" In a decision that is later highly criticized, US Defense Secretary Les Aspin denies requests from General Montgomery for armored reinforcements,"
General Montgomery had almost nothing to do with the planning for the Oct 3 raid on Mogadishsu... Gen. Garrison, the commander of Task Force Ranger, was essentially independent of Montgomery even though Montgomery was higher up in the chain of UN command.
And the following from "Blackhawk Down, by Mark Bowden, P 340-341:
"General Montgomery asked for Abrams tanks and Bradley vehicles in late September for his QRFs (quick reaction forces) and these were turned down, again because of pressure in Washington to lower, not raise, the American military presence in Mogadishu. It is easy to dismiss these pressures as effete concerns, but strong congressional support is vital to sustain any military venture. In our system of government, everything requires a balancing act. At that point, any move that appeared to be deepening America's commitment to the military option in Mogadishu weakened support for it. Even if Montgomery had gotten his Bradley's , it's questionable what impact they would have had in the battle. It is doubtful they would have been in place by Oct. 3. Since they would have been assigned to the 10 Mountain Division, they would not have been part of the Ranger ground reaction force......one soldier died awaiting rescue. The rescue column would have had to leave 4-5 hours earlier to save him assuming surgeons could have saved him. Again, the quarrel is over Garrison's call, not with weak-kneed Washington politicians undercutting forces in the field...."
From your link here is what Montgomery said about how he learned about Oct. 3...:
"How did you find out about the October 3rd incident?
On the day of what has become known as the 'Battle of Mogadishu' I was away from Mogadishu, I was in western Somalia with the German contingent, and I was representing the Force Command. I got back into headquarters about three in the afternoon, as I recall, and when I came back down I was told that something was brewing, that the Rangers had an operation that they were going to launch, and I was given the information that was available at that time, I talked to General Garrison, I let General Bir know what on the US side was happening. General Bir was never out of the picture, General Garrison and I talked, the nature of their operations is that they get short notice and they are very adapted to making a quick plan and launching a quick strike. What would take us several days to plan, would take them maybe 20 minutes to plan.
Now while I was out, I mean the alert had gone to my American G3 Operations Officer, and all the things that we needed to do to support the Rangers had already been done. The Quick Reaction Force was already spinning up and being prepared to support if they needed to, if the Rangers got in trouble.
General Garrison and I talked about it. I told him that there were no UN activities located there.... this happened to be in a very bad part of Mogadishu and it was reported later that I said to him 'that's really Indian country, Bill.' But of course they knew that. They'd been there for a while. But it was a bad neighborhood, very dangerous But I also didn't have any reason to doubt that they knew all of that.
Now the mission itself -- what I did -- was immediately to start lining up support if we needed it. I didn't have any reason to think that we would, other than it was a dangerous operation. I had a Liaison Officer from General Garrison at my side, and I had my hand on communications to talk to the Quick Reaction Force, and to the Rangers. I had the ability to talk to UN Forces.
When it became apparent that we had a problem, we dispatched the Quick Reaction Force -- began dispatching it down to the Ranger headquarters. I started thinking ahead to what else I might need. Now I didn't have any armor or heavy forces at my disposal. There were only eight tanks in Mogadishu....they were old American tanks that had been given to the Pakistanis, and of those only four were operational, and they were at the airport, which is where the Ranger headquarters was. And so I called the Pakistani Commander and told him that I might need those tanks, and he said okay.
You had made a request for tanks -- why wasn't it already set up to have those tanks on call...?
Well those tanks -- the Pakistani tanks -- were on call. They happened to be at the airport, poised to help an operation that the Pakistanis were going to conduct. So they were poised and they were ready and I had no reason other than to build a force and have it standing by to support Task Force Ranger. 'Cause nobody thought that they would ever need that kind of back up. As a matter of fact, having a Quick Reaction Force stand up was something that we routinely did, the US Quick Reaction Force.
But to go beyond that means that you would have to tell contingents what was going on. There's no such thing as a secret in Mogadishu, particularly in the UN Headquarters, or amongst contingents, so I mean you couldn't compromise. Even if you had a reason, and, again, we just didn't have a reason to have those four tanks sitting for Task Force Ranger, and again they were old tanks. They had real limitations. The Italians had fifty, some real tanks, more modern. And the Italians were about two hours out of the city I think.
So when it became apparent that we had a problem that the Rangers couldn't handle by themselves, and that I needed some more punch other than infantry, then I asked the Pakistani commander for those tanks and he said yes. So there's a miscommunication about this. In their planning for going into that Ranger force that was hunkered down to get them out, it was clear that we needed some armored personnel carriers. The Malaysian Battalion had wheeled armoured personnel carriers. They were older vehicles, but they were better than nothing, they were pretty good vehicles. I [told] the Malaysian Commander, that we might have to commit the Malaysian Battalion, and the Malaysian Commander did not hesitate to say yes.
What took the time... there's a misunderstanding about this. First of all, the Quick Reaction Force tried to go to conduct a relief. To go with the lean elements of the Quick Reaction Force. And they ran into a fight. And it was clear to me that if we piecemealed into that fight, that we were gonna suffer casualties, and that it was not a smart thing to do.
Now, Task Force Ranger had a successful raid. They had time to even take the prisoners out of the location and evacuate them back. However, when the second helicopter went down, they made the decision that they were gonna divert and go to that helicopter. So instead of coming out, after it had successfully accomplished its mission, they're diverted to go protect that helicopter and see if they could get the crew out. I mean, that was their decision.
Task Force Ranger, made that decision and they had a lot of support. Almost all of the casualties -- except that maybe one Ranger that I know of who missed the rope coming off the helicopter -- were taken in the process of going from that point to the helicopter site. Once they got to the helicopter site, they were resupplied by air, with fuel, with ammunition, and with water. And they were secure. I mean,they were under pressure and they were under attack, but they were secure. I think there was one other Ranger that died while they hunkered down, and the doctors had indicated that he probably would not have survived, even if they had been able to get him out. I mean there was not a big controversy about that.
So there were no casualties taken, once they were in that position. And they were secure. And I made the decision that we were gonna put a big plan together, and we were not gonna waste lives by rushing in there. And I personally approved the final plans... to make sure that we were doing the right thing by going in, and I knew that we had some time to do that. Because I knew that every helicopter in Mogadishu was over them, with guns blaring, if necessary, and I knew that they were okay, and they were. And that Garrison had made it clear to me that they were not in immediate danger. But we needed to get them out of there.
The decision was made by Task Force Ranger that they would like not to take the Malaysian soldiers in necessarily, but they would like to use those armored personnel carriers. And the Malaysian Commander said okay, but he wanted his drivers to drive. So the force that went in had four Pakistani tanks. They had no night vision capability, they went in anyway. They had the Battalion of armored personnel carriers with Rangers and 10th Mountain Division, the Quick Reaction Force soldiers in it. And all of the helicopters that they could put in the sky above the operation backing them up. That's the force that went in, and they got in -- I don't remember exactly how long -- but they had to fight their way in and it took them two or three hours.
There was a problem getting in there?
In fighting its way in, it took about two or three hours to get there, mostly in the hours of darkness. Two killed and about 12 wounded, and one of the killed also was a Malaysian soldier -- one of the drivers of the vehicles. It was very difficult going for the tanks because again they had no eyes, they had no night vision capability, they were in the lead and that was a little slow, too, I think, but nonetheless, it was an efficient operation. They got there.
What actually took so long, the Rangers did not want to leave without being able to extract the remains of the pilots in the helicopter. And there was great difficulty in doing that. And all night, as you can imagine -- this was the worst night of my life -- I kept saying, 'get out of there, let's go, get out of there, let's go.'
Now [the Rangers] were okay once the force got to them. There wasn't any fighting or anything. But nonetheless it was very dangerous and we had to make the move. The plan was to get everybody out and over to the Pakistani stadium, which was closer than the airport. It was better to do that than try and come back the same way, and it was well after midnight -- almost 3 - 4 o'clock in the morning -- before the last of them were ready to come out of there. But there was this was confusion, I think, about it taking eleven hours to rescue the men. They weren't under great duress during that period. That's why they stayed in there so long. And we got them out.
It did take a certain amount of time to put the right plan together and to assemble the Force -- being the Malaysian vehicles and drivers and Pakistanis. There was a lot of conjecture, and a lot of things said that I think were very unfair. I'm very proud of the Malaysian and the Pakistani soldiers that were a part of that, I am enormously proud of the 10th Mountain Division who got very little recognition, because they weren't a part of Task Force Ranger. The focus was on Task Force Ranger, but Colonel Bill David, was their commander and he just did a superb job. They did everything right, and they took casualties, and they were tremendous soldiers, all of them. And I made it a point to write a letter to the Chief of Defense of the Malaysian Forces, because there was some accusation in I think Time Magazine-- and nothing could have been further from the truth, in fact as a soldier, I have to tell you that I would go anywhere, under any circumstances with the Malaysian soldiers.... But at any rate, that's how that evening unfolded, [there are] a lot of misconceptions about it.
What about Garrison and his Ranger Task Force and their back up plan?
I'm sure he had one.... I mean he had his own internal Reaction Force. He didn't commit his total force and he had his own helicopter gun ships and he had significant capability. My US Quick Reaction Force was there as the second or third back-up, I think, for the Rangers.
You made requests for armored tanks, more support. Why was your request denied?
If you look at events in July and August, you would see that there was an increase in the number of ambushes on the roads. There was an increase in numbers of mortar attacks against us, against our facilities and the Headquarters, our casualties started to go up, in August there was this awful explosive that literally obliterated a vehicle with four young MPs in it. A time I will never in my life forget. So it was becoming increasingly difficult and at the same time, I have to say that the United Nations forces were becoming increasingly timid and I really began to be worried about my capability to protect my force, as the US Commander.
So I made a request in August, I sent it to General Hoar in Tampa, and I asked for a Mechanic Task Force, and I asked for a Air Cavalry Troop. I asked for more human intelligence capability. As I recall, there may have been some more and the response back about two or three weeks later, when the CINC came to see me, was that would never fly and my response to that was 'Yes, but that's what I need.'
Why wouldn't it fly?
It wouldn't fly because the United States wanted out of Somalia, wanted to lower our troop presence, rather than increasing it. And this was a request that said -- this guy Montgomery wants to build the force. The request, at the very outset, said 'for protection of the force,' only. I mean I had absolutely no intention to expand operations, or to become more aggressive or do anything like that. I really honestly was worried that some other bad thing was gonna happen .
After I was told that was too big a force and would never fly in Washington.... I resized a force that still would have the capability with the Bradley fighting vehicles and heavy mortar platoons instead of armor or instead of artillery and a platoon's worth of intelligence. At any rate it was downsized considerably, but it would still be a good force, and that is the request I made and that request went forward to Washington from Florida, CINCENT's headquarters. I think it was August or early September. Now this incident, the battle, took place on the 3rd of October.
Is there a general feeling that the nature of your mission is increasing in scope as far as what the US is requesting for you to do? Yet, at the same time, they're decreasing what they are willing to supply you with?
I understand that politically the United States wanted out of Somalia at that point in time, and they weren't any happier with the way the mission was going... had never intended to leave the Quick Reaction Force there for the entire period, it hoped that we would be able to bring it out early and that we had plans to further decrease the force... [they were] trying to get out and you know, this guy, this Commander says he needs more troops, but nobody was shooting in Washington -- they were shooting at us. I was just concerned, I did what I had to do, I think it's a military commander's responsibility to say what is needed regardless of whether it'll fly or not fly.
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