Operation Gothic Serpent

Operation Gothic Serpent was a military operation conducted by United States special operations forces with the primary mission of capturing warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The operation occurred in Somalia from August to October 1993 and was supervised by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).

As part of the operation, the soldiers were deployed in a mission to arrest two of Aidid's lieutenants. That mission's result – executed under the command of Gothic Serpent – became known as the Battle of Mogadishu, or "The Battle of the Black Sea" to those who fought in it.

Read more about Operation Gothic Serpent:  Background, Task Force Ranger, General Situation, Battle of Mogadishu, October 6 Mortar Attack, U.S. Withdrawal, Results, Dramatizations

Famous quotes containing the words operation, gothic and/or serpent:

    “An absolute can only be given in an intuition, while all the rest has to do with analysis. We call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and consequently inexpressible in it. Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elements already known.”
    —Henri Bergson (1859–1941)

    “In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “You danced with me never saying a word.
    Instead the serpent spoke as you held me close.
    The serpent, that mocker, woke up and pressed against me
    like a great god and we bent together
    like two lonely swans.”
    —Anne Sexton (1928–1974)