Discover Top American-Made Products!
Support local craftsmanship with these high-quality, American-made items—shop now on Amazon!
Shop NowA disturbing military investigation report released Friday reveals how two Navy SEALs drowned in January, off the coast of Somalia. The preventable tragedy happened during a nighttime raid, in heavy seas. The bottom line is “their personal gear was too heavy, causing them to sink almost immediately upon hitting the water.”
Investigation report released
On Friday, October 11, the Naval Special Warfare Command released their final report. They were investigating the circumstances of a January 11 raid on “a slow-moving cargo boat called a dhow.” Nine months later, we’re learning that both victims sank like rocks. It was all over in 47 seconds.
Their crew-mates spent hours and days searching for them on top of the water. They relied on emergency flotation gear that didn’t work.
According to the report, “two highly trained elite military operators” drowned and their bodies were lost at sea “as helicopters and drones circled above.” One of them was “a Division I college swimmer.”
The SEALs were identified for the first time as Gage Ingram, 27, and Christopher Chambers. He was the champion swimmer and died “just days ahead of his 37th birthday.” Ingram “was on his first deployment.” He jumped in to save Chambers. Both were promoted posthumously.
As General Michael Kurilla, head of U.S. Central Command, writes, “this incident, marked by systemic failures, was preventable.” It all started when intelligence alerted the SEAL team the target vessel “was stocked with Iranian-made weapons.”
Specifically “ballistic and cruise missile parts.” They were on their way to the Houthis, who use them to take pot shots at oil tankers. The report notes a “nine-person team” was assembled to board the smugglers.
Slippery railing
Things were moving quickly that night. The report notes “commanders wanted to give the personnel time to prepare for the mission” but had to “pull the dhow while it was still transiting international waters.” They had “two helicopters circling 200 feet overhead and drones hovering” as “the team departed from the USS Lewis B. Puller aboard three specialized speedboats.” So far, so good. When they pulled alongside the dhow, “a light tactical ladder padded with grip tape was thrown over the ship’s railing.” It attached perfectly but nobody used it.
“Team members opted to ignore the ladder and climbed directly over the dhow’s railing.” Later, they all admitted to investigators they should have used their ladder because they “thought the railing had been slippery and feeling as though it had just been painted.” They managed to get aboard anyway. Most of them.
The last two were Ingram and Chambers. Loaded with around 48 pounds of gear, “Chambers opted to jump and grab the railing.” The report details that waves were “now rocking hard against the stalled vessel.”
With “the weight of his gear pulling on him, Chambers quickly lost his grip and plunged into the water 9 feet below.” Ingram, on his first mission, was already aboard the Dhow. He saw Chambers go in and jumped after him. “Ingram was estimated to be wearing as much as 80 pounds in gear,” including the team’s radio.
Ingram “appeared to have deployed a special flotation device from his kit and at one point tried to shed his gear.” He must have untied the float line. The report says investigators were unable to determine how the flotation device came to be “later found intact drifting in the ocean.” All the rescue procedures are based on assuming they couldn’t sink.
“The prevailing expectation within the special operator community — expressed by (a) number (of) interviews … was that in the event of a man overboard, the operator would return to the surface.” Nobody is in charge of checking whether they’re carrying too much gear and they don’t get much training on use of their emergency “water wings.” Both deficiencies will soon be corrected.
