PMC Somalia

[crimsontide 10]

in terms of the marines, they looked very similar to gulf war soldiers. 6 color chocolate chip helmet covers. pasgt helmet and vest. 6 color vest cover. Alice webbing. it seems to me that in terms of uniforms, the Marines still fielded a mix of 6 color desert and some units were begining to field DCU, but only on the pants and jacket. M16A2, M203, M249, M60 (not 240, they werent widely in service in the infantry role yet.) LAW72 M9= the standard equipment of the period, of course, all iron sights, no optics, and picatinny rails hadnt been fielded yet.

here is a good thread about the marines in somalia with info from somalia vets.\

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?12601-Marines-in-Somalia&p=251666&viewfull=1

[HyperU2 11]

We were there after The Battle Of Mogadishu too. Myself included. :) The Marines used the M60E3, my job.

[Fox '09 14]

thanks for the info , both of you. But wait , all the pics they are wearing bdus , not a pasgt vest..?

[HyperU2 11]

They have vests on. They're the Gulf War era flak jackets in woodland with desert covers.

[Fox '09 14]

hmm , well the thing is if we put the vest + covers then they would be..... fat... would a bdu do? even if he was fattened a bit?

[HyperU2 11]

They served little purpose anyway, whatever looks close.

[Fox '09 14]

ok after checking again, we modeled the ranger body armor , not pasgt vest.. :(

we will try to model it (the pasgt vest)

[Snake Man 407]

You guys do realize that there were exactly 4 seals

Someone mentioned (somewhere) earlier that there were 6. In any case, SEALs were there and we will model them in the mod now.

Air Force PJ's did however play a very critical role in the events of that day, and I have yet to see any mention of them.

So far nobody has mentioned them and I haven't come across in my research on them in the scale that it would raise eyebrows. Good to know they were there, thank you for the info.

In the movie they are dressed just like delta so most people didnt recognize them for what they were, but a large portion of all the "delta" medics present in the movie were actually PJ's.

This is not about any movie, this is about realism. We will not take reference information from that movie.

Sorry about lacking information on the first post, I have now updated it with small FAQ bit about this.

those reference pics on the seals don't seem particularly accurate to somalia.

Sad thing is, those three pics are the only thing we have to go for. I'm very happy to receive more and better details about them, text or pics, all is good.

another interesting unit you could look at would be US Marines

That sounds OK to me, but not in the near future, we have pretty much all the stuff planned now and we'll stick with that. After that is completed and mod is stable / enjoyable in multiplayer, then we can add additional stuff which enhances game play.

what do you need, pics, the types of gear, stuff like that?

Anything would be very much appreciated, if a piece of information or picture can help us make this mod more realistic, we want it, bad :)

We were there after The Battle Of Mogadishu too. Myself included.

Hey, someone who was actually there, great. Could you please tell me few things about the city, building wise. For example of course the most important question; did you ever see with your own eyes the "target building" or Olympic hotel?

I have spend literally DAYS googling around internet and I have not found a single picture (besides google earth satellite one) of target building. There is one claiming to be it but it clearly is Olympic hotel.

If you have seen target building / Olympic hotel, then all information what ever you can remember would be extremely useful. If you have pics, then I'll probably faint :o

Thanks guys for the feedback, keep it coming.

[crimsontide 10]

just to clarify, the pasgt vest is the gulf war era flak jacket. they can clearly be seen on nearly all pictures of marines in that period as well as on the 10th Mountain soldiers, although the rangers wore the ranger vest, and delta wore an experimental black vest

here is a picture of delta during the period

here is a picture of a pasgt vest just to show you what I am talking about. this one is woodland, but they had 6 color covers that went on them.

[Fox '09 14]

do you know what the delta force wore? references etc , I really don't have much to lead on.

[crimsontide 10]

"So far nobody has mentioned them and I haven't come across in my research on them in the scale that it would raise eyebrows. Good to know they were there, thank you for the info."

yeah, they basically provided the flight medics aboard the 160th SOAR helicopters, and were responsible for saving many of the flight crew on the crashed helicopters. I have yet to see pics, but I believe they had similar kit to delta. in addition, there were AF combat controllers on the ground with delta if you believe mark bowden's book. with regards to the seals, I spoke to a former professor of mine who was delta and was there, and he said he only knew of 4 of them, but their kit was essentially the same as delta, as like I said above, they were on exchange with them, so the black helmet and vest with DCU's and a CAR-15 seems to be what they would have been using. SIG 226 for a sidearm if you want to get in detail.

---------- Post added at 12:38 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:35 AM ----------

do you know what the delta force wore? references etc ' date=' I really don't have much to lead on.[/quote']

check the pic I posted above. DCU uniform. Black Combat vest. plastic "hockey" helmets. actually very similar to the SF units from Arma 1, just switch the uniforms to DCU, and the vest needs to be switched to black, and probably needs some remodelling. in terms of gear, from what I understand, they used CAR-15's aka XM-177's, some of them mounted with aimpoints on top of the carry handles. the models you had thus far were pretty decent. the biggest issue being weapons. the M-4 wasnt in issue at this point afaik, and if it was, it didnt have a flat top or quad rail because picatinny rails were just being invented.

Edited July 23, 2010 by crimsontide

[HyperU2 11]

The target building looked a lot like the "Olympic hotel" that was in BHD. The Olympic itself is bigger, 4 or 5 stories.

[crimsontide 10]

I could be wrong, but is this not the olympic hotel? I could be very wrong on that. this was just from a quick google images search.

[HyperU2 11]

I think that's across the street from the Olympic. I don't think the Olympic had balconies.

[Snake Man 407]

The target building looked a lot like the "Olympic hotel" that was in BHD.

Umm define "a lot like" ;)

As said, I drive to keep this mod realistic and not based on some Hollywood movie footage from Cairo (or where ever they filmed it). The hardest part now for long time has been to find solid info on the 1993 era buildings, specifically Olympic hotel and the target building.

The Olympic itself is bigger, 4 or 5 stories.

Do you know the length it was? My google earth scale tool references say its 30m length and 15m "wide".

edit: (so I follow forum rules, no double posts).

I could be wrong, but is this not the olympic hotel? I could be very wrong on that. this was just from a quick google images search.

That was the one error I made early on my research:

banadir.com/images/global_hotel.jpg

Heh ;)

To me its quite strange that battle of this magnitude and there is no photos of the target building. But then again, westerners cant really walk up to the building and take photos and Somali's themselves don't have many digi cameras & internets :)

Edited July 23, 2010 by Snake Man

[crimsontide 10]

another thing I noticed when checking out your pictures is that your rangers are missing their LBE's. in addition, they have the later molle canteen covers which didnt exist yet.

example pic of assembled LBE

> 100kb

In addition, the rangers may or may not have used this following type of load bearing vest. perhaps HyperU2 could shed some light on this since he was there. It was introduced around 1988 and was never fully adopted, but some units used it.

Edited July 25, 2010 by Rellikki

[HyperU2 11]

Umm define "a lot like" ;)

As said, I drive to keep this mod realistic and not based on some Hollywood movie footage from Cairo (or where ever they filmed it). The hardest part now for long time has been to find solid info on the 1993 era buildings, specifically Olympic hotel and the target building.

Do you know the length it was? My google earth scale tool references say its 30m length and 15m "wide".

There are buildings in ARMA that are very similar, I'll do a recon lol.

15m sounds narrow but there were like 4 sets of windows on the end and 8 or so across the length so the scale sounds correct.

This guy scaled a model off of the movie for the Olympic and it's reminiscent of the actual target building.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=4625ae10df651ccf24a8f7a8f6c4c10b

To me its quite strange that battle of this magnitude and there is no photos of the target building. But then again, westerners cant really walk up to the building and take photos and Somali's themselves don't have many digi cameras & internets :)

Technology has changed a hell of lot in 17 years. I guess the tourism there isn't any better though. Oddly there is an internet cafe near where one of the Blackhawks went down now. I would have never imagined.

Here is a vid from the 1/2 Marines who went in in 93. You can tell it's a different quality from what is coming out of Iraq and Astan now. lol

85xZtloE7Xc

Edited July 23, 2010 by HyperU2

[Fox '09 14]

as for the lbe , i am discussing with snake man if we should make an entirely new one or try to use the VTE ones. will grab a screenshot of what i mean.

[Snake Man 407]

There are buildings in ARMA that are very similar, I'll do a recon lol.

Thanks, that would be great.

15m sounds narrow but there were like 4 sets of windows on the end and 8 or so across the length so the scale sounds correct.

Okay thanks.

This guy scaled a model off of the movie for the Olympic and it's reminiscent of the actual target building.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/download?mid=4625ae10df651ccf24a8f7a8f6c4c10b&rtyp=lt&ctyp=other&ts=1273175911000

Well what I've seen from google earth and the one sole picture found on the net (which now has been taken offline, I do have it on my hdd of course), that sketchup model dont resemble the hotel at all.

Technology has changed a hell of lot in 17 years. I guess the tourism there isn't any better though.

Tourism? You haven't followed the news much have you :)

There is daily mortar attacks and government forces are fighting against the al shaheeba (spelling) islamist insurgents. Mogadishu is the last place where I'd want to visit now.

BTW here is photo from the Philadelphia Inquirer

http://inquirer.philly.com/packages/somalia/tobia/photo2.asp

Says on the text: "The Bakara Market Place with all kinds of activity with the Olympic Hotel in background.", but as you said, there is no balconies in Olympic hotel, so that image (regardless that you see ONE story, ONE corner hehe) is again not the real one.

I went and uploaded few images from my research library:

Olympic Hotel and target building

And some apparently real sketch of target building by Somali informant

Not sure if that sketch is real.

[HyperU2 11]

Tourism? You haven't followed the news much have you :)

Sarcasm. :)

That's a great shot of the Olympic.

The one I posted I meant reminded me of the target building. I guess if it's everything shown in the red square it was bigger than I thought, the smaller portion looks like that "Olympic" drawing I posted.

[Kiki 10]

another thing I noticed when checking out your pictures is that your rangers are missing their LBE's. in addition, they have the later molle canteen covers which didnt exist yet.

example pic of assembled LBE

http://www.armyrotc.uta.edu/2007/lbe%20copy.jpg

In addition, the rangers may or may not have used this following type of load bearing vest. perhaps HyperU2 could shed some light on this since he was there. It was introduced around 1988 and was never fully adopted, but some units used it.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/Iifs01.jpg

The second load bearing vest from the IIFS system wasn't used in Somalia but in the Kosovo war in the late 90's wasn't it ?

Edited July 25, 2010 by Rellikki

[Tobie 10]

you will need a lot of types of buildings that it doesnt look so boring like in arma 1.

but the avgani map was really cool!

modeling buidlings is actually simple. many people of the community could provide models made with sketchup to get many different buildings.

just an idea...

[HyperU2 11]

Duala feels very "right" just more sparse than this would be.

[Fox '09 14]

the vest so far

going to do some stuff to the normal map and diffuse today, wrinkles etc as you can see it is still flat

[Franklin 0]

I know this doesn't really add to the discussion that is going on here, but...

I have to say I am extremely impressed with the level of research, and the effort being put into this mod. I normally hate to see anything related to "black hawk down" in this game. Typically because to me it signifies ignorance, and a false sense of importance in those who use the reference. Every person in game flying a Blackhawk who wants to call themselves "Super 6-1" drives me nuts, and i see it as disrespectful to the men who actually were there. But having seen the work done so far, and the direction this mod is going. I have to say that this is a superior effort to do it right, and to do so with the intent of honoring those who fought and died in that hell hole of a city.

Major Kudos to you guys that are working on this mod, and to those who are contributing to it. I can't wait to see what comes of your excellent work.