event to spark change.

In the wintertime, snow, fog, and low-lying clouds made it difficult, if not impossible, to fly from Bagram to Jalalabad. In late January 2009, the men living in outposts in the Korengal Valley were in desperate need of resupply, and as fate would have it, weather was less than favorable for flying that day. It looked as though we would have to conduct the Korengal resupply ourselves. Depending on how many sling loads were needed, the Korengal resupply could take four to six hours to complete. Supplies—ammunition, water, mail, and food—would be transported to FOB Blessing by truck and prepared for sling loading. We would then use our Chinooks to deliver the sling loads to Firebase Vegas, OP Restrepo, OP Vimoto, OP Dallas, and the Korengal Outpost (KOP.) The Korengal Valley is not overly large, so we usually conducted the mission with two Chinooks. One Chinook delivered supplies in the valley while the other Chinook picked up its load at FOB Blessing. We also used the resupply flights to move soldiers into the various outposts and transport those who needed to depart the valley.

The Korengal resupply was set for January 17, 2009. The morning revealed low-lying clouds and haze. Gray skies produced an off-and-on drizzle throughout the day. We assumed Task Force Eagle Lift would not be able to get through the passes from Bagram to conduct the mission, so we called our crews to the TOC to prepare them to conduct the mission. TF Blue Spaders needed five turns into the Korengal Valley and two to other COPs outside the valley. We decided to conduct the mission with one Chinook, protected by a team of Apaches. Chief Warrant Officer 2 Joe Mosher, a quiet, prior-enlisted noncommissioned officer, was the pilot in command of the Chinook, crewed with Chief Warrant Officer 2 John Taylor. In the back of the aircraft were Sergeant Jonathan McLawhorn, the flight engineer, Specialist Kenneth Mason, the crew chief, and the door gunner, Specialist Leandro Garcia.

After the mission briefing, the crews conducted a team briefing so that every crew member, Chinook and Apache alike, fully understood how they would go about accomplishing every aspect of the mission. Takeoff time was set for 8:30 A.M. The crews gathered their gear and headed to their aircraft around 7:45 A.M., but when they contacted the TOC for radio checks they were told to stand down.

“The guys at Eagle Lift are saying they will make it. They want to do the mission so just hang tight for a while,” the battle captain said to Joe Mosher.

Joe Mosher rolled his eyes and let out a sigh. “They’re not going to be able to make it. If we’re going to do this I want to go now. I don’t want to wait until every enemy fighter up there is up and looking to shoot at us,” he said to Taylor. “We’re going to end up doing this. We all know it, so why don’t we just go do it now?”

Mosher didn’t like the idea of spending time in the Korengal Valley during the middle of the day. Two hours passed and it became clear that Eagle Lift, as Mosher predicted, would not make it. “Flex 6-4,” the battle captain called over the radio, “Eagle Lift isn’t going to make it. Go ahead and execute the mission.” Each aircraft in Afghanistan was assigned a call sign. Mosher and crew were flying Flex 6-4 that morning.

“I told you they weren’t coming at eight thirty this morning,” Mosher mumbled.

Mosher didn’t like it. He felt relatively comfortable going into the Korengal early in the morning, but not in the middle of the day. Still, he knew the resupply was desperately needed, so he pressed on. His crew departed FOB Fenty three hours after the originally planned takeoff time.

After a quick stop at FOB Joyce in the central Kunar to drop off some supplies, they crossed the river and entered the Pech River Valley. “When we get to the Korengal let’s take a quick look into the valley. I want to make sure we’ve got the ceilings to get in there. It looks like there’s a pretty low cloud layer,” Mosher told the crew.

As they passed the entrance to the Korengal they diverted to take a quick look into the valley. A low, scattered layer of clouds hung in the valley, but it didn’t look like the weather would interfere with the mission. As they approached FOB Blessing they could see the hookup team prepared to attach the loads to the cargo hook under the belly of the aircraft. Sergeant McLawhorn made his way to the center of the aircraft and laid down with his head over the “hellhole,” which is a square hole in the floor of the helicopter through which the crew chief looks to see under the aircraft in order to give directions to the pilot.

Mosher slowed the big Chinook down and came to a hover over the load.

“Come left two,” McLawhorn said over the Chinook’s intercom system, indicating that he wanted Mosher to move the helicopter two feet to the left.

“Back three,” he then directed.

“Hold, that’s good. Slings on,” said McLawhorn, indicating that the soldier underneath the aircraft had hooked the sling legs onto the cargo hook.

“Up ten for slings tight. Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Slings tight,” McLawhorn said. The slings were connected to the cargo hook and the slack was out of the sling legs. Joe Mosher then pulled in power to climb. The load teams shielded their faces with their arms to protect themselves from the dust and sand blown up by the Chinook’s massive rotor blades.

“Here we go,” Taylor said, as they departed Blessing for the Korengal.

They flew back east to the entrance of the valley. The first set of three slings was to be dropped at the Korengal Outpost. The first turn went off without a hitch, smooth as glass. It was a good start.

“Flex 6-4, the guys on the ground are picking up some chatter. Nothing too serious right now, but sounds like the enemy is talking about us. We’ll escort you to the mouth of the valley, and while you pick up the next load we’ll stay here and look for the enemy,” Chief Warrant Officer 2 Kevin Clark told Joe Mosher. Kevin was the air mission commander of the Apache team.

“Sounds good. These next loads are going into Restrepo, so watch that area close,” Mosher said.

“Roger. We’ve got it.”

Flex 6-4 returned to FOB Blessing, but this time they landed and picked up two soldiers before attaching the sling loads. One of the soldiers needed a ride to Firebase Vegas, and the other needed to get back to FOB Fenty in order to depart theater for a midtour leave. With the two passengers on board, they picked up three more sling loads and departed for a second turn into the valley. As they departed it Joe called Kevin Clark on the radio.

“You guys seen anything?” Mosher asked.

“Negative. They obviously see us and they are talking, but they haven’t said anything too alarming,” Clark said.

“Okay. We’ll fly past Restrepo and circle back to the north to drop the slings,” Mosher said.

“Roger, we will pick up your twelve and six inbound,” said Clark, indicating that one Apache would lead them in and one would cover their trail as they made the approach. OP Restrepo was a tiny outpost. To drop the sling loads precisely where the men on the OP could get to them would require a slow and deliberate approach. The valley was dark. It began to drizzle and gloomy clouds loomed overhead.

As they entered the valley, John Taylor noticed a white truck parked on the side of the road with its hood up. While it didn’t alarm him, it stuck out in his mind because during their mission brief Jillian’s intel folks had mentioned that the enemy often used this tactic as a way to cover their true intent of observing coalition forces, or worse, to wait for an opportunity to shoot at them. Jillian’s team was beginning to understand the enemy and how they operated; more important, they were providing meaningful briefings to the pilots who were actively looking for the indicators.

Taylor kept his eye on the truck but didn’t observe anything overly concerning. Mosher made the final turn and saw where he needed to drop the slings. He proceeded inbound with caution, and the entire crew was calm and deliberate in their actions. About four hundred meters prior to the touchdown point the crew suddenly saw a bright flash, heard a loud explosion, and felt the aircraft jolt. For Joe Mosher, time instantly slowed down. We didn’t just get hit, did we? he thought.

The aircraft was still flying fine and for a moment Joe thought, We can still drop these slings and depart the area. What Mosher did not realize was that an RPG had hit the aircraft and blown a large hole through the fuel cell. Flames blew out of the bottom of the aircraft like a torch as fuel spilled from the tank and ignited.

John Taylor snapped his head to Mosher and said, “Cut the load!”

“No,” Mosher said, “hold the load,” which Sergeant McLawhorn reluctantly did.

Suddenly, another RPG passed just under the front of the aircraft and exploded in the hill adjacent to them. Taylor pointed at the RPG impact. “There goes another one!” he shouted.

“Cut the load!” Mosher ordered.

Sergeant McLawhorn immediately jettisoned the sling loads free from the aircraft and they plummeted into the valley below. Specialist Mason, manning the right-side machine gun, began shooting into the valley.

“Do you see them?” Taylor asked Mason, meaning the enemy.

“No,” he replied, “but I’m pretty sure I know where they shot from.”

Joe Mosher broke right and quickly decided where he was going to attempt to put the helicopter down. He later recalled thinking that the Korengal Outpost was the largest landing area available, but if the aircraft blew up they might burn the whole outpost down. His instincts told him to land immediately. Every fiber of his body wanted out of the burning aircraft. As long as they were in the air, a crash was still a possibility, and burning was about the last way he wanted to go out. He knew that if he landed in the valley no one would get out alive. The enemy would swarm them before help could arrive. He had to get as close as possible to friendly forces. Firebase Vegas was their best bet so he quickly decided to head in that direction.

Mosher accelerated to get out of the engagement area. He got the Chinook up to one hundred knots airspeed. Flames were shooting out of the belly of the aircraft as fuel continued to pour from the tank, and enemy forces continued to engage them with large- and small-caliber machine guns and RPGs. Suddenly the left engine, fuel starved, shut down. The helicopter instantly dropped about thirty feet, but nonetheless it remained in the air. Joe knew the aircraft could hover on the power of a single engine.

“We’ve got to land!” Taylor yelled to Mosher.

“We need to get to Vegas,” Mosher replied as he pulled up on the collective control lever to get more power and pushed forward on the cyclic to gain airspeed. Airspeed would get them out of the area faster, but if the only remaining engine quit, Joe would have to slow the aircraft down quickly before hitting the ground.

Smoke began to fill the cockpit as the fire continued to burn in the back of the helicopter. Sergeant McLawhorn disconnected his safety strap and retrieved an extinguisher. He fought the fire as they flew on toward Vegas.

“Open your window so we can clear this smoke,” Taylor told Mosher, but that would have required Mosher to let go of the cyclic and he was scared to take his hands off the controls. Taylor then jettisoned his door, which drew the smoke out, helping to clear the cockpit enough for Joe to fly and for them to breathe.

“We’ve got to get this thing on the ground. My neck is burning,” Taylor said, fearing more for the men in the back of the aircraft than for himself.

Just then Mosher saw the landing zone at Vegas. “There! I’m going to put it down right by the wire, on the edge of the perimeter,” Mosher said.

He rapidly slowed the aircraft and made a quick ninety-degree, right turn. If the aircraft rolled he wanted his side to be down, so they could exit out of Taylor’s now-ejected door. He and Taylor both braced themselves, not knowing if the aircraft would land level or roll over. Mosher got both back wheels down, but the front of the aircraft was sitting on some small scrub and a tree. As he continued down, Taylor released his seatbelt and prepared to shut down the remaining engine. As Mosher reduced the collective control, allowing the aircraft to sit on the ground, the aircraft suddenly rolled right. Taylor managed to shut down the engine before being thrown across the cockpit into the windscreen on Mosher’s side. Sergeant McLawhorn, who had been fighting the fire, was thrown out of the back of the aircraft.

With the aircraft on the ground, Taylor scrambled out the door and Mosher followed. Garcia, Mason, and one of the Blue Spader soldiers they had picked up at Blessing followed them out through Taylor’s door.

Everyone except McLawhorn met at the front of the aircraft. “Where is McLawhorn and the other passenger?” Mosher asked everyone, then ran to the back of the aircraft to search for them. He saw McLawhorn lying in the bushes about thirty yards from the aircraft. “I’ve got McLawhorn!” he yelled. “He’s hurt.”

Sergeant McLawhorn’s back was broken and his teeth were chipped. He couldn’t walk, but he was alive. They would need a litter to carry him out. They were still missing Sergeant Dawson, but the aircraft was already a ball of flames. They tried to get close, but it was now impossible.

Sergeant Ezra Dawson was the thirty-one-year-old son of a preacher from Oklahoma. He’d later moved to Las Vegas, where he worked as a waiter and part-time comedian before joining the army. He was a handsome, African-American infantryman with a smile that would light up a room. He was headed home for midtour leave, but he didn’t make it out of the Korengal Valley. The crew was devastated. They were certain that Sergeant Dawson was in the helicopter. Soldiers from Firebase Vegas, having watched the entire ordeal in the small valley, rushed down the hill to do what they could to help, but there wasn’t much left that they could do.

*   *   *

“Flex 6-4 is down in the Korengal!” the radio telephone operator (RTO) reported in the command post back at FOB Fenty.

“Go get the SCO [squadron commander] and the S3,” the battle captain ordered one of the other RTOs, who ran from the TOC to get me.

I ran back to the TOC with him. The battle captain had already briefed the medevac crew. They were preparing to launch as I entered the TOC. We had a team of Kiowas in the FARP at FOB Wright, so I told the battle captain to have them wait and escort the medevac to Firebase Vegas. The soldiers at Vegas reported that they had recovered the crew, but one of the passengers was still missing.

“Get the Pathfinders ready to go. We’ll need to send them in and recover what’s left,” I told the battle captain. Since I had about thirty minutes before the medevac and Pathfinders arrived at the Korengal, I thought through the situation. The crew was secure at Vegas. The Pathfinders were being spun up. The medevac was on the way. It was time to take a breath and slow things down. I went to my office to call Colonel Spiszer, the Task Force Duke commander, and Colonel Lewis to explain what had happened and what I had already put in motion.

“Colonel Lewis,” he answered.

“Sir, I have launched a medevac to go get the crew. We’re briefing the Pathfinders on the situation now. I plan to take them in on a Chinook once it’s dark so they can go through the wreckage and recover what we can.”

“Okay. We’ll need to find the black box so we have the recordings of what happened,” he said.

“Roger, sir. We are showing the Pathfinders what it looks like now and we are going to take them out to a Chinook to show them where it is located on the aircraft. Once the fire is out and the wreckage has cooled they should be able to recover it.”

“What about Sergeant Dawson?” he asked.

“I think the soldiers at Vegas will recover him. We’ll bring him out when we put the Pathfinders in.”

“Okay. Be careful going in there—in and out quickly. We don’t want to give them another target to shoot at.”

“Yes, sir.”

Colonel Spiszer informed Major General Jeff Schloesser, the commander of CJTF-101. General Schloesser directed him to destroy the aircraft completely, so it could not be used as propaganda against us.

Captain Matt McNeal was the air mission commander of the Kiowa team at FOB Wright. He linked up in flight with the medevac, and they flew to Vegas to recover the crews.1 As they flew in, smoke billowed from the smoldering Chinook, which was already unrecognizable. The medevac brought the entire crew back to the aid station at FOB Fenty.

That evening I flew in the jump seat on the lead Chinook as we inserted the Pathfinders to recover the downed aircraft. We landed in the LZ at Vegas, and after the Pathfinders exited the helicopter, we respectfully loaded Sergeant Ezra Dawson and flew his body to FOB Fenty.

The following morning the Pathfinders sent back pictures. They had recovered the black box. Only a few scraps and melted sheet metal remained of the helicopter. General Schloesser ordered us to bury what was left.

We learned many lessons from the Flex 6-4 shoot-down, lessons that were not lost on our men. In fact, Flex 6-4 entirely changed how we operated, and forced us to reevaluate how we were conducting all of our missions.

It was clear that, like the Crasnovians at the National Training Center, the enemy were observant; they had noted the pattern of multiturn, day-only resupply missions into the Korengal Valley for quite some time and had elected to act. They took advantage of the situation. Since arriving in theater, the Blue Spaders had received multiple pieces of intelligence stating that the enemy wanted to shoot an aircraft down in the Korengal.2 We knew that the enemy were always watching us and reporting our actions to their leadership. It would be tragic ever to think that we had found “the” way to execute a given mission.

In war, what works today is obsolete tomorrow. We learned that we had to develop systems that would force us to challenge our assumptions and tactics systematically and continually.

A couple of weeks after the attack several things were proven true. The enemy had been studying our resupply missions and had used our patterns against us. They had not only achieved a tactical success but also an information-operations success; Al Jazeera aired a video of the Flex 6-4 shoot-down. The event was video-recorded from at least three positions.

General Schloesser was correct in his assessment that they would try to use the wreckage as a propaganda tool. The video showed our soldiers burying what was left of the charred and burned aircraft. It gave us insight as to the complexity of the attack. They had strategically placed shooters on both sides of the approach path to Restrepo to engage the aircraft. In the days that followed, we obtained a copy of a sketch they had drawn as they planned the attack. From that document we clearly saw the in-depth planning, briefing, and rehearsing that the enemy had conducted. It was a sobering discovery. The shoot-down had been planned for quite a while, and the level of planning was possible due to our predictable pattern.

We had assumed responsibility for the Korengal resupply mission and never questioned if we could do it differently than our predecessor. In hindsight it’s easy to say that it should have been apparent to us, that we could have executed the mission at night using the increased capability of our newly fielded CH-47F Chinooks. The new aircraft gave us tremendous capability. It had a fully integrated, digital cockpit management system, a common aviation architecture cockpit, and advanced cargo-handling capabilities that complemented the aircraft’s advanced mission performance and handling characteristics. It was ideally suited for dark nights with no ambient illumination.

The loss of Flex 6-4 forced us to consider thoroughly every mission enabler on the battlefield, such as close air support and UAVs, and how we could use them to reduce risk and increase capability. From that point forward, UAVs, various intelligence-collection assets, infrared illumination rockets, and fixed-wing aircraft would help us perform what we coined “conditions-based” turns when executing multiturn resupply missions.

We felt relatively certain that we could execute the first turn into a valley such as the Korengal without any issues, but after the first turn the likelihood that the enemy would attack increased. We had to use every tool at our disposal to gain situational understanding, which would enable us to evaluate the risk with each successive turn. The Flex 6-4 shoot-down drove us to operate almost solely at night, and later in the deployment we would use only “red illumination” (new-moon phase, with zero illumination) to execute repetitive-turn resupply missions. Previously, aviation had not flown freely throughout the area of operations with limited illumination, but we trained, utilized the systems in the aircraft, maximized the use of infrared illumination rockets, and began flying on the darkest nights to reduce the enemy’s ability to observe and shoot us. The utter darkness of the mountain valleys, which we once feared, became our greatest protection against a determined enemy.

Most important, we adopted an approach that forced the enemy to become reactive in nature. We constantly asked ourselves what we could do differently that would prevent them from discovering patterns they could potentially exploit. “Keep him guessing” became our mantra.

The Flex 6-4 shoot-down also reminded us how easily we could die, how quickly a seemingly routine mission could become a life-and-death situation. In fact, it helped us to better understand that nothing was routine in Afghanistan.