A SEAL’s training in combat diving makes him as formidable off land as on
FORCE FACTS Jacques Cousteau made significant improvements to earlier diving technologies during the 1940s and is generally regarded as the father of modern scuba diving
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n a v y s e a l s 9 INTRODUCTION Shortly after midnight on May 2 2011 Sohaib Athar heard a loud clattering near his home in Abbottabad Pakistan Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad he tweeted to his followers A few minutes later he added A huge window shaking bang Athar was witnessing the culmination of an exhausting 10-year search for al Qaeda terrorist and 9 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden American intelligence authorities be lieved they had finally located him in a high-walled compound in Abbottabad United States president Barack Obama decided that a raid was the best way of capturing or killing him For this task he chose a squadron from one of America’s elite special op erations forces SOFs the Naval Special Warfare Development Group or DEVGRU more commonly known as SEAL Team Six After several weeks of preparation everything was finally ready Two Black Hawk he licopters flown by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment Airborne took off from a base in Afghanistan near the Pakistani border They carried 24 SEALs and a com bat dog Several other choppers were on high alert to provide backup if necessary The operation was kept secret from the Pakistani government for fear that someone would tip off bin Laden During the 90-minute flight the helicopter pilots hugged the contours of the ground to avoid radar detection Planners had taken great pains to come up with the most ef fective strategy But they hadn’t accounted for one thing When one of the helicopters began its descent over the compound the high walls kept the downwash from the ro tors from properly diffusing The copter rapidly lost altitude Moments later it crashed ZzZ The Abbottabad compound kept Osama bin Laden hidden from the public for years
