The failed 1980 U.S. attempt to rescue the
hostages in Iran was apparently due to
problems with the helicopters.
They lacked adequate sand filters, (or
something to that effect) causing some to
malfunction. Consequently, there weren’t
enough choppers remaining to complete the
mission.
Arggghhh!! All that planning & work for nothing!!
Assuming the above is reasonable accurate:
Had there been no sandstorm, or if the
choppers had been correctly geared…
Could the mission have succeeded?
I saw that show last night too. To answer your question, no. It was too complicated a mission for the military at that time. Jimmy Carter was cutting costs of the military drastacally at that time. Lack of training can be more catastrophic than lack of proper equipment. To practice for the mission is not enough if the base skills are not all there. I think the lack of proper filters was just an excuse for failure. I place the blame on Jimmy Carter himself.
We are having the same problems now with ‘Bubba’ in office. Pilots of all types are leaving the service because of the crap they have to put up with for less and less. Less training and flight time, not just pay. Count computer and electronics technicians also. Why would you work for peanuts when private industry is paying more and more because of a shortage of qualied workers.
I remember at least one chopper having to put down because of the sand, but wasn’t the real scrub point when one of the choppers crashed into one of the C-130s at Desert One?
The main problem was the pandering to interservice rivalry that demanded that the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines all had prominent roles in the operation. At that time they were not so good at communicating between themselves, with different protocols and communication systems etc.
Coincidentally, one of my mother’s cousins was on that Marine helicopter and died when they crashed into the Air Force C130 (I was still fairly young and had only met him a few times).
There’s a memorial to the failed “Eagle Claw”/“Blue Light” operation at Arlington Cemetery, off alongside the Challenger pedestal.
I read a good book that was published about 15 yearss ago, called Secret Armies. It was a reporter’s book-length article on special operations forces around the world, and covered every force and important operation (entebbe, Princess’ Gate, Eagle Claw…).
IIRC, one of the choppers crashed into a transport full of men, burning them all to death when a fuel bladder, literally a big balloon full of gas for refueling, went off. The interservice rivalry aspect was also heavily documented in the book. Also, I believe that the men did a minimum of training together: each service trained its own men, then threw them together for the final operation.
[[I saw that show last night too. To answer your question, no. It was too complicated a mission for the military at that time. Jimmy Carter was cutting costs of the military drastacally at that time. Lack of training can be more catastrophic than lack of proper equipment. To practice for the mission is not enough if the base skills are not all there. I think the lack of proper filters was just an excuse for failure. I place the blame on Jimmy Carter himself.
We are having the same problems now with ‘Bubba’ in office. Pilots of all types are leaving the service because of the crap they have to put up with for less and less. Less training and flight time, not just pay. Count computer and electronics technicians also. Why would you work for peanuts when private industry is paying more and more because of a shortage of qualied workers.]] DW3
“Jimmy Carter? He’s history’s greatest monster!”
Personally, I think all conservatives should be glad that Clinton was elected. By 1992, it was getting increasingly difficult to blame everything that was wrong in American politics on a man that had been out of office for twelve years. Now if Bush gets elected in 2000, all of our nation’s problems can be attributed to the legacy of the Clinton years.
I am not going to do it. Yaaag yes I am. I am here in another helicopter debate.
I was in the service during the rescue attempt.
I was a helicopter crewman at the time.
The reason the rescue attempt failed was the selection of the wrong birds. Navy seasprite helicoptors were used. These aircraft were designed to fly over water and limited land. Primarily they were carrier aircraft, ill suited for the task. Oddly enough minor modifications could have been made to the choppers making them as land worthy as the next.
The common opinion among my at crew the time was, the mission was intended to fail. Only an idiot would send his bird over a desert without a particle separator on the intake.
Of course, anyone with any sense also knows the desert is a harsh environment for a turbine, separator or not. Carter was slashing the military budget and we did feel it. Parts were hard to come by and the 200 dollar toilet seat had yet to surface.
As to whether the people on the aircraft could have pulled off the mission? I say yes. Special forces troops are a special breed that don’t like to take no for an answer. It is a shame that they had to die in a “Class A mishap”. My condolences to their families.
U.S. Military Spending
Year current$ 1996$ %GDP %budget
1975 86.5 242.0 5.7 26
1976 89.6 234.0 5.3 24.1
1977 97.2 232.7 5.1 23.8
1978 104.5 233.2 4.8 22.8
1979 116.3 237.4 4.8 23.1
1980 134.0 246.2 5.1 22.7
Source: http://www.lepcnet.org/ombwatch/natsecur/mstable.html
(Derived from Budget of the United States Government, FY97; Statistical Abstract of the U.S., 1995)
Current$ are in billions, unadjusted for inflation. 1996$ are also in billions, adjusted for inflation.
I hope the above table puts to rest the notion that Carter “slashed” defense spending. Remember that the 1980 budget figure was a Carter budget; the 1975 and 1976 budgets were Gerald Ford’s. So the 1974 Congress and Gerald Ford brought spending down to the mid-230 billions (constant dollars), and Carter and Congress maintained it there until 1980.
I suppose it was international pressures toward the end of Carter’s administration that made him and/or Congress want more spending, whereas the end of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam several years earlier had allowed reductions in the budget.
Aww, man! My table looks louzy! I have this nice easy non-proportional font in the “Your Reply” window, which gets all nasty and complicated (albeit a lot better-looking) when the reply appears on the board.
At least the link worked. From there you can get to a decent looking table of these data, which will prove that deep down, Carter was a sabre-rattling brasshat. Will, maybe not.
Military spending has never fluctuated all that much since 1975 or so. The highest it ever got was 303 billion under Reagan, and right now even after the ‘peace dividend’ cutbacks it’s still at 250 billion. However, this doesn’t mean that some areas weren’t cut heavily at the expense of others.
I’ve heard some of the blame for the failure of the mission being levelled at micromanagement by the White House. I’ve heard that Carter had to approve every aspect of the mission as it happened, leading to timing errors and confusion.
While we’re laying blame and entertaining conspiracies: Wasn’t Ollie North part of that mission? Can you say: “plot to discredit President Carter?”
Of course the real reason those helicopters crashed was because Al Gore, Jesse Jackson, and Vince Foster acting in their real identities as KGB agents shot them down with surface-to-air missiles they had acquired during their service with the Vietcong.