19951776 Club
Marines pull O'Grady from Bosnia; six days of bugs, grass, and near-misses end in seven minutes on the ground
Two CH-53s lift off USS Kearsarge before dawn, touch down in a rocky pasture, and depart under small-arms fire and three shoulder-launched missiles, all of which miss.
Six days after his F-16C was split in two by a Bosnian Serb surface-to-air missile near Mrkonjić Grad, Air Force Captain Scott O'Grady was still alive — eating bugs and grass, hiding face-down in fields while paramilitaries fired rifles within feet of him. Just after midnight on June 8, 1995, he finally reached an F-16 pilot on the radio. At 0635, two CH-53 Sea Stallions lifted off USS Kearsarge, touched down in a rocky Bosnian pasture, and had O'Grady aboard within seven minutes. The rescue force — 51 Marines, two AH-1W Supercobra gunships, two AV-8B Harriers, and a web of Navy and Air Force support aircraft — drew small-arms fire and three shoulder-launched missiles on the way out, all of which missed…
