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Old 02-24-2010, 20:12   #5
Papa Zero Three
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Join Date: Aug 2009
Posts: 547
I watched the 60 minutes segment just now and like most stories, I have another side of this story.

I actually was the guy on the other end of the phone when the Black water office/rep called down to Kandahar to see if that aircraft was on the runway. When I asked how long it was overdue I was told it had been missing for 18 hours and they were now looking for it. After that "we" spun up and it was a 7th Grp Mtn team along with the PJs from next door that ended up doing the mission. Aside from it taking 24 hrs getting the team and needed assets and airframes to Bagram, they did not have a pinpoint location on the crash sight. That took another 24 hrs to utilize the correct mechanism that is used in these types of situations to determine that the crash was in 3 separate pieces along the mountain side at roughly 15k feet.

IMHO, had Blackwater been quicker to start calling people instead of waiting 18 hours after the flight was overdue, we might have pulled at least one person off that crash site alive instead of it just being a recovery mission.


On a side note, one of the COAs that was sent down from Bagram that I absolutely could not believe was for a HALO mission into the crash site. Once I explained how out of the world that was given the altitude and that it was on a side of a snow covered mountain they finally decided to move the 47s and the team into position at Bagram for an air infil onto the mountain side.
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