Navy SEAL who killed Osama Bin Laden reveals 'hardest part' 15 years on from mission

We all want to be remembered for something in our lives, whether it's achieving scientific or sporting success, or achieving celebrity status.

But after the spate of terrorist attacks lead by Al Qaeda, the world needed someone to step up as a hero and bring an end to Osama Bin Laden, the jihadist who founded the organisation.

Robert O'Neill is the man who earned that title in 2011 when he was sent on a special mission to Pakistan, where he came face-to-face with the leader of Al Qaeda in his compound in Abbottabad.

After a first helicopter literally crashed into the terrorist's front garden, O'Neill was one of the first on the scene and after heading upstairs with a fellow elite special operations member, the responsibility of killing Bin Laden fell on his shoulders.

Bin Laden was able to evade the military for many years (Stephane Ruet/Sygma via Getty Images)

He said: "I turned right and there was bin Laden standing there, three feet away.

"I recognised him immediately. I was impressed with how skinny he was. His beard was sort of gray. His hands were on his wife Amal’s shoulders. I took it as a threat; he could blow himself up.

"At SEAL Team Six, we shoot you twice in the head right away. I shot him twice and shot him again with my H&K 416. He crumpled on the foot of his bed.

I just shot Bin Laden — like what the f–k? Everything I had ever known, everything I planned, just changed drastically."

While most would assume that the hardest part of the mission would be pulling the trigger, that was part of O'Neill's special training and he had no qualms about joining the mission, in the hope of having 'one shot at this motherf****r'.

However, for the Navy SEAL, it was leaving his wife and young daughter behind, with them having no knowledge of where he was going, that he suggests was the trickiest part of the whole process.

He told the New York Post: "The hardest part is telling your kids goodbye, because death is coming. The day I shipped off, my 3-year-old daughter packed a Hello Kitty suitcase and said, 'When you get home, you’re taking me on vacation.'

"I had to rip the scab off, give her a kiss and look her in the eyes one last time, fully believing I wasn’t going to come back. That’s the hard part. My poor [former] wife had no idea where I was going."

O'Neill revealed the hardest part of the stealth mission (Phillip Faraone/Getty Images)

The author, who has also appeared in a Netflix series about Bin Laden's demise, has also revealed the one regret he has about what went down in Pakistan, and it was down to the US giving Bin Laden a burial at sea.

If O'Neill had his way, he said that he would have much preferred to see the Saudi Arabian terror figure strung up in New York City - so that Americans could deliver their own justice.

"I would have hung him from a bridge in New York City," he said.

Despite O'Neill's insistence that he fired the shot that killed bin Laden, another former Navy SEAL also claimed that he was responsible for the al-Qaeda leader's death, with both men widely criticised for breaking a military code of silence in the years since Bin Laden's death.