The Missionĭuring this time, American military commanders refined a plan for a possible rescue mission, and conducted training exercises to evaluate the troops and equipment that would be used in such an undertaking. The remaining 53 hostages, however, had waited out five months of failed negotiations by April of 1980. Iran’s new leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called for the United States to return the shah, as well as for the end of Western influence in Iran. President Jimmy Carter had allowed the deposed Iranian ruler, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, into the United States for cancer treatment. The incident took place two weeks after U.S. diplomatic staff were seized at the Iranian Foreign Ministry. embassy in Tehran, taking 63 Americans hostage. On November 4, 1979, as many as 3,000 militant students stormed the U.S. To learn more about Operation Eagle Claw, continue reading below. And in every failure there is an opportunity to prevent it from happening again.On April 24, 1980, an ill-fated military operation to rescue the 66 American hostages held in Tehran ended with eight U.S. But, in every mistake there is an opportunity to learn. The loss of life was tragic and unneccessary. It was an embarrassment to the nation and the special forces community. Operation Eagle Claw is an astounding example of an overseas military operation going catastrophically wrong. As part of the postmortem, actions were taken to prevent this kind of disaster from occurring again but the damage had been done. President Carter’s board of directors (US voters) decided a change in direction was necessary. President Carter himself blamed his failed 1980 re-election bid, at least partially, on his handling of the Iran hostage crisis. If the mission planners are viewed as the development team and the special operations forces played the role of operations team the President of the United States Jimmy Carter played the role of CEO. The aftermath of the failed operation was equally catastrophic. Luckily no additional accidents occurred during the hastened evacuation but the dead were left behind in the rush to escape the area. The immediate order to fail faster than planned was given as remaining aircraft were loaded and took off as soon as they could. The planned abort of a deployment had turned utterly catastrophic. Four operators were injured and another eight perished. People were scurrying away from exploding aircraft and ammunition. With no warning the helicopter’s rotors struck the C-130 and crashed into the cockpit of the C-130 that had just refueled the helicopter. The helicopter pilot could not assess that the operator had moved under the wing of the C-130. He honed in on the only thing he could make out through the rotor created dust storm the operator guiding him. The helicopter pilot was in a very low visibility situation. As one of the operators guided a helicopter off the ground to return to base he shielded himself from the dust storm under the wing of a C-130 that was refueling the helicopters at a makeshift base in the Iranian desert. The mission (deployment) was aborted per the parameters agreed upon prior to deployment that is when the real catastrophe occurred. This is like three of eight services failing to launch in production.
One helicopter had a hydraulic issue, another got lost in a dust storm, and a third had a cracked rotor and was subsequently scuttled.