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Subject: Operation Anaconda
Yimmy    12/28/2007 9:04:47 PM
What are peoples thoughts on this operation? I read a book the other day which made mention of it. The author, Mark(?) Ryan, made it sound like a huge clusterf*** on the behalf of the Americans - and I was wondering if anyone on these forums could shed light on the issue? The story as I read it, consisted of a British OP locating Bin Laden in a village within a valley, and not having appropriate assets in the region themselves, sent the communication upwards to the Americans for them to deal, it being thought that 9/11 being on American soil, it would be nice if they were the ones to bring Bin Laden in. Now, the British gave intelligence suggesting for any heliborne landings to take place in a neighbouring valley, and even recce'd LZ's. When the Americans arrived, they arrived three days late, and in the wrong valley (the target valley). There were far more bad guys than expected, and everyone on the operation (Americans, British, Aussies, and Canadians I think) got shot up, while Bin Laden got away (if he ever really was there in the first place). At one point in the operation, American Chinooks attempted a landing to drop off I think a couple of Seal teams on top of a vantage point without a decent recce, leading to a rescue having to be made and helicopters lost in addition to casualties. Afterwards a RM led operation to sweep and mop-up the area was launched, which resulted in no enemy being found (despite a huge kill count published for Operation Anaconda). This was supposed to have caused for ill feeling between the RM Cmdo and the Americans. Now, I remember some mention of this operation in the media at the time, but I didn't realise things had gone nearly as badly as this book I read portrayed them. The book itself was good, if a bit superficial in depth, and was very much pro-everyone, especially the Americans and British (the author being British). So was he being unduly harsh on the handling of the operations?
 
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Yimmy       1/4/2008 2:17:51 PM
Tumble weed eh?
 
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Claymore       4/28/2008 4:21:37 AM
I have read up a little bit about it.

I thought conventional wisdom was OBL got away at Tora Bora in 2001. But there were "Tier 1" leaders in the Shah-e-Kot valley at the time.

The Chinook crashes on top of what is now known as "Robert's Ridge" (The SEAL who fell out and died there) is where a couple Rangers died saving Roberts.  Some US infantry 10th Mountain got hit hard with mortars on the eastern side of the valley.

There are plenty of Web articles at the bottom the of wiki page I have not had time to read yet.

I do know a little bit more about the clean-up a few weeks later. US and Canadian Infantry went through and had some small skirmishes. They mostly went through and blew up weapons caches.

All and all there were mistakes, but Afghan and Soviet forces never took control of the valley, but the coalition did.



 
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