Introducing the advance party of a dramatic new series that tells in 1:30 scale military miniatures the story of one of the U.S. Army’s bloodiest days in modern history.
SOMALIA in East Africa during the early 1990s was a ‘basket case’ of a country. Years of vicious tribal warfare between rival clans had caused a famine on a truly biblical scale. Already more than 300,000 civilians, many of them, women and children, had died of starvation.
One particular clan leader, Mohammed Farrah Aidid, the most powerful of the Somali warlords, ruled the country from its capital Mogadishu. From there he had been seizing most of the international food shipments arriving by sea and air from a shocked and sympathetic world. America and the United Nations had then dispatched troops to the war-torn country to stop the stealing and help distribute the food to those who needed it most. And for a time that worked until most of these forces, including the Americans, left.
Almost immediately the plunder of the food aid began again and the situation went from bad to worse…
AUGUST 1993
As conditions worsened the U.S. once more dispatched a small force of some of best fighting units to Mogadishu. These included a Delta Forces team… the 160th SOAR (Special Operations Aviation Regiment) flying a mix of helicopters including the powerful UH-60 Blackhawk and men from the 75th Ranger Regiment. All of these troops had a clear, simple mission… Remove Aidid from power and restore order!’
Over the course of the following weeks and then several months that mission statement was to lead to one particular day when everything that could go wrong did go wrong in a military operation. This has been documented in great detail, first in a best-selling book by author Mark Bowden and then a block-buster movie directed by Ridley Scott.