45. Midnight Raid of the Raptors

This story appeared on Page A2 of The Standard-Times on March 20, 2003.

In the field: with a search and rescue team By MARY BETH SHERIDAN, The Washington Post

OVER THE WESTERN KUWAITI DESERT -- At around 1 a.m. Tuesday, Army pilots Gordon Cimoli and Fred Sullo gently eased their UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter down toward the moonlit desert below. They were practicing a search for a downed American pilot, a brown-haired, brown-eyed man who, they've been told, had a broken leg. "There's the LZ," said Cimoli, a chief warrant officer, indicating the landing zone where they would pick up the man.

In the back of the helicopter, three soldiers wearing night-vision goggles and clutching weapons scrambled out of their seats and unfurled a red litter. Another braced at the door of the descending helicopter, ready to fire on enemy forces with an M-60 machine gun. "Forty feet," came the deep voice of a crew member. "Thirty-five feet. Twenty feet." The Black Hawk nestled into the sand, and the rescue team bolted out the door. It was a practice run for one of the most urgent missions in any war: search and rescue. Cimoli and Sullo belong to an Army unit nicknamed the Raptors, which includes a specialized rescue team that could debut in combat with Iraqi forces.

The Raptors, part of the 5th Battalion of the 158th Aviation Regiment, know their mission is about more than saving the lives of soldiers who are lost or shot down. They also want to keep Iraqi forces from capturing military personnel and turning them into psychological weapons. That occurred during the 1991 Gulf War, when a battered Navy pilot, Lt. Jeffrey Zaun, was put on Iraqi TV and forced to condemn coalition forces. "This is the Saddam Sweepstakes," said pilot Cimoli, 32, from Mount Clemens, Mich. "It's a race against time."

With their high drama and visibility, rescue attempts can become emblems of a conflict. In 1994, U.S. troops were withdrawn from Somalia after searing images were broadcast worldwide of a mob dragging a dead American, one of a group of Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers attacked by Somali clansmen. U.S. helicopters and ground troops were unable to quickly extract the soldiers. The following year came a very successful rescue: Air Force Capt. Scott F. O'Grady was saved in a bold Marine-led helicopter operation six days after his F-16 was shot down over Bosnia. The search-and-rescue missions are not just about the public's perceptions of battles. They are also key to maintaining morale within the military.

Soldiers know that when they put themselves in harm's way, their comrades will do their utmost to save them. "I've seen it in our own battalion," said Cimoli, a tall, dark-haired son of a UH-1 "Huey" helicopter [crewchief] in Vietnam. Soldiers seek him out on the chow line at Camp Udairi, in northern Kuwait, and tell him about their missions. "Make sure you get me," they tell him.

"It's an American thing," said Chief Warrant Officer 5 Warren Aylworth, tactical operations officer with the Raptors. "We always want to get our people out. We take that more seriously all the time." Army helicopters have always swooped down to help fellow aviators flying downed in battle. But until recently, the Air Force had primary responsibility for search-and-rescue missions. During the Vietnam War, its CH/HH-3 Jolly Green Giant helicopter crews became legend, snatching survivors from jungles and rice paddies in sometimes hair-raising operations.

During the 1991 Gulf War, 35 aircraft were downed and seven rescue missions were dispatched, a number that drew criticism from some in the military. To improve the services' ability to carry out rescues, the military in 1999 transferred primary responsibility for the task from the Air Force to a new Joint Personnel Recovery Agency based at Ft. Belvoir, Va. The Raptor team reflects that shift. "The Army is doing it (search-and-rescue) basically for the first time with conventional forces as part of a primary job," said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Sam De Nardi, 39, of San Diego, as he munched a spaghetti-and-Wonder Bread sandwich before Tuesday's flight. He is the senior Black Hawk pilot in the Raptors special rescue team.

In hostilities with Iraq, some Black Hawk helicopters from the 5th Battalion would be assigned to accompany squadrons of AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, hovering at the edge of battle to dart in and snatch downed pilots. In military jargon, such rescue craft are "embedded" with units. But the Raptor team staging the exercise Tuesday morning would go after whoever needed rescue: a reconnaissance team that has been discovered, perhaps, or a pilot shot down in a remote area or soldiers in an Army truck that got lost. Raptor members would be on-call 24 hours a day, waiting in their tents for the call.

The Tuesday morning drill hinted at how delicate and dangerous the missions could be. The team operated in close formation: two Black Hawks, carrying a specialized search-and-rescue team trained in emergency medicine, accompanied by three Apache gunships for protection. In a real operation, Air Force planes might provide additional firepower.

As they approached the site, the helicopters identified the location of the target of the rescue, a team member playing the role of a downed pilot. The pilot used the radio to quiz the man on his injuries. The Black Hawks dropped gently into the sand. Immediately, the "snatch-and-grab" team hurtled out, armed with M-249 Squad Automatic Weapons and M-4 assault rifles with grenade launchers. Some took up positions to provide security; others quickly confirmed the identify of the "pilot" by asking him about personal information in his records. "They got the survivor," said one of the pilots, as the team raced back, pushing the litter into the Black Hawk's interior. The helicopter swiftly lifted off as the team strapped in the litter. The craft headed out over a desert that looked like a milky sea at night. "Midnight raid of the Raptors," crooned a pilot.