Operation Eagle Claw

General information

Planned as Operation Rice Bowl, the operation was designed as a complex two-night mission. The first stage of the mission involved establishing a small staging site inside Iran itself, near the Tabas in the Yazd Province (formerly in the south of the Khorasan province) of Iran. The site, known as Desert One, was to be used as a temporary airstrip for the C-130 Hercules transport planes and RH-53 Sea Stallion minesweeper helicopters which would undertake the actual rescue operation. After refueling the helicopters the ground troops should board the helicopter and fly to Desert Two near Tehran. After locating and extracting the hostages from Tehran, the rescue would be transported by helicopter to Manzariyeh Air Base outside of Tehran, where C-130 transports would evacuate them out of the country under the protection of fighter aircraft.

A combination of equipment failure and unforeseen low-level sandstorms caused the mission to be aborted, but only after men and equipment had been assembled at Desert One. After the helicopters had refueled, one drifted into a C-130 while lifting off. In the ensuing explosion and fire, eight servicemen lost their lives; five USAF aircrew in the C-130, and three USMC aircrew in the MH-53. During the evacuation, five MH-53 helicopters were left behind, intact, containing plans which identified CIA agents within Iran.

Anecdotal information relayed from special forces personnel suggest a different version of events took place. According to one special forces member, the Iranians had been tipped off of the impending rescue attempt and were waiting for the US forces. Groundfire is alleged to have been the cause of the aircraft losses - it is noted that this accounts for the large number of bullet holes found in the returning aircraft that have been officially attributed to ordnance touched off by the conflagration from other burning aircraft. That the US personnel evacuation was done in hostile conditions helps explain why so much sensitive information was left behind.

Wounded personnel, mostly with heavy burns, arrived to Incirlik airbase at Adana - Turkey with a C-130, straight from Desert One. This shows that the original plan was to leave Iranian airspace over Turkey, which is nearer to Iran.

Critics have argued that the mission had been bound to fail anyway, both due to being over-complex and because the hostages that were to be rescued had been scattered in various 'safe houses', which the provided forces would not have been able to find and secure in time. Not long after the failure of the mission, the Iranian Embassy Siege happened in London.

The failure of the various services to work together with cohesion forced the establishment of a new multi-service organization. The concept of USSOCOM was born and finally established; and placed into operation in the 1988-1989 time period. Each service subsequently now has its own Special Operations Forces under the overall control of USSOCOM. For example, the Army has its own Army Special Operations Command (ASOC) that controls the Army Special Operations Forces (ARSOF).

It is also plausible that the large number of the various services of the USA's armed forces involved in the operation compromised the secrecy of the mission. An embarrassing internal audit of the secrecy failure would similarly call for a more consolidated approach to planning operations of this nature.

A second rescue mission was planned under the name Operation Credible Sport (also known as Operation Honey Badger) but was never put into action.

The hostages were released after 444 days of captivity on January 20, 1981; the day that President Ronald Reagan assumed his office. In the May 2006 issue of The Atlantic, journalist Mark Bowden provided a lengthy account of the failed mission.

Units involved in the operation (incomplete)

• USS Nimitz (CVN-68) & MarDet (Marine Detachment); and Battle Group
• USS Coral Sea (CV-43) & MarDet; and Battle Group
• 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force)
• 75th Ranger Regiment (U.S. Army Rangers)
• U.S. Army Special Forces (Green Berets)
• USS Okinawa (LPH-3), 31st Marine Amphibious Unit, Battalion Landing Team 3/3, and HMM 165 (see numerous Navy and Marine Corps deployment reports)
• USAF 1st Special Operations Wing, 8th and 16th Special Operations Squadrons (AC-130/MC-130), USAF RED HORSE and numerous support organizations
• USAF 1st Combat Communication Group

External links

• [1] The first part of a series of articles on Kuro5hin entitled Modern Warfare: Special Operations, Operation Eagle Claw.
• [2] A pictorial overview.
• [3] Airman magazine's interviews with surviving participants.

References

1. USAF College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education. Air & Power Course: Operation Eagle Claw. United States of America: US Air Force.
2. Personal account of the mission and Iranian history related to the Iran Hostage Crisis. [4]
3. Olausson, Lars, Lockheed Hercules Production List 1954-2005, Såtenäs, Sweden, annually.
4. Kyle, Colonel James H., USAF (Ret.), "The Guts to Try", Orion Books, New York, 1990, ISBN 0-517-57714-3.de:Operation Eagle Claw