FIELD NOTES / AFGHANISTAN

Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy: Operation Red Wings & the Medal of Honor

Official U.S. Navy portrait of Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy

Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy was the officer in charge of the four-man U.S. Navy SEAL reconnaissance element whose mission became the best-known episode of Operation Red Wings in Kunar Province on 28 June 2005. His individual actions are rightly remembered, but understanding them properly also means placing the SEAL mission back inside the larger Marine-led operation that produced it.

From Long Island to the Navy

Murphy was born on 7 May 1976 in Smithtown, New York, and grew up in Patchogue on Long Island. He graduated from Patchogue-Medford High School in 1994 and went on to Penn State University.

In 1998 he graduated with honours with bachelor’s degrees in political science and psychology. Although he was accepted by law schools, Murphy chose the Navy and entered Officer Candidate School in 2000.

Becoming a SEAL officer

Murphy was commissioned as an ensign on 13 December 2000 and began Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training in January 2001, graduating with BUD/S Class 236. He completed further airborne, SEAL qualification and SEAL Delivery Vehicle training and joined SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 in Hawaii in 2002.

His assignments before Afghanistan included Jordan, Qatar in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.

Afghanistan, 2005

In early 2005 Murphy deployed to Afghanistan with SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. By June he was leading a four-man reconnaissance element tasked with locating Ahmad Shah, an anti-coalition militia leader operating in the mountains near Asadabad in Kunar Province.

The wider context matters. Official U.S. Marine Corps history records that 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marines had inherited the outline of an operation from 3/3, renamed it Operation Red Wings and selected Shah’s cell as its focus. The initial Marine concept used a reconnaissance phase followed by conventional Marine action. Naval special operations personnel became central to the opening phase because special-operations aviation support was required.

This means Red Wings should not be reduced to four SEALs on one mountain. Murphy’s team was carrying out one critical reconnaissance phase within a larger operation.

28 June: contact

Murphy’s four-man team consisted of Murphy, Danny Dietz, Matthew Axelson and Marcus Luttrell. The team was discovered by local herders, after which its position was compromised and a firefight developed on steep mountain terrain.

Official accounts vary in the number assigned to the enemy force. The Marine planning history describes Shah’s target cell before the operation as fewer than 20 anti-coalition fighters. Murphy’s later official Medal of Honor citation says his four-man team was besieged by 30–40 fighters during the firefight. Those figures describe different assessments at different stages and should not be flattened into one supposedly certain number.

The communications problem

The terrain prevented Murphy’s team from maintaining reliable contact with higher headquarters. According to his official citation, Murphy deliberately moved into exposed ground to gain a position from which he could transmit a call for help. He provided his team’s location and requested immediate support while under fire.

He was wounded during the call, completed it, returned to cover and continued fighting.

My own Afghanistan experience came years later and in a different place. As a Royal Welsh mortarman, the part of Murphy’s story that jumps out is the connection between terrain, communications and support. Mortars, aviation or any other support are only useful if the force in contact can communicate position, situation and need. Mountain ground can turn a technologically capable force into a small isolated group very quickly. That is a service lens on the problem, not a claim that I was in Kunar in 2005.

The quick-reaction force

Murphy’s call triggered a rescue effort. An MH-47 Chinook carrying eight Navy SEALs and eight soldiers from the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment approached the fight and was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade. All 16 personnel aboard were killed.

Murphy, Dietz and Axelson were killed in the ground fight. Luttrell survived, was sheltered by local Afghans and was later recovered by U.S. forces.

Medal of Honor

Murphy was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2007 for his actions on 27–28 June 2005. He became the first person to receive the medal for actions in Afghanistan and the first U.S. Navy recipient since the Vietnam War.

Legacy

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Michael Murphy (DDG-112) was commissioned in 2012. Schools, memorials and other institutions also carry his name.

That legacy is strongest when it remains attached to the actual circumstances of the action: a reconnaissance team isolated in extreme terrain, a communications failure imposed by geography, a commander exposing himself to restore contact, and a rescue force that paid an enormous price trying to reach the team.

Return to Log 045 — Kunar Province 2005 and Operation Red Wings →

Sources & further research

I keep the pre-operation estimate of Ahmad Shah’s cell separate from later estimates of the force engaged in the firefight, and I place the SEAL reconnaissance mission inside the wider 2/3 Marines Operation Red Wings plan rather than treating it as the entire operation.

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