The Army upgraded heroism awards Thursday for 60 operators who took part in Operation Gothic Serpent, better known as “Black Hawk Down,” in the 1990s in Mogadishu, Somalia.
Fifty-eight awards were upgraded to Silver Stars, the third-highest military combat medal, and two were enhanced to Distinguished Flying Crosses after an October 2020 directive from former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy, who commanded the Senior Army Decorations Board to reconsider the distinctions, the branch announced.
The Silver Star is awarded for a courageous act under fire, while the Distinguished Flying Cross is given to service members who display “extraordinary achievement” in an aerial operation.
The medals will be presented later in 2021.
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In 1993, U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force, a special operations unit, attempted to snatch two lieutenants under the command of Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid, who killed United Nations peacekeepers in the region during a civil war and humanitarian crisis. The mission, which was supposed to end swiftly, was drawn out after militants shot down two Black Hawk helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades.
For 18 hours, about 90 soldiers engaged in gunfire with a wave of insurgents as teams tried to extract wounded pilots from the aircraft. By the shootout’s end, 18 U.S. service members had died, 73 were wounded, and hundreds of Somalians were killed.
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Delta operators Sgt. 1st Class Randall Shughart and Master Sgt. Gary Gordon were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for their efforts to protect downed pilot Chief Warrant Officer Michael Durant. Images of dead soldiers circulated throughout the world, and a year later, the United States withdrew.
The battle was memorialized in the film Black Hawk Down, released in 2001.
