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Roche unveils AF hero memorial WASHINGTON -- Air Force Secretary Dr. James G. Roche unveiled a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery on Jan.8 to honor Tech. Sgt. John A. Chapman who was killed March 4, 2002, while fighting against the Taliban during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. He was posthumously decorated with the nation's second-highest award for valor, the Air Force Cross. (U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Jim Varhegyi) View Larger Download HiRes by Master Sgt. Scott ElliottAir Force Print News1/9/2004 - WASHINGTON -- The secretary of the Air Force unveiled a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery on Jan. 8 to honor...

--"Ration stripping," they call it when forward- deployed combat troops jettison all but the most essential items from their Meals, Ready to Eat so they don't have so much to carry as they set out on a mission. Troops in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan reported sacrificing all but a few carefully chosen food items from their MRE pouches to lighten their pockets and rucksacks. These reports alarmed food technologists at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center at Natick, Mass, who recognized that warfighters weren't simply tossing aside "luxury" items like flameless heaters and Tabasco sauce. Janice Rosado from the Defense...

Gunship crew earns MacKay trophy by 1st Lt. Gabe Johnson 16th Special Operations Wing Public Affairs 11/24/2003 - HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. (AFPN) -- An AC-130H Spectre gunship crew from the 16th Special Operations Squadron here was awarded the Clarence MacKay Trophy recently for most meritorious flight of the year. The 14 airmen of “Grim 31” received the Air Force-level award for saving the lives of 82 U.S. soldiers and two HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters and crews during a close-air support mission. The mission was over Afghanistan’s Shah-e-Kot Valley on March 2, 2002 -- the second day of Operation Anaconda. Enemy forces surrounded 10th Mountain...

The Air Force and Army Chiefs of Staff are leading a focused effort to examine air-ground operations in order to improve the two services' combat capability and make it more effective. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John P. Jumper, recognized the need to improve air-ground coordination and execution of close air support missions after reviewing after-action reports from Operation Anaconda conducted against Taliban and al Queda fighters in Afghanistan last year.Senior leaders from the two services have met four times in the past four months to refine the Army-Air Force...

[...] At around 0115z on 4 March 2002, I was told that a military member was on the ground in a hostile area in Afghanistan after falling out of a helicopter. My team was told that another team was attempting to go in and get him, but if they were not successful, my team would go in. We were waiting to find out if we would go in to try to get to our lost military member. My team was in a helicopter in route and our estimated time of arrival was 0150z. My team consisted of ten people plus...

Esquire August 2002 Pg. 116 War Stories: Anaconda It was supposed to be a basic hammer-and-anvil operation. Friendly Afghan forces would flush the Qaeda from their positions, and the 10th Mountain Division and 101st Airborne would ambush them, and maybe they'd kill or capture bin Laden along the way. But suddenly the Army found itself ambushed and in the middle of the bloodiest battle since Somalia. The inside story of Operation Anaconda. By John Sack 1. COMPANY C, March 2 to March 3 Imagine this. Imagine you’re a country doctor up in the Adirondacks, and your first patient today is...

Part one of two ARLINGTON, Va. — Army infantry troops deployed to Afghanistan are struggling to keep weapons clean and in good working order, with soldiers particularly concerned about the maintainability and reliability of the M-4 carbine and the squad automatic weapon, according to an Army report on lessons learned in Afghanistan. But soldiers also are more than pleased with the performance of other weapons, such as the M-240B machine gun, which won a 100 percent vote of confidence overall. And troops often described a love-hate relationship with the same weapon, such as the soldier who called his squad automatic...

Christian Science Monitor August 1, 2002 Pg. 1 Anaconda: A War Story US soldiers recount 18 hours in one of the fiercest firefights of the Afghan war By Ann Scott Tyson A pale blue dawn broke over the snow-covered Shah-e Kot peaks as Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Abbott and his battalion from the 10th Mountain Division rode packed in Chinook helicopters to the battle zone. Many of the US troops, fresh-faced young recruits who'd never before seen combat, were, as some put it, "pumped." For Sergeant Abbott, a 32-year-old father of four, former Army Ranger, and a veteran of conflicts...

<p>American servicemen fight for their country--and most also answer to a higher Power.</p> <p>"We should be dead," one soldier told Maj. Mike Dugal as Operation Anaconda wound down last month. "Our equipment is riddled with bullets. I know someone is praying for me."</p>

Al Qaeda plotted new US attacks Villagers say they heard Osama bin Laden's voice last month, and saw his No. 2, Ayman al Zawahiri, in caves. By Ilene R. Prusher | Staff Writer of The Christian Science Monitor SHAH-I-KOT, AFGHANISTAN – Key Al Qaeda officials, possibly including Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 to Osama bin Laden, were present in the fortified Shah-i-Kot caves of this region just before the recent US attacks. Local villagers, who spoke on the condition that their village not be identified, provided details on how they were recruited to blast a new network of caves for...

SIRKANKEL, Afghanistan, Mar 05, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- As U.S. troops poured from the belly of a Chinook helicopter, a rocket-propelled grenade fired by the al-Qaida hit the craft and American forces scurried back aboard and took off. A head count showed someone was missing. For the Americans, their worst fears came true on Monday, the bloodiest day of the war for U.S. forces. The missing serviceman was captured and killed by al-Qaida. "We saw him on the Predator being dragged off by three al-Qaida men," said Maj. Gen. Frank L. Hagenbeck, referring to an unmanned reconnaissance ...

March 06, 2002 How Americans fell foul of al-Qaeda's last stand by Daniel McGrory and Michael Evans How Operation Anaconda faltered against stiffer than expected resistance by well-supplied fighters IT WAS pitch dark on Saturday morning when B52 bombers started pounding the deep valleys around Gardez, signalling the start of Operation Anaconda, the American push to squeeze the life out of the last big stronghold of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. For the American military and their allies, the operation is proving to be the bloodiest yet of the War on Terror and there are indications that al-Qaeda had long ago laid ...

GOTTA SEE THIS -- OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM 3/15-16/02 <========================> REPORT FROM THEATRE 1 - AFGHANISTAN Shahi Kot Mountains, Canadian and US forces deliver justice to Al Qaeda. <===== Update from 3/15/02 DOD Briefing =====> Anaconda Is Success; Enemy Killed Unknown, Say Officials Gerry J. Gilmore, American Forces Press Service brWASHINGTON, March 15, 2002 -- Senior DoD leaders today called Operation Anaconda a success, while noting the difficulty to fully ascertain enemy losses as the campaign continues to wind down. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon...

March 8, 2002 -- BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan - Seconds after stepping off a Chinook helicopter in an Operation Anaconda sweep, Sgt. Robert Healy knew things had gone badly wrong. "Two minutes after we got out, we started taking hits," he said. "There were RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] hits all over the place." Eighteen hours later, Healy, from the U.S. 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum near Watertown, N.Y., and the 80 other soldiers on the mission were rescued from their icy mountain combat zone by helicopter. By then, 27 men, including Healy, were wounded, mostly by shrapnel as ...

GARDEZ, Afghanistan/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A fierce mountain battle raged on Tuesday with U.S.-led ground forces saying they killed hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, but Pentagon officials warned the mission was far from over as seven slain U.S. troops were taken home. Much of the U.S. ground force in Afghanistan was flown into Bagram Air Base north of Kabul for the offensive in snowy mountains near the town of Gardez. The offensive, which has involved about 1,000 U.S. troops, so far has claimed eight American lives and about seven allied Afghan soldiers. "On Tuesday we caught ...

The story is still sketchy, but it appears that early this morning in Cumberland County, here in North Carolina (Fort Bragg) the wife of a combat Army Special Forces GI fighting in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan was viciously stabbed to death while her horrified daughters, aged 12 and 14 looked on and then tried unsuccessfully to stop the assailant. The murderer broke through a security protected rear door to the house and used a kitchen butcher knive to stab the soldier's wife to death. The Police, along with State Bureau of Investigation personnel, are saying little about the case, apart ...

<p>KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- As U.S., allied and Afghan forces Tuesday pounded al Qaeda and Taliban fighters hiding in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan's Paktia province, new facts emerged about how seven U.S. service members were killed in fighting one day earlier.</p>

SHAHI KOT, AFGHANISTAN - This is how the battle is playing out: Al Qaeda fighters, usually in pairs, jump out from cave entrances in the snow-covered mountain peaks and fire rocket-propelled grenades and antiaircraft missiles at US positions in the valley below. B-52s - 10 to 15 minutes later - pummel the cave dwellers, while a US special forces team heads higher into the mountains. Their faces camouflaged, and flanked by 50 Afghan soldiers, the US troops advance in three jeeps and two all-terrain motorbikes. As the seventh day of the largest offensive in the Afghan war began, the ...

SNOW was falling hard as the convoy set off after midnight. Mohammed Yasin and 600 of his Afghan compatriots huddled in the back of the Russian-made lorries, clutching AK-47 rifles with spare ammunition strapped to their chests. Ahead, small groups of American commandos led the way in light vehicles with orange sheets tied to their roofs as a signal to other coalition forces. The lights of Gardez dwindled in the valley as the first coil of Operation Anaconda wound slowly up a treacherous mountain track towards the Al-Qaeda positions. Hours passed as the convoy of 60 vehicles crept upwards with...

GARDEZ, Afghanistan, Mar 10, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Running low on ammunition, hundreds of al-Qaida fighters are concentrated near two cave complexes in the eastern Afghan mountains but land mines are proving a major problem in routing them, Afghan fighters said Saturday. As Operation Anaconda entered its second week, U.S. troops and their Afghan allies scoured the icy mountains of eastern Afghanistan, pursuing a surrender-or-die policy against enemy forces in the biggest U.S.-led offensive of the Afghan war. Afghan fighters who returned Saturday from the front said about 400 al-Qaida fighters and their Taliban allies were holed...