Veterans Share Stories in ‘Special Ops: True’ on Paramount+

For millions of Americans, the Battle of Mogadishu looks like Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. The first Green Berets sent into Afghanistan after 9/11 ride into battle with the faces of Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon. The raid that killed Osama bin Laden has been reconstructed repeatedly on film and television.

A new Paramount+ documentary series, Special Ops: True, which began streaming Aug. 4, features firsthand accounts from Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, Green Berets and other veterans involved in U.S. special operations stretching from Panama to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. All 20 episodes across two seasons are available now.

Several episodes return to battles and raids that have already been turned into some of the best major Hollywood war movies, including the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu, the post-9/11 “Horse Soldiers” mission in Afghanistan and Operation Neptune Spear, the 2011 raid that killed bin Laden.

‘Black Hawk Down’ Veterans Return to Mogadishu

Two episodes in the second season revisit Operation Gothic Serpent and the fighting in Mogadishu on Oct. 3 and 4, 1993.

Among the veterans featured are retired Army Chief Warrant Officer 4 Mike Durant and former Army Ranger Jeff Struecker. Paramount identifies Durant as a former member of a special operations aviation unit and Struecker as a veteran of the 3rd Ranger Battalion.

Durant was piloting Super 64, the second Black Hawk shot down during the battle, when it was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade and crashed. Delta Force snipers Master Sgt. Gary Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Randy Shughart volunteered to protect the crash site, where Durant was the lone surviving member of the helicopter crew. Both men were killed and posthumously received the Medal of Honor. Durant was captured and held for 11 days.

Struecker was a 24-year-old sergeant and Ranger squad leader during the battle. He received the Silver Star for his actions in Mogadishu and later remained in the Army as a chaplain.

The battle became the basis for Mark Bowden’s book Black Hawk Down and Scott’s 2001 film. The movie helped turn what had been a disastrous and politically consequential operation into one of the most recognizable depictions of modern American combat.

Special Ops: True goes back to the men who survived it. Paramount’s two-part episode follows the U.S. attempt to capture leaders in Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid’s organization and the battle that followed after the two Black Hawks went down.

The Bin Laden Raid Gets Another Firsthand Account

The series opens its first season with “Operation Neptune’s Spear: Kill Bin Laden,” covering the SEAL Team Six raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Former SEAL Robert O’Neill, who has publicly maintained for years that he fired the shots that killed bin Laden, appears in the series. That claim remains one of the more contested details surrounding an otherwise extensively documented operation.

The Defense Department confirmed years ago that O’Neill served with SEAL Team Six and participated in the raid but declined to confirm who fired the fatal shots. Former SEAL Matt Bissonnette provided a different sequence of events in his 2012 book, No Easy Day, in which a SEAL ahead of him in the assault formation shot bin Laden before other operators entered the room.

The Real ‘12 Strong’ Horse Soldiers

The first season also closes with a mission already familiar to movie audiences.

“Operation Enduring Freedom: Horse Soldiers” returns to the Special Forces teams inserted into Afghanistan shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks. Paramount’s press materials show former Green Berets Mark Nutsch and Robert Pennington discussing the operation.

Nutsch commanded Operational Detachment Alpha 595, one of the first 12-man Green Beret teams sent into Afghanistan. Working with Afghan Northern Alliance forces, the Americans found themselves traveling through mountainous terrain on horseback while helping fight Taliban forces.

The Army has documented Nutsch’s account of arriving in Afghanistan with limited intelligence and meeting armed Afghan fighters at remote landing zones, where the Americans could not be certain how friendly their reception would be.

ODA 595’s story later inspired the 2018 film 12 Strong. Chris Hemsworth’s character was based on Nutsch, while Michael Shannon played a character based on Pennington.

Twenty Episodes Go Well Beyond the Famous Missions

The series also spends considerable time on operations that never received a $100 million Hollywood treatment.

Episodes cover the 1989 rescue of American Kurt Muse from a Panamanian prison during Operation Acid Gambit, the hunt for al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq and the 2002 fight on Takur Ghar during the Battle of Roberts Ridge. Other installments examine the evacuation of Afghans during the fall of Kabul and the rescue of journalist Benjamin Hall after he was wounded in Ukraine.

One second-season episode returns to the 2008 Battle of Shok Valley in Afghanistan. The mission involved Operational Detachment Alpha 3336, whose members fought their way across steep terrain while taking heavy fire. Matthew Williams, one of the Green Berets involved, later received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the battle.

For viewers who already know Mogadishu from Black Hawk Down or Afghanistan from 12 Strong, those familiar stories provide the doorway into a much broader collection of special operations history.

Hollywood has already supplied its versions of several of these missions, but Special Ops: True gives the surviving veterans another chance to tell their stories in their own voices.

All 20 episodes of Special Ops: True are streaming on Paramount+.