Operation Eagle Claw: The Desert One Collision and the Road to SOCOM

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By April 1980, 52 Americans had been held hostage in Tehran since November 1979, and the CIA warned President Jimmy Carter that Iraq might soon invade Iran. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski pushed for a rescue, while Secretary of State Cyrus Vance warned it would get the hostages killed. With Vance away in Florida, Carter approved the mission on April 11, and Vance resigned. The plan joined the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and CIA: eight RH-53D helicopters would fly 600 miles from the USS Nimitz to a salt flat called Desert One, refuel from C-130s, carry Delta Force and Rangers to a hide site called Desert Two, and stage a raid on the embassy and Foreign Ministry with extraction through a soccer stadium and a captured air base. Weeks before, CIA pilot Major John Carney landed at Desert One, tested the soil and planted infrared landing lights, and an embassy cook described where the hostages slept.

On April 24, 1980, a bus carrying 43 Iranian civilians drove into the landing zone, and Rangers fired an anti-tank rocket at a fuel smuggler's tanker, lighting up the site. One helicopter was abandoned with a suspected cracked rotor blade, another turned back after losing its instruments in a haboob, and a third arrived with failed hydraulics, leaving five, below the minimum of six. After Carter aborted, a helicopter hover-taxiing in self-made dust drifted into an EC-130, and the fire killed eight servicemen. Five intact helicopters were left behind with classified papers. The Holloway Report faulted compartmentalized planning and split command, leading to U.S. Special Operations Command and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

• Delta Force commander Colonel Charlie Beckwith refused to shrink his assault team to fit five helicopters.
• The pilot of Bluebeard 3 lost his horizon as the ground guide backed away from flying sand, and he pushed forward into the transport plane.
• Iranian jets fired on the abandoned helicopters and killed a Revolutionary Guard commander on the ground.
• Ayatollah Khomeini credited the wind and sand as agents of God for stopping the mission.
• The hostages were released minutes after Ronald Reagan's inauguration on January 20, 1981.