Operation Redwing went terribly wrong. The idea was for a four-man team of Navy SEALs to go into the mountains of Afghanistan on a mission to kill a Taliban leader thought to be allied with Osama bin Laden. Everyone in the team was killed except for team leader Marcus Luttrell.
A rescue team consisting of a Chinook helicopter with 8 US Navy SEALs and 8 SOAR Nightstalkers aboard was sent to get him. It was shot down killing all 16 aboard.
Now it was up to then-Air Force Capt. Keith Wolak, callsign "Wookie" to save the remaining SEAL. And his actions resulted in his receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Wolak, whose call sign is “Wookie,” coordinated 17 aircraft within 16 square miles in the search for the lone surviving member of a Navy SEAL Team, Former Navy Petty Officer 1st Class and Navy Cross recipient Marcus Luttrell. Wolak commanded an A-10 Thunderbolt II, commonly known as the Warthog. Even for the A-10, which is designed for close-air support, the terrain proved daunting: a mountainous landscape, 2,000 foot ceilings, crowded airspace, and cloudy skies – all of which left no margin for error.
Hostile forces abounded in the terrain below, and they had recently proven to be a formidable surface-to-air threat; just one week earlier, they had taken down a helicopter holding 16 Americans.
When the A-10 leading the attack developed an equipment malfunction, Wolak quickly moved his plane into position to confront the enemies and take out any heavy weaponry. He made numerous attack runs, unleashing 30-millimeter rounds from the aircraft’s Gatling gun – capable of firing up to 3,900 rounds per minute – to destroy Taliban positions on the mountainsides.
Although the enemies had been neutralized, the rescue effort still hung in the balance – the rescue helicopter had only five minutes of fuel left, complicated by bad weather and poor visibility. In a brief ten-second window – when the clouds suddenly parted – Wolak managed to successfully mark with infrared lighting a landing zone for the helicopter. The crew located and evacuated Luttrell and two Afghans who had come to his aid. Later, the crew said that without Wolak’s guidance the mission would have failed.
From The News & Observer
The pilots and crews of the attack jets and helicopters had carefully planned the rescue attempt. But once they reached the rugged part of Afghanistan where the missing American was supposed to be hiding in a small village, things started going wrong, as they often do in war.
It was a moonless night, and low clouds obscured the spot where the Black Hawk chopper was supposed to set down. Then an equipment failure on the lead A-10 attack plane kept it from firing its guns or dropping bombs.
Capt. Keith M. Wolak, in another A-10, was supposed to be the mission coordinator. Now, though, the 35-year-old Seattle native would have to make attack runs while simultaneously coordinating 17 aircraft packed into a tight space over the rescue area.
Wolak said Friday he made several attack runs, mainly against fortified fighting positions on the mountainsides around the landing zone. The idea was to knock out heavy weapons that could be used against the chopper designated to pick up the serviceman.
But if the Black Hawk crew couldn't figure out where to land, it wouldn't matter. The crew radioed that it was running low on fuel. As Wolak lined up one last attack run, he knew somehow he had to find a way to show them where to set down.
For security reasons, Wolak and Pope spokesmen declined to identify the man the team was trying to rescue July 2, 2005. But in the official citation for Wolak's medal, the rescue task force is described as the largest assembled since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan.
The only big rescue team that day was for a Navy SEAL. Marcus Luttrell was the lone survivor from a four-man team that had been attacked by dozens of enemy fighters while on a mission to find a Taliban leader.
A helicopter full of troops sent in to help them was shot down, killing all 16 people aboard.
According to various press accounts Luttrell, who had taken a bullet to the thigh and suffered shrapnel wounds and cracked vertebrae, crawled until the day after the attack, when an Afghan villager spotted him. Instead of killing the wounded SEAL, though, the man took him home, where the country's custom of hospitality toward strangers meant he was safe. When the Taliban fighters tracked him down, the villagers refused to hand him over, and so the Taliban set up around the village to wait for a chance to kill him.
A villager, though, took a note from Luttrell to a nearby Marine outpost.
Now it was the job of Wolak and the others in the air to make sure Luttrell got home and no more choppers were shot down.
Over the village, Wolak pointed the blunt nose of the A-10 down at the last target, blasted it with the jet's 30-millimeter cannon, then pulled up and maneuvered so that he was looking where the landing zone should be.
For just 10 seconds, according to Air Force records, the clouds parted so that he could see it, and he shined an infrared light onto it. The Taliban fighters couldn't see the light, but the Black Hawk pilot, who, like Wolak, was wearing night vision goggles, could.
After receiving his medal Friday, Wolak -- who has since been promoted to major -- said that the break in the clouds was luck.
Luck or not, the helicopter crew told military officials later that if he hadn't marked the landing zone, they couldn't have landed. Two Afghans helped Luttrell to the Black Hawk, which flew all three to safety.
