Latest news with #BattleofMogadishu
Daily Mail
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
He survived Black Hawk Down and was played by a Hollywood A-lister. 30 years on, he reveals how life has changed
Just months before the eighth anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu and the release of the soon-to-be-classic feature film immortalizing it, survivor and war hero Norm Hooten retired from the Army as a master sergeant. It was August 2001, and his wife Bonnie, a pharmacist, 'was not down for another 10 years in the Army,' Hooten said in a podcast interview earlier this month. 'It had a lot to do with my family,' Hooten told Ryan Manion on The Resilient Life. 'I had young kids at the time, and … a lot of times, what the families go through is as difficult or more so than what the actual soldiers on the ground go through – and it really, really scared her to death … she said something to me one time that really resonated with me. It was really kind of a driving factor in me leaving the army. 'She said, 'You know, when we first started together here in the unit … when we would go to team parties … it was fun."' They'd all been young couples with young families, she recalled, 'living as normal a life as we could.' 'But now when I go,' she told Hooten, ' I'm one of the few people out of our group that isn't a widow, and I'm just not ready to continue doing that. I don't want the kids to do it.' So he enrolled in pharmacy school, intending to join his wife's industry – only for the 9/11 attacks to strike America one month letter. Hooten was recalled back to the Army, rejoining its ranks as Eric Bana played a character based on – and named for – him on movie screens across the world. Black Hawk Down was nominated for four Academy Awards and won two; according to podcast host Manion, it's required training viewing for some US soldiers. Hooten then transitioned to supervisory coordinator for the Federal Air Marshal Service and Deputy General Director of the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Centre in Jordan, which specializes in counter-terrorism and special ops. 'I saw a lot of special operations guys that were coming through there who had substance use issues, serious substance use issues, primarily with prescription opioids – and a lot of them had evolved into illicit drug use … many times because they couldn't get access to the prescription drugs. 'It really, really troubled me, and [I] ended up going back to pharmacy school,' he said. He'd be 57 by the time he graduated in 2016, focusing on 'PTSD, chronic pain management and substance use disorder and the nexus of those three – because oftentimes they're joined at the hip,' he said. He completed two residencies, he said, and had hoped that his experience on the pharmaceutical side would give him insights into how to best tackle rampant veteran opioid and substance abuse and mental health problems. 'I don't know … I'm any closer to the answer today than I was when I started, but I know I had to try,' Hooten said on the podcast. 'I didn't want to get towards the end of my life and think there was something that I could have done, because many of the guys that I saw with these issues were close friends of mine – guys that I would never have suspected of it.' He's still confounded, he said, and 'it's one of the things that keeps me up at night, trying to figure it out.' Hooten said that, while he was supported by an invaluable network of friends and family after returning from Mogadishu, 'you can't come through something like that and not be changed by it.' He's sent one son to West Point and another child to the United States Naval Academy, and Hooten still believes that films like Black Hawk Down can shine a 'nice, good light' on the armed forces. 'I've had people tell me … 'Hey, I saw that movie when I was in middle school and I joined the Army and went in the Ranger Battalion, or I went in the Marine Corps, because I saw that movie. 'So I thought it was good for the military,' he said. Hooten (left) told The Resilient Life podcast that part of the reason he went back to pharmacy school was because of the high rate of substance abuse by veterans and active service members At the same time, he said he couldn't imagine losing one of his serving children. 'I think the greatest sacrifice that you can do is offer up a child onto the altar of freedom,' he said. 'And I don't know that I would be able to survive something like that.' Again emphasizing the importance of family, Hooten said that the 'second-hardest day … of my life was going into Mogadishu and losing all my … friends. 'When you're in the Marine Corps or in the Army or any of the services … the people that you work with become more than friends,' he said. 'They're your extended family. You know their families. You know their moms, their dads, their kids, their wives. And they become very, very close to you … so Mogadishu was a very, very difficult, difficult day for me personally. Because we didn't just lose soldiers. We lost close, close friends and colleagues. 'The hardest day of my life … was coming home and facing their families and seeing what it did to them, not just in that moment but for generations to follow.' A combination of family focus and brotherhood with Mogadishu warriors led Hooten to another new pursuit, he said: He began a cigar company after a smoke with his son 'led to several hours in just deep philosophical conversation with a kid that I'd been around his whole life. 'But I'd never really connected with him on that personal level before,' Hooten said. 'I was too busy bein a dad, and he's too busy being a son, and it really brought us together. 'And then we started a tradition of doing it. He and another West Point parent, Tim young, 'started hanging out on the back porch enjoying a good smoke and a whiskey every once in a while, and then, on the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu, I wanted to share that experience with my buddies. 'So we had another friend of ours hand roll 300 cigars,' he said on the podcast. 'We made up a label, stuck them on there ourselves, and then took them up to the event, never thinking we were going to sell them. 'We were just giving them as gifts. 'And then we started getting a lot of requests for boxes of those cigars … we just started it kind of by accident.' 'We started making them and using some of the proceeds to help veterans' causes, and … shortly afterward, we did the same thing with whiskey. Hooten 'really did not start out thinking, we're going into the whiskey/cigar business,' he said. 'We just thought, we're going to take some stuff up to some buddies at a reunion and have a good time.' Now Hooten's the president and co-founder of Hooten & Young Premium Cigars and Whiskey, which states on its website is 'proud to support our troops,' committing to 'give 10% of our profits to foundations that directly aid veterans and their families.' He's also an associate chief of pharmacy at the US Department of Veteran Affairs and said he hopes he lives 'as honorably as I can' knowing that 'there were many, many people that I served with that would love to just spend one more day with their families, one more day with their friends … I do not take that for granted.' Hooten said he's concerned about the consistently high suicide rates among veterans and other health challenges and continued to study it further. 'It's a very, very difficult and multi-faceted problem,' he said.
Express Tribune
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Delta Force launches free Black Hawk Down co-op campaign
Listen to article Delta Force, the free-to-play military simulation game developed by Team Jade, has reimagined the classic Black Hawk Down as a co-op campaign for up to four players. The update, now available, is based on the original 2003 game, which was adapted from Mark Bowden's book about the Battle of Mogadishu. The remake retains the core of the original while introducing a modern look and feel. Initially launched as a multiplayer experience, Delta Force has expanded its horizons to feature tactical gameplay in several distinct modes. The Black Hawk Down campaign is a seven-mission-long experience that draws players into the brutal and unforgiving world of the Battle of Mogadishu. As a specialist, you and your squad will need to work together, each fulfilling a unique role like providing ammo or healing teammates, to survive and complete objectives. The game's difficulty is designed to be unforgiving. Players must be tactical and strategic, as enemy AI is challenging, with enemies taking cover, flanking, and hitting hard. With health depleting quickly from even a few shots, players are encouraged to bring friends into the mission for support. Specialists can carry medkits to patch up injuries, but they take time, leaving players vulnerable. Black Hawk Down offers a modernized visual experience powered by Unreal Engine 5. Each mission brings distinct settings, and the attention to detail is evident, whether escorting a convoy or rescuing soldiers. This update, available now for free, comes with various in-game rewards and limited-time events like Flappy Hawk, where players can unlock exclusive cosmetic items, weapon experience tokens, and other rewards.
The Independent
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
The harrowing true story behind Netflix's Surviving Black Hawk Down
Ridley Scott 's 2001 war film Black Hawk Down divided critics when it was first released in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The gritty action movie, which features a star-studded cast including Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor and Eric Bana, depicted true events from 1993's Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia and became a box office success, as well as winning Oscars for editing and sound. However, it was also criticized in some quarters for playing fast and loose with the facts. Ken Nolan's screenplay streamlined Mark Bowden's 1999 book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War down to feature film length, and was accused of whitewashing the real story. In a 2002 article for The Independent, Repo Man director Alex Cox questioned why the deaths of Somali citizens had been overlooked and pointed out that McGregor's character had been renamed after the real-life GI was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl. The new three-part series Surviving Black Hawk Down, produced by Scott's own production company Ridley Scott Associates and directed by Jack MacInnes, revisits the Battle of Mogadishu through a documentary lens and invites both American and Somali survivors to recall and describe the events in their own words. The battle, which saw two Black Hawk helicopters crash out of the sky, took place on October 3 and 4 1993 but its origins can be traced back to the start of the Somali civil war. The late 1980s had been a time of political unrest in the country, and President Siad Barre's authoritarian regime would eventually fall in 1991. The following year, food shortages and severe drought led to mass starvation and famine. United Nations peacekeepers were sent into the country, but soon found themselves clashing with Somali National Alliance leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The US military launched Operation Gothic Serpent to capture Aidid, who they considered a rogue warlord. At the start of October 1993, American forces were dispatched to Mogadishu in pursuit of Aidid and his lieutenants, but his militia fought back. After a pair of Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, what had been intended to be a military strike was transformed into a messy rescue mission. As Bowden wrote in his book: 'Insurgents shot down two American Black Hawk helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades. When about 90 US Rangers and Delta Force operators rushed to the rescue, they were caught in an intense exchange of gunfire and trapped overnight." The rescue was far from smooth. As The Independent correspondent Steve Bloomfield wrote later: 'Eighteen US Army Rangers were killed in the firefight that followed. Their broken bodies were dragged through Mogadishu's battle-scarred streets. An estimated 1,000 Somalis died that day too, although they didn't get a Hollywood film made about them.' As heroic as Scott's film attempted to portray the incident, most remember it as a disastrous debacle. Surviving Black Hawk Down goes some way to try to redress that imbalance, featuring interviews with Mogadishu residents who found themselves trapped in the war zone and local militiamen as well as the Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers they fought against. Among those interviewed is Saido Mohamed, a Mogadishu resident whose home was taken over by US soldiers seeking shelter from Aidid's militia. She gives a harrowing testimony that stretches across two episodes, recalling her fears of both the Americans who invaded her home and the Somali fighters who surrounded it. Soldiers on both sides are frank about the violence they meted out. One American soldier recalls deciding to 'kill everybody that I could see that was hostile or acting hostile in any way. I don't think my finger came off the trigger for very long at all.' A Somali fighter says: 'The fall of the helicopter was the happiest moment I ever had,' and adds: 'My gun never had a rest.' There was little glory in what happened next, either. In the aftermath of the Battle of Mogadishu, US troops pulled out of the country and the rest of the UN peacekeeping mission followed soon after. As Bloomfield noted: 'Somalia was left to slide back into anarchy.'
The Independent
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Surviving Black Hawk Down: True story behind Ridley Scott film and hit Netflix docuseries
Ridley Scott 's 2001 war film Black Hawk Down divided critics when it was first released in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The gritty action movie, which features a star-studded cast including Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor and Eric Bana, depicted true events from 1993's Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia and became a box office success, as well as winning Oscars for editing and sound. However, it was also criticized in some quarters for playing fast and loose with the facts. Ken Nolan's screenplay streamlined Mark Bowden's 1999 book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War down to feature film length, and was accused of whitewashing the real story. In a 2002 article for The Independent, Repo Man director Alex Cox questioned why the deaths of Somali citizens had been overlooked and pointed out that McGregor's character had been renamed after the real-life GI was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl. The new three-part series Surviving Black Hawk Down, produced by Scott's own production company Ridley Scott Associates and directed by Jack MacInnes, revisits the Battle of Mogadishu through a documentary lens and invites both American and Somali survivors to recall and describe the events in their own words. The battle, which saw two Black Hawk helicopters crash out of the sky, took place on October 3 and 4 1993 but its origins can be traced back to the start of the Somali civil war. The late 1980s had been a time of political unrest in the country, and President Siad Barre's authoritarian regime would eventually fall in 1991. The following year, food shortages and severe drought led to mass starvation and famine. United Nations peacekeepers were sent into the country, but soon found themselves clashing with Somali National Alliance leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The US military launched Operation Gothic Serpent to capture Aidid, who they considered a rogue warlord. At the start of October 1993, American forces were dispatched to Mogadishu in pursuit of Aidid and his lieutenants, but his militia fought back. After a pair of Black Hawk helicopters were shot down, what had been intended to be a military strike was transformed into a messy rescue mission. As Bowden wrote in his book: 'Insurgents shot down two American Black Hawk helicopters with rocket-propelled grenades. When about 90 US Rangers and Delta Force operators rushed to the rescue, they were caught in an intense exchange of gunfire and trapped overnight." The rescue was far from smooth. As The Independent correspondent Steve Bloomfield wrote later: 'Eighteen US Army Rangers were killed in the firefight that followed. Their broken bodies were dragged through Mogadishu's battle-scarred streets. An estimated 1,000 Somalis died that day too, although they didn't get a Hollywood film made about them.' As heroic as Scott's film attempted to portray the incident, most remember it as a disastrous debacle. Surviving Black Hawk Down goes some way to try to redress that imbalance, featuring interviews with Mogadishu residents who found themselves trapped in the war zone and local militiamen as well as the Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers they fought against. Among those interviewed is Saido Mohamed, a Mogadishu resident whose home was taken over by US soldiers seeking shelter from Aidid's militia. She gives a harrowing testimony that stretches across two episodes, recalling her fears of both the Americans who invaded her home and the Somali fighters who surrounded it. Soldiers on both sides are frank about the violence they meted out. One American soldier recalls deciding to 'kill everybody that I could see that was hostile or acting hostile in any way. I don't think my finger came off the trigger for very long at all.' A Somali fighter says: 'The fall of the helicopter was the happiest moment I ever had,' and adds: 'My gun never had a rest.' There was little glory in what happened next, either. In the aftermath of the Battle of Mogadishu, US troops pulled out of the country and the rest of the UN peacekeeping mission followed soon after. As Bloomfield noted: 'Somalia was left to slide back into anarchy.'
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Surviving Black Hawk Down' On Netflix, Where Americans And Somalis Recall The Deadly 1993 Battle Of Mogadishu
Surviving Black Hawk Down is a three-part docuseries, directed by Jack MacInnes and produced by Ridley Scott Associates, where people who were involved in the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia talk about that fateful time. The Battle of Mogadishu is better known in the U.S. as the 'Black Hawk Down incident,' where Somali fighters downed three Black Hawk helicopters and fought Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers tooth and nail for two days. In all, 18 American soldiers died, as well as hundreds of Somalis, in the worst losses the U.S. military had suffered since the Vietnam War. The battle was fictionalized for Scott's 2001 film Black Hawk Down. Opening Shot: We see the neon-clad outside of a diner. Inside, a man sits down at a booth. 'So Dave, October 3, 1993,' the director says. 'A long time ago,' says Dave. The Gist: In the series, MacInnes not only speaks to members of the Rangers and Delta Force for the series, but he also speaks to Somalis who were fighting the U.S. forces. Deployed at first as part of a U.N. peacekeeping mission and an effort to help with the famine that was a result of Somalia's civil war, the U.S. military's mission changed in mid-1993 to try to take out General Mohammed Farah Aidid, head of the Somali National Alliance. On October 3, 1993, Delta Force, supported by the Rangers, went on a mission in Mogadishu to take out some of Adid's lieutenants. What ended up happening was that fighting was fierce, despite ragtag nature of the Somali insurgents and freedom fighters, for the simple reason that support had solidified behind Adid after air raids by the U.S. killed dozens of civilians. What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we mentioned, the docuseries takes its lead from the film Black Hawk Down, but it also is reminiscent of the recent Apple TV+ docuseries Vietnam: The War That Changed Take: Surviving Black Hawk Down is an engaging docuseries because it goes over the Battle of Mogadishu in an amount of detail that most people have never been exposed to before. Even if you remember the Black Hawk Down incident, especially the horrifying footage of freedom fighters dragging the body of a dead U.S. soldier through the streets of the city, or if you saw Scott's 2001 film, you likely don't have much of a recall about what led up to this battle or even why U.S. forces were in Somalia in the first place. MacInnes uses the interviews, archival footage and well-staged reenactments to put viewers in the middle of the fight. Through his interviews with Rangers and Delta Force members, we got context on how they came to their particular assignments, how young many of the Rangers truly were, and how utterly confident-to-the-point-of-cockiness they were going into these missions. On the other hand, the balance of hearing from the Somalis that fought against a country that they quickly saw as an invaders rather than humanitarians gives us a good picture of how they were able to fight so fiercely and bring down the three Black Hawks, despite not having the training or weaponry the Americans had. The first episode leads to the downing of the Black Hawks, while the remaining two episodes go into what happened after that, including the attempted rescues of the Black Hawk occupants that survived the crashes, as well as the media spectacle around the failed mission. What we hope the series discusses is how the failure in Somalia affected U.S. foreign policy during Bill Clinton's presidency, including the U.S. staying out of the genocide in Rwanda. We also hope there might be at least some insight into why it doesn't seem that we were able to take lessons from Vietnam, where a motivated force prevailed over the U.S. Hearing some of the soldiers and how they recounted the battle, they definitely felt like they felt they had the skills and tech to overwhelm a group they thought was ragtag and unorganized. Even 31 years later, their surprise at the fierceness of the fight was apparent. Sex and Skin: None. Parting Shot: 'This is going bad, quick,' says one of the Delta Force soldiers about the situation after the first Black Hawk went Star: We'll give this to every one of the Somalis that talked for the docuseries. It's refreshing to see their viewpoint of the Pilot-y Line: While we generally rail against reenactments, the ones in this series are very well-done, so no complaint from us. Our Call: STREAM IT. Surviving Black Hawk Down gives viewers details to a battle that is still remembered but whose context has pretty much faded in the last three decades. Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn't kid himself: he's a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, Fast Company and elsewhere.
