THESE TWO BLACK HAWK PILOTS SACRIFICED THEMSELVES FOR THEIR CREW
Cliff “Elvis” Wolcott and Donovan “Bull” Briley were the pilots of Super 6-1, the first Black Hawk shot down during the Battle of Mogadishu.
On October 3, 1993, Delta operators were inserted at the target building by their Little Birds to seize the hostile warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, while four squads of US Rangers each secured one corner of the block. Through a misunderstanding one of those squads, call sign Chalk 4, was set down on the wrong corner.
The hostile mob Aidid had stirred up now moved on the Americans, and Chalk 4 was outnumbered as well as twice as far from friendly forces as planned. In the heat of the firefight, Super 6-1 orbited low over Chalk 4 to give fire support. Both door gunners opened fire with their miniguns on enemy fighters in the streets and on the rooftops. Four Delta snipers, the “Delta Boys”, were also working through the open doors of the Black Hawk.
As the helicopter turned to the left, one of the door gunners spotted an RPG gunner outside his own arc of fire. Before he could pass the exact position to the other gunner, the RPG hit the tail of the Black Hawk. The damage sent Super 6-1 into an uncontrolled spin and it began to sink toward the ground. The pilots could not stop it, whatever they tried. One of the Delta Boys was not clipped in and barely managed to hold on, both legs already hanging out of the Black Hawk. The impact killed both pilots. The crew in the back survived the crash, some of them badly wounded.
Some accounts assume that “Elvis” Wolcott pushed the nose of the helicopter down shortly before impact to take the force of the crash with the cockpit and give his crew a better chance of surviving.
A brotherhood nobody else understands.
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