Operation Eagle Claw - Execution of The Mission

Execution of The Mission

Only the delivery of the rescue force, equipment and fuel by the MC-130E Combat Talons (call signs Dragon 1 to 3) and EC-130Es (Republic 4 to 6), all flown by Combat Talon crews, went according to plan. The special operations transports took off from their staging base at Masirah Island near Oman and were refueled in-flight by KC-135 tankers just off the coast of Iran.

Dragon 1 landed at 22:45 local time after the hidden lights were activated. The landing was made under blacked-out conditions using the same improvised infrared landing light system as that installed by Carney on the airstrip, visible only through night vision goggles. The heavily loaded Dragon 1 required four passes to determine that there were no obstructions on the airstrip and that it could squeeze into its small confines. The landing resulted in substantial wing damage to the Talon that later required it be rebuilt "from the ground up", but no one was hurt and the Talon remained flyable. Dragon 1 off-loaded Kyle, a USAF combat control team (CCT) led by Carney, Beckwith and part of his 120 Delta operators, 12 Rangers of a roadblock team, and 15 Iranian and American Persian-speakers, most of whom would act as truck drivers. The CCT immediately established a parallel landing zone north of the dirt road and set out TACAN beacons to guide the helicopters. The second and third MC-130s landed and discharged the remainder of the Delta Force operators, after which Dragon 1 and 2 took off at 23:15 to make room for the EC-130s and the eight RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopters (Bluebeard 1 to 8).

Bluebeard 6 was grounded and abandoned in the desert when its Marine pilots interpreted a sensor indication as a cracked rotor blade. Its crew was picked up by Bluebeard 8. Then, the remaining helicopters ran into an unexpected weather phenomenon known as a haboob (fine particles of sand suspended to a milky consistency in the air following dissipation of a thunderstorm). Bluebeard 5 flew into the haboob, but abandoned the mission and returned to the Nimitz when erratic flight control instrumentation made navigating without visual reference points impossible, just 25 minutes from clear air. The scattered formation reached Desert One, 50 to 90 minutes behind schedule. Bluebeard 2 arrived at Desert One with a malfunctioning second-stage hydraulics system (which powers the number-one automatic flight control system and a portion of the primary flight controls) leaving one hydraulics system to control the aircraft. (Bluebeards 2 and 8, which were later abandoned, now serve with the Iranian Navy.)

Soon after the first crews landed and began securing Desert One, a tanker truck apparently smuggling fuel was blown up nearby by a shoulder-fired rocket as it tried to escape the site. The passenger in the tanker truck was killed, but the truck's driver managed to escape in an accompanying pickup truck; when the tanker truck was evaluated to be engaged in clandestine smuggling, the driver was not considered to pose a security threat to the mission. The resulting fire illuminated the nighttime landscape for many miles around, and actually provided a visual guide to Desert One for the disoriented and dehydrated incoming helicopter crews. A civilian Iranian bus with a driver and 43 passengers traveling on the same road, which served as the runway for the aircraft, was forced to halt at approximately the same time and detained aboard Republic 3.

With only five Sea Stallions remaining to transport the men and equipment to Desert Two, which Beckwith considered was the abort threshold for the mission, the various commanders reached a stalemate. Helicopter commander Seiffert refused to use Bluebeard 2 on the mission, while Beckwith refused to reduce the size of his rescue force. Beckwith failed to incorporate intelligence from a Canadian diplomatic source into a "bump plan"; additionally, he anticipated losing additional helicopters at later stages, especially as they were notorious for failing on cold starts and they were to be shut down for almost 24 hours at Desert Two. Kyle recommended to Vaught that the mission be aborted. The recommendation was passed on by satellite radio up to the President. After two and a half hours on the ground, the abort order was received.