Replies

Extortion 17

CH-47D (approx 100 ft Length)
“Full Blackout conditions” (no beacon or lights on)
100-150 feet altitude
50 Knots (58 mph)
Range 220 meters

Enemy force fired 2 or 3 RPG’s from a 2 story tower

(source: United States Central Command, MacDill AFB, Fla. “Executive Summary”, pdf document (see paragraph 5.b) ;
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB370/docs/Document%2012.pdf )

RPG-7

A U.S. Army evaluation of the weapon gave the hit probabilities on a 5-meter (16 ft) wide, 2.5-meter (8 ft 2 in) tall panel moving sideways at 4 meters per second (8.9 mph). This probability decreases when firing in a crosswind due to the unusual behavior of the round; in an 11-kilometer-per-hour (6.8 mph) (3 m/s) wind, the gunner can not expect to get a first-round hit more than 50% of the time beyond 180 m.
50m 100%
100m 96%
200m 51%
300m 22%
400m 9%
500m 4%
(source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-7#Hit_probabilities )

The effectiveness of shooting an RPG-7 at a well lit (day-time) firing range against a 9 mph target (5 X 2.5 meter, simulating a slow moving tank) at a known range would be significantly different than firing at an admittedly larger unlit target (100 feet) at night (2:30 am) moving at 58 mph at an unknown range.

My questions:
1) Why was a (cargo aircraft) CH-47 used instead of a (standard Special Forces variant) MH-47?
2) Why was the entire Seal team on one aircraft instead of the normal 2?
3) Why was the 7 man Afghan contingent changed out at the “last minute”? Manifest inaccurate?
4) (per “Executive Summary” above) All 38 men and a working dog remains were recovered, where are the autopsy reports? Were they cremated?
5) Families respond: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqtJrJ40Cio (3hr video) Many other questions.