Medal of Honor awarded

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Chapman is believed to have crawled into a bunker, shot and killed an enemy fighter charging at him, and killed another enemy fighter in hand-to-hand combat.

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Now that is what you call someone dedicated to a mission.

Rambo of the desert .

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Rambo of the desert .

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I thought so as well.

Literally he was given up for dead and understandably so, he'd clearly taken numerous shots and was lying on the ground dead. But really just unconscious and wounded.

The only reason we know the story is because of drone footage.

The USAF Rescue Rangers are badass and seldom talked about.

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and killed another enemy fighter in hand-to-hand combat.

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wowww

There's a good book about Operation Anaconda titled Not a Good Day to Die, by Sean Naylor. It gives a good accounting of what happened on Takur Ghar, a 10,000'(+) mountain, that day in early March, 2002.

Army SF teams had set up a couple of OPs overlooking the Shahikot Valley for the upcoming operation in the valley. The SEALs were supposed to set up on Takur Ghar. But because of some delays, instead of inserting a few miles away and patrolling in, they attempted to land on the X and got lit up. Roberts fell off the tail ramp as the the helo was trying to get out of Dodge.

Chapman went back in with some SEALs to try to find Roberts. They were outnumbered and out gunned. The SEALs had a couple of men wounded out of 4 or 5 (I think). They bailed out and left Chapman, saying they thought he was dead. Not the best day for the DEVGRU guys.

The author, Sean Naylor, doesn't have much good to say about most of the SEALs. The only one he was complimentary of was an older CPO nicknamed Slab. He was particularly harsh about one officer that he used the pseudonym of Vic Hyder for.

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IYAM SEALS should stick to maritime and amphibious ops. Infantry tactics are not their forte. The Army and Marines have it drilled into them from basic training on up.

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As many bad experiences as I had with SEALs as late as 2009 - 2010, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this. They are a quick-learning organization, and they've performed admirably far more often than not.

That said, I don't think it's crazy to say that virtually all of the ground-based highly sensitive and technically difficult operations in the first couple years of any conflict should be done by Army SF, CAG, and (as a next level option) MARSOC. The SEALs fricked up way more than this; Marcus Luttrell should have never been in the situation he was in the first place, and there's a good reason why Groups send out hundreds of missions exactly like Luttrell's and never end up in that situation. Red Wings was a SEAL frick up from go.