Alex Quade won two documentary awards at the Gig Harbor Film Festival. Quade won an “Audience Choice Award” for her documentary, “Taliban Capture & Release”, and “Best Short Film” for her documentary, “Danger Close: Spec Ops Gunship.” The summary follows:
“Danger Close: Spec Ops Gunship”
(ALEX QUADE FILMS; Director/Producer: Alex Quade)
War reporter Alex Quade has embedded with Special Operations Forces on several combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan during which AC-130s provided close air support and cover fire. In her film, “Danger Close: Spec Ops Gunship,” Quade brings the audience along for a ride on-board a Spectre Gunship live-fire mission; it is the gunship and air crew which took care of the teams Quade was with during the fatal downing of a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan in 2007, by a Taliban surface-to-air-missile. Alex Quade was supposed to be on that helicopter. She survived to report firsthand on the fierce firefight and recovery efforts involving that Special Operations AC-130 gunship. That AC-130 mission, that night in Helmand Province between Kajaki and Sangin, is cited as one of the most challenging and dangerous combat search and rescue missions in all of Operation Enduring Freedom history. The nine-hour mission began with the AC-130 crew assuming tactical control of 17-separate combat aircraft while clearing a pathway for SOF troops pinned down by small arms and RPG fire to secure the crash site. The AC-130 crew stayed in position to silence both anti-aircraft artillery and enemy forces engaging the SOF rescue team within meters of each other – or “Danger Close” – as Quade learned both on the ground, and later in the sky during interviews with the crew.
