Posted on 04/15/2005 4:22:10 PM PDT by F14 Pilot
WASHINGTON - It was a quarter-century ago this month, April 24, 1980, that the secret American raid into Iran to rescue 53 hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran collapsed in disaster on a make-shift airstrip in the middle of the Iranian desert.
The embarrassingly public failure of the raid, code-named Operation Eagle Claw, was a low-water mark for the Carter administration and for our military as well, still struggling to get back on its feet in the wake of the debacle in Vietnam just five years before.
Eight American servicemen died when the raid came apart with the fiery collision of a Marine RH-53 helicopter and an Air Force EC-130 on the ground. President Jimmy Carter had already ordered the mission aborted when too few helicopters were still usable after a low-level flight into Iran from an American aircraft carrier out to sea.
With the raid the world also got its first partial look at a super-secret U.S. Army Special Operations force known as Operational Detachment-Delta and its legendary founding commander, Col. Charlie Beckwith, a Special Forces and 101st Airborne Division veteran of two tours in Vietnam.
Carter announced the failure and, appropriately, took full responsibility for it. He had micro-managed the operation from the White House and bent to pressure from all the services for a piece of the action and the glory.
Beckwith's forces did not own their own transportation, so the Air Force would haul the raiders into the staging and refueling area deep in the Iranian desert by C-130 turboprop transport planes, while Marine helicopters that would ferry the Delta operators from the airstrip to Tehran came in from the sea.
The helicopter crews had to be cobbled together from Marine, Navy and Air Force pilots at the last minute when it was discovered that some of the Marine pilots lacked the skills needed to fly such a mission.
A number of Operation Detachment-Delta operators and agents had already infiltrated into Tehran to help conduct the strike to rescue the 53 diplomats and Marine guards who were taken hostage when a mob seized the U.S. Embassy on Nov. 4, 1979.
Beckwith and higher-ranking supporters in the Pentagon had lobbied for the rescue mission to be carried out by the hostage-rescue experts of Delta, and had begun planning a rescue within hours of the seizure of the Americans.
But all that planning and hard work had come apart so disastrously. The raiders and the air crews, their secret airstrip now marked by the towering flames of burning aircraft, packed up and flew out on the remaining C-130s. Orders were given to destroy the helicopters but in the confusion they weren't carried out. The secret plans fell into the hands of the Iranians, and the Tehran agents working for the United States narrowly escaped capture themselves.
Some say the failure paralyzed the administration and led directly to Carter's defeat by Ronald Reagan the following November. The Iranians finally freed the hostages on the day Reagan was inaugurated, 444 days after they were seized.
Not long afterward Beckwith quietly retired from the Army. He never tried to put the blame on Carter then, or ever. He died nearly 15 years later, convinced that most of the blame lay with inter-service rivalry.
What grew out of that failure was a determination by some powerful members of Congress, as well as those who believed in and nurtured the small special operations community, that this would never happen again, that a command designed to ensure the success of such secret missions was needed and it needed to be totally self-sufficient in everything, including aircraft, helicopters and pilots.
Against stubborn opposition in the Pentagon, such a command was born. It is today's U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Base, Fla., headed by a four-star flag officer - general or admiral - and has come into its own since 9/11.
Joseph L. Galloway is the senior military correspondent for Knight Ridder Newspapers. Readers may write to him at: Knight Ridder Washington Bureau, 700 12th St. N.W., Suite 1000, Washington, D.C. 20005-3994. His column appears most Fridays in the American News.
PING
A quarter of a century ago.........damn.
Just yesterday...
And the rouge regime of Mullahs becomes worse every year!
ping
Interesting article. Thanks for posting it.
Operation Eagle Claw received its climate data from an office in the State Department. The Analyst who provided the informaton had no background in climatology, meteorology or physical geography. The result was the team landed in a site in a season of the year when dust storms were prevolent. The rest is history.
no, that is not true, the meterologist was a trained one, the haboob was just unforseen.
Which in no way means it wasn't Carter's fault, and that of his national (in)security team. The raid was done on a shoestring. They wouldn't let them use the Air Force choppers that would have been better suited to the mission. But most importantly they wanted it to be low profile. What they should have done was given the Iranians a private ultimatum. Release hostages or we start bombing. We didn't have nearly the supply of smart bombs that we do now, but a couple of B-52 wings could still mess up a place real bad, without using nukes. We did have few smart bombs, and F-111s to deliver them to certain special locations, like the houses of the leading Mullahs. Of course such a tactic risked the hostages, and Carter would not allow that kind of PR nightmare.
One former AF officer that I had served with suggested that the BUFFs be accompanied by C-5s or C-141s, flying in the same formations as the BUFFs, near the tail end of the bomber stream. Then paratroops would HALO in behind the bombers, which would do their best to isolate the location where the hostages were being held. Choppers, Air Force ones designed for such long range missions, but operating from Navy Carriers, would swoop in and pick up hostages and troops. More BUFFs and Navy Tac Air would provide defense suppression and ground support during the operation. But that all required thinking big, whereas Carter was a small man and thought small.
Or we could have just contracted the operation out to the Israelies. :)
Remember that President of the United States was Carter not Reagan or Bush. He was coward enough not to do any thing like that.
I know the office, its director, the analyst, and the report. It is exactly as I said. The team was given faulty intelligence.
I always thought embassies were extensions of the sovereign territory of the country. Invading one is identical with invading the country itself.
If so, why then did you Americans allow President Carter to let the Iranians humiliate your country instead of inflicting severe military blows on it? Why wasn't he impeached?
Can it happen again and if it does, what will be American response?
BTW, I think President Carter was the worst US president of the 20th century, even more so than President Clinton.
I became an American at heart watching the presidential debates between Ronald Reagan and President Carter. Listening to Reagan was the first time I understood America, its beauty and grandeur.
What a guy.
I'll bet that's fixing to change.
One of many.
I take issue with that statement. Jimmy Carter sets a new low for his administration and legacy every time he opens his mouth.
A whiny no-account ex-president of no stature.
What, bad makeup?
Son Tay wasn't a clue?
Bump to your kind comments about America. They are greatly appreciated.
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