Hawai'i man tells real-life 'Black Hawk Down' story

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

"Black Hawk Down" tells the story of the 18-hour gun battle in Mogadishu, Somalia that shocked the nation in 1993 with images of dead Americans being dragged through the streets, and marked an abrupt turnabout in U.S. policy in the African nation.

Stephen Kam was one of the Marine helicopter pilots sent into Somalia after the deadly battle of Oct. 3, 1993. Photo courtesy of Veronica Kam

Stephen E. Kam, a 1983 Punahou grad and former Marine helicopter pilot, did.

Kam, 37, flew heavily armed UH-1 helicopters over the same war-torn streets for several weeks following the Oct. 3, 1993 firefight.

That day, 160 mostly Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers found themselves at war with thousands of Somalis in what became known as the "Battle of the Black Sea."

The Hawai'i man, who now lives on the Mainland, was part of the cavalry call — which included the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit — sent to Somalia to pound Mogadishu into the pavement if called upon to do so.

"Even though they (Army Rangers there) were in a different service, we considered any American soldier to be a brother in arms," Kam recalled. "We really thought we would be steaming down there to put an end to it once and for all."

Instead, he arrived to find an unsteady truce in the wake of a raid into the heart of warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid's turf that killed 18 U.S. soldiers and at least 500 Somalis.

As aircraft commander of a Marine Huey, Kam routinely flew in and around Mogadishu — the "Dish" he called it — on show-of-force training missions and to drop off people at the U.S. Embassy.

"Somebody was shooting at somebody the whole time," he said. "There were a lot of people walking around armed. It was crazy — you would land at the airport and hear bullets ricocheting off the tarmac. You kind of figured you weren't being shot at, and that it was probably Somalis shooting at other Somalis, or rival factions battling it out, or people shooting their guns in the air because they felt like it."

What started as a U.N. humanitarian mission to feed starving Somalis disintegrated into U.S. efforts to snare Aidid and the pitched battle on Oct. 3.

Months later, the U.S. pulled out and the mission collapsed.

The experience led Kam to draw his own conclusions about the "nation-building" failure that some believe emboldened Osama bin Laden into believing America could be beaten back if the country was bloodied in battle.

"I think the biggest concern was what our national command authority was going to let us do," Kam said. "My feeling was if we were allowed to fight as we were allowed to fight during the Gulf War, we would prevail quite handily. If we were restrained, then things could be more difficult."

Kam, a University of Washington graduate who is married and has two children, believes the experience in Somalia opened the eyes of many to the reality that being the world's police force wouldn't be as easy as thought.

"(Somalia) wasn't a traditional military operation," Kam said. "It wasn't fighting a war. They were asking us to do something other than fight a war."

The Hawai'i man's involvement came via the USS Guadalcanal, which was on deployment in the Mediterranean when the call came for reinforcements.

Kam was attached to the 22nd MEU and part of HMM-162, a composite helicopter squadron with 12 CH-46s, four CH-53s, four Cobra gunships, and three Hueys.

The 22nd MEU and accompanying ships were diverted through the Suez Canal to Somalia. Another Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived in about a week .

"Our understanding was the Rangers got involved in a firefight and had taken some casualties and we were going to support them," he said.

Kam recalls sailing by Mogadishu in a show of force — "parading the beef" the Marines called it — and flying missions every few days.

"We stayed offshore on ships. We conducted operations ashore, but the (Marine) helicopters were pretty much based on ships because it was a lot safer," Kam said. "There was an amphibious ready group of ships, and my recollection is one of the first things we did was sail by in full view of the city, so everyone knew we were there."

After the Oct. 3 battle, "the rules of engagement had totally changed," Kam said.

"It kind of had been in fire only in self-defense," he said. "(After Oct. 3) we could engage any crew-served wea-pon we saw, but you couldn't just shoot at a (single individual) walking down the street carrying a weapon."

Usually flying above 1,500 feet, Kam got a bird's-eye view of the destruction that years of clan warfare had wrought on Mogadishu.

The movie struck Kam as an accurate depiction of the deployment of troops on the ill-fated mission.

"But my recollection was I didn't see a roof on a house there — or maybe not more than on a dozen houses in Mogadishu," he said. "They were more just shells of buildings."

He remembers refugee camps with tents fashioned from patched-together rags.

"It was very sad," Kam said. "Flying outside the city I even saw some folks living in the hollow of a tree. The level of poverty I saw was unbelievable and the level of destruction was unbelievable."

Kam's helicopter was armed with miniguns, a .50-caliber machine gun and often carried rockets in pods. But the type of small arms and shoulder-fired missiles that brought down two Black Hawks in enemy territory on Oct. 3 was no longer evident among the Somali fighters.

"I think everybody was just trying to feel each other out to see how far we would take this thing," Kam said. "We were all kind of waiting and expecting to be called upon to finish the fight, so to speak."

Later, Kam and others would find out they were being kept at bay as a "big stick" while negotiators sought the release of captured Black Hawk pilot Chief Warrant Officer Mike Durant, who was freed 11 days after the Oct. 3 battle.

Kam, who flew missions in Somalia for about three weeks, says it was a mistake for the United States to pull out under the conditions it did. He also thinks it was a mistake to allow the mission to change from a humanitarian one to a quest for Aidid.

If U.S. leadership decided to risk American lives in Somalia in the first place, it should have been committed to staying, said Kam, who also served in Haiti before leaving the Marines in 1995.

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.