Medal of Honor for John Chapman?
The New York Times recounts the story of Air Force Tech Sergeant John Chapman on top of the mountain, Takur Ghar, during Operation Anaconda, March 4, 2002, while Chapman was supporting SEAL Team 6 during the battle for the summit of the mountain. Navy Chief Britt Slabinski saw Chapman get wounded and when he checked the body under intense fire, he determined the airman was dead and he moved his team from mountain.
Now according to an examination of the drone footage using new video technology of the battle after the team withdrew, it appears that Chapman was merely unconscious when Slabiniski checked his body and that Chapman fought alone for an hour killing at least two other Taliban fighters, one in hand-to-hand combat until he was ultimately killed as he fought to cover for the reinforcements who arrived on the scene.
Chapman was awarded the Air Force Cross initially.
The Air Force secretary is pushing for a Medal of Honor, the military’s highest award, after new technology used in an examination of videos from aircraft flying overhead helped officials conclude that the sergeant had killed two fighters with Al Qaeda — one in hand-to-hand combat — before dying in an attempt to protect arriving reinforcements.
The Times article seems to make Chief Slabiniski the bad guy, but I don’t blame him – I wasn’t there. He crawled on top of Chapman’s body and got no response – I don’t what else he could have done with the battle raging all around him. He had team mates who he knew were alive to think about. Tough men in tough situations have to make tough decisions and then they have to live with those decisions.
Category: Terror War
RIP a warrior.
Not to offend anyone on TAH, credit were credit is due. But is the AF really trying for an MOH before we get world peace?
You ain’t be gittin no whirled peas!!!
If anyone at the NYT wants to second-guess the actions of a special operator in a fight, they need to put their money where their mouth is and go to their local recruting office. As Doug Sterner and I have discussed many times, the reason no Air Force MOH have been awarded since 9-11 is purely political. Air Force leadership is dominated by conventional big-blue flag officers. When spec-ops did all the work to locate Abu Al-Zaqawri in 2006, big blue made sure it was a conventional F-16 that got to swing the bat at the softball on the tee to take him out. The conventional pilots don’t want to allow an enlisted spec-op battlefield airman to wear a MOH until they can find a way to give it to one of their own first.
Pretty much the same reason there has been no living MOH recipient for Iraq as well.
If the Air Force is performing its mission as intended there just isnt that many oportunities for its members to get recognized for bravery.
Interesting topic though. I would think that Special Ops and FACs would have the highest proportion of awards for Valor.
You’re correct. I’m nearly certain all the Air Force Crosses have gone to combat controllers or pararescuemen. That goes as well for the Silver Stars of which I think some TAC-P airmen have been recognized. The one I shake my head at is Robert Gutierrez. I cannot understand how his actions don’t warrant a MOH.
http://valor.militarytimes.com/recipient.php?recipientid=52982
Just recently finished Not A Good Day to Die. That book suggests that the fighter in the bunker could be Chapman, but it was far from certain. I’m glad they moved significantly closer to a solution for this mystery.
As an aside, when was the last AF MoH? I’m guessing Vietnam…
Almost certainly, but there was an Air Force Cross for Somalia for a PJ who ran back and forth across a street under fire to treat wounded.
The answer seems to be Steven L. Bennett, pilot, for actions in Vietnam in June 1972, which cost him his life.
RIP, hero.
That was Tim Wilkerson. Good Man and humble as hell. He was one of our inspectors in Korea for an ORI.
Vietnam. Looks like the last e-tool to receive it was John Levitow.
I can’t spell his name correctly, I know Pittenger’s Air Force Cross was upgraded to the MOH and he was Enlisted and received his Air Force Cross was before A1C Levitow’s MOH.
The late CMSgt Richard Etchberger in 2010 for Battle of Lima Site 85 in 1968.
Overall I thought the article was a good read, with a lot of details not given by other media outlets that focused solely on who is at fault.
I think any normal person would read this and understand that it was a horrible situation, exceptionally stressful, and that Senior Chief Sablinkski did the best he could under the circumstances. I know he is still haunted by what happened that day, but hopefully he will overcome the guilt.
The article does point out some of the tensions and finger pointing by the various Special Ops units towards each other. Sean Naylor’s book in fact pointed out several instances where the Rangers resented the SEALs.
If the Medal of Honor goes through, it will be the first to be corroborated by technology and not eyewitness testimony. The gunship and predator footage seems to indicate Chapman’s courageous last stand, but Sablinksi, after viewing the footage, seems to disagree (he didn’t think a Special Operator like Chapman would have used a non suppressed rifle to shoot full auto).
IMO, looks like the USAF should do the right thing and upgrade John Chapman’s Air Force Cross to the MOH. But, the AF brass would need to check their egos in at the door and upgrade it because he was an AIRMAN, not because he was in the SPECOPS community.
TSgt John Chapman – HERO and WARRIOR
Absolutely no blame for Slabinski, assessing the state of a casualty can be tricky. We had a soldier in 2005 named David Orlandini who was on a convoy between Tikrit and Kirkuk when the HEMMT he was riding on was hit by an IED buried under the road.
He was riding in the back (because no one thought anything about that in those days) and he suffered injuries to his feet and ankles that kept him from standing or walking. The explosion went off right under the TC and ejected both him and the driver from the cab. The rest of the convoy hauled ass out of the kill zone (SOP then) and the bad guys who triggered the IED opened up with small arms on the driver and TC-a soldier named Paul Thomasson.
Orlandini crawls over to Thomasson and the driver and asks Thomasson if he is OK and gets a “yes” from him, so he attends to the driver who had a scalp wound that was bleeding a lot, but not really serious. However, unknown to all was that Thomasson had inhaled the super-heated gasses from the explosion and his trachea was swelling shut. By the time Orlandini turned back to Thomasson he was unconscious and he died soon afterwards.
Now, as near as can be determined, Orlandini did everything right-a reply from a patient is generally considered proof of a patent airway-but in the hear of combat it was just too easy to miss any secondary signs that there might have been problems (evidence of burns around Thomasson’s mouth and nose for example). In any event, it is doubtful that anything he might have done would have saved Thomasson as he likely had lung damage as well, but I guess the point I am trying to make is that I can understand how Slabinski made a similar mistake (if indeed he did).
RIP
In combat it would be very easy to make that mistake.
We have the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, the heat of battle provides little room for investigation and consequently results in misdiagnosis in a lot of cases.
RIP, hero.
No mistakes were made. Men did their jobs. One man made a heroic, valiant sacrifice doing his. Award the medal and remember his name and that event, with the respect and honor it drserves, forever. RIP USAF warrior. Well done Navy SEAL. You lived to fight another day. God Bless you all.
Mistakes were absolutely made.
‘Journalists’, ‘authors’ (a specific one whom betrayed some serious trust and intentionally went as far out of context as possible to create false drama and thus sell more books), and so-called military ‘professionals’ with zero relevant 1st hand experience are all absolutely not included in the group that can discuss those mistakes with any relevancy.
Some people need to run around the mountains at an elevation of 3500m or higher with a combat load, get in a gunfight or five, and dance from one precarious tactical situation to another for several hours and get back to me on what they felt the effects were regarding situational awareness and overall perception, among other things.
I won’t even get started on the juxtaposition between this ‘report’ and the statements as to why Rafael Peralta (USMC) was not awarded the MoH.
Fellow Marines in combat in the same room see a guy roll himself onto a grenade: “Didn’t happen. He wasn’t capable of conscious thought or action. Don’t know what you saw.”
‘New technological enhancement of video from ISR feed determines fallen CCT was alive after all and fellow Operator on ground should of course have known as well’.
Yeah, let me tell you about the gap between what the ISR Cultists think they know about the situation on the ground from their feeds and Absolute Reality…
Invisible Chechens are a thing. They haunt certain (not all, just the delusional ones) RPV ‘managers’ in their dreams. Or actually, they probably don’t. Because the consequences of Invisible Chechens rarely impact the daily lives of those most deserving of a hard life lesson.
‘Even if it looks like Call of Duty, it ain’t.’
One other thing. Wouldn’t a man in the CQB of his life, after running out of ammo with his M4, pick up an unsuppressed AK and stay in the fight to cover the inbound reinforcements?
I cannot help but think that the non-Veteran, pro-transgender AF secretary wants the MOH for the AF and nothing more. Nothing more.
When there is a screw up, someone gets a medal.
Fuck Naylor, Fuck the NYT.
No issue at all with Chapman’s potential award.
It would be nice to see certain high-ranking micro-managers with zero hours on the ground, on patrol, in the dark who had a ‘negative influence’ on air ops that day/night/day hang by the neck until dead.
Slab is a Warrior’s Warrior. He wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did, doing what he did, with the brothers in arms he had, were he anything less.
I read the NYT article very carefully and what I came away with is that bad things happened to good men and no amount of second guessing or inter-service finger pointing will change that.
I’ve seen dead people who weren’t. Making such a judgement during combat? This man shouldn’t spend one day explaining his actions to those whose combat experience comes from a video game. Enroll the panel, do your study, make your findings known. I wonder if this is one of those times when ‘someone’ has to go under the bus? Let’s hope not.
This badass did what I think anyone who has ever served, hopes that they would do in the same situation. If that makes sense.
Just from the reading, this MAN deserves it.
How do you think he was able to fit those balls into his pants ?
Many issues in play not covered by the article. First, the area was snow deeply covered and Senior Chief Slabiki reportedly crawled to Chapman put his hand on Chapman’s chest and found no signs of breathing and concluded Chapman had died from his wounds. I submit making the correct call Slabiki moved the remainder of his team to a defensible position to continue the fight. The videos indicate hand to hand combat in which Chapman was apparently victorious followed by another combat wherein weapons possibly of a variety he had not carried into battle that day were utilized The final chapter to the story not referred to in the NYT article shows Chapman moving from a placement of cover and concealment attempting to take out a heavy automatic weapon position firing at nearly point blank range into the second element of CH47 helicopters bringing in the Quick Reaction Force sent in to rescue the beleaguered SEAL force. The video reportedly shows Chapman mounting a one man attack against that weapon at the cost of his life to save members of the QRF that were under murderous fire. Their was an autopsy done of Chapman’s remains that was later either redone or the results reevaluated and the findings of the second procedure were in stark contrast with the initial findings in that the final two mortal wounds were delivered from an angle that was at odds with the first autopsy and the second results confirm what the drone/gunship videos authenticate. A previous comment spoke to the need for two first hand reports to corroborate the heroic deed prior to the CMH to be awarded. Assuming this award is upgraded this would be the first time electronic medium would be used in place of eye witness statements. As of last October the Secretary of the USAF had signed off on the upgrade and a verbal commitment from the Secretary of Defense to approve the award were in hand. The final chapter of this story is yet to be published. I received this information from an individual very close to the investigation during… Read more »