DC, 11 April 1980, Washington Noon.
The meeting began with Jimmy Carter’s announcement: ‘Gentlemen, I want you to know that I am seriously considering an attempt to rescue the hostages.’
Hamilton Jordan, the White House chief of staff, knew immediately that the president had made a decision. Planning and practice for a rescue mission had been going on in secret for five months, but it had always been regarded as the last resort and ever since the 4 November embassy takeover, the White House had made every effort to avoid it. As the president launched into a list of detailed questions about how it was to be done, his aides knew he had mentally crossed a line.
Carter had met the takeover in Iran with tremendous restraint, equating the national interest with the well-being of the fifty-three hostages and his measured response had elicited a great deal of admiration, both at home and abroad. His approval ratings had doubled in the first month of the crisis. But in the following months, restraint had begun to smell like weakness and indecision. Three times in the past five months, carefully negotiated secret settlements had been ditched by the inscrutable Iranian mullahs and the administration had been made to look more foolish each time. Approval ratings had nose-dived and even stalwart friends of the administration were demanding action.
Mark Bowden The Atlantic May 2006. Iran had been a US ally until the Shah was ousted from power by the Revolutionary Guard. Student militants stormed the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979 taking the Marine guards and embassy staff as hostages. After releasing some of the hostages, 53 remained. It is not usually militarily expedient for a commander in the field to have all his eggs in one basket. However, all the USAF, USN and USMC forces trained in air rescue and special operations are combined into one force and are therefore an exception to this rule. Nor is it militarily expedient to mount an operation using available USAF transports, Navy helicopters and USMC tanker aircraft - despite political attempts to the contrary, often using financial savings as a justification. This was proved at huge cost during the final days of the Carter administration when Operation ‘Eagle Claw’, a joint USAF/USMC attempt to rescue 52 diplomats held captive at the US embassy in Tehran on 24 April 1980 using Hercules aircraft and US Navy RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters flown by marine pilots, ended in disaster at ‘Desert One’, Posht-i-Badam, a remote location in Iran. The operation encountered many obstacles and was eventually aborted. Its failure and the humiliating public debacle that ensued damaged US prestige worldwide.
‘Colonel Charlie Beckwith, the creator of Delta Force, the Army’s new, top-secret counterterrorism unit, was summoned to the White House. He and President Jimmy Carter, both proud Georgians, swapped stories about their neighbouring home counties. Beckwith, a brave and commanding soldier, was a big, gruff man whose energy filled a room and he had flaws as outsized as his virtues. He was a difficult man, proud, tough and at times arrogant and capricious; these traits were aggravated when he drank, which was often. But at the White House he was on his best behaviour, impressing the president with his aura of blunt certainty as he presented the proposed mission in ever greater detail.
‘The colonel was an accomplished salesman. He had spent a career selling the idea of his elite unit and now that it existed, he was eager to show what miracles it could perform. His enthusiasm was infectious. He and his men had been rehearsing the mission for so long that they could have done it in their sleep and they were going to make history - not just cut this particular Gordian knot but write their names in the annals of military glory. In a sense, Beckwith’s long crusade to create Delta Force had been a rebellion against the mechanization and bureaucratization of modern warfare. He held to an old and visceral conviction: that war was the business of brave men. He loved soldiers and soldiering and his vision was of a company of men like himself: impatient with rank, rules and politics, focused entirely on mission. He had created such a force, choosing the best of the best and training them to perfection. They were not just good, they were magnificent. And now he would lead them into battle.
‘Technically, Carter had not yet given the goahead, but when Beckwith left the White House, he was certain he had sold the mission. He flew to Delta’s stockade at Fort Bragg, North Carolina and immediately assembled his top men. ‘You can’t tell the people; you can’t tell anybody,’ he said. ‘Don’t talk about this to anyone. But the president has approved the mission and we’re going to go on April 24.’
The operation was designed as a complex twonight mission. On the first night three EC-130Es (Call signs: ‘Republic 4 to 6’) would carry the Delta Force and other protection elements and three MC-130E Combat Talons (‘Dragon 1 to 3’) would carry the logistical supplies. They would enter Iran in a remote coastal area sixty miles west of Chabahar and fly to ‘Desert One’ via the Dashte Lut or Great Salt Desert, a 500-mile-long and 200-mile-wide expanse of sand and salt in the high plateau region of north central Iran. It is both desolate and unpopulated. Large tracts of it are broad, flat and hard packed. Its western edge is roughly a hundred miles southeast of Tehran. ‘Desert One’ would be secured and established with a protection force and approximately 6,000 gallons of jet fuel would be brought to the area in collapsible fuel bladders carried in each ‘fuel bird’. Next, eight USN RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters (‘Bluebeard 1 to 8’) of HM-16 with USMC crews would arrive from the USS Nimitz under way in the Arabian Sea.1 Marine pilots, who ended up flying almost all of the helicopters, had little experience in long distance flying over land with night vision goggles. They were not special operations personnel and had no experience with sand storm conditions but the helicopters would refuel and fly the Delta Force soldiers 260 miles further to ‘Desert Two’, 52 miles short of Tehran. The second night would involve the rescue operation. AC-130 gunships would be deployed over Tehran to provide any necessary supporting fire.
Logan Fitch, a tall Texan and one of Delta’s squadron leaders recalled that: ‘When we briefed General David Jones, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff it was just dusk. I can picture him today wearing a brown suede bomber jacket, a Madras shirt and blue trousers. And he put his arm around me and said, ‘Logan, looks like y’all got at least the rudiments here. Now we have to get the other services involved. Think about that. What that means is, oh, gosh, there might be some glory here and since I’m in charge of all the military I’ve got to make sure that the Air Force gets its part, the Marines, Navy, blah, blah. Well, the bottom line was that we had people flying those helicopters who really didn’t want to be there. Not that they were cowards or anything. I often use the analogy that, if you take a Greyhound bus driver who’s been driving a bus for forty years and you put him behind the wheel of an Indy 500 race car, he’d kill himself and a bunch of other people, probably. So I think that the people that piloted the helicopters were not the right people; Not bad people, not cowardly people, just not the right people.’2
‘Just after dark, the Hercules moved in over the coast of Iran at 250 feet, well below Iranian radar and began a gradual ascent to 5,000 feet. It was still flying dangerously low even at that altitude, because the land rose up abruptly in row after row of jagged ridges - the Zagros Mountains, which looked jet black in the grey-green tints of the pilots’ night-vision goggles. Its terrain-hugging radar was so sensitive that even though the plane was safely above the peaks, the highest ridges triggered the loud, disconcerting horn of its warning system. The co-pilot kept one finger over the override button, poised to silence it.
‘The decision had been made to fly into Iran on fixed-wing transports rather than helicopters and since then Beckwith had added still more men to ‘Eagle Claw,’ as the rescue mission was now codenamed. Most notable among them were a group of soldiers from the 75th Ranger Regiment, out of Fort Benning, Georgia, who would block off both ends of the dirt road that angled through Desert One and man Redeye missile launchers to protect the force on the first night in the event it was discovered and attacked from the air. A separate thirteen-man Army Special Forces team would assault the foreign ministry to free the three diplomats being held there. Also on Beckwith’s lead plane was John Carney, an Air Force major from the team that had slipped into Iran weeks earlier to scout the desert landing strip and bury infrared lights to mark a runway. He would command a small Air Force combat-control team that would orchestrate the complex manoeuvres at the impromptu airfield.
‘Some of these men sat on and around the Jeep. The mood was relaxed. If there was one trait these men shared, it was professional calm. They had taken off at dusk from the tiny island of Masirah near Oman. An hour behind them would come five more C-130s - one of them carrying most of the remainder of Beckwith’s assault force, which now numbered 132 men; three serving as ‘bladder planes’ and a back-up fuel plane carrying the last Deltas and sophisticated telecommunicationsmonitoring equipment.
‘Delta was made up of men who would have felt crushed to be excluded from this mission. They were ambitious for glory. They had volunteered to serve with Beckwith and had undergone the trials of a gruelling selection process precisely to serve in improbable exploits like this... They were a motley, deliberately unmilitary-looking bunch of young men. In fact, they looked a lot like the students who had seized the embassy. Most were just a few years older than the hostage-takers. They had long hair and had grown moustaches and beards, or at least gone unshaven. Many of those with fair hair had dyed it dark brown or black, figuring that might nudge the odds at least slightly in their favour if they were forced to fight their way out of Iran. The loose-fitting, many-pocketed field jackets they wore, also dyed black were just like the ones favoured by young men in Iran. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers (as opposed to spies) must enter combat in uniform, so for the occasion the men all wore matching black knit caps and on their jacket sleeves had American flags that could be covered by small black Velcro patches... Beckwith had insisted on a Ranger tradition: each man carried clips and a length of rope wrapped around his waist, in case the need arose to rappel. With his white stubble, dangling cigarette or cigar and wild eyes under thick dark eyebrows, Beckwith himself looked like a dangerous vagrant. Before leaving Masirah, the men had joked about which actors would portray them in the movie version of the raid and they decided that the hillbilly actor Slim Pickens, who in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove had ridden a nuclear weapon down into doomsday waving his cowboy hat and hallooing, would be the perfect choice for the colonel.
Delta Force ‘B’ Squadron shortly before Operation ‘Eagle Claw’. Those ringed, including, far left, Major Richard L. Bakke, were killed during the operation when their EC-130E (62-1809) was destroyed in a collision with US Navy RH-53D 158761 Sea Stallion.
Map showing the routes taken to and from ‘Desert One’ on 24 April 1980 when Operation ‘Eagle Claw’, a joint USAF/ USMC attempt to rescue 52 diplomats held captive at the US embassy in Tehran using Hercules aircraft and US Navy RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters flown by marine pilots, ended in disaster at Posht-i-Badam, a remote location in Iran.
‘On the morning of the mission, the men had assembled in a warehouse, where Major Jerry Boykin had offered a prayer. Tall and lean, with a long, dark beard, Boykin stood at a podium before a plug box where electrical wires intersected and formed a big cross on the wall. Behind him was a poster-sized sheet displaying photographs of the Americans held hostage. Boykin chose a passage from the first Book of Samuel: And David put his hand in his bag and took thence a stone and slang it and smote the Philistine in the forehead; that the stone sunk into his forehead and he fell on his face to the earth. So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone …
‘They had flown from Wadi Kena to Masirah, where they had hunkered in tents through a bright and broiling afternoon, fighting off large stinging flies and waiting impatiently for dusk. They would make a four-hour flight over the Gulf of Oman and across Iran to ‘Desert One’. The route had been calculated to exploit gaps in Iran’s coastal defences and to avoid passing over military bases and populated areas. Major Wayne Long, Delta’s intelligence officer, was at a console in the telecommunications plane with a National Security Agency linguist, who was monitoring Iranian telecommunications for any sign that the aircraft had been discovered and the mission compromised. None came.’
Not long after the lead Hercules departed Masirah, eight Sea Stallions left the Nimitz nearly sixty miles off the coast of Iran and moved out over the Gulf in order to make landfall shortly after sunset. They had been preceded by the EC-130 refuellers and the MC-130 Combat Talons carrying Delta Force, from Masirah.
‘Word of the successful helicopter launch - ’Eight off the deck’ - reached those in the lead plane as especially welcome news, because they had expected only seven. Earlier reports had indicated that the eighth was having mechanical problems. Eight widened the margin of error.
‘As the lead plane pushed on into Iran, Major Bucky Burruss, Beckwith’s deputy, was on the second C-130, sprawled on a mattress near the front of the plane. Burruss was still somewhat startled to find himself on the actual mission; although there was still no telling if they were really going to go through with it. One thing President Carter had insisted on was the option of calling off the raid right up to the last minute: right before they were to storm the embassy walls. To make sure they could get real-time instructions from Washington, a satellite radio and relay system had been put in place at Wadi Kena.
‘As the lead plane closed in on the landing site, its pilots noted curious milky patches in the night sky. They flew through one that appeared to be just haze, not even substantial enough to interfere with the downward-looking radar. They approached a second one as they got closer to the landing site. John Carney, who had come into the cockpit to be ready to activate the landing lights he had buried on his trip weeks earlier, was asked, ‘What do you make of that stuff out there?’
‘He looked through the co-pilot’s window and answered, ‘You’re in a haboob.’
‘The men in the cockpit laughed at the word.
‘No, we’re flying through suspended dust,’ Carney explained. ‘The Iranians call it a haboob.’
‘He had learned this from the CIA pilots who had flown him in earlier. Shifting air pressure sometimes forced especially fine desert sand straight up thousands of feet, where it hung like a vertical cloud for hours. It was just a desert curiosity, nothing that could cause a problem for the planes. But Air Force Colonel James H. Kyle, whose responsibility included all airborne aspects of the mission, knew that the haboob would be trouble for a helicopter. He had noticed that the temperature inside the plane went up significantly when they passed through the first haboob. He conferred with the plane’s crew and suggested they break radio silence and call ‘Red Barn,’ the command centre at Wadi Kena, to warn the helicopter formation behind them. The chopper pilots might want to break formation or fly higher to avoid the stuff. It took the lead plane about thirty minutes to fly through this second patch, indicating that it extended about a hundred miles.
‘As the MC-130 approached the landing area, Carney activated his runway lights, but just then the newfangled FLIR (forward-looking infrared radar) detected something moving, which proved to be a truck hurtling along the dirt road that ran through the landing site. The pilots passed over the spot and then circled back around. On the second pass the stretch of desert was clear. They circled around for the third time and touched down -Logan Fitch was amazed by how smoothly. The plane coasted to a stop and when the back ramp was lowered, the Rangers roared off in the Jeep and on a motorcycle to give chase to the truck. Word that an American plane had landed in the desert, relayed promptly to the right people, could defeat the whole effort.
‘The hard-packed surface of three weeks prior was now coated with a layer of sand the consistency of baby powder - ankle-deep in some places - that accounted for the extraordinary softness of their landing. This fine sand made it more difficult to taxi the plane and the backwash from the propellers kicked up a serious dust storm.’
The landing however, resulted in substantial wing damage to the heavily loaded MC-130 but no one was hurt and it remained flyable. ‘Dragon 1’ 64-0565 captained by Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Brenci of the 8th SOS in off-loaded a USAF Combat Control Team (CCT) consisting of 120 Delta operators, twelve Rangers forming the roadblock team and fifteen Iranian and American Persian-speakers, most of whom would act as truck drivers.
‘Fitch followed with his men, walking down the ramp and stepping into a cauldron of noise and dust. His team had nothing to do at ‘Desert One’ except wait to offload camouflage netting and other equipment from the second C-130 when it arrived, then board helicopters for the short trip to the hiding places. The big plane’s propellers were still roaring and kicking up sand. Shielding his eyes with an upraised arm, Fitch turned to his right and was shocked to see, coming straight toward him, a bus! Literally out of nowhere. The odds that the plane would encounter one vehicle at midnight on such an isolated desert road were vanishingly small, but there it was, honouring an absolute law of military operations: the inevitability of the unexpected. This second vehicle was a big Mercedes passenger bus, piled high with luggage, lit up like midday inside and filled with more than forty astonished Iranian passengers.
‘Suddenly the night desert flashed as bright as daylight and shook with an explosion. In the near distance, a giant ball of flame rose high into the darkness. One of the Rangers had fired an anti-tank weapon at the fleeing truck, which turned out to have been loaded with fuel. It burned like a miniature sun.’
Shortly after midnight things grew louder and busier as the second and third MC-130s, using both runways roared in for a landing, right on schedule and discharged the remainder of the Delta operators.
‘As Burruss and his men came down the lowered ramp of their plane, they gaped at the ball of flame, the bus and the passengers sitting on the sand.
Welcome to World War Three!’ Fitch greeted them.
‘Desert One’ was now looking more like an airport and Carney’s men were busy directing traffic, preparing for the arrival of the helicopters. Within the hour, all three C-130 bladder planes were positioned and parked, along with the [EC-130E ABCCC Airborne Battlefield Command and Control Centre) aircraft] communications plane.’
‘Dragon 1’ and ‘2’ took off at 23:15 for Masirah to make room for the EC-130s and the RH-53Ds and to return to base to allow the crews to prepare for the second night operations.
‘The unloading had gone pretty much as planned, with one exception: the second MC-130 had landed a few thousand feet farther away from the landing zone than expected, so the job of transferring the camouflage netting from it to the choppers was correspondingly bigger. The netting would be draped over the helicopters at their hiding places at daylight. It was not an especially warm night in the desert, but all the men were overdressed in layers of clothing and they were sweating heavily with exertion. Moving through the loose sand made the task even more difficult. The Air Force crews struggled to unfurl hundreds of pounds of hoses from the parked tankers, for fuelling the choppers.
‘What is the status of the choppers?’ Beckwith asked over a secure satellite radio.
The helicopter pilots had been told to fly at or below 200 feet to avoid radar. This limitation caused them to run into a haboob that they could not fly over without breaking the 200 foot limit. They had never even been briefed on the existence of haboob conditions, or their effects on low-flying formations. Two helicopters lost sight of the task force and landed, out of action. Another had landed earlier when a warning light had come on. Their crew had been picked up but ‘Bluebeard 8’ the helicopter that had stopped to retrieve them was now twenty minutes behind the rest of the formation. Battling dust storms and heavy winds, the RH-53s continued to make their way to ‘Desert One’. After receiving word that the EC-130s and fuel had arrived, two of the Sea Stallions that had landed started up again and resumed their flight to the rendezvous. But then another helicopter had a malfunction and the pilot and Marine commander decided to turn back, halfway to the site. The task force was down to six helicopters, the bare minimum needed to pull off the rescue. However, less than two hours into the mission, ‘Bluebeard 2’ had an indicator light warn of a main rotor blade spar crack. This was often a false reading on RH-53Ds, but when the crew landed at ‘Desert One’ they decided to abandon the helicopter after inspecting the rotor blades. Six Sea Stallions had been deemed as the minimum number of helicopters needed for the mission and they were now down to five.
When Logan Fitch returned from rounding up the rest of his men, he was surprised to find that his second-in-command, Captain E. K. Smith, was still waiting with his squadron in the dust. Fitch told Smith to get the men on the helicopters.
‘The mission is an abort,’ Smith said.
‘The abort scenario, which they had rehearsed, called for Fitch and his men to board not the helicopters but one of the tankers. The choppers would fly back to the carrier and the planes would return to Masirah. Fitch told Smith to prepare the men to board the plane, but said they should wait until he returned.
‘When the decision to abort was relayed to Wadi Kena and to Washington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national-security adviser broke the news to Carter. Standing in a corridor between the Oval Office and the president’s study, Carter muttered, ‘Damn. Damn.’
‘He and Brzezinski were soon joined by a larger group of advisers, including Walter Mondale, Hamilton Jordan, Warren Christopher and Jody Powell. Standing behind his desk, his sleeves rolled up and hands on his hips, the president told them, ‘I’ve got some bad news … I had to abort the rescue mission … Two of our helicopters never reached ‘Desert One’. That left us six. The Delta team was boarding the six helicopters when they found out that one of them had a mechanical problem and couldn’t go on.’
‘At least there were no American casualties and no innocent Iranians hurt,’ Carter said.’
At ‘Desert One’ there was no time to dwell on the abort decision. Fuel consumption calculations had showed that the extra ninety minutes idling on the ground had made fuel critical for ‘Republic 4’. When it became clear that only six helicopters would arrive at ‘Desert One’ authorization was given for the EC-130Es to transfer 1,000 US gallons from the bladders to their own main fuel tanks, but ‘Republic 4’ had already expended all of its bladder fuel refuelling three of the helicopters and had none to transfer. To make it to the tanker refuelling track without running out of fuel, it had to leave immediately. Logan Fitch directed his men to board. They piled in on top of the nearly emptied fuel bladders, which rippled like a giant black water bed. Everyone was weary and disappointed. Delta officer Eric Haney stripped off his gear and his black field jacket, balling it up behind him to form a cushion against the hard metal angles of the plane’s inner wall. He and some of the other men wedged their weapons snugly between the bladder and the wall of the plane to keep them secure and out of the way. Some of the men immediately fell asleep.
‘We’re all set - let’s go,’ Fitch told the plane’s crew chief.
A RH-53D - ‘Bluebeard 3’ - that needed additional fuel required it to be moved to the opposite side of the road. To accomplish both actions, ‘Bluebeard 5’ had to be moved from directly behind EC-130E (ABCCC) 62-1809. The aircraft could not be moved by ground taxi and had to be moved by hover taxi (flying a short distance at low speed and altitude). Just behind their tanker, a USAF Combat Controller in goggles, one of Carney’s crew, appeared outside the cockpit of the RH-53 and informed Major Jim Schaefer, ‘Bluebeard 3’s pilot that he had to move his helicopter out of the way. Schaefer had refuelled behind that tanker and he now had enough fuel to fly back to the Nimitz, but first the C-130s needed to get off the ground. Schaefer lifted the front end of his Sea Stallion. His crew chief hopped out to straighten the nose wheels, which had been bent sideways when they landed. Straightened, they could be retracted so that they wouldn’t cause drag in flight. The crew chief climbed back in.
‘How much power do we have, Les?’ Schaefer asked Petty his co-pilot, performing his usual checklist.
‘Ninety-four percent,’ Petty said.
Schaefer lifted the helicopter to a hover at about fifteen feet and held it, kicking up an intense storm of dust that whipped around the Combat Controller on the ground. He was the only thing Schaefer could see below, a hazy black image in a cloud of brown, so Schaefer fixed on him as a point of reference. The Combat Controller attempted to direct the manoeuvre from in front of the helicopter, but was blasted by desert sand churned up by the rotor. To escape the cloud created by Schaefer’s rotors, the Combat Controller retreated toward the wing of the parked EC-130E. Concentrating on his own aircraft, Schaefer did not notice that his blurry reference point on the ground had moved. He kept the nose of his blinded helicopter pointed at the man below and as the combat controller moved, the Sea Stallion turned in the same direction, drifting to a point almost directly above the Hercules. Schaefer perceived that he was drifting backward and thus attempted to ‘correct’ this situation by applying forward stick in order to maintain the same distance from the rearward moving marshaller. Then Schaefer heard and felt a loud, strong, metallic whack! It sounded like someone had hit the side of his aircraft with a large aluminium bat. Others heard a cracking sound as loud as an explosion, but somehow sharper-edged, more piercing and particular, like the shearing impact of giant industrial tools. The Marine pilot’s main rotor had clipped the EC-130E’s vertical stabilizer and crashed into the wing root, metal violently smashing into metal in a wild spray of sparks. Instantly the helicopter lost all aerodynamics, was wrenched forward by the collision, its cushion of air whipped out from beneath and it fell with a grinding bang into the EC-130E’s cockpit, an impact so stunning that Schaefer briefly blacked out. Schaefer had just filled his tanks and the EC-130E still had fuel in the bladder in its rear and the sparks from the collision immediately ignited both of them with a powerful, lung-emptying thump that seemed to suck all the air out of the desert. A huge blue ball of fire formed around the front of the C-130 and a pillar of white flame rocketed 300 feet or more into the sky, turning the scene once more from night into day.
‘Charlie Beckwith pivoted the moment he felt and heard the crash and started running toward it. He pulled up short, a football field away, stopped by the intense heat and thought with despair of his men: Fitch’s entire troop, trapped.
‘Inside the EC-130, Fitch had felt the plane begin to shudder, as though the pilots were revving the engines for takeoff. The hold had no windows and he couldn’t tell if they were moving yet. Then he heard two loud, dull thunks. He thought maybe the nose gear or the landing gear had hit a rock, but when he looked toward the front of the aircraft he saw flames and sparks. He thought they were under attack. He had removed his rucksack and leaning against it was his weapon, an M203 grenade launcher. He grabbed it and stood, in a single motion. Beside him the plane’s load master, responding wordlessly to the same sight, pulled open the troop door on the port side of the plane. It revealed a solid wall of flame. Fitch helped the load master slam the door down and push the handle in to lock it. He and the men were perched on a thousand gallons of fuel and they appeared to be caught in an inferno.
‘Open the ramp!’ Fitch shouted, but lowering it revealed more flames. The plane was going to explode. It was an enormous bomb on a short fuse and the fuse was lit. The only other way out was the starboard troop door, which had been calmly opened by three of the plane’s crewmen. That way proved blessedly free of flames. Men started piling out of it before it was completely open.
‘Still inside, Sergeant Major Dave Cheney, a bull of a man with a big deep voice, kept shouting, ‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ as the men crowded toward the only escape. Flames were spreading fast along the roof, wrapping down the walls on both sides and igniting in each man a primitive flight instinct that none of them could control. One of the junior Air Force crewmen fell and was being trampled by fleeing Deltas when Technical Sergeant Ken Bancroft fought his way to the man, picked him up and carried him to the doorway and out. Cheney’s natural authority and clarity helped prevent an utterly mad scramble and kept the men in a steady flow out the door. They were used to filing out this way on parachute jumps, so the line moved fast. Still, it was torture for the men at the rear.
‘Ray Doyle, a load master on one of the other tankers, more than a hundred feet away, was knocked over by the force of the initial explosion. Jessie Rowe, a crewman on another tanker, felt his plane shake and the temperature of the air suddenly shoot up. Burruss saw the plane erupt as he stepped off the back of his C-130. He was carrying incendiary explosives down the ramp, to destroy the disabled Sea Stallion and the sight buckled him. He sat down and watched the tower of flame engulfing the plane, the downed chopper perched on top of it like a giant metal dragonfly, thinking, ‘Man, Fitch and his whole squadron gone, those poor bastards.’ But then he saw men running from the fireball. Pilots of the other craft quickly spread the word to their crews that they had not been attacked.
‘Haney was still inside the burning plane, near the end of the line of men trying to get out. He and those around him had been jarred alert by the noise and impact of the crash and Haney had seen blue sparks overhead toward the front. Then the galley door at the front of the plane blew in and flames blasted in behind it. ‘Haul ass!’ shouted the man next to him, leaping to his feet.
‘Captain E. K. Smith, who had dozed off right after boarding the plane, woke up to see men trying to gain their footing on the shifting surface of the fuel bladder and thought it was amusing - until he saw the flames. He and the men around him scrambled toward the door as best they could, fearing they would never outrace the flames. Ahead, men were jammed in the doorway. When Haney finally reached the door, he threw himself out, dropping down hard on the man who had jumped before him. They picked themselves up and ran until they were about fifty yards away. Then they turned to watch with horror.
‘Fitch felt it was his duty to stay in the plane until all the men were off, but it was hard. As the flames rapidly advanced, he realized that not everyone was going to make it. Instinct finally won out and both he and Cheney leaped out the door, falling when they hit the ground. Other men crashed on top of them. They helped one another up and over to where the others were now watching, brightly illuminated by the growing fire.
‘Fitch ran to what seemed a safe distance and then turned around, still assuming they were under attack and lifted his weapon. He looked for the enemy and saw instead the awesome and ugly sight: the chopper, its rotors still turning, had clearly crashed down on the front of the plane. It wasn’t an attack; it was an accident.
‘He saw two more men jump out - one of them Staff Sergeant Joe Beyers, the radio operator, whose flight suit was burning. Other men rushed to put out the flames and drag him clear. Then ammunition started ‘cooking off,’ all the grenades, missiles, explosives and rifle rounds on both aircraft, causing loud, cracking explosions and throwing flames and light. The Redeye missiles went off, drawing smoke trails high into the sky. Finally the fuel bladders ignited, sending a huge pillar of flame skyward in a loud explosion that buckled the fuselage. All four propellers dropped straight down into the sand and stuck there, as if somebody had planted them.
The eight USAF and USMC crewmembers killed on the failed attempt to release the Iranian hostages on 24 April 1980.
‘In the chopper, Schaefer at last came to. He was sitting crooked in his seat, the chopper was listing to one side and flames engulfed the cockpit.
‘What’s wrong, Les, what’s wrong?’ he asked, turning to his co-pilot. But Petty was already gone. He had jumped out the window on his side.
‘Schaefer shut down the engines and sat for a moment, certain he was about to die. Then, for some reason, an image came into his mind of his fiancée’s father - who had never seemed much impressed by his future son-in-law - commenting a few days hence on how the poor sap had been found roasted like a holiday turkey in the front seat of his aircraft. Something about that horrifying image motivated him. His body would not be found like a blackened Butterball; he had to at least try to escape. He ejected the window on his side and as fire closed over him, badly burning his face, he dropped hard to the ground and then ran from the erupting wreckage.
‘The exploding aircraft and ammo sent flaming bits of hot metal and debris spraying across the makeshift airport, riddling the four remaining working helicopters, whose crews jumped out and moved to a safe distance. Most of the men had no idea what was going on; they knew only that a plane and a chopper had been destroyed. The air over the scene was heavy with the door of fuel, so it wasn’t hard to imagine that all the other aircraft might burst into flames as well. The remaining C-130s began taxiing in different directions away from the conflagration.
MC-130E 64-0564 and ‘Dragon 2’ crew just before departing for Desert One.
‘Word of the calamity reached the command centre in Wadi Kena in a hurried report: ‘We have a crash. A helo crashed into one of the C-130s. We have some dead, some wounded and some trapped. The crash site is ablaze; ammunition is cooking off.’
‘The only course now was to clear out and fast. Some thought was given to retrieving the bodies of the dead, but the fire was raging and there wasn’t time... As Burruss headed back to his C-130, he took one last look at the flaming ruins of the plane and the chopper and felt a stab of remorse over leaving the dead behind. But nothing could be done about it.
‘America’s elite rescue force had lost eight servicemen - five of fourteen USAF aircrew in the EC-130 and three of the five USMC aircrew in the RH-53, with only the helicopter’s pilot and co-pilot (both badly burned) surviving as well as seven helicopters and a C-130 and had not even made contact with the enemy. It was a debacle. It defined the word ‘debacle.’3
During the frantic evacuation to the EC-130s by the helicopter crews, attempts were made to retrieve their classified mission documents and destroy the aircraft. The helicopter crews boarded the EC-130s. Five RH-53 aircraft were left behind mostly intact, some damaged by shrapnel. The EC-130s carried the remaining forces back to the intermediate airfield at Masirah Island, where two C-141 medical evacuation aircraft from the staging base at Wadi Abu Shihat, Egypt picked up the injured personnel, helicopter crews, Rangers and Delta Force members. The injured were then transported to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The White House announced the failed rescue operation at 1:00 am the following day. On 20 January 1981, minutes after Carter’s term ended, the 52 US captives held in Iran were released, ending the 444-day Iran hostage crisis.
Former ‘Heavy Chain’ and ‘Desert One’ veteran 64-0564 crashed into the ocean shortly after a pre-dawn takeoff from NAS Cubi Point, Philippines on 26 February 1981, killing fifteen passengers and eight of nine crewmen. The Talon was taking part in Special Warfare Exercise 81 and had flown twelve missions in the preceding sixteen days. Following an administrative flight the day before, the crew was scheduled for its last mission, a night exercise that was set back from 0100 local time to 0430. The flight profile consisted of a normal takeoff, a tactical landing a half hour later to onload fifteen Navy SEALs, followed by a tactical takeoff. The Talon reported normal flight conditions six minutes after the tactical takeoff, but crashed nine minutes later. No cause was determined, but investigators found that the likely causes were either crew fatigue from operations tempo, or failure of the terrain following radar to enter ‘override’ mode while over water.
Within two weeks of the failure of Operation ‘Eagle Claw’ the Pentagon began planning for a second mission. A new organization, the Joint Test Directorate (JTD), was established to assist and support the Office of Secretary of Defense Directorate (OSD) joint planning staff. Under the name ‘Honey Badger’, the JTD conducted a series of large-scale joint-force exercises and projects to develop and validate a variety of capabilities that would be available to OSD when mission requirements were identified. JTD trained a large and diverse force of US Army and USAF special operations and aviation units, but the critical factor remained extracting the rescue team and freed hostages from Tehran. The ‘Credible Sport’ project, a joint undertaking of the USAF, US Navy and Lockheed-Georgia was created within ‘Honey Badger’ to develop a reliable extraction capability. ‘Credible Sport’ was tasked to create a large ‘Super STOL’ fixed-wing aircraft to extract the rescue team and hostages and overcome the ‘weak link’ in the previous plan, the heavy lift helicopter.
‘Credible Sport’ called for a modified C-130 to land in the Amjadien Stadium across the street from the US Embassy in Tehran and airlift out Delta Force operators and the rescued hostages. The aircraft would then be flown to and landed on an aircraft carrier for immediate medical treatment of an expected fifty wounded.
‘Armi’ Armitage the Lockheed test pilot said: ‘The hostages were daily marched around the soccer field near the American Embassy and we were given advance notice of when the hostages would be at the field on a given day by one of the many Iranians who were still friendly to the US. The planes were equipped with flares, a radar altimeter and even a laser altimeter that looked ahead at the landing aim point to give a precise slant altitude above the touchdown point. A computer was to control the firing of the rockets. If the retrorockets fired before they were on the ground, they were dead. A test was scheduled for three days before the planned mission date in October. If the test were successful, the mission would be a GO.’
Three MC-130 Combat Talon crews (all ‘Eagle Claw’ veterans) were assigned to fly the three aircraft, drawn from the 463rd Tactical Airlift Wing, with the concept plan calling for the mission of two aircraft (one primary and one spare) to originate in the US reaching Iran by five in flight refuellings and penetrate at low altitude in the dark to evade Iranian air defences. Three C-130s were modified under a top secret project at Eglin Air Force Base Auxiliary Field #1 (Wagner Field), Florida. The contract called for two to be modified to the proposed XFC-130H configuration within 90 days and the third to be used as a test bed for various rocket packages blistered onto the forward and aft fuselage, which theoretically enabled the aircraft to land and take off within the sports arena’s confines. (A fourth aircraft, an EC-130 ABCCC, was used as the interior mock-up airframe for simulator training.)
After Lockheed was requested on 27 June 1980 to begin preliminary engineering studies on an STOL Hercules, the use of JATO units was explored, since these had previously been used to power takeoffs. Lockheed reported on 16 July that 58 JATO bottles (more than seven times greater than normal) would be required and that arresting gear would be insufficient to stop the C-130 in the required space. The US Navy’s Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake organization was then brought into the project to provide expertise on existing rocket motor power. Lockheed proceeded with work to structurally reinforce the C-130 airframe to withstand rocket forces and to develop a passenger restraint system for 150 persons.
The resulting XFC-130H aircraft were modified by the installation of thirty rockets in multiple sets: eight forward-pointed ASROC rocket motors mounted around the forward fuselage to stop the aircraft, eight downwardpointed Shrike rockets fuselage-mounted above the wheel wells to brake its descent, eight rearwardpointed MK-56 rockets (from the RIM-66 Standard missile) mounted on the lower rear fuselage for takeoff assist, two Shrikes mounted in pairs on wing pylons to correct yaw during takeoff transition and two ASROCs mounted at the rear of the tail to prevent it from striking the ground from over-rotation.
Other STOL features included a dorsal and two ventral fins on the rear fuselage, double-slotted flaps and extended ailerons, a new radome, a tail hook for landing aboard an aircraft carrier and Combat Talon avionics, including a Terrain Following/Terrain Avoidance radar, a defensive countermeasures suite and a Doppler radar/GPS tie-in to the aircraft’s inertial navigation system.
The test bed aircraft (74-2065) was ready for its first test flight on 18 September 1980, just three weeks after the project’s initiation. The first fully modified aircraft (74-1683) was delivered on 17 October to TAB 1 (Wagner Field/Eglin AF No. 1), a disused auxiliary airfield at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. Between 19 October and 28 October, numerous flights were made testing various aspects, including the double-slotted flaps system, which enabled the C-130 to fly at 85 knots on final approach at a very steep eight-degree glide slope. All aspects worked flawlessly and a full profile test was scheduled for 29 October.
The test’s takeoff phase was executed flawlessly, setting a number of short takeoff records. ‘Armi’ Armitage and the Lockheed test crew then assessed that the computer used to command the firing of the rockets during the landing sequence needed further calibration and elected to manually input commands. The reversemounted (forward-facing) eight ASROC rockets for decelerating the aircraft’s forward speed were situated in pairs on the fuselage’s upper curvature behind the cockpit and at the midpoint of each side of the fuselage beneath the uppers. Testing had determined that the upper pairs, fired sequentially, could be ignited while still airborne (specifically, at 20 feet), but that the lower pairs could only be fired after the aircraft was on the ground, with the descent-braking rockets also firing during the sequence.
The flight engineer, blinded by the firing of the upper deceleration rockets, thought the aircraft was on the runway and fired the lower set early. The descent-braking rockets didn’t fire at all. Later unofficial disclaimers allegedly made by some of the Lockheed test crew’s members asserted that the lower rockets fired themselves through an undetermined computer or electrical malfunction, which at the same time failed to fire the descentbraking rockets. As a result, the aircraft’s forward flight was immediately reduced to nearly zero, dropping it hard to the runway and breaking the starboard wing between the third and fourth engines. During rollout, the trailing wing ignited a fire, but a medical evacuation helicopter dispersed the flame and crash response teams extinguished the fire within eight seconds of the aircraft stopping, enabling the crew to safely exit the aircraft. 74-1683 was dismantled and buried onsite for security reasons, but most of its unique systems were salvaged.
74-1686 was nearly ready for delivery, but when on 2 November 1980 the Iranian parliament accepted an Algerian plan for release of the hostages, followed two days later by Ronald Reagan’s election as the US President, the rescue mission plan was cancelled. The hostages were subsequently released concurrent with Reagan’s inauguration in January 1981.
The remaining airframes were stripped of their rocket modifications and 74-2065 returned to regular airlift duties. 74-1686, however, retained its other ‘Credible Sport’ STOL modifications and was sent to Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. There, in July 1981 it was designated YMC-130H as the test bed for the MC-130 Combat Talon II’s development, under Project ‘Credible Sport II’. Phase I was conducted between 24 August-11 November 1981 to test minor modifications to improve aerodynamics, satisfy ‘Combat Talon II’ prototype requirements on STOL performance, handling characteristics and avionics and to establish safety margins. It also identified design deficiencies in the airframe and determined that the ‘Credible Sport’ configuration was suitable only for its specific mission and didn’t have the safety margins necessary for peacetime operations. Phase II testing which began on 15 June 1982 and continued until October determined that the final configuration resulted in significant improvements in design, avionics and equipment and that the ‘Combat Talon II’ design was ready for production. The 1st Special Operations Wing attempted to have the test bed transferred to operational duty as an interim ‘Combat Talon II’ until production models became available, but Headquarters, Tactical Airlift Command disagreed. The cost of returning the YMC-130H to stock airlift configuration was more than its value and it never flew again.4
The forlorn wreckage of EC-130E (ABCCC) 62-1809 which was destroyed in the collision with US Navy RH-53D 158761 Sea Stallion at ‘Desert One’.
The 1990 invasion of Kuwait by Iraq resulted in the deployment of four Combat Talons and six crews of the 8th SOS in August 1990 to King Fahd International Airport in Saudi Arabia as a component of Operation ‘Desert Shield’. During Operation ‘Desert Storm’, the combat phase of the Gulf War in January and February 1991, the Combat Talon performed one-third of all airdrops during the campaign and participated in psychological operations, flying 15 leaflet-drop missions before and throughout the war. Combat Talon crews also conducted five BLU-82B ‘Daisy Cutter’ missions during the two weeks preceding the onset of the ground campaign, dropping eleven bombs on Iraqi positions at night from altitudes between 16,000 feet and 21,000 feet, once in concert with a bombardment by the battleship USS Wisconsin.
Two 7th SOS Talons deployed to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, as part of Operation ‘Proven Force’. They supported the first Joint Search and Rescue mission over Iraq, attempting to recover the crew of ‘Corvette 03’, a downed F-15E Strike Eagle. However permission from the Turkish government to fly the mission was delayed for 24 hours and the crew was not recovered.
Three MC-130H Combat Talon IIs of the 7th SOS were deployed in December 1995 to deliver peacekeeping forces to Tuzla and Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as part of Operation Joint Endeavour, during which one Talon was hit by ground fire. The first combat deployment of a Combat Talon II was on April 8, 1996, during Operation ‘Assured Response’. Special operations forces were deployed to Liberia to assist in the evacuation of 2000 civilians from the American embassy when the country broke down into civil war. However orders to combat drop an eighteenman SEAL team off Monrovia were rescinded and the mission landed in Sierra Leone. Similar circumstances brought the Combat Talon II to Zaire in 1997. Talon II deployments for joint exercises in 1997 included Australia, Guam, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand. In July 1997 three Talon IIs deployed to Thailand as part of Operation ‘Bevel Edge’, a proposed rescue of 1000 American citizens trapped in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, by a possible civil war, but the crisis ended when the Cambodian government allowed all non-citizens who desired so to leave by commercial air. A 7th SOS Combat Talon II aircrew, Whiskey 05, earned the Mackay Trophy for an embassy evacuation mission in the Republic of the Congo in June 1997. The crew rescued thirty Americans and twenty-six foreign nationals and logged twenty-one hours of flight time.
The wreckage of EC-130E (ABCCC) 62-1809 with one of the abandoned RH-53D helicopters behind in the aftermath of Operation ‘Eagle Claw’ at Posht-i-Bada.
Full operational capability for the ‘Talon II’ was reached in February 2000. At that time 24 MC-130Hs were deployed to four squadrons: 15th Special Operations Squadron, eleven at Hurlburt Field, Florida; 1st Special Operations Squadron, five at Kadena AB, Okinawa; 7th Special Operations Squadron, five at RAF Mildenhall; and 550th Special Operations Squadron, three at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico.
On the night of 19/20 October 2001 four Combat Talon IIs infiltrated a task force of 199 Rangers of the 3rd Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment and tactical PSYOP teams 658 miles inside Taliban-held Afghanistan. The force dropped onto Objective ‘Rhino’, an unused airfield in Kandahar Province 110 mi southwest of Kandahar, to secure a landing zone as a temporary operating base for Special Forces units conducting raids in the vicinity. A month later, two MC-130Hs, flying from Masirah Island, inserted a platoon of US ‘ Navy SEAL Team Three and four Humvee vehicles to within ten miles of the same airfield on the night of 20/21 November. The SEAL platoon was inserted to establish an observation post at the airstrip and then assist two USAF combat controllers inserted by military free fall in preparing a landing zone for the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The 15th MEU landed in CH-53 helicopters on 25 November 2001 and established Camp ‘Rhino’, the first forward operating base in Afghanistan for US forces.
Combat Talon IIs of the 7th SOS, augmented by crews from the 15th and 550th SOSs, flew 13-to 15-hour airdrop and airlanding night resupply missions from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey to Special Forces Operational Detachments - Alpha (ODAs) in Afghanistan during the opening phase of Operation ‘Enduring Freedom’ in December 2001. Operating in mountainous terrain they innovated an airdrop tactic by replicating maximum-effort landing techniques to rapidly descend from 10,000 feet to 500 feet AGL to ensure accurate gravity drops after clearing high ridgelines into deep valleys.
Combat Shadow 66-0213 was lost when it flew into a mountain side in eastern Afghanistan on 13 February 2002. Assigned to the 9th SOS, the aircraft was called to perform on call refuelling for CSAR assets. The aircraft was forced to make an emergency climb in poor visibility to escape a box canyon in the mountainous terrain, ran out of climb performance and crash landed wheels up in deep snow. The aircraft was a total loss but the crew of eight survived. Combat Talon II 84-0475, assigned to the 15th SOS, was lost in a takeoff crash on 12 June 2002, near Gardez, Afghanistan. During a night exfiltration mission of two Special Forces soldiers from a landing strip at the Sardeh Band dam, the Talon crashed less than three miles from the airstrip shortly after takeoff. Conflicting reports point to overweight cargo and windshear as possible causes. The Talon’s two loadmasters and a passenger were killed.
Combat Talon II 90-0161of the 15th SOS crashed into Monte Perucho, south of Caguas, Puerto Rico, during a training mission on 7 August 2002, killing all ten aboard. The Talon was flying a terrain following night mission in blowing rain and fog, along a low level route commonly used by the Puerto Rico Air National Guard. The crew misinterpreted and disregarded terrain obstacle warnings.
A Combat Talon II of the 7th SOS (87-0127 ‘Wrath 11’) crashed during a terrain-followingand-avoidance night training exercise on 31 March 2005, near Rovie, in the Drizez Mountains in southeast Albania, 60 miles southeast of Tirana. The Talon had taken off from Tirana-Rinas Airport 20 minutes before and was one of two flying at 300 feet AGL at a reduced power setting. The aircraft was lost when it stalled attempting to clear terrain, killing all nine crew members.
The 7th SOS, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Mark B. Alsid and part of the 352nd Special Operations Group, received the Gallant Unit Citation in 2006 for operations conducted during Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ between 12 February and 12 May 2003. The 7th SOS was tasked to Joint Special Operations Task Force - North, known as Task Force ‘Viking’, whose objective was to hold 13 Iraqi Army divisions along the ‘Green Line’ in north-eastern Iraq to prevent those divisions from reinforcing other Iraqi operations against United States forces invading from Kuwait. Forward-based at Constanţa, Romania its primary mission was to infiltrate the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the Army’s 10th Special Forces Group and the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Special Forces Group into Kurdish-held territory in preparation for Operation Northern Delay. Denied permission by Turkey to fly into Iraq from its airspace, the 7th SOS flew the first 280 troops on a circuitous path around Turkey to a base in Jordan on March 20–21, 2003. On March 22, six Combat Talon IIs (four from the 7th SOS) infiltrated 16 ODAs, four ODBs, battalion command elements and Air Force Combat Control Teams to complete the fifteen-hour mission, the longest in US ‘ Special Operations history. The insertion profile consisted of a four and one-half hour low level flight at night through western and northern Iraq to Bashur and Sulaymaniyah airfields, often taking heavy ground fire from the integrated air defences. The Talon IIs, at emergency gross weight limits, operated blackedout, employed chaff and electronic countermeasures, flew as low as 100 feet AGL and carried their troops tethered to the floor of the cargo holds. Three of the Talons were battledamaged, with one forced to seek permission to land at Incirlik Air Base. The operation became known informally as ‘Operation Ugly Baby’. Major Jason L. Hanover was individually honoured for commanding a mission that seized two austere airstrips during the operation. After airlanding their troops, the Talon IIs then had to fly back through the alerted defences to recover to their launching point.
Overflight permission was granted by Turkey on 23 March and the Combat Talon IIs delivered fifty ODAs into Iraq. The Talon IIs then resupplied Task Force Viking, assisted in operations to capture Kirkuk and Mosul, airlanded supplies at remote outposts using Internal Airlift Slingable Container Units (ISUs) and acted as pathfinders for conventional C-130 airlift missions.
The MC-130W ‘Combat Spear’ or ‘Combat Wombat’ to give its unofficial name, performs clandestine or low visibility missions into denied areas to provide aerial refuelling to SOF helicopters or to air drop small SOF teams and supply bundles. The first of twelve MC-130Ws (87-9286) was presented to Air Force Special Operations Command on 28 June 2006. The aircraft was developed to supplement the MC-130 Combat Talon and Combat Shadow forces as an interim measure after several training accidents and contingency losses in supporting the Global War on Terrorism. The programme modified C-130H-2 airframes from the 1987-1990 production run, acquired from airlift units in the AFRes Command and Air National Guard. Use of the H-2 airframe allowed installation of SOF systems already configured for Combat Talons without expensive and time-consuming development that would be required of new production C-130J aircraft, reducing the flyaway cost of the Spear to $60 million per aircraft. The Combat Spears, however, do not have a Terrain Following/Terrain Avoidance capability.
EC-130E 62-1818 which was one of the Hercules used on the ill-fated ‘Eagle Claw’ operation on 24 April 1980, pictured here on its return to Hurlburt Field.
A standard system of special forces avionics equips the MC-130W: a fully integrated Global Positioning System and Inertial Navigation System, an AN/APN-241 Low Power Colour weather/navigation radar; interior and exterior NVG-compatible lighting; advanced threat detection and automated countermeasures, including active infrared countermeasures as well as chaff and flares; upgraded communication suites, including dual satellite communications using data burst transmission to make trackback difficult; aerial refuelling capability; and the ability to act as an aerial tanker for helicopters and CV-22 Osprey aircraft using Mk 32B-902E refuelling pods.
The MC-130Ws are assigned to the 73rd Special Operations Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico, with all twelve to be operational by 2010. Initially nicknamed the ‘Whiskey’ (NATO phonetic for the ‘W’ modifier), the MC-130W was officially dubbed the ‘Combat Spear’ in May 2007 to honour the historical legacy of the Combat Talons in Việtnam.
Beginning in 1997 studies of the vulnerability of the non-stealthy MC-130 force reflected concerns about its viability in modern high-threat environments, including the prevalence of manportable air-defence systems (‘MANPADs’) in asymmetric conflicts. At least two studies were conducted or proposed to explore the prospect of a replacement aircraft (known variously as ‘MC-X’ or ‘M-X’), with USAF at that time hoping for an Initial Operating Capability date of 2018. One analyst questioned the survivability of slow nonstealthy platforms such as the MC-130 in future threat environments in a 2007 presentation to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and stated his opinion that development of a stealthy replacement for the MC-130 is a ‘strategic priority’. The US ‘ Department of Defence’s 2006 Quadrennial Defence Review Report also recognized the concern, asserting DoD’s intention to ‘enhance capabilities to support SOF insertion and extraction into denied areas from strategic distances.’
Despite these concerns, the USAF decided to proceed with modernization of the current force. The Air Force has stated it desires 37 MC-130Js to replace its MC-130Es and MC-130Ps, which are forty or more years old. Based on the KC-130J tanker operated by the USMC, the new MC-130J has added features for both combat search and rescue and special operations missions. The HC-130J and MC-130J both use the KC-130J tanker as a baseline, but with major modifications to the Block 6.5 KC-130J. The MC-130J adds an Enhanced Service Life Wing, an Enhanced Cargo Handling System, a Universal Aerial Refuelling Receptacle Slipway Installation (UARRSI) boom refuelling receptacle, more powerful electrical generators, an electro-optical/infrared sensor, a combat systems operator station on the flight deck, provisions for the Large Aircraft Infrared Countermeasures System and armour.
Production of the first MC-130J aircraft was started at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Marietta, Georgia on 5 October 2009. Lockheed Martin will build an MC-130J tanker version for Air Force Special Operations Command on its standard C-130J production line. The MC-130J is the first C-130 specifically built for special operations, making it lighter and more efficient. Most special operations aircraft are modified after production to accommodate special operations missions. The MC-130J was initially dubbed the ‘Combat Shadow II’ in honour of the aging MC-130P platform that it was expected to replace but has now officially been named the Commando II.
The Air Force Special Operations Training Centre has begun the MC-130J training programme in conjunction with the 193rd Special Operations Wing, using any of the unit’s four EC-130J ‘Commando Solo’ aircraft to form what will become the training regimen for MC-130J aircrew members. The MC-130J has a five-member crew, a major reduction in size from the standard eightmember MC-130P ‘Combat Shadow’ crew, thus requiring additional coordination among crew members. The MC-130J will begin replacing aging MC-130E Combat Talon I and MC-130P Combat Shadow aircraft after a period of testing and evaluation. The Commando II will fly clandestine, low-level aerial refuelling missions as well as infiltration, exfiltration and resupply missions. Eventually the 415th Special Operations Squadron, a unit of the 58th Operations Group, will become the main training unit for both MC-130J and HC-130J operations.
Within two weeks of the failure of Operation ‘Eagle Claw’ ‘Credible Sport’ was tasked to create a large ‘Super STOL’ fixed-wing aircraft fitted with ASROC units to extract the rescue team and hostages but when on 2 November 1980 the Iranian parliament accepted an Algerian plan for release of the hostages, followed two days later by Ronald Reagan’s election as the US President, the rescue mission plan was cancelled.
The 522nd Special Operations Squadron is the first to operate the MC-130J Commando II. It is expected to achieve Initial Operational Capability in 2012. The first MC-130J (09-6207) undertook its first test flight on 22 April 2011. The 522nd Special Operations Squadron received its first MC-130J in late September 2011. A total of 37 MC-130J aircraft are planned, which will eventually replace all other MC-130 variants.
In 2013 the 7th SOS transitioned from the MC-130H to the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey.
1 The eight RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters had been stowed on the hangar deck of the Nimitz to keep them away from the prying eyes of Iranian patrol aircraft as well as Soviet reconnaissance satellites. The helicopters had accidentally been sprayed with corrosive flame retardant (which had been quickly washed off), then seawater when a small fire broke out in the hangar and maintenance had been delayed until the last minute.
2 In a 24 June 2012 talk.
3 Mark Bowden is an Atlantic national correspondent. His most recent book is The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden.
4 In 1988 74-1686 was placed on display at the Museum of Aviation at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, Georgia. As of February 2008, the other surviving Credible Sport aircraft, 74-2065, was assigned to the 317th Airlift Group, 15th Expeditionary Mobility Task Force, at Dyess Air Force Base, Texas in grey scheme with blue tail band.