The crippled Chinook managed to escape the ambush and land several kilometres away.

In the process, a SEAL fell from the rear ramp and tumbled into the snow below.

The Chinook was struck by RPGs and small arms fire and banked away to escape. As the SEAL's special operation Chinook, flown by the Nightstalkers of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, attempted to land on the peak of the 11,000 foot Takur Ghar, hidden al Qaeda defenders sprang an ambush. Anaconda brought together both conventional American forces and a large collection of US and Coalition special operations forces to hunt down the al Qaeda remnants. The SEALs were tasked with establishing covert observation posts to call in air strikes on al Qaeda positions in the infamous Shah-i-Khot Valley close to the Afghan-Pakistan border.Anaconda was designed to engage large numbers of foreign al Qaeda fighters who had fled to the valley after the overthrow of their hosts, the Taliban government and the later battle of Tora Bora in December 2001 which forced many of the foreign fighters toward the border and into the Shah-i-Khot, a traditional refuge of mujahideen in the 1980s.

In the early morning hours of March 4, 2002, a reconnaissance team of US Navy SEALs from the Tier One Naval Special Warfare Development Group attached to Joint Special Operations Task Force 11 attempted to infiltrate onto an Afghan mountain peak in support of what was then the largest operation conducteĭ by US forces since Vietnam, Operation Anaconda.

Takur Ghar by Leigh Neville