Posted on 12/30/2024 11:15:12 AM PST by BenLurkin
The Iran Hostage Crisis was a disaster for President Jimmy Carter’s image both domestically and abroad. Coupled with attacks on other American embassies in the Muslim world and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979, the hostage crisis made him look weak in the eyes of not only Americans, but also the rest of the world.
Carter and Brzezinski called a National Security Council (NSC) meeting to discuss the question of a rescue mission. At this point, Brzezinski was gung-ho on the idea. Although Warren Christopher, the acting Secretary of State, attended, his role was largely symbolic, as Brzezinski drove the meeting’s decision to go forward with the mission. Shockingly, rather than calling Vance immediately after the meeting, Christopher waited until his boss returned to brief him on the decision.
...
It went horribly.
Not only was the landing zone, codenamed DESERT ONE, apparently not remote enough to avoid drawing Iranian civilian attention, but several mechanical failures in the helicopters proved to be the operation’s undoing. EAGLE CLAW was called off after three of the eight helicopters were rendered inoperable by hydraulic failures and navigation problems.
As the aircraft prepared to leave DESERT ONE, the rotor of a helicopter slashed open the fuel bladder of a C-130 plane, causing a massive explosion. The blast killed eight U.S. personnel and wounded several others.
Thus ended the Carter administration’s abortive attempt to resolve the hostage crisis by military means. The following day, President Carter informed the nation of the failed mission. He acknowledged the role of “equipment failure” in the disaster, but made it clear that “The responsibility is fully my own.” The hostages would remain in captivity until January 20, 1981—the day Carter left office.
(Excerpt) Read more at faithandfreedom.com ...
Out of the ashes of that disaster came Air Force Special Ops. God Bless you, “Rotor” Rakip.
This fiasco was a major reason for the development of the V-22 Osprey.
Osprey was a very expensive program, in terms of both lives and treasure.
As a young man (40 years ago) I designed a tiny part of Osprey. I wondered why the government was spending so much on this program, that had cost many lives.
Much later I realized that the reason the program had such a high priority was in large part due to the failure of the Iranian hostage rescue mission, which led the government to the realization that there was a strategic gap in our air power that could only be filled by a VTOL platform with high speed and substantial lift capacity.
The guy leading the expedition was Charles Beckwith. When I saw his picture my first thought was we had to be related, because he had the Beckwith nose. Well, years later I found out we were, because he was into genealogy and after retirement contacted the family.
That’s a very inaccurate article. The first helicopter that failed to report to Desert one had landed because two of the blade Integrity monitors showed that it had two cracked rotor blades.
Second aircraft that turned around had major avionics failures and turned around because it had to navigate between two mountains and was unable to rise above the mountain height due to restrictions about radar and whether they would be detected or Not by the radar.
The third aircraft landed with a failed primary hydraulic system and the secondary hydraulic system was overheating. The normal process at that time is to fill the secondary hydraulic pump with grease and continue to fly but the Marine commander on the ground canceled the mission at that point and informed the Air Force Commander who was in charge of the entire Mission and that Colonel contacted the president and the mission was formally canceled then.
As they were refueling the helicopters to leave desert one, the Air Force ground controller marshaled the helicopters to the rear of the c-130s and during the marshalling of one aircraft the Air Force ground controller left his flashlight on and lowered his hands and the pilot of the Marine aircraft thought he was telling him to land when he did that and the aircraft landed on top of a C-130, only the aircraft didn’t land like he was trying to land on top of it, he landed very badly at an angle and that’s what caused the crash.
Www.thehostagerescueattemptiniran.com
Video
President Carter offers his condolences for the families of those who died in the attempted rescue of American hostages in Iran.
April 25th, 1980
https://rumble.com/v64b21m-president-jimmy-carter-statement-on-failed-iran-rescue-mission.html
Charlie Beckwith was only in charge of the Delta Force troops on that mission.col Kyle was the whole mission commander, col Beckwith was delta force, col Pittman was Marine commander, col Sieffert was the mission commander for the helos.
What RaceBannon writes about the missions.
Here is another article detailing the blood Carter had on his hands.
From ‘15.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/18/jimmy-carters-blood-drenched-legacy/
Thank you for that ping, linMcHlp...much appreciated.
Thank you for those excellent corrections.
I recalled that later, that mission was the only thing I gave Carter credit for, even though it failed, and I still think 172 days was far too long to wait.
In retrospect, I believe I shouldn’t have given Carter any credit at all, but I always felt that it did highlight a glaring weakness we had to work to overcome, and that was our deficiency in inter-service operations.
Sigh. I remember seeing that Iranian POS poking at the remains of those corpses with a ballpoint pen, IIRC. Wishing we could have dropped something on his head.
I didn’t reach that level of outrage until years later when we had two US Navy riverine boats surrender to the Iranians. And my anger then wasn’t directed only at the Iranians.
We were still at sea then, I didn’t see it till later!
Man, the emotions for years.
What is worse is to learn how much we were lied to about how Carter treated the shah, and how western media gave been on repeat of lies.
https://thehostagerescueattemptiniran.com/evidence-jimmy-carter-abandoned-the-shah-of-iran/
Exactly. I had just gotten out of the Navy in September, so it was something I was still tied into.
I often tell people how much I disliked Carter, but serving in an under-equipped Navy where they had us wearing foul weather jackets on the flight deck that were only good to 40 degrees while it was bitter cold in the Atlantic really made me dislike him even more.
I always wished I had the chance to serve under Reagan, where all the “No Dogs or Sailors on The Grass” signs in Norfolk became passe!
I was an electronic technician on the USS Mars when this occurred. We got a message that said basically we had taken definite military action against Iran and they had taken definite miliary action against us. We thought we were at war for about 2 days. After it was over I thought about some unusual looking helos I had seen on a carrier we had unrepped a few days earlier. I can’t remember what was unusual, but something stood out.
I delivered beer to the Nimitz when they reached the 100 day at Sea mark about 2 weeks before the rescue attempt.
I know the guy (a neighbor) who designed the hostage rescue operation and managed it from the situation room. Had his eyes and ears on everything. After everything that happened in the desert, the guys on the ground and the guys in the command center all agreed they could still accomplish the mission.
Carter got cold feet and called it off.
Everyone was sick to their stomachs about his cowardice.
My neighbor resigned shortly thereafter in disgust.
At the same this was going on the Jim Jones koolaid thing was also happening.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.