5 A UH-60 Blackhawk lands at Camp Ramadi in Iraq CHAPTER ONE SECRET AND RISKY It was just before midnight on May 1 2011 Two stealth Blackhawk helicopters took off from a US air base in Afghanistan The mission was top secret So were the helicopters Very few people knew these helicopters even existed The craft had stealth technology to let them sneak past enemy radar That would allow the elite US Navy SEAL crew on board to remain undetected
The Stealth Blackhawk Stealth aircraft have special features that hide them from enemy radar The paint on the outside soaks up radio waves so the plane won’t appear on detectors The shape is also designed so radar will not bounce off it In addition stealth Blackhawks have five or six rotor blades Most Blackhawks have four blades More blades allow pilots to slow the rotor speed The blades are covered in cloth That makes the helicopters quieter 6 The helicopters were code-named Chalk One and Chalk Two They were headed for Abbottabad Pakistan The copters flew low to sneak past Pakistani radar All seemed to be going well Then Chalk One dropped down and crashed It hit a wall surrounding the house where terrorist Osama bin Laden was hiding Two SEALs sitting by the aircraft’s open door almost fell out But the experienced army pilot made sure they crashed without tumbling One of the SEALs later told a reporter that the pilot was a hero because he saved their lives
A soldier surveys the landscape from the door of a B l a c k h a w k h e l i c o p t e r At that point the SEALs had to act fast They had to change the carefully rehearsed plan to capture or kill bin Laden The original plan was for Chalk One to hover and drop off the SEALs near bin Laden’s house Chalk Two would drop off one team to guard the area It would then drop off the other team on the home’s third floor From there they could attack from the top down That plan changed as soon as Chalk One crashed 7
