A desperate mission to rescue 53 American hostages from Iran ended in failure and the deaths of eight servicemen, but it is being remembered 25 years later as a turning point for U.S. special forces that eventually led to successes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and elsewhere.
Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force veterans of Operation Eagle Claw, families of those who lost their lives and a support group are gathering this weekend for an anniversary reunion and remembrance in the Florida Panhandle.
Air Force Maj. Harold L. Lewis Jr., of Mansfield, Conn., was among those killed during the fateful mission.
Mere failure turned into fiery disaster when a helicopter collided with a transport plane at Desert One, a desolate rendezvous spot in Iran, after mechanical and weather problems already had aborted the mission.
What happened on April 25, 1980, shocked the Pentagon and Congress into building up special forces that conduct clandestine missions and practice small-scale warfare against terrorists and guerillas.
“The U.S. got better prepared to deal with terrorism quicker because of Desert One,” retired Air Force Col. Roland Guidry said in recent interview.
He was a squadron commander in the lead plane at Desert One and later served as chief of air operations for the U.S. Special Operations Command, now headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa.
Organizational, logistical and equipment flaws coupled with interservice rivalry contributed to Eagle Claw’s failure, but the audacious rescue plan and training that went into it still are paying dividends.
“There’s a lot of missions that are occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan we don’t know anything about, but they’re using some of the same tactics and procedures we developed,” Guidry said.
Guidry, 65, now a Destin real estate broker, will be the principle speaker at an Eagle Claw symposium Monday, the mission’s anniversary date, at Hurlburt Field near Fort Walton Beach.
Hurlburt is headquarters for the Air Force Special Operations Command, and it was the home base of five airmen who died at Desert One. Three Marines also perished.
On Sunday night, the Tampa-based Special Operations Warrior Foundation will hold a 25th anniversary dinner and remembrance in Fort Walton Beach. The foundation was founded in the wake of Desert One to provide college scholarships for children of special operators killed or disabled in the line of duty.
Since then, it has awarded grants to about 530 children of more than 440 special operations personnel who have given their lives. That includes 17 children of the eight men killed at Desert One and one airman who was disabled there.
Former third-party presidential candidate and billionaire Ross Perot, one of the foundation’s first contributors, also will receive its “Spirit of the Warrior” award Sunday.
Jody Powell, then-President Jimmy Carter’s press secretary, will be master of ceremonies. Carter’s inability to free the hostages was an issue in his 1980 re-election defeat.
The crisis began Nov. 4, 1979, when a mob seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. One hostage was freed because of illness after the rescue attempt. The other 52 were released as President Ronald Reagan was being inaugurated in 1981.
Eagle Claw was aborted after mechanical problems disabled two of eight Navy and Marine Corps helicopters and a third turned back in the face of a dust storm. The five remaining helicopters were one short of the minimum needed to continue.
Six Air Force transports had flown in Army Delta Force troops and fuel for the helicopters, which then were supposed to take the soldiers to a clandestine staging area near Tehran. The mission never got that far.
After the abort order, one helicopter tried to leave Desert One in a cloud of dust but crashed into a parked C-130 cargo plane loaded with 44 Delta troops.
“We didn’t hear anything. We just felt sort of a jar,” said retired Air Force Staff Sgt. J.J. Beyers, a radio operator in the C-130’s cockpit where five other airmen died. “We thought we might have been shelled or something. It never occurred to us what happened.”
Beyers, 62, who lives near Hurlburt in Niceville, climbed down a ladder into the cargo hold where something hit him and knocked him out.
“I woke up and the cargo compartment was empty,” he said.
A door on the right side appeared to be five miles away, Beyers said.
“I was saying to myself “I’m dead,”‘ he recalled. “Then I looked up again and the door looked like it was just an arm’s length away. I said, “Hell, I’m not going to die in this godforsaken place.”‘
Beyers was on fire when he got out. Soldiers rolled him on the ground to put out the flames. He suffered severe burns on both hands, his arms and his buttocks and was forced to retire.
The transports had taken off from Misirah, an island off Oman. When they returned, British airfield workers sent over two cases of cold beer.
One case had a message scrawled on it. That piece of cardboard is displayed in a frame at Hurlburt. It reads:
“To you all from us all for having the guts to try.”
—
On the Web:
Special Operations Warrior Foundation: http://www.specialops.org
AP-ES-04-23-05 1704EDT
Comments are no longer available on this story