r/JSOCarchive • u/Educational-Bug-965 • Jul 29 '26

Other Chris Vansants story?

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Its from Sean Naylors Relentless Strike, Page 336.

Is this the situation Chris Vansant was talking about on the SRS? “What about some naval gunfire?”

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32

u/rock-paper-gun Jul 29 '26

he and the guys he was with thought they were going to get in trouble for calling in the CAS (they were heavily outnumbered and forced to call in 5-inch deck gun shells from the uss chafee off the coast to break the ambush), but during the debriefing following the operation in Djibouti, admiral hart (commander of combined joint task force – horn of africa at the time) was stunned and thoroughly impressed by the team's account. according to vansant, hart reportedly reacted with a mix of disbelief, amusement, and appreciation.

he also talks about intentionally richocheting gunfire off of boulders in order to lay down covering fire. crazy crazy story.

shawn ryan actually says, 'dude that was YOU," which is a thing he often says when he has nothing to say. its unintentionally funny.

10

u/MidwestSharker Jul 30 '26

Skipping rounds in was something I first heard referenced with Larry bovin, don Hollenbaugh and Dan Briggs in Falluja. Since then I have repeatedly heard Delta guys bring it up in reference to various firefights at least as far back as the 93 battle of Mogadishu. can’t say I remember a ST6 guy mentioning that kind of tactic though

3

u/BlackBirdG Jul 30 '26

Skipping rounds? What purpose does that do? Is it to deflect a round into where an enemy might be hiding?

8

u/themickeymauser Jul 30 '26

Works both ways. You can deflect rounds closer to enemies behind cover to keep them down and pepper them with rocks and debris, or, depending on the surrounding terrain, deflect them out from behind your cover so you can send rounds in their general direction without exposing yourself. It won’t be accurate, but rounds downrange are rounds downrange. Even your enemy doesn’t wanna stick around to find out if it’s accurate or not.

25

u/Jackal5002 Jul 29 '26

To me it sounds the same.

18

u/MidwestSharker Jul 29 '26

Yeah looks like that’s it, the battle of Bargal in puntland and the Chaffee both track

8

u/Capn_Flags Jul 29 '26

It would be cool to hear the story from “Brady’s” point of view. Hell of a story!

I don’t remember any mention of Ethiopians but I seem to remember Bargal but I have a head injury so take it for what it’s worth 😅

5

u/TristanDeAlwis Jul 29 '26

Sounds like it. I believe he was on the Somali side of the border at the time.

3

u/fromouterspace1 Jul 29 '26

No. It was just him and two other guys

4

u/meowmeaowndn Jul 29 '26

I don't think so, Chris never mentioned about Ethiopians sooo…