Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six
 |
|
| Author | Don Brown |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre |
War Historical non-fiction |
| Pages | viii, 295 pages |
| ISBN | |
Call Sign Extortion 17: The Shoot-Down of SEAL Team Six, is a 2015 non-fiction expose, written by best-selling author and former U.S. Navy JAG Officer Don Brown, about the 2011 Chinook shootdown in Afghanistan of a United States Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter. It is published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, through its Imprint, Lyons Press. In the shoot-down, 30 Americans lost their lives, including 17 U.S. Navy SEALs, most of whom were members of SEAL Team Six, officially the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group.
The crash, said to have been caused by a Rocket-propelled grenade fired by Taliban forces in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, when the helicopter was at approximately 100–150 feet off the ground just prior to landing, was the largest loss-of-life by U.S. in the Afghan War. The Chinook was shot down in the early morning hours of August 6, 2011, at approximately 0239 AM Local time, and was the largest single-loss of American life in the history of the U.S. Navy SEALs.
The book is written based largely upon a review of the official, non-classified military record of the crash, which was mysteriously leaked to several family members in October 2011, one month after the official military investigation was closed. Brown believes that the SEAL team may have been sacrificed, either through extreme gross negligence in the mission-planning or for other reasons, and has stated in interviews that the military is covering up key facts germane to the case, including the identities of seven Afghans who slipped on the helicopter without authority, and the true status of the helicopter's black box, which has been the subject of conflicting reports by the military.
Brown criticizes the U.S. rules of engagement, which prevented pre-landing suppression fire into the helicopter's designated landing zone, and which, according to Brown, allowed Taliban forces to slip into the area of the landing zone and fire the RPG which destroyed the helicopter. Pre-suppression fire would have cleared the landing zone and saved the lives of the Americans, Brown argues repeatedly. Brown also claims the military committed a major security breach, by allowing seven unidentified Afghan Commandos to board the helicopter just before takeoff, and subsequently attempting to cover up the breach in the final report, and suggesting the possibility of an "inside job" by the Taliban.
...
Wikipedia