While Michael J. “Mike” Durant is probably not a household name around the world, he is an indelible symbol and memory for anyone who has seen Ridley Scott’s classic war film, Black Hawk Down, based on the book of the same name by Mark Bowden. A native of Berlin, N.H., Durant joined the military in 1979 and was assigned to the 470th Military Intelligence Group in Fort Clayton, Panama. After helicopter flight training, he was subsequently appointed to Warrant Officer 1 and flew with the 377th Medical Evacuation Company in Korea, and then the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, Ky., as an instructor. In 1988, Durant joined the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne – 160th SOAR), known as the “Night Stalkers.” Durant served with the 160th during Operations Prime Chance, Just Cause, Desert Storm, and Gothic Serpent.

Durant was the pilot of an MH-60 special operations helicopter, callsign “Super Six Four,” the second helicopter shot down by Somali militiamen during a seizure raid in Mogadishu on Oct. 3, 1993. Hit by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG), Durant’s helicopter crashed in the city a mile from the raid site, where he and his crew – Bill Cleveland, Ray Frank, and Tommy Field – survived the crash, but sustained severe injuries. Surrounded and unable to escape or evade, two snipers, Randy Shughart and Gary Gordon, volunteered to drop into the crash site and try to hold off the growing crowds of hostile militia and angry civilians.

During the ensuing street battle, Durant’s crew and the two snipers were overwhelmed and killed. For their extraordinary actions, both Shughart and Gordon were both later awarded the Medal of Honor, the first such decoration since Vietnam. Durant – suffering from injuries that included a broken back, leg, face, and gunshot wounds – was overrun, captured, and held prisoner for 11 days. Later released, he eventually recovered from his wounds and other injuries, and returned to flight status with the 160th SOAR. With more than 3,700 flight hours, he retired from the Army in 2001 as a Chief Warrant Officer 4 and master aviator. Over his military career, Durant has received many decorations, including the Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, Bronze Star with Valor Device, Purple Heart, Meritorious Service Medal, three Air Medals, POW/MIA ribbon, and others.

Durant is now the owner, president, and CEO of Pinnacle Solutions, Inc., a service-disabled, veteran-owned engineering services company based in Huntsville, Ala. Durant also offers seminars to military personnel about helicopter maneuvering and Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) operations. He lives in Alabama with his wife Lisa. They have four sons and two daughters.

In this interview with The Year in Special Operations, Durant shares his experiences leading up to the ill-fated Battle of Mogadishu, his hardships during captivity, and his unlikely survival.

 

John D. Gresham: The Year in Special Operations: How many things had you done in the Army as a pilot before you decided you wanted to do something like flying in “special people?”

Michael Durant: It happened pretty much right away. I was in Korea on [my] first assignment and got wind of the unit and was intrigued by it right away. … I knew the unit was there, so I finally figured out how to get ahold of them and I called them and said, “I’d like to come over to assess.” What happened was I’d already mistakenly signed into the 101st Airborne, which is a fine unit. But because I’d done that, I was already committed to them for a minimum of 18 months to two years, which as it turns out, is probably the best thing that could have happened to me. I had good experience in flying medevac, but I didn’t have a lot of experience in some key areas that I got by being in … an air assault organization, where you’re doing a lot more flight formation, tactical operations, night flying and missions like that. I got a few more hours under my belt, got to know the Fort Campbell area a little bit better, which helped. In the end, it was the best thing for me.

 

What was it like in those days? Gen. Bryan “Doug” Brown, was one of the founding members of the Night Stalkers, and back then, they actually had to go through the actual Special Forces Q Course in addition to doing qualification within the unit itself. What was it like when you got there?

I was actually part of the first 160th formal Green Platoon class. Before my group, the training was actually being done by instructors taken out of hide from the line companies. They didn’t have a formal course that was established up until the time I got there. With the implementation of the Green Platoon course and the creation of the SOA training company theytook you through [a] several-month program of formal instruction, which included physical fitness and medical training, map reading, and land navigation … all those things – in addition to the basic flight training – were all part of that original curriculum. And we were the test case. It was actually very well done and the final phase also included the SERE course at Fort Bragg.

 

Right.

That was the piece where we would join in with the students who were in the SF Q-Course and we’d do that phase with them.

 

And of course the piece you ended up having to use under a very poor situation.

There’s always room to get better.

As it turns out, I’m the first person who had the opportunity to apply what I learned there in the real world. There are now two of us, I believe. Dave Williams was the other one, the Apache pilot shot down during the early stages of OIF.

 

Interesting. OK, so you actually began flying and went with the unit operationally about in what time frame?

I completed Green Platoon and SERE training and reported to the unit in January of ’89.

 

Where were you assigned at that point in time?

At Fort Campbell. Delta Company, 1st Battalion.

 

You were flying the MH-60s?

Right.

 

How would you have characterized yourself as a pilot about that time?

I would say, reaching the top of my game. Not there yet, but getting there, if that’s what you’re looking for. I think when you’re at that stage in your aviation career, you think you’re better than you are. In fact, you’ve done enough things to make you feel confident, which is what you want, but you don’t realize there’s a lot out there you don’t know and haven’t experienced yet. As you gain additional experience and you gain more flight hours, you begin to realize that. There’s always room to get better.

 

Can you talk about some of the other people you were there with? What kind of people were you flying with in the 160th at that point?

I’m not sure the average person understands we’re not talking about an organization with different people rolling in every couple of years. I think that’s something else that’s unique about SOF. You’re talking about the same people. You’re talking about organizations that are employed in combat at almost every turn. There are very few examples of things we’ve been involved with as a country in the past 20 years that SOF didn’t have a slice of somewhere. And what people don’t necessarily understand is that it’s the same people. There are people who have experience in six or seven different combat environments in their special operations careers. And that’s true for the ground force guys as it is for the aviation, probably even more so.

 

So, you’re literally talking about a small family sized unit?

It truly was a family.

Absolutely.

 

Not many people talk about the 160th as a social organization. What kind of a family is it?

Well, I know it’s changed. Things are never, after 10 years, the way they were when you were there or like you remember they were. But when I was there, we were very close. I mean very close. When you went on extended deployments with people, you’d learn more about them. You’d become closer to them than anyone. And meanwhile, your families are probably back socializing as well, and you’d think that when these deployments would end, the last thing we’d want to do would be to spend more time together. But, in fact, we did. So, it truly was a family. No doubt.

 

And are these people who you’d generally gone to work with throughout your time in the unit from the time you first came in to the time when you mustered out?

Yeah, pretty much. Some came earlier, some came later, but from that era, we were together for a very long time, and for many we’re still in close contact.

 

What was happening with you over the next couple of years before you went to Somalia? What kinds of things were you doing at that point?

Well, I was involved in Operation Prime Chance in the Persian Gulf, Just Cause in Panama, and went to Desert Storm as well.

 

The question that comes up is obviously you did Desert Storm, you were knocking around a little bit after that. Then comes ’93 and the summer. And this thing called Task Force Ranger is formed. What are your recollections of how that came to be?

Well, initially this was going to be a low-profile mission with not a lot of assets involved. And I was not a part of that initial team. That sort of stuff happened all the time and we would spin up and spin down constantly, so nobody got too worried about it until we actually got deployment orders. In fact, on that one, they came back home because we weren’t going to go. And then as things continued to develop in Somalia, we spun up a larger, more capable force involving the Rangers and more helicopters.…

 

And other professionals from other organizations?

Right. And we went to Bragg and we started going through the plans again because this thing is a lot more complicated now. We had more moving pieces. And then again we got spun down. We were told we were not going. And I actually flew all the way to Fort Hood and then got a call out there just after arriving that said, “OK, plans have changed again. You need to fly back to Fort Bragg.” And so we flew all the way back to Fort Bragg again, and with that event, we were locked in and realized, OK, we’re probably going for real this time, and as a matter of fact we did. Within maybe half a day, we were out of there.

And we arrived on the scene. To be honest with you, it seemed fairly benign. There didn’t seem to be much going on. I would say the potential for violence and combat losses viewed by most of us was low probability. But as you know if you’ve read the story, by Oct. 3, things had deteriorated significantly, and it got more and more violent and the enemy more and more aggressive. In fact, there was a Black Hawk from the 101st that was shot down in early September. When that happened, we realized that this was for real.

There’s evidence that shows that al Qaeda was involved in helping get some of those resources in there, so what we didn’t know was they had plenty of them and due to the sheer numbers, they were more of a threat than we thought they were.

 

This was no longer a permissive environment.

Right, right.

 

Over what time frame had you been over there during those six prior missions?

I think we got there on Aug. 28 and the Black Hawk Down mission occurred on Oct. 3.

 

And the rest of those missions went pretty much to template? Nothing too terribly exciting on them? You did your job, brought them out, and everything was fine?

That’s pretty much it. We didn’t lose any aircraft. A couple of folks got wounded, but it was minor. The most excitement was on one mission, when we did grab the No. 2 guy and he was successfully turned over to the U.N. And on that mission, they started firing RPGs at us, so that raised it up another notch.

 

Without getting into threat assessments and other things, had you guys looked seriously at the threat from the RPG? Had it really come on your scope as something that was a potentially serious threat in the environment and the way you were working the birds?

Well, it’s always a threat. I think we understand that much more so now than we did then. But even then, we viewed it as a threat. The problem with that weapon is that there’s not a whole lot you can do about it. You have to use cover and concealment and that’s about it. We were told they didn’t have all that many of them … which turned out to be false.

 

[Laughs] I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh, but it’s funny how they were saying there weren’t many, and they were selling them for how much on the dollar down in the marketplace?

Well, I don’t think anyone knows even today how many there actually were, but there’s evidence that shows that al Qaeda was involved in helping get some of those resources in there, so what we didn’t know was they had plenty of them and due to the sheer numbers, they were more of a threat than we thought they were. And there’s some evidence they were being shown how to use them effectively against helicopters.

Well, there had been people a few years earlier doing it over in Afghanistan.

And being trained by the best.

 

[Laughs] Don’t you love it when professionals network with professionals? What was life like there for you guys? I mean obviously, you, the Rangers, and some of the other professionals were operating in a fairly small airport in an interesting environment. What was it like?

Well, it was OK. It was as good as it could be. Some of the folks were living in the hangars. We flight crews, they tried to take better care of us and we actually had these trailers that were previously used by U.N. flight crews, and it was fine. You know, we got to eat fairly decent food most of the time, got to work out, run around the airfield, and play volleyball to kill some time. There were some training missions thrown in there. Most people, most nonmilitary people, don’t realize that even in war, you have to train and we would go out and do some of those training hops; fairly straightforward.

 

Were you building a certain amount of cohesiveness with the people you were working and flying around with?

Oh, yeah. Now I, personally, got moved to the flight lead position for our element. So I flew with one particular group of Rangers for probably the first six or seven weeks, then I bumped up to the lead position. I ended up with Capt. Steele and all his guys on my aircraft. But even having flown only a couple of missions with those guys, I got to know them pretty well.

Task Force Ranger 20th Anniversary: The Battle of Mogadishu, Oct. 3, 1993

By Mike Markowitz – June 4, 2013