The assault began at 10 p.m. local time. The fifteen fighters carried small arms, rocket-propelled grenades, and explosive charges, breaching the perimeter on the eastern side near the U.S. Marine aircraft hangars -- a section guarded by British and Tongan troops. Once inside, they split into three teams. One attacked Marine mechanics from VMM-161 and the aircraft refueling stations. A second went straight for the flight line, attaching explosive charges to parked Harriers and firing RPGs at others. The third was engaged at the base's cryogenics compound. These were not suicide bombers stumbling toward a gate; they were an assault force executing a planned operation against specific, high-value targets. The Taliban later claimed the raid was retaliation for the anti-Islamic film Innocence of Muslims, and that Prince Harry, then stationed at Camp Bastion as an Apache helicopter pilot, was the intended target.

The first explosions reached the VMA-211 squadron offices as concussive thuds. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Raible, 40, the squadron commander, left his office to investigate. An anti-personnel RPG struck the side of the building moments later, and shrapnel from the blast hit him in the neck. He bled out before he could organize the defense he was already moving to lead. Nearby on the flight line, Sergeant Bradley Atwell, 27, a Marine mechanic, was killed by the same RPG round that had struck Raible -- the warhead detonated in the air above them both. Command fell to Major Robb T. McDonald, the executive officer, who directed Marines to safety, led a reconnaissance of the burning flight line, and called in two helicopter strikes on the attackers. For those actions, McDonald received the Silver Star. The distinction between the living and the dead that night came down to feet and seconds -- the geometry of a single RPG round exploding overhead.

The counterattack was multinational and improvised. U.S. Marines, defense contractors from Triple Canopy, and No. 51 Squadron RAF Regiment -- stationed on the opposite side of the main runway -- converged on the attackers. The RAF troops arrived twelve minutes after the first shots. Overhead, Marine AH-1W SuperCobras and UH-1Y Venoms from HMLA-469 took off while still under fire from the insurgents, joined by British Apache helicopters from the Joint Aviation Group. The four-hour firefight played out among burning aircraft, ruptured fuel lines, and the wreckage of hangars. A second group of five insurgents was flushed from hiding hours later and killed near their entry point. The final five were detected near the flight line and destroyed by RAF gunfire and orbiting helicopters. By morning, all fifteen attackers were dead or captured. But the damage was staggering: six Harriers destroyed, two more severely damaged, a C-130 wrecked, and a section of the flight line reduced to charred metal.

The aftermath cut upward through the chain of command in a way that battlefield losses rarely do. Major General Charles Gurganus, the senior Marine commander in Helmand, and Major General Gregg Sturdevant, the aviation commander, were both forced into early retirement. The Marine Corps stated that Gurganus had made "an error in judgment when conducting his risk assessment of the enemy's capabilities and intentions," and that Sturdevant had not adequately assessed force protection. Both men retired with full benefits -- a detail that rankled. An anonymous senior defense official told NBC News that if Gurganus had not been a general, he would have faced a court martial. "Marines are dead and six aircraft were destroyed," the official said. "A Lance Corporal would fry for a lot less than that." A British parliamentary inquiry found that UK commanders bore a degree of responsibility for "systemic failures." Allegations that Tongan guards had been sleeping on duty were investigated and dismissed; British personnel, not Tongan, were responsible for the breached section of perimeter.

The Marine Corps' response was swift. Within 36 hours, the USMC deployed 14 replacement Harriers to Afghanistan -- a surge that underscored both the aircraft's operational importance and the depth of the blow. The six destroyed and two damaged jets represented six percent of the Corps' entire Harrier inventory at a time when normal attrition ran about two airframes per year. ISAF announced a week later that it had captured one of the raid's planners. Camp Bastion was reinforced and its perimeter security overhauled. But the raid had accomplished what no Taliban offensive in the open field could: it demonstrated that even the coalition's deepest rear areas were vulnerable, that a small team with RPGs and determination could inflict damage measured in hundreds of millions of dollars. For the families of Lieutenant Colonel Raible and Sergeant Atwell, no operational metric could contain what was lost.