The Iranian Hostage Crisis and Rescue Attempt

Coach Carney’s two years of hard work with Brand X soon paid off. At the beginning of 1979, Iran was in the midst of an Islamic revolution. After his 37 years of rule—characterized by many Iranians as secular, immoral, and repressive—growing instability in Iran led Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to flee to Egypt. Soon after, two million cheering Iranians welcomed the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, returning from exile, to become the country’s new ruler.

In late October, President Jimmy Carter decided to allow the shah to enter the United States for medical treatment, and on 4 November 1979, Khomeini-inspired radicals stormed the US embassy in Tehran, taking some 60 US citizens hostage. The resulting hostage crisis preoccupied Carter. As then-White House chief of staff, Hamilton Jordan, described, “There were two White Houses,” he recalled, “one working on the hostages, the other working on everything else.” The crisis served as the backdrop for a dramatic rescue attempt resulting in tragedy at a desolate Iranian desert site and helped end Carter’s chances for a second term.

Much ink has been spilled over the mission but little has been written on the role of the MAC CCT at Desert One.

Within days of the embassy’s seizure, an ad hoc joint task force (JTF) began forming in the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s (JCS) Special Operations Division. Maj Gen James Vaught, a highly decorated Army officer, commanded the task force, while his deputy, Col James Kyle, USAF, possessed a wealth of experience in special operations C-130s. Beckwith, the ground force commander, expected his elite counterterrorist force to enter the embassy and rescue the hostages. Planners added Navy RH-53D minesweeping helicopters to provide airlift for both the counterterrorist ground force and the hostages.

In another iteration of the long-running Army–Air Force controversy over combat control, in the rescue’s early planning the Rangers were tasked to handle CCT-type duties. After one mistake-ridden exercise, Maj Gen Philip C. Gast, USAF, declared unequivocally a phrase with long-term consequences: “Airmanship will be handled by airmen.” That point proved to be a recurring challenge, but, from then on Carney’s Brand X team trained with the JTF to provide air traffic control and remote landing zone navigational systems as well as lighting and marshaling of the aircraft in the desert.

Many authors addressing the hostage rescue attempt have mentioned the term “compartmentalization,” the practice of denying information to those without a specific need-to-know, including the participants in an operation. Combat controller Rex Wollmann’s experience verified that aspect of the operation.

In the winter of 1979–80, he was a young staff sergeant assigned to the 1st Special Operations Wing’s CCT at Hurlburt and received a call from Carney, whom he had never met. The major asked him to bring a wet cell battery for a tactical aid to navigation (TACAN) for an exercise in Yuma, Arizona.

Wollmann recalled,

“It was basically, hey, you’re coming here, bring this battery to help support us. I actually brought the wrong [battery] because I didn’t understand him, but it worked out anyway as far as what we were doing. And that’s when I started seeing everything kind of tying in together. Even though I wasn’t briefed on what was going on... I think at that time I realized that this [was] for a bigger purpose than just training aircrew.”

Wollmann became a frequent participant in the exercises, and after one scenario, he cornered Colonel Kyle, the JTF deputy commander and the Air Force component commander, and said, “I know what’s going on... and if this thing’s going to go, I want in!” Kyle remained noncommittal, and it was some time before Wollmann was designated a participant in the operation.

There were five-and-a-half months between the seizure of the embassy compound and personnel and the execution of the rescue operation. One reason for the delay was that the JTF had to be ready to conduct the mission as best it could if the Iranians started executing the hostages. That gave the task force a short-term perspective on training.

There were also several occasions when diplomatic initiatives appeared close to bringing the hostages home. Each time that happened, the JTF lowered its expectations for the approval of the rescue mission. That was the case when higher headquarters directed the task force to stand down for two weeks for Christmas as in normal peacetime training.

Combat controller Koren quoted another member of the task force who put it this way: “We didn’t have five months to get ready one time. We had one month to get ready five times.”

The final, approved plan was complicated and required some 40 hours over two nights from start to finish. On the first night, six C-130s (three MC-130 Talons and three EC-130E aircraft) were to fly from Masirah Island, Oman, into Iran and land at a semiprepared site (Desert One) well southeast of Tehran; eight US Navy RH-53s—piloted mostly by Marine aviators—were to launch from the deck of the USS Nimitz and land at Desert One.

The helicopters would refuel, after which the C-130s would return to Masirah; the helicopters would then airlift Beckwith’s ground force to a hide site about 50 miles from Tehran. There, US agents would meet the troopers and lead them on foot to a remote hilly area where they would hunker down for the day. Meanwhile, the helicopters would fly another 50 miles to a remote hideout where they were to remain camouflaged during the upcoming daylight hours.

The JTF planned to monitor communications throughout the day to determine whether or not the rescue force had been detected. On the second night, assuming all had gone well, MC-130s and AC-130s were to launch from Wadi Kena, Egypt, to secure the Iranian airfield at Manzariyeh, south of the US embassy, and provide close air support in the Tehran vicinity, respectively. Two C-141s were to fly into Manzariyeh to await the arrival of the ground rescue force and the hostages. The Starlifters were to evacuate the rescuers and the hostages and provide medical care as needed.

Meanwhile, the agents were to load Beckwith’s men into several vehicles and drive them into Tehran for the assault on the embassy. Once Beckwith gave the signal to begin the attack, an AC-130 was to position itself overhead and the RH-53s would fly to the soccer stadium to receive the rescued hostages and take them to Manzariyeh. There, abandoning the H-53s, the C-141s were to evacuate the hostages, ground force, and helicopter crews out of Iran.

Figure 4.4. CCT members, Operation Eagle Claw (aka Desert One). Left to right: Mitch Bryan, John Koren, Mike Lampe, Bud Gonzalez, Dick West, John “Coach” Carney (on bike), Bill Sink, Rex Wollmann, and Doug Cohee.

In 1973, Bryan, Koren, and Lampe had served together at Udorn, Thailand. Six enlisted combat controllers and Carney expected to enter Iran. Mike Lampe, Koren, and Gonzalez had the marshaling duties on the North landing zone (LZ) of Desert One, where three of the six C-130s and six of the eight RH-53s were to land. On the South LZ, West and Wollmann were to place the TACAN next to the dirt road and marshal the other three C-130s and the remaining two helicopters. Carney and Bryan, collocated with Colonel Kyle, had the job of establishing the control point next to the TACAN and handling the air traffic control duties from there.

Two other combat controllers, Bill Sink and Doug Cohee, were to remain at Masirah to support the JTF, and they were not happy about it.

When Carney’s team arrived at Wadi Kena on 20 April 1980, operational details remained to be worked out. Prior to a covert reconnaissance mission several weeks earlier—during which Carney was flown into Desert One—all planning had been based on a single LZ. The reconnaissance mission, flown in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Twin Otter, was piloted by Jim Rhyne, who had worked with Mike Lampe on Project 404 in Laos.

Carney had one hour on the ground to take soil samples and emplace newly devised, remotely activated lights in the traditional “box-and-one” pattern that were to guide the first Talon to a safe landing. If caught by the Iranians, his cover story was that he was a geologist and had gotten lost—definitely not a story that Carney was anxious to test. Returning safely with Iranian soil and without having to resort to any fabrications, Carney was confident that a dual runway operation was feasible. But it could not be practiced in the final rehearsal on 11 April.

The road next to where he had buried the “pop-on” light-emitting diodes (LED) separated the two LZs.

Koren summarized the CCT’s role at Desert One: “The biggest thing... was laying out runways, parking the aircraft [for refueling], and getting the TACAN up and running—which was a fairly heavy piece of equipment and emitted a lot of power.” To assist in moving up and down the LZs, the team had acquired two motorcycles—an innovation later adopted by the Rangers—and part of their time at Wadi Kena was spent practicing with their Kawasaki bikes.

Finally, the mission was a “go.” Departing from Masirah Island at dusk on 24 April, Carney’s seven-man CCT flew into Desert One on the lead Talon, piloted by Bob Brenci. Two other Talons and three EC-130s followed, along with the eight RH-53 helicopters. En route, Brenci’s crew encountered large areas of powdery, suspended dust associated with distant thunderstorms. Known as a haboob—Arabic for “strong wind”—the condition had not been forecast and proved harrowing for the helicopters.

Four hours after takeoff and nearing Desert One, Brenci’s MC-130 finally passed through the haboob. The night air was now crystal clear and the weather perfect at the landing site. Undoubtedly, one of the tensest moments for the CCT was when Bryan activated the LED lights that Carney had planted in the ground nearly four weeks earlier.

Kyle described those moments:

“We were now five miles from the desert landing zone (LZ), and Mitch flipped the switches that would activate the lights. Would they work? They’d been out there at the mercy of the elements for almost a month. All eyes were straining to catch a glimpse of them... ‘There they are! Off to the right!’ It was Carney. A cheer went up and John was on the receiving end of some good-natured back-slapping and kidding about his ‘Flash Gordon’ device.”

Within minutes of Brenci’s landing, two unsettling interruptions took place.

First, an Iranian tour bus drove into the middle of the site. Beckwith had planned for such a possibility, but its occurrence at the start of ground operations must have tightened a few stomach muscles. Ground force members exited the aircraft, stopped the bus, and secured its terrified driver and more than 40 passengers. Wollmann recalled that he and West were so intent on carrying the TACAN off the Talon’s ramp that they didn’t even see the bus until they were almost the only ones left standing there. “When we saw the bus,” Wollmann said, “it was... oh, we shouldn’t be doing this just yet.”

Only a few minutes later, a fuel truck followed by a small pickup rumbled down the same road. A ground force member fired a warning shot that the driver ignored, after which the ground force fired on the truck with one or more light antitank weapons. The truck burst into flames—ruining the night vision of everyone in the area—but the driver managed to jump out and escape in the second vehicle.

Kyle asked Beckwith what to make of the situation. Beckwith quipped, “Let’s don’t get excited until we get eight or ten vehicles in here and have to establish a parking lot.” Shrewdly, he surmised that the fuel truck was part of a smuggling operation and that the driver was unlikely to report anything to Iranian authorities. In any case, the driver had neither seen the Talon nor heard American voices.

In the meantime, the CCT set up both landing strips, north and south of the road, using basically a “compass-and-pacing” technique, turned on the lights, and was ready for the rest of the force to arrive. The mission continued.

It was no easy task to assist in the landing and parking of aircraft under the conditions at Desert One. “Once somebody landed we had to marshal them into their parking position because this was not a definable area,” Koren said. “We only had the box-and-one, coupled with the obscuration with the dust and the sand, we had to... hand marshal... with our night-vision marshaling wands into parking positions.”

The controllers aimed for only 20 feet of separation between C-130 wingtips and the rotor sweep of the H-53s, largely because of the limited length of the EC-130s’ fuel bladder hoses needed to refuel the helicopters. “And that’s very close, at nighttime under night vision goggles [NVG] in a dust environment in a combat zone,” Koren added.

Although the lead Talon had perhaps the most challenging landing, the nearest occurrence to a mishap upon the landing probably involved Hal Lewis’s EC-130.

After Brenci’s arrival on the South LZ, Marty Jubelt’s Talon was the next to set down, landing on the North LZ. Three minutes later, Steve Fleming landed his MC-130 on the southern strip. Lewis was next on the North side, piloting the first of the three tankers. Working on the northern strip, Lampe described the scene: “We’re moving like molasses in January in the sand, with our rucksacks and our weapons... we’ve got a bike [motorcycle] that’s pretty much useless to us in the soft sand, so... we’re doing everything on foot.” The sand slowed the CCT and the ground force members as they off-loaded equipment from Jubelt’s Talon.

“I keep looking at my watch, knowing the time [for aircraft landing] sequence. I didn’t know if Mitch [Bryan] was giving [Lewis] a go-around... I’m... realizing the next aircraft is supposed to land in this LZ [and] is probably just turning final... So I keep trying to call Mitch, I can’t get a hold of him,” Lampe continued. Finally, Lampe decided to move Jubelt on his own. “I could see the... Delta guys were still off-loading and so I finally made a decision and... got the aircraft’s attention,” he said. Turning around with his marshaling wands, Lampe moved as quickly as he could to get Jubelt’s aircraft away from the LZ. As Jubelt’s Talon turned out of the way, Lewis’s aircraft came right past him. “I just made an independent decision to move that aircraft at that time based on knowing what the time sequence of the next landing was, and I’m glad I did,” Lampe said.

Russ Tharp and Jerry Uttaro piloted the last two EC-130s. Tharp’s landing meant there were five C-130s on the ground. It was time to launch Brenci and Jubelt on their return to Masirah to make room for Uttaro and the inbound helicopters. As soon as the dust settled from Tharp’s touchdown, the CCT marshaled Brenci into position and launched him from the South LZ, followed by Jubelt on the North LZ. Uttaro’s landing a few minutes later placed two EC-130s on the northern strip with one tanker and the remaining Talon to the south.

Following the arrival of the C-130s, Lampe, Koren, and Gonzalez established the standard “Y-lighting pattern” in preparation for the helicopters’ arrival. Two of the original eight helicopters failed to arrive at Desert One, one abandoned by its crew in the desert with a blade warning light. The second crew that aborted returned to the USS Nimitz with multiple instrument and navigational system failures. That left six helicopters, the absolute minimum required to complete the mission. Arriving late, at different times and from different directions, the six remaining RH-53s had separated under the near zero visibility conditions created by the unexpected haboob.

Approaching the haboob, one of the helicopter pilots described it as “a wall of talcum powder.” When the first helicopter finally touched down, its rotor downwash kicked up sand and debris that knocked out one of Lampe’s NVG lenses and one of Gonzalez’s as well. The two worked together slowly and carefully to get the H-53 parked. When all six had landed, four were positioned to the north behind two of the EC-130s (Lewis and Uttaro); the remaining two were parked to the south behind the third tanker (Tharp). The mission, although well behind schedule, continued to that point.

But en route, “Helo-2” had lost one of its hydraulics systems, creating a serious flight control situation. The pilot had continued to the landing site in hopes the condition might be rectified on the ground. It could not, which reduced the helicopter force to five. Much earlier, leadership had decided that six helicopters were required to complete the mission. The on-scene leadership quickly conferred and agreed they now faced an abort situation. That decision was relayed to the JTF commander and the White House. With a heavy heart, President Carter accepted the decision of his field commanders. The force faced a withdrawal from the Iranian desert, and at that point, disaster struck.

On the north side, Hal Lewis’s tanker was so short on fuel that he needed to launch immediately to make it back to Masirah, but Helo-3 and Helo-4 were parked behind him. Lewis could not move until they were out of the way. Helo-3, unable to ground taxi, picked up to a hover and encountered a brownout—a serious reduction in the pilot’s visibility that obscures outside visual references necessary for aircraft control. The pilot drifted sideways into the left side of the tanker, resulting in a tremendous explosion and casualties.

Of the several environmental factors that challenged the CCT at Desert One—the darkness of a NVG landing zone, the temperature hovering around 90 degrees, and the bone-rattling noise from C-130 and H-53 engines that made communications extremely difficult—the ever-present dust may have been the worst. Wollmann described it as powdery, so fine that just walking through it created dust clouds. Koren added, “It was very hot. We didn’t have much of a crosswind, we had a lot of suspended dust... it was not a nice place.”

The C-130 propellers and H-53 rotors only made the dust situation worse, so visibility was extremely limited. Operating with just one NVG lens each, Lampe and Gonzalez probably had less than 50 feet of visibility—and that with only one eye. Published works on Operation Eagle Claw suggested the CCT erred in two specific actions in the desert. In Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America’s War Against Terrorism, the authors stated that Maj James Schaefer, the pilot of the helicopter involved in the collision, “lifted off and turned 10 degrees to the left, keeping his eyes fixed on the sergeant [the CCT marshaler]... But the sergeant backed away from the 100-mile-per-hour blast of Schaefer’s rotors. What Schaefer thought was a stationary object was now moving: Schaefer believed he was drifting left when in fact the sergeant was moving right.”

So readers were led to believe the marshaler was partially responsible for the tragic mishap. This scenario’s problem was that as soon as the RH-53 lifted off, the ever-present dust that plagued every movement of men and machines at the site that night engulfed it. Even if the pilot expected to use his marshaler as a hover reference, he could not have kept “his eyes fixed on the sergeant” after lifting into a hover and thereby creating a dust storm with the powerful downwash of the rotors.

The second action was the CCT’s retrieval of the LED lights during the evacuation following the mishap. “When the CCT removed the runway lights and replaced them with chem-lites, they did not realize that the pilots could not see the dimmer [chem-lites] that outlined the runway,” retired Air Force colonel and Talon pilot Jerry L. Thigpen wrote. As a result, when Russ Tharp and Steve Fleming started their takeoff runs from the South LZ, each rammed his C-130 into the roughly three-foot-high sand berm marking the road, leading their passengers and crews to wonder if they were going to make it. “A catastrophe was avoided thanks to the durability of the tough C-130 aircraft and the superior flying skills of their crews,” Thigpen continued.

While Thigpen’s words were correct, they left the reader with a wrong impression of the CCT’s role. In The Guts to Try, retired colonel Kyle wrote that after locating John Carney in the aftermath of the helicopter/C-130 crash, he directed Carney to “make sure you have all your runway lighting and navigation gear collected.” Carney did so. If the CCT was at fault, the Air Force component commander who directed the retrieval shared the responsibility.

The single CCT action that Carney regretted appears not to have been addressed. In an interview, he stated, “The only thing I can think of is that nobody should have left that control point, and that’s what I told combat controllers day in and day out after that. You don’t leave that control point. You stay there, and that’s where everything is controlled from. Every decision that goes on at that airfield is made from that control point... You never let that happen again.” Carney was referring to the fact that he allowed Mitch Bryan to leave the control point to deal with a radio problem just prior to the decision to reposition Helo-3. The outcome of any different course of action, though, is unknown.

Several of the CCT experienced the explosion from close quarters. Lampe, positioned near Lewis’s tanker at the time, said that he turned his back to avoid the rotor downwash. The next thing he remembered was the heat and “huge fireball from the explosion” that almost knocked him down. Lampe felt that the egress training the operators practiced at places like Yuma, Arizona, and Indian Springs, Nevada, was partly responsible for enabling them to get out of the burning C-130 as well as they did. It was perhaps remarkable that no operator or crewmember remained trapped inside the cargo compartment of Lewis’s aircraft.

Indeed, two operators saved Lewis’s radio operator, Joseph Beyers, when they reentered the burning aircraft and pulled him out. Several others caught in the cargo section suffered burns but survived. Tragically, five crewmembers trapped inside the EC-130’s cabin perished, as did three of the crew of Helo-3.

Following the explosion, the seven CCT members, working with the C-130 loadmasters, distributed and loaded the passengers on the remaining three C-130s and accounted for all personnel. Kyle was adamant that after all that had gone wrong that night, the JTF was not going to leave someone behind. Minutes later, Uttaro’s EC-130, the last aircraft on the ground at Desert One, departed. The last two men to board were Kyle, then Carney.

The events that unfolded in the Iranian desert on the night of 24–25 April 1980 were marked indelibly in the minds and hearts of all participants. The “miracle” on ice that a dedicated team of Americans had pulled off in February at the Winter Olympics was not to be repeated by another equally dedicated team in April in the Iranian desert. “It was a national mission and we let the country down,” one CCT member recalled. Another said, “You had America’s best out there, and it didn’t work.” A third felt “a whole lot of disappointment, disappointment in a lot of ways,” coupled with uncertainty over the fate of the hostages once the Iranians realized what had taken place.

Despite mission failure, Operation Eagle Claw served as a catalyst. First, for the United States, the event signaled the undeniable need to rebuild the nation’s special operations capabilities—a work that began with the establishment of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), far more appreciated since 11 September 2001. The loss of eight special operators that night—five Airmen, three Marines—and one who remained incapacitated left 17 young children in need of educational assistance. In response, SOF advocates established the Bull Simons Award to provide for the children’s education. In 1998, Simons award officials joined with another SOF-oriented fund to form the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which Carney led for the next 15 years. Hundreds of children of SOF warriors lost in operations or training have benefited from the foundation’s work. Among the college graduates was the son of Air Force captain Hal Lewis, who perished at Desert One.

But there was little time for dwelling on the failure in the desert. Within two weeks, planning at the Pentagon resumed for a possible second rescue attempt. Any second try was going to be even more difficult and costly than the first, as the Iranians immediately dispersed the hostages to discourage that very thing. A large training program known as Honey Badger took place throughout the summer and fall of 1980. The program was intended to develop specific capabilities, such as airfield seizures, but was not tied to any particular scenario for Iran. Still, many operators from the April raid, including CCT members, participated in Honey Badger. Combat controller John Koren called the program’s training “very intense.” The newly formed JTF achieved a milestone in late July at Reese AFB, Texas, when it conducted the first successful dual-runway seizure. From 9–16 October, Carney’s CCT participated in another combined exercise that included Delta Force and Rangers and utilized fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. In late November Exercise Storm Cloud—the final JTF exercise—took place.

One of the most unexpected decisions during this period stemmed from the helicopter-related failures in the Iranian desert. In May 1980, the Air Staff diverted nine HH-53H Pave Low helicopters from MAC to the Tactical Air Command. The Pave Lows, under development for a decade, had been slated to enhance MAC’s combat rescue capability. Instead, they formed the backbone of the Air Force’s SOF rotary wing force for almost the next three decades. The sudden decision also signaled the beginning of a lengthy period of decline in the status and capabilities of Air Force “Air Rescue,” a trend that affected the evolving special tactics community to some degree as well.

Fortunately, a second rescue try was not required. The Iranians feared president-elect Ronald W. Reagan, who shortly after his election referred to them as “barbarians” for their harsh treatment of the hostages, stating he “did not bargain with such people.” Taking no chances, on 20 January 1981—the day of Reagan’s inauguration—the Iranians released the remaining 52 US hostages. Not only was Carter denied a second term in the White House, in part because of the prolonged hostage crisis, he was also denied the opportunity to welcome the Americans home while still serving as the president of the United States.