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A six-member commission was appointed by the JCS to study the operation. Headed by Adm James L. Holloway III, the panel included Gen LeRoy Manor, who commanded the earlier Son Tay raid.

One issue investigated was selection of aircrew. Navy and Marine pilots with little experience in long-range overland navigation or refueling from C-130s were selected though more than a hundred qualified Air Force H-53 pilots were available.

Another issue was the lack of a comprehensive readiness evaluation and mission rehearsal program. From the beginning, training was not conducted in a truly joint manner; it was compartmented and held at scattered locations throughout the US. The limited rehearsals that were conducted assessed only portions of the total mission.

Also at issue was the number of helicopters used. The commission concluded that at least ten and perhaps as many as twelve helicopters should have been launched to guarantee the minimum of six required for completion of the mission.

The plan was also criticized for using the "hopscotch" method of ground refueling instead of air refueling as was used for the Son Tay raid. By air refueling en route, the commission thought the entire Desert One scenario could have been avoided.

The Foxhole Revisits...

The Foxhole will be updating some of our earlier threads with new graphics and some new content for our Saturday threads in this, our second year of the Foxhole. We lost many of our graphic links and this is our way of restoring them along with revising the thread content where needed with new and additional information not available in the original threads.

A Link to the Original Thread;

The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Operation Eagle Claw (4/24/1980) - Apr. 24th, 2003

Eagle Claw was intensely micro-managed by the White House. Enough said.

There was a mission plan that probably would have worked, but Carter thought it was utterly terrible.

A parachute drop of two battalions was to be covered by C130s carrying the late Viet Nam war daisy cutters, the ones in a big propane tank.

A long list of militarily significant installation would each get a daisy cutter. Any attempt to move toward the Embassy was to have a daisy cutter. The guys on the ground could call them in as needed, also. I can't remember the extraction plan, so I probably did not like it much.

This was in the days before precision bombing by GPS, so these somewhat large bombs would make up the difference. My estimate is that more than 200 and less than 500 daisy cutters would be needed. This level of ordinance use in Teheran would have caused significant collateral damage. It is possible there would have been civilian casualties on the Hiroshima scale.

So you can see why Carter got upset. Me, I think the plan had possibilities.

No intelligence was coming out of Iran because Carter had dismantled the CIA's network of spies due to the agency's role in overthrowing governments in Vietnam and Latin America.

Carter dismantled CIA? I am shocked, shocked.

According to Robert Baer in See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terror, Stansfield Turner cut 820 case officers October 31, 1977, a blow from which the agency has yet to recover--witness current DCI George Tenet telling the togaed blowhards it will be five years before we have the necessary intel capability.

Tenet should have got a boot up his ass September 12, 2001.

Carter remains Mr. Rogers on the outside, while committing unspeakable practices, unnatural acts with any dictator anywhere on the globe provided said schmuck loathes America.

Had Carter not betrayed the Shah, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

The pilots did their best and were sacrificed to the socialist useful idiots in whose vanguard stood Jimmy Malaise.

Now we are offered another UNuch, Jean Fraud Keri, awarded the Trois Bandages Pourpres.

She would betray our allies as did Mickey Malaise, and would respond to any crisis in UNuch fashion.

Daisy

Daisy Cutter

We report; you decide.