Operation Eagle Claw

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Operation Eagle Claw
Part of Iran Hostage Crisis

A left side view of six RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters in flight. The helicopters, based aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN-68), are taking part in Operation Evening Light, a rescue mission to Iran.
Date April 24 - April 25, 1980
Location Tehran, Iran
Result Failure (Unsuccessful hostage rescue attempt); mission aborted with loss.
Belligerents
 United States Flag of Iran Iran
Commanders
Flag of the United States Col. Charles Alvin Beckwith
Flag of the United States Col. James Kyle
Flag of the United States Lieutenant General William G. Boykin
Casualties and losses
8 KIA
4 WIA		 1 civilian KIA
v • d • e
Canadian Caper – Eagle Claw  – Iraqgate – Credible Sport  – Algiers

Operation Eagle Claw (or Operation Evening Light) was a United States military operation that attempted to rescue 52 American hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran on April 24, 1980.

During the Iran Hostage Crisis, President Carter was determined to ensure the release of the hostages before the end of his presidency, particularly as the Democratic nomination for the 1980 presidential election neared. Despite extensive last minute negotiations, the Carter administration was unable to secure the release of the hostages by Carter's last day in office, January 20, 1981. It was only after Ronald Reagan's election, after 444 days of captivity, that Iran released the American hostages.

Contents

[edit] Overview

The wreckage of a Sea Stallion helicopter at the Desert One base in Iran.
The operation was designed as a complex two-night mission. The first stage of the mission involved establishing a small initial staging site inside Iran, near Tabas in the Yazd Province (formerly in the south of the Khorasan province). The site, named Desert One, was to be used as a temporary airstrip for the USAF special ops MC-130E Combat Talon I penetration/transport aircraft and C-130 Hercules (later EC-130E) refueling aircraft, along with eight Navy RH-53D Sea Stallion minesweeper helicopters flown by Marine Corps aircrews from the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz stationed in the nearby Indian Ocean.

After flying in under radar and landing at Desert One, the C-130s would off-load men and equipment and refuel the arriving helicopters, which would undertake the rescue operation. The ground troops were to board the refueled helicopters and fly to Desert Two near Tehran the same night when the helicopters would be concealed. The next night, the rescuers would be transported to the embassy by CIA agents, overpower the hostage guards, and escort the hostages across Roosevelt Boulevard (the main road in front of the embassy) to a soccer stadium, where the helicopters would land and retrieve the entire force.

The Tehran CIA Special Activities Division paramilitary team was led by Richard Meadows, and was there for two purposes: (1) to obtain information about the hostages and the embassy grounds, and (2) to transport the rescuers from Desert Two to the embassy grounds with pre-staged vehicles. In reality, the most important information came from an embassy cook who was released by the Iranians and discovered on a flight from Tehran at the last minute by another CIA officer, and who confirmed that the hostages were centrally located in the embassy compound - this was a key piece of information long sought after by the planners.

The assault on the embassy was to occur after eliminating electrical power in the area to disrupt any military response by the Iranians. AC-130 gunships were to orbit overhead to provide supporting fire. The helicopters were to transport the rescuers and hostages from the football stadium to Manzariyeh Air Base outside of Tehran (34°58′58″N 50°48′20″E / 34.98278°N 50.80556°E / 34.98278; 50.80556), where a Ranger force would have captured the airfield and C-141 transports would be waiting to remove the contingent from Iran under the protection of fighter planes.

Only the delivery of the rescue force, equipment and fuel by the C-130 force occurred according to plan. An unexpected sandstorm of the kind known as a haboob contributed to the loss of three of the eight RH-53D helicopters by the time the helicopter formation reached Desert One, behind schedule. The first helicopter was grounded and abandoned in the desert with a cracked rotor blade, and its crew was picked up by another helicopter that continued the flight. The second helicopter abandoned the mission and returned to the Nimitz with erratic instrumentation due to the heat inside the haboob. The third helicopter arrived at Desert One with a malfunctioning primary hydraulics system and insufficient confidence in the secondary (backup) hydraulics system to continue. The first and third helicopters, which were abandoned, now serve with the Iranian Navy.

Meanwhile, a fuel-smuggling tanker truck was blown up nearby with a shoulder-fired rocket as it tried to escape the site shortly after the first crews landed and began securing Desert One. The resulting fire illuminated the night-time landscape for many miles around, and actually provided a beacon to Desert One for the disoriented and dehydrated incoming helicopter crews, who flew in lower than the undetected C-130 Hercules flight because of miscommunicated instructions and faulty communications equipment, and subsequently encountered the sandstorm. The passenger in the tanker truck was killed in the attack, while the truck's driver managed to escape in an accompanying pickup truck, and was not considered to pose a security threat to the mission when evaluation deduced the clandestine smuggling nature of the tanker truck. Soon after the truck driver escaped, a civilian Iranian bus with a driver and 43 passengers travelling on the same road, which served as the runway for the aircraft, was forcefully halted and held until the site was fully evacuated.

With only five helicopters remaining for transporting the men and equipment to Desert Two, and needing a predetermined minimum of six helicopters at that stage (Col. Beckwith's plans anticipated losing additional helicopters at later stages, especially as they were notorious for failing on cold starts and they were to be shut down for almost 24 hours at Desert Two), Col. Beckwith recommended that President Carter abort the mission, and Carter did just that on April 25, 1980. In order to complete the refueling of one of the helicopters, another had to be moved. That helicopter had blown a tire on landing and had therefore to be moved by "air taxi". Its pilot became disoriented in the resulting dust cloud raised by its rotors and crashed into the C-130.

In the ensuing explosion and fire, eight US servicemen died: five USAF aircrew in the C-130, and three USMC aircrew in the RH-53D, with only the helicopter pilot surviving. During the following frantic evacuation of the scene by the C-130s, with many of the helicopter aircrews believing they were under attack due to munitions cooking off in the fire, five RH-53D helicopters were left behind mostly intact, some damaged by shrapnel, with the sixth helicopter on top of the C-130 where it crashed and was being consumed by the fire. Iranian gains from the failed operation total between four and six RH-53D helicopters. In their haste to evacuate the helicopters, the Marine aircrews inadvertently left behind classified plans that identified the Tehran CIA agents.

The C-130s carried the remaining forces back to the intermediate airfield at Masirah Island where two C-141 medical evacuation aircraft from the rear staging base at Wadi Abu Shihat, Egypt (referred to as Wadi Kena by the US Forces due to its location near Qena) 26°33′18″N 33°07′58″E / 26.555058°N 33.132877°E / 26.555058; 33.132877 picked up the injured personnel, helicopter crews, Rangers and Delta Force members and returned to Wadi Kena. The injured personnel were then transported to Ramstein Air Base, Germany. The Tehran CIA team left Iran, unaware that their presence had been compromised.

[edit] Aftermath

Operation Eagle Claw Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery

The White House announced the failed rescue operation at 1 A.M. the following day. The embassy hostages were scattered across Iran to make a second rescue attempt impossible. Iranian Army investigators found 9 bodies, 8 Americans and 1 Iranian civilian (which was used to criticize the White House’s announcement that “…there were no Iranian casualties…”). The 44 Iranian civilians were interviewed and gave eye witness accounts of the operation.

The failure of the various services to work together with cohesion forced the establishment of a new multi-service organization. The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) was established and became operational on April 16, 1987. Each service now has its own Special Operations Forces under the overall control of USSOCOM. For example, the Army has its own Army Special Operations Command (USASOC) that controls the Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF). The Air Force special ops unit that supplied the C-130 elements of the rescue attempt was awarded the AF Outstanding Unit Award for both that year and the next, was assigned its own squadron of HH-53H Pave Low (Super Jolly) helicopters for long-range low-level night flying operations, and became co-hosts at its home base of Hurlburt Field with the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC).

The lack of well-trained Army helicopter pilots that were capable of the low-level night flying needed for modern special forces missions prompted the creation of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) (Night Stalkers).

A second rescue mission was planned under the name Operation Credible Sport (a.k.a. Operation Honey Badger), but was never implemented. This second rescue attempt was planned using modified YMC-130H Hercules aircraft. Outfitted with rocket thrusters fore and aft to allow an extremely short landing and take-off in a soccer stadium, three aircraft were modified under a rushed secret program. One aircraft crashed during a demonstration at Duke Field at Eglin Air Force Base Auxiliary Field 3 on October 29, 1980, when its landing braking rockets were fired too soon. The misfire caused a hard touchdown that tore off the starboard wing and started a fire. All on board survived. The impending change in the White House caused to the abandonment of this project. The two surviving airframes were returned to regular duty with the rocket packages removed. One is now on display at the Museum of Aviation located next to Robins Air Force Base, Georgia.[1]

Not long after the failure of the mission, on May 6, 1980, the Iranian Embassy Siege occurred in London which ended in a successful assault by the British Special Air Service (SAS).

As for the situation in Iran, the hostages were released after 444 days of captivity on January 20, 1981, the day that Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter as president.

Retired Chief of Naval Operations Admiral James L. Holloway III led the official investigation in 1980 into the causes of the failure of the operation on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Holloway Report primarily cited deficiencies in mission planning, command and control, and inter-service operability, and provided a catalyst to reorganize the Department of Defense, and the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986.[2]

A memorial honoring the eight Americans who lost their lives during the rescue attempt is located in the Arlington National Cemetery.

[edit] Units involved in the operation

These units are known to have participated:

[edit] See also

[edit] Fictional depictions

  • The Desert One phase of the operation is depicted in the 1986 film The Delta Force. The sequence in the film shows the explosion of a Sea Stallion helicopter and the subsequent rescue of an injured soldier by a character played by Chuck Norris. The film also depicts the escape from Desert One in a Hercules C-130 aircraft.

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Hostage Rescue Attempt In Iran, April 24-25, 1980". http://rescueattempt.tripod.com/id1.html. by James Bancroft. Accessed 31 March 2007.
  2. ^ "The Holloway Report" (PDF). http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB63/doc8.pdf.  Accessed 31 March 2007.

[edit] External links

Coordinates: 33°05′N 55°48′E / 33.083°N 55.8°E / 33.083; 55.8

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw"
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