06/08/2026
RIP Warriors
Fifteen years ago today, on August 6, 2011, a CH-47 Chinook helicopter carrying an American quick reaction force was shot down by a Taliban RPG in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, Afghanistan. All 38 men aboard were killed, 17 Navy SEALs, most of them from DEVGRU's Gold Squadron, 5 Naval Special Warfare support personnel, 3 Air Force Special Tactics airmen, an Army helicopter crew, and 7 Afghan commandos and an interpreter. It remains the single deadliest day in the history of American special operations and the greatest loss of life the Navy SEAL community has ever suffered.
The mission itself was almost incidental to the tragedy that followed. The team was flying in as reinforcements for Army Rangers already engaged in a firefight nearby, standard, well-worn work for men who'd done it hundreds of times. There was nothing unusual about the call that night. That's part of what makes the loss so hard to sit with, an ordinary mission, an unlucky shot, and in an instant, an entire generation of experience gone at once.
We've spent time on this page honoring some of the men lost that night. Boyd Renner's Gold Squadron brothers. Bill Mulder, whose own death six years later from the weight of that loss led Congress to pass legislation in his name. Eddie Penney and Dom Raso, who both carried Extortion 17 with them for the rest of their careers, Raso describing it as the moment his faith and sense of purpose were remade entirely. Andrew Harvell, one of the Combat Controllers killed alongside his brothers.
Fifteen years on, the loss still ripples through this entire community, through the men who lived because they weren't on that helicopter, through the families who were, and through every Gold Star wife and child who marks this date every single year. We say their names, and we remember what one bad night can take from an entire brotherhood. Never forgotten.
