| After
realizing there was no infrastructure or support for a quick strike, planners
started mapping out a long-range, multifaceted rescue.
What emerged was
a complex, two-night operation. An Army rescue team would be brought into
Iran with a combination of helicopters and C-130s. The “Hercs”
would fly the troopers into a desert staging area from Oman. They would load
the rescue team on the helicopters, refuel the choppers, and then the helos
and shooters would move forward to hide in areas about 50 miles outside
Tehran.
On day two, the
Army team would be escorted to the embassy in trucks by American intelligence
agents. The Army team would take down the embassy, rescue the hostages and
move them to a nearby soccer stadium. The helos would pick up the shooters
and hostages at the stadium and evacuate them to Manzariyeh Air Base, about
40 miles southeast of Tehran.
MC-130s would fly
Army Rangers and combat controllers into Manzariyeh. The Rangers would take
the field and hold it for the evacuation. Meanwhile, AC-130H Spectre gunships
would be over the embassy and the airfield to “fix” any problems
encountered. Finally, C-141s would arrive at Manzariyeh to fly the hostages
and rescue team to safety.
Secrecy and surprise
were critical to the plan. The entire mission would be done at night, and
surprise was the Army shooters’ greatest advantage.
It was an ambitious
plan; some say too ambitious.
“This mission
required a lot of things we had never done before,” said retired Col.
(then-Capt.) Bob Brenci, the lead C-130 pilot on the mission. “We were
literally making it up as we went along.”
Flying using
night-vision goggles was almost unheard of. There was no capability, or for
that matter, a need, to refuel helicopters at remote, inaccessible landing
zones. All these skills and procedures would be tested and honed for this
mission.
“These
capabilities are routine now for special operators, but at the time we were
right there on the edge of the envelope,” said retired Col. (then-Capt.)
George Ferkes, Brenci’s co-pilot.
The aircrews
weren’t the only ones pushing the envelope. Airman First Class Jessie
Rowe was a fuels specialist at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., when he got
a late night call to pack his bags and show up at the Tampa International
Airport. He met his boss, Tech. Sgt. Bill Jerome, and the pair flew to Arizona.
They were now a part of Eagle Claw. Their job? Devise a self contained refueling
system the C-130s could carry into the desert to refuel the helicopters at
the forward staging area.
“No one told
us why,” said Rowe, who’s now a major at Hurlburt Field and one
of just two operation participants still on active duty. “But, you
didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.
“We begged,
borrowed and stole the stuff we needed to make it work,” he said. “We
got it done. In less than a month, we had a working system.”
The Eagle Claw
players were spread out, training around the world. The Hurlburt crews spent
most of their time training in Florida and the southwestern United States.
The pieces were coming together.
At the same time,
negotiations to free the hostages continued to go nowhere. By the time April
1980 rolled around, the Eagle Claw team had been practicing individually,
and together, for five months. The aircrews averaged about 1,000 flying hours
in that time. In comparison, a typical C-130 crew dog would take three years
to log 1,000 hours.
It’s showtime
“We were chomping at the bit,” Brenci said. “We just wanted
to go and do it.”
After a long training
mission in Arizona and a flight to Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., to pick up
parts, Col. J.V.O. Weaver (a captain then) and his crew, returned to Hurlburt
Field to an unusual sight.
“We rolled
in and noticed the maintenance guys were on the line painting all the birds
flat black,” Weaver said. “They painted everything. Tail numbers,
markings. Everything.”
The plan was moving
forward. Less than a day later, six C-130s quietly departed Florida bound
for Wadi Kena, Egypt. The president hadn’t pulled the trigger yet, but
the hammer was cocked on the operation.
The Army and Air
Force troops were in Egypt awaiting orders. The Marines and sailors, the
helicopter contingent, were aboard the USS Nimitz afloat in the Persian Gulf
off the coast of Iran.
“I remember
we ate C-rats (the predecessor to MREs) for days and then one morning a truck
rolls up, and we’re served a hot breakfast,” Rowe said. “Light
bulbs went on in everyone’s minds.”
The hot breakfast
was a precursor to a briefing and pep talk from Army Maj. Gen. James Vaught,
the Joint Task Force commander for Eagle Claw. The mission was a go.
“Everyone
was pumped up,” said retired Chief Master Sgt. Taco Sanchez (then a
staff sergeant). “Arms were in the air. We were ready!”
Next stop, Masirah.
A tiny island off the coast of Oman. To say this air patch was desolate would
be kind. It was a couple of tents and a blacktop strip. It was the final
staging area — the last stop before launching.
Just before sunset
on April 24, Brenci’s MC-130 took off toward Desert One. The die was
cast. Brenci’s crew would be the first to touch down in Iran. They carried
the Air Force combat control team and Army Col. Charlie Beckwith’s
commandos. Beckwith would lead the rescue mission into the embassy. Also
on board Brenci’s plane was Col. James Kyle, the on-scene commander
at Desert One and one of the lead planners for the operation. The other Hercs
left Masirah after dark, and the helicopters launched off the Nimitz.
It was a four-hour
flight. Plenty of time to contemplate what they were attempting.
“We just tried
to stay busy,” Sanchez said. “We were in enemy territory now. The
pucker factor was pretty high.”
The first challenge
would be to find the make-shift landing strip. Only 21 days earlier, Maj.
John Carney, a combat controller, had flown a covert mission into Iran with
the CIA to set up an infrared landing zone at Desert One. Carney was perched
over Brenci’s shoulder as the C-130 neared the landing site. The lights
he had buried in the desert would be turned on via remote control from the
C-130’s flight deck. The question was, would they work?
Brenci was a couple
miles out when in slow succession a “diamond-and-one” pattern appeared
through his night-vision goggles. The bird touched down in the powdery silt,
and the troops went to work.
Gremlins arrive
The choppers, eight total, left the Nimitz and were supposed to fly formation,
low level, to the meet area. Because of the demands of the mission, at least
six helicopters were needed at Desert One for the mission to go forward.
Two hours into the flight the first helicopter aborted.
Further inland,
the Marine helo pilots met their own private hell. Weather for the mission
was supposed to be clear. It wasn’t. Flying at 500 feet, the helicopters
got caught in what is known in the Dasht-e-Kavir, Iran’s Great Salt
Desert, as a “haboob” — a blinding dust storm. The situation
was bad. After battling the storm for what seemed like days, one of the
helicopters turned back.
At Desert One,
all the C-130s had landed and were taxied into place. They were waiting for
the choppers. An hour late, the first helicopter arrived.
“We weren’t
on the ground that long, but my God, it felt like an eternity waiting for
the helos,” Beyers recalled. The first two helicopters to roll in pulled
up to Beyer’s aircraft to be refueled. When the sixth chopper showed,
everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
The Army troops
boarded the helicopters. The fuels guys did their magic. Everything was good.
Then word spread. One of the helicopters had a hydraulic failure. Game
over.
Beckwith needed
six helicopters. Kyle, the on-scene commander, aborted the mission.
“It was
crushing,” Rowe said. “We had come all that way, spent all that
time practicing, and now we had to turn back.”
The decision made,
now the crews had to evacuate the Iranian dust patch. Time was a factor.
The C-130s were running low on fuel. Sunrise was fast approaching, and the
team didn’t want to be caught on the ground by Iranian troops. Members
had already detained a civilian bus with 40-plus passengers and were forced
to blow up a fuel truck, which wouldn’t stop for a roadblock.
They had worn out
their welcome. Dejected and disappointed, they just wanted to button up and
go home.
Beyers’ aircraft,
flown by Capt. Hal Lewis, was critically low on fuel. But, before it could
depart, the helicopter behind the aircraft had to be moved.
“We had just
taken the head count,” recalled Beyers. They had 44 Army troops on board.
Beyers was on the flight deck behind Lewis’ seat. “We got permission
to taxi and then everything just lit up.”
A fireball engulfed
the C-130. According to witnesses, the helicopter lifted off, kicked up a
blinding dust cloud, and then banked toward the Herc. Its rotor blades sliced
through the Herc’s main stabilizer. The chopper rolled over the top
of the aircraft, gushing fuel and fire as it tumbled.
Burning wreck
Fire engulfed the plane. Training kicked in. The flight deck crew began shut-down
procedures. The fire was outside the plane. Beyers headed down the steps
toward the crew door. That’s when someone opened the escape hatch on
top of the aircraft in the cockpit, Beyers said. Boom. Black out.
Tech. Sgt. Ken
Bancroft, one of three loadmasters on the airplane, knew he had troops to
get off the plane. He went to the left troop door. Fire. Right troop door.
Jammed shut.
“I don’t
know how I got that door off,” Bancroft said.
He did. One after
another, this hulk of a man tossed the Army troops off the burning plane
like a crazed baggage handler unloading a jumbo jet.
Beyers had been
knocked out. The flight deck door had hit him on the head as he went down
the steps. When he came to, he was on fire. Conscious again, he crawled toward
the rear of the plane.
“I made it
halfway,” Beyers said. “I quit. I knew I was dead.” Somehow
he moved himself closer to the door. Then he saw two figures appear through
the flames. Two Army troopers had come back for him. He was alive, but in
bad shape.
Beyers always had
the bad habit of rolling up his flight suit sleeves. He finally paid the
price. His arms, from the elbows down, were terribly burned. His hands were
charred. Hair, eyebrows and eyelashes, gone. Worse were the internal injuries.
His lungs, mouth and throat were burned. Yet, he clung to life.
The desert scene
was one of organized chaos. Failure had turned to tragedy.
“I knew they
were dead,” Bancroft said of his crew mates in the front of the plane.
“I looked up there, and it was just a wall of fire. There was nothing
I could do.”
The last plane
left Desert One a half hour after the accident. Beyers was on that
airplane.
“The accident
was a calamity heaped on despair. It was devastating,” wrote Kyle in
his book called “The Guts to Try.”
“The C-130
crews and combat controllers had not failed in any part of the operation
and had a right to be proud of what they accomplished,” Kyle said.
“They inserted the rescue team into Iran on schedule, set up the refueling
zone, and gassed up the helicopters when they finally arrived. Then, when
things went sour, they saved the day with an emergency evacuation by some
incredibly skillful flying. They had gotten the forces out of Iran to fight
another day — a fact they can always look back on with
pride.”
Pride and sorrow
are the two mixed emotions most participants share.
“We were the
ultimate embarrassment,” Sanchez said. “Militarily we did some
astounding things, but ultimately we failed America. I’m proud of what
we accomplished. I was 27 years old, and when I think about that mission
it still sends shivers down my spine.”
The aftermath of
the rescue operation was a barrage of investigations, congressional hearings
and, believe it or not, more planning and training for a follow-on rescue
mission.
Members of the
8th SOS were involved in those plans. In fact, some of the same crew members
who participated in Eagle Claw came back and started preparing for the follow-up
mission.
Healing the wounds
At the same time, the squadron needed to bury its dead, and start healing
the wounds from Desert One. Beyers survived the tragedy. After spending a
year in the hospital, and enduring 11 surgeries, he was medically separated
from the Air Force.
The bodies of the
eight men were eventually returned to the United States, and a memorial service
was held at Arlington National Cemetery.
Memories of that
ceremony are still vivid for many of the rescue team. Weaver, who was an
escort officer, still recalls when President Carter visited the families
prior to the service. After talking with a Marine family, the president made
his way to the family Weaver was escorting.
“He came up
to the family, then he looked down at those two little boys, and he just
got down on his knees and wrapped his arms around them,” Weaver said.
“Tears were streaming down his cheeks. Here’s the president of
the United States, on his knees, crying, holding these boys. That burned
right in there,” he said pointing to his chest.
A memorial was
placed at Arlington National Cemetery honoring the eight men killed.
Subsequently, other tributes have been made remembering the men who died
at Desert One. Hurlburt has dedicated streets in their honor. New Mexico’s
Holloman Air Force Base Airman Leadership School is named for Tech. Sgt.
Joel Mayo, the C-130 flight engineer killed at Desert One.
Mayo and Sanchez
were good friends. “I talked to him that night,” Sanchez said,
flashing back to a time long ago. “It’s important people understand.
Joel had no idea he was going to give his life that night. But, if you told
him he was going to die, he still would’ve gone.”
Sanchez’s
words capture the essence of every man on the mission. They were a brave,
courageous group of men, attempting the impossible, for a noble and worthy
cause. They came up short and have lived 21 years with the demons, or gremlins,
that sabotaged their mission of mercy.
“They tried,
and that was important,” said Col. Thomas Schaefer, the U.S. Embassy
defense attaché and one of the hostages. “It’s tragic eight
men died, but it’s important America had the courage to attempt the
rescue.”
In his living room,
Beyers gazes at the photos on his wall. Pointing to the picture of his crew,
he says, “How I survived and they didn’t, I don’t know. I
was lucky.”
Even having lived
so long with the horrible outcome of that mission, Beyers never doubts his
choice to take part.
“We do things
other people can’t do,” he said. “We would rather get killed
than fail. It was an accident. But, I have no doubt, had the Army guys gotten
in there, we would’ve succeeded.”
It comes down to
that. Desert One is a story of what could’ve been.
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