Why the Rescue Failed
Glick, Stephen P. & Koehl, Stuart L.
"Why the Rescue Failed" Stuart L. Koehl & Stephen P. Glick There was more to Operation Eagle Claw's failure in the desert of Iran than Jimmy told us. When ignorance has gotten ten men...
...In addition, the training laid out by the planners was inadequate and unrealistic, considering the mission's requirements...
...Of course, in any commando raid, surprise is of the essence...
...The forces established under Project Blue Light were not intended, or trained, for commando operations...
...In the early 1950s the Israeli Army cleaned out its deadwood after a series of small but humiliating failures...
...Much of the timidity of American foreign policy can be u'aced to a lack of confidence in our military forces to carry out the missions assigned to them, while much of Soviet boldness is a result of their new operational confidence...
...Rather, they were to be a unique anti-terrorist squad to be used in hostage situations in the United States, or abroad when the local government was at least tacitly supporting the American position...
...All movements prior to the helicopter landings at the Embassy would take place in darkness, men and equipment hiding camouflaged by day, so that, there having been another layover at Darmavand on Friday, the raiders would not actually leave Iran until Saturday morning...
...And the chain of command was a bureaucrat's dream...
...For instance, it would have been impossible to retain secrecy or surprise for the duration of the mission, at least as the mission was planned...
...Instead, it is indicative of a decline in American military competence first noticed by some observers during the Vietnam war...
...and it called for a force of six large transport planes, eight helicopters, and more than a hundred men to remain inside a hostile country for more than 72 hours...
...Rather than hiding or forgetting our failure in the Iranian desert, we must take steps to root out its causes and correct our deficiencies...
...Perhaps most important, the leadership of Col...
...And most Americans came to believe that bad luck foiled a gallant attempt to save our fellow countrymen from a barbaric captivity...
...The rdmaining six helicopters and six C-130s arrived at Desert One...
...And he did not exhibit the independence and resolution which a commando leader must have...
...Presumably, the AWACS would coordinate air support over Teheran from the time Delta Force THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 23 assaulted the Embassy until it left Iranian airspace...
...Officers must become soldiers again, and men must be trained to fight effectively...
...More important, because they may be refueled in the air, the CH-53Es would need not have landed in the desert, which in turn suggests the possibility of a direct flight to Teheran from the Nimitz...
...Unlike the RH-53, they have armor, heavy armament, aerial refueling capability, and fully redundant systems...
...At this airstrip, code-named Desert One, these planes would be joined by eight RH-53 minesweeping helicopters from the carrier Nimitz, in the Gulf of Oman...
...Unfortun.ately, the men picked for the mission were as ill-suited as the equipment...
...Official White House and Department of Defense statements claimed that the mission was successful up to the point where it was cancelled, that a series of unfortunate events beyond human control were responsible for the failure...
...It is over-controlled and over-centralized...
...Taking wallets, credit cards, and personal letters into a mission sug24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1980 gests a lack of serious intent and a thorough ignorance of the rules of warfare...
...On Thursday evening, Delta Force would board the helicopters and fly to a second landing zone in the remote mountains near Darmavand, about 50 miles northeast of Teheran...
...After the collision he gave way to panic and immediately evacuated the landing zone, in effect allowing himseff to be stampeded out of Iran by fear of a handful of untrained-militiamen in Tabas...
...All of their training presupposed that they would have some control of the area surrounding a terrorist redoubt...
...our compatriots and the heroes who saved them...
...American officers today THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR .JULY 1980 25...
...In the interests of efficiency, .for instance, all the helicopter repair kits were prepacked and palletized, so that all the spare parts taken on the mission were on one helicopter--which, as we pointed out earlier, had to turn back...
...When ignorance has gotten ten men killed where it should have cost but two, is it not responsible for the blood of the other eight...
...Apparently, no one considered the effects of bad weather, or the possibility of running into the kind of sandstorm which contributed to the first two helicopter failures...
...And other rules were broken as well...
...Beckwith failed to maintain proper security at Desert One, which allowed the smugglers' jeep to escape...
...Throughout the raid, an E-3 AWACS aircraft would maintain command and control, monitoring Iranian airspace and maintaining direct communications between the carrier task force, Washington, and the mission commander...
...At this point a tanker truck towing a jeep blundered into Desert One...
...Operating far behind enemy lines, commandos are outnumbered and outgunned and must rely on surprise--open-mouthed, dumbfounded incredulitymto paralyze the enemy, if only temporarily...
...Having freed the captives, Delta Force would signal the helicopters, already en route from Darmavand, to land in the Embassy parking lot and soccer field...
...A militarily unsound plan was approved by high-ranking officers who wished to please the President and the Secretary of Defense rather than see American arms succeed...
...It is not a combat assault helicopter: It lacks power, armor, and armament...
...In retrospect, it was perhaps for the best that Eagle Claw failed when it did...
...Thus the Prussians were destroyed at Jena-Auersdidt in 1806, and the French in 1940...
...No doubt the Pentagon would have been quick to release the details of this miraculous feat, revealing the following operational plan: American agents, probably from the Southwest Asia Special Forces Group (Green Berets), would infiltrate Iran several days prior to the rescue attempt and assume positions to support the main force when it arrived...
...Along with Delta Force the planes would bring additional aviation fuel and refueling gear, and electronic equipment to jam Iranian radar and radio communications...
...On Thursday, a busload of Iranian civilians driving down the road running through Desert One were stopped and detained...
...Very often a nation's military reputation will outlive its prowess...
...it will need a complete overhaul of our military system, a massive reform...
...Beckwith now dropped everything, got his men on the remaining Cd30s, and took off, leaving behind the bodies of eight American servicemen, a small library of secret documents, five intact helicopters, and America's military reputation...
...There they would meet some of the Green Beret infiltrators, who would have acquired trucks from friendly Iranian sources in order to take Delta Force and its guides to a warehouse on the outskirts of Teheran...
...The helicopters' minesweeping apparatus would have been replaced with equipment more appropriate for Eagle Claw, such as armament and night vision devices...
...Napoleon Some time during the second week of April, President Carter, after nearly six months of "diplomatic appeals," reversed his position opposing the use of force to achieve the release of the American hostages in Iran...
...The illusion of competence survives until the first severe test...
...The evacuation of Desert One began at a frenzied pace...
...Of course, what happened was something much different from this...
...Repairing .the helicopter was impossible: All of the spare parts were aboard the helicopter which had returned to the Nimitz...
...America requires an armed force of formidable competence if it is to stand up to the dynamic, aggressive, and self-confident Red Army...
...Apparently he also allowed himself to be overruled by his superiors after the jeep incident...
...He obviously did not maintain adequate control over the evacuation...
...Is Eagle Claw merely an isolated incident, or is it indicative of greater flaws and potentially catastrophic failures in the American military...
...This last part of the plan obviously violates one of the cardinal rules of commando operations: fast in and fast out...
...It values efficiency more than effectiveness...
...On Thursday evening it was discovered that one of the remaining helicopters was unserviceable due to a hydraulic system failure...
...It is axiomatic that in war only the simple succeeds, but the mission plan for Eagle Claw was complex, maximizing the chances for confusion and mishaps...
...The effective method would have been to split up the parts among all the helicopters, with lots of redundancy...
...This in turn requires an understanding of the mission plan, the actual events, and the general principles governing this sort of commando operation...
...Awakening Friday morning, most Americans were horrified to discover that a secret rescue attempt had been aborted in the Iranian desert, thatmechanical failures had caused the cancellation, and that eight American servicemen were dead in an aircraft collision...
...Thanks to the miracle of modern telecommunications, which allows generals and even presidents to lead a battalion in combat without getting within 10,000 miles of the front, the operation's field commander, on whose daring and on-the-scene judgments the operation's success depends, apparently felt compelled to check back constantly with" higher authorities' before departing from the operation's plan...
...A less hypothetical error was in the selection of the men and equipment to be used in the raid...
...Certainly they would not have been able to negotiate the interior of the Embassy itself...
...A plan made by confident men would have been bold, risky, and successful...
...These are the combat assault cousins of the RH-53...
...This trend towards ineffectuality is marked by a decline in the standards of training for the enlisted men, and by the absolute corruption of the officer corps, not in pecuniary terms but in the more insidious abrogation of its military function...
...And given these generic inadequacies, of course, it did not help that the RH-53s used in the event itself had been poorly maintained: Of the 110 flight hours needed to keep the RH-53s fully operational between January and April, only 25 had been flown...
...When the sixth helicopter was discovered non-operational, he consulted his superiors rather than making the final decision himself...
...The American officer corps, for example, recognizes its deficiencies, at least at the subconscious level, and lacks any operational serf-confidence...
...Another helicopter suffered an electrical failure, which disabled its gyrocompass and navigation equipment and fored it to return to the Nimitz...
...The unit assembled for the raid would be code-named Delta Force...
...as field commander, the decision to scrub or go forward with the mission was his and his alone...
...Feeling that security was now compromised, somebody--whether Col...
...But given the nature of Eagle Claw, somewhere along the way Delta Force would inevitably have given the game away...
...Before the preparation for Eagle Claw, they had never trained for the sort of long-range clandestine activities they were called upon m perform...
...Certainly no contingency plans were made to continue the mission if a portion of the force failed to arrive at its objective, and contingency plans of this sort are essential to commando operations...
...The helicopters would remain at Desert One all day Thursday, resting the men and refueling the helicopters...
...The rescue mission itself would be undertaken by volunteers from the Department of Defense's special anti-terrorist unit, a multi-service force established in 1977 under Project Blue Light...
...Beckwith, higher military authorities, or the President himself--ordered the mission scrubbed...
...By 1956 it was the most effective force in the region...
...Compare the cautious and tentative fumbling surrounding this raid with the energy and daring of the Russian coup de main in Kabul...
...The American officer corps today values careers more than operations...
...It was planned to conform with President Carter's desires that there be no combat...
...On the way to Desert One, one RH-53 suffered a possible rotor failure, landed, and was abandoned in the desert...
...Had Delta Force arrived at the compound in the dead of night, they might well have gotten lost inside it...
...The RH-53 Sea Stallion was never meant to undertake long, nape-ofthe-earth flights over land...
...The choice of helicopters, for instance, was crucial to the failure of the mission...
...for the seizure and maintenance of three landing zones, the staging of a major refueling operation, and an approach drive to the Embassy of some 60 miles in borrowed trucks...
...Helicopter training flights were made only in clear weather...
...Here, final intelligence reports would be digested and assault plans confirmed...
...But is this the truth...
...It lacks initiative...
...The small contingent having rejoined the bulk of Delta Force,~all the American troops and the ex-prisoners would embark and fly to a third landing zone northwest of Teheran, where they would rendezvous with the C-130s from Desert One, destroy the helicopters, and leave Iran...
...Eagle Claw has given us a unique opportunity...
...If the United States is to survive the military challenges of the next decade, it will require more than just a larger military budget...
...They abhor combat because it is messy and screws up organizational charts...
...If the failure of the rescue attempt was a blow to our pride, it was a signal of opportunity to our enemies...
...This is an alarming development...
...Were the bungling and ineptness of Eagle Claw an anomaly, the raid would have no more significance than any other isolated incident of military stupidity...
...All of which was illustrated by Eagle Claw...
...And the lack of a contingency plan for a rapid evacuation of the landing zone in the event of detection only increased the chances of something like a collision happening, a condition which the lack of proper air traffic control did nothing to mitigate...
...Sometimes, though, a nation is fortunate enough to have the truth revealed in less catastrophic fashion...
...Like a tree rotten from within, an army can appear strong until the first winter storm blows it over...
...Using the proper machines, they would have flown to Teheran directly and swooped out of the night, gone before they were noticed...
...Stuart L. Koehl & Stephen P. Glick WHY THE RESCUE FAILED There was more to Operation Eagle Claw's failure in the desert of Iran than Jimmy told us...
...they never reported the Americans to the Iranian government...
...They have lost contact with and refuse to acknowledge the nature of war, which is killing the enemy...
...To understand the true significance of the mission, one must view it as a military operation and judge it on strictly military terms...
...Under orders to avoid killing Iranian civilians, the soldiers failed to stop the jeep...
...The helicopters were to have been topped off and flown out of Iran, but while crossing the landing zone to refuel, a taxiing RH-53 struck a stationary Hercules: Both aircraft exploded, killing eight men and seriously wounding five...
...Moreover, Delta Force never trained on a full-scale mock-up of the Embassy compound (practice assaults were made at the Fort Bragg brig...
...Ironically, the men in the tanker mack were smugglers...
...The proper helicopter for the mission would have been the CH-53Es used by the Marine Corps...
...Our rime is short, and if we do not begin now we might never have the chance...
...The mission was not conceived with the primary aim of freeing the captives...
...Beckwith during the mission was something less than inspiring...
...Aside from the simplicity, equipment, and men appropriate to a commando raid, Eagle Claw lacked flexibility or contingency planning...
...The Carter administration and the Pentagon have both tried to excuse this fiasco by referring its failures to "equipment failure," but the conception and execution of the mission were so deficient and amateurish that it was probably doomed to failure from the start, especially when judged by the rules of warfare generally and of commando warfare in particular...
...If nowhere else, the poor training of the men manifested itself in the fact that personal effects were found on the bodies of the dead...
...For this reason it was incredibly convoluted and impossible...
...Or is the failure of Eagle Claw attributable to conscious actions taken on the part of American political and military leaders...
...The mission was also planned to serve the ideals of "managerial competence" at the expense of military effectiveness...
...Rather, they are students of managerial techniques...
...It called for the coordination of two foreign governments (Egypt and Oman), Green Beret advance teams, Iranian collaborators, Delta Force, and the Nimitz Task Force...
...The incidents of the bus and the tanker truck at Desert One are example enough, especially considering the President's injunction to avoid killing Iranians...
...He could have, and should have, extinguished the fires, collected the dead, and destroyed the helicopters and secret documents before staging a deliberate withdrawal...
...At some later point, the mission's inevitable cumulative errors might well have resulted in the death or capture of the entire force...
...On April 23 he launched Operation Eagle Claw, a mission to rescue the American captives by a coup de main at the American Embassy in Teheran...
...Then Delta Force would divide, a small contingent moving to the Foreign Ministry building, where three senior American diplomats are "guests" of the Iranian government, and the bulk of Delta Force proceeding to the American Embassy compound, where they would storm the Embassy proper by means of nonlethal chemical agents which would incapacitate the terrorists before they could harm their captives...
...Most important of all, the tendencies so well typified by the failures of Eagle Claw affect American military operations in pervasive and dangerous ways...
...Had Mars favored American arms that week in April, we would have awakened on the twenty-sixth cheering the release of Stuart L. Koehl and Stephen P. Glick are practicing research analysts for a Washington-based defense consulting firm and long-time observers of military affairs...
...Soldiers stopped it at a roadblock, but the driver ran to the jeep and took off across country...
...Because the operation's planners had decided that six RH-53s were the minimum required to ensure the mission's success, a rambling discussion about the advisability of continuing the mission now began between the mission commander, Colonel Charles Beckwith, and the White House and Pentagon...
...Their pilots were not made familiar with low-level blind flying...
...Having three engines instead of two, they are more powerful than the RH-53, which fact would have obviated the need to remove the sand filters from the RH-53s in order to achieve more power...
...are no longer students of war...
...On Wednesday evening, April 23, they would fly from Egyptian airfields near Luxor aboard C-130 Hercules transport aircraft to an abandoned airstrip near Tabas, in the Iranian desert, with a short layover in Oman to rest the aircrew...
Vol. 13 • July 1980 • No. 7
