Diesel_Actual
Banned
- Joined
- May 3, 2010
- Messages
- 66
Looking for some opinions on this book " Victory Point: Operation Red Wings and Operation Whalers"
I've started reading it, and I am reservations about it, mainly that it serves as a complete rebuttal to Marcus Luttrell's account of the operation, stopping just short of calling him completely full of shit. I have found alot of contradictions in the book.
The author claims that he had access to classified After Action Reports.(Which I find highly unlikely)
Here are some of the issues outlined in the book pertaining to "Operation Red Wings" that the author criticizes Luttrell about.
1. Originally the mission was for a 6-man USMC recon team, but since the op was to take place @ night, the 160th SOAR would provide the birds, since 160th SOAR could only support SOF teams, the job was handed to the SEALs. The Marines strongly recommended that the SEALs take 6 men as well, book also says that the Marines strongly apposed helicopter insertion as they believed it would comprise the mission immediately, but the SEALs disagreed.
2.Author says, contrary to Luttrell's account that, "AHMAD SHAH WAS NOT A HIGH LEVEL TALIBAN OR AL QAEDA LEADER" and not a "high-value or medium-value target" but instead a "high-payoff target" Is this really a distinction that is made, payoff vs. value??
3. An obvious one, Luttrell got the ops name wrong, it was Red Wings(as in Detroit Red Wings) not Red Wing. Who cares? From the AAR I've read the Op didn't have a name until after it went down. Perhaps Marcus didn't want to give up the Corps "uber-sophisticated" method of naming operations
4. Commo The Marines suggested the SEALs carry a PRC-117 20 Watt radio, but in spite of the suggestion the SEALs carried (5 Watt) PRC-148 handhelds, which proved to be ineffective in the valley.
The SEALs carried a Iridium 9505A satellite phone, which the author makes a big deal that "Lone Survivor" called it a cell phone.
5. There are many more issues to list, but the one that bothers me the most.
"Victory Point" claims that the SEALs were ambushed by 6-8 ACM fighters, not the 100+ that are claimed in "Lone Survivor", goes on to say that in Luttrell's intial AAR he stated that they were ambushed by 20-30 fighters. The author is using the video taken during the ambush as his proof for the number of fighters. Why would Marcus put his reputation on the line, and over-estimate the number of fighters in his book? I can understand being off by 20-25, but off by over 100? We are talking about an elite operator highly trained in reliable information gathering
I find this book strikingly similar to "Not a good day to die" as it is an account of a SEAL operation gone wrong that attempts to discredit them, from the perspective of conventional forces w/o any input from any SEALs involved(also book is approved by USMC but not NSW). Complied from 3rd hand accounts, from units that were particularly upset about their missions being handed off to SEALs. It's just ridiculous to me, how some of these Army/Marine commanders were so quick to write reports stating the NSW units had no business operating in Afghanistan, but they don't like to mention the hundreds of other joint NSW missions in Afghanistan that were preformed flawlessly. Clearly, inter-service rivalry is still a major issue, or was just a few years ago.
If you really want to get fired up, visit this blog. The authors spend a whole week blasting Marcus Luttrell and his team and Lone Survivor. The stuff is just down right disrespectful. Calling Marcus a "unbalanced warfighter" who "Unable to process his survivor's guilt, he creates a fiction about what happened: 20-30 attackers turns into 200. The team's tactical mistakes--losing communication with higher, not choosing to evacuate faster, deciding to let the goat herders go--become the fault of ROE. The death of his fellow SEALs becomes the fault of liberals, politicians and the media."
http://www.onviolence.com/?o=1
See more of the issues here http://www.darack.com/victorypoint/
I've started reading it, and I am reservations about it, mainly that it serves as a complete rebuttal to Marcus Luttrell's account of the operation, stopping just short of calling him completely full of shit. I have found alot of contradictions in the book.
The author claims that he had access to classified After Action Reports.(Which I find highly unlikely)
Here are some of the issues outlined in the book pertaining to "Operation Red Wings" that the author criticizes Luttrell about.
1. Originally the mission was for a 6-man USMC recon team, but since the op was to take place @ night, the 160th SOAR would provide the birds, since 160th SOAR could only support SOF teams, the job was handed to the SEALs. The Marines strongly recommended that the SEALs take 6 men as well, book also says that the Marines strongly apposed helicopter insertion as they believed it would comprise the mission immediately, but the SEALs disagreed.
2.Author says, contrary to Luttrell's account that, "AHMAD SHAH WAS NOT A HIGH LEVEL TALIBAN OR AL QAEDA LEADER" and not a "high-value or medium-value target" but instead a "high-payoff target" Is this really a distinction that is made, payoff vs. value??
3. An obvious one, Luttrell got the ops name wrong, it was Red Wings(as in Detroit Red Wings) not Red Wing. Who cares? From the AAR I've read the Op didn't have a name until after it went down. Perhaps Marcus didn't want to give up the Corps "uber-sophisticated" method of naming operations
4. Commo The Marines suggested the SEALs carry a PRC-117 20 Watt radio, but in spite of the suggestion the SEALs carried (5 Watt) PRC-148 handhelds, which proved to be ineffective in the valley.
The SEALs carried a Iridium 9505A satellite phone, which the author makes a big deal that "Lone Survivor" called it a cell phone.
5. There are many more issues to list, but the one that bothers me the most.
"Victory Point" claims that the SEALs were ambushed by 6-8 ACM fighters, not the 100+ that are claimed in "Lone Survivor", goes on to say that in Luttrell's intial AAR he stated that they were ambushed by 20-30 fighters. The author is using the video taken during the ambush as his proof for the number of fighters. Why would Marcus put his reputation on the line, and over-estimate the number of fighters in his book? I can understand being off by 20-25, but off by over 100? We are talking about an elite operator highly trained in reliable information gathering
I find this book strikingly similar to "Not a good day to die" as it is an account of a SEAL operation gone wrong that attempts to discredit them, from the perspective of conventional forces w/o any input from any SEALs involved(also book is approved by USMC but not NSW). Complied from 3rd hand accounts, from units that were particularly upset about their missions being handed off to SEALs. It's just ridiculous to me, how some of these Army/Marine commanders were so quick to write reports stating the NSW units had no business operating in Afghanistan, but they don't like to mention the hundreds of other joint NSW missions in Afghanistan that were preformed flawlessly. Clearly, inter-service rivalry is still a major issue, or was just a few years ago.
If you really want to get fired up, visit this blog. The authors spend a whole week blasting Marcus Luttrell and his team and Lone Survivor. The stuff is just down right disrespectful. Calling Marcus a "unbalanced warfighter" who "Unable to process his survivor's guilt, he creates a fiction about what happened: 20-30 attackers turns into 200. The team's tactical mistakes--losing communication with higher, not choosing to evacuate faster, deciding to let the goat herders go--become the fault of ROE. The death of his fellow SEALs becomes the fault of liberals, politicians and the media."
http://www.onviolence.com/?o=1
See more of the issues here http://www.darack.com/victorypoint/