One Perfect Op: An Insider's Account of the Navy Seal Special Warfare Teams - Hardcover

Dennis Chalker; Kevin Dockery

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0380978040 ISBN 13: 9780380978045

Publisher: William Morrow, 2002

Synopsis

America’s most elite commando unit, the US Navy SEAL Team Six pulled off one of the most remarkable covert operations in military history when they infiltrated the secret hideout of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in the dead of night and killed the hated terrorist mastermind. Dennis Chalker was an original “plankowner” (founding member) of SEAL Team Six, and in One Perfect Op, he takes readers deep inside the remarkable world of America’s Special Forces operatives. With an introduction by Richard Marcinko of Rogue Warrior fame, One Perfect Op describes, step by breathtaking step, one extraordinary SEALs mission, shedding fascinating new light on the training, the planning, the courage and the skill of these exceptional warriors.

About this title

About the Authors

Dennis Chalker enlisted in the Army before joining the Navy and served as a “plankowner”, or founding member, of SEAL Team Six and “Red Cell”, and as a Command Master Chief for Navy BUD/S training. He lives in southern California.

Kevin Dockery is the military historian and field curator for the UDT/SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida. He lives in Michigan.

From the Back Cover

No elite military commando unit since the darkest days of Korea and Vietnam has a more storied history than the U.S. Navy SEALs, a stealth fighting force legendary for its abilities to wage covert war on sea, air, and land. Now former SEAL Command Master Chief Dennis "Snake" Chalker takes us deep inside the celebrated SEAL Team Six for an astonishing, firsthand look at the formation, preparation, and deployment of a crack detachment meticulously trained for an ongoing mission that has become essential to the survival of our nation: counterterrorism.

When Dennis Chalker joined Army Airborne in the early 1970s he was, by his own admission, a fairly typical young man from the Midwest. After his initial tour of duty—and a brief, unsatisfactory stint as a civilian—he volunteered to be a candidate for "the Teams," elite Naval Special Forces units known for their "outside the envelope" approach to warfare and their ability to strike any target, no matter how heavily guarded or impossible to reach.

After enduring BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training—the most rigorous selection process ever devised—Chalker rose rapidly through the ranks and was personally chosen by "Rogue Warrior" Richard Marcinko for a leadership role in Red Cell. Together they would push special operations warfare to a level it had never achieved before.

From the Granada action to electrifying events in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, Chalker now describes in stunning detail previously classified operations in the war against global terrorism. And at the center of his riveting, compelling, and astonishingly honest account is one remarkable covert mission in which daring, timing, skill, and cunning worked in concert to accomplish what in SEALs parlance is known as a "perfect op": one in which enemy territory is successfully penetrated and the objective achieved without any evidence left behind to indicate that the SEALs were even there.

Never before has a book given readers as spellbinding a look at the detailed inner workings of the U.S. Navy SEALs—from a mission's planning and preparation to its successful completion. And never has there been a truer, more intimate portrait of the extraordinary brotherhood of warriors who today are on the front lines of the most devastating conflict of our age, the war that America must win.

Reviews

Command Master Chief Chalker, a former Navy SEAL, tells the story of his personal involvement with one of the U.S.'s most secretive military organizations, formed to counter terrorism and perform operations in hostile territory. Writing with Dockery (Free Fire Zones), Chalker guides the reader through a three-year stint with the army's 82nd Airborne in the early '70s and a college football injury, quickly moving to his navy career, from getting himself into BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition, SEAL) training to hazing rituals and continued training to ensure that each mission can be a "perfect op" pulled off without discovery by the opponent. In the early 1980s, Chalker became a founding member of SEAL Team Six, which played a prominent role, described in riveting detail, in the U.S. invasion of Grenada. Readers who find the following sort of sentence poetic will not be able to put the book down: "If I had to dump the M4 and switch to my secondary weapon, I would be well served by my SIG P226 loaded with a full fifteen-round magazine of hot copper-jacketed serrated 9mm hollowpoints." But the perfect op is one where the SEALs do not have to fire a round, which is clearly Chalker's preference. After serving with Team Six, Chalker volunteered for one of the new Red Cell units, formed to test American bases for security often entering and leaving a facility without being spotted, which a base commander does not want to happen. Those looking for a larger-scale history of this secret branch of the service should turn to Orr Kelly's Brave Men, Dark Waters, but by the time Chalker's 20 years are up, he has indoctrinated quite a few of his own "enswines," and special ops buffs will be satisfied. (Apr. 1)Forecast: Our current operations in Afghanistan will cultivate interest in this title, of course, but Tom Clancy's Shadow Warriors, an overview of special forces due out in February, may steal many of Chalker's potential readers.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The war news on commando forces will broaden the appeal of this SEAL's memoir, written with the help of coauthor Dockery, about the elite warrior, his training, his skills, his motivation, and, ultimately, his exposure to deadly danger. The narrative, replete with the calisthenics, runs, and swims with which the military continuously hones its special operations personnel, relates Chalker's operations over his two decades in the military, which ended in the early 1990s. Assigned to an antiterrorist team, Chalker describes role-playing hostage scenarios, plus his team's assignment to breach security at naval bases, using, on occasion, amusing stratagems. The practical joker vanishes, however, when Chalker relates his major combat experience, the invasion of Grenada in 1983, in which close friends died. Chalker provides ample details on the risks inherent in military life, which makes this a timely, adventuresome, and interesting account. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

A retired command master chief and member of SEAL Team Six, Chalker is more than qualified to give the reader an insider's account of the U.S. Navy SEALs, which are among our nation's elite special forces. He certainly makes readers feel that they are part of "one perfect op" an operation that comes off without discovery or intervention. He describes one such operation in 1992, though exact names and locations are of course classified. Chalker is more open when describing the invasion of Grenada, his short army "career" before becoming a SEAL, and counterterrorist activities at home and abroad. Together with coauthor Dockery, who has written a number of works on the SEALs and Special Forces, he offers a quick but accurate glimpse into the training and life of a navy SEAL. A brief glossary of military terms appears at the end of the text. One minor flaw is the lack of illustrations or an index. Recommended for casual readers as well as serious students of military history for its accessibility and realism. David M. Alperstein, Queens Borough P.L., Jamaica, NY
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0380978040
• ISBN 13: 9780380978045
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352