"It Was a Catastrophic Impact. That's the Only Way I Can Describe It."

That from Norm Hooten, a Special Ops team lead, in this riveting CBS News piece:

Most Americans know what happened in Mogadishu, Somalia, during America's first battle against al Qaeda 20 years ago thanks to the Oscar-winning film, "Black Hawk Down." Now for the first time, they can see how the actual battle unfolded in footage obtained by 60 Minutes. Lara Logan's report, containing the images and combat veterans' eyewitness accounts of the battle, also follows the secret, 7-month effort of a retired soldier and his wife to repatriate the helicopter's wreckage. This remarkable 60 Minutes story will be broadcast almost 20 years to the day of the battle Sunday, Oct. 6 at 7:30 p.m. ET/PT.

The footage that will bring viewers back to the start of the mission, the battle and the downing of "Super 61," the call sign of the doomed helicopter, is military surveillance footage shot of the mission. It captures the scenes on Oct. 3, 1993, in Mogadishu that inspired the film.

A mission that day to capture top lieutenants of a Somali warlord was going fairly well until Super 61 took a rocket-propelled grenade -- a lucky shot that somehow found its fast-moving target. "It took a direct hit to the tail boom and started a slow rotation," says Norm Hooten, a Special Operations team leader that day who has never spoken publicly about the incident until now. "It was a catastrophic impact. That's the only way I can describe it," Hooten tells Logan.

Hooten and two other veterans who were there that day then tell Logan their harrowing experiences in the battle to retrieve the bodies and survivors of the crash in an hours-long ordeal recreated in the film. Nineteen died in the battle.

There's more, including heroic attempts by a couple to recover and bring back home as much of the wrecked Blackhawk helicopter as they could.

Read it all.

Here's a teaser piece to the 60 Minutes segment scheduled to air tomorrow night: