A Chain of Events: The Government Cover-Up of the Black Hawk Incident and the Friendly-Fire Death of Lt. Laura Piper. This item is unavailable.A Chain of Events: The Government Cover-Up of the Black Hawk Incident and the Friendly-Fire Death of Lt. Laura Piper

On April 14, 1994, on a clear morning over northern Iraq's no-fly zone, two U.S. Air Force F-15 jets encountered two U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopters on a routine mission. Within ten minutes, the F-15s misidentified the helicopters and shot them down with fire-and-forget missiles. For three years, aircraft had patrolled these skies with a near-perfect safety record. Although the Black Hawk's downing was one of the worst air-to-air friendly fire incidents involving U.S. aircraft in military history, the Air Force would officially conclude the pilots had made a reasonable mistake. One victim was ebullient twenty-five-old intelligence officer Laura Piper, in love with life and with being an Air Force lieutenant. Movingly written by her mother,A Chain of Events is the story of Laura’s final flight and the Air Force’s mishandling of the subsequent investigation. It is a story of duty, patriotism, a mother’s devotion to a daughter’s memory, and her family’s disappointment in a beloved institution.