How America’s hopes were abandoned in the desert

Press, 28 April 1980, Page 8

How America’s hopes were abandoned in the desert

By

RICHARD HALLORAN,

of the New York Times

News Service, through NZPA J

Washington

The rescue mission into Iran ended on Friday in an inferno of blazing aircraft, exploding ammunition, and flying shrapnel, a senior military officer has said in providing details of the failure in the desert.

Things were gong well until about 1.40 a.m. (local time) at the remote desert landing site, despite the loss of two of eight helicopters on the way in, and the unwelcojne visit of a busload of Iranian tourists.

At that time, four of the six helicopters intending to proceed with the operation had been refuelled and loaded. and two more were in the process of being refuelled. Then one chopper had a hydraulic failure in the control system that could not be fixed and, at 2.30 a.m., the troops were told to pull out Troops got out of the helicopters and back on to the transports, but the refuelling continued as the plan was to bring out the five helicopters that could fly. One, however, had drained a Cl3O (Hercules) of fuel, and then had to lift up across a road to top up its tanks from another fuel plane. As the pilot lifted and banked away from the first tanker, his rotor sliced through the fuselage of a Cl3O loaded with troops. Both aircraft burst into flames, killing three marines in the helicopter and five Air Force crewmen in the transport plane.

The Army anti-terrorist troops aboard the Cl3O were able to get out, but two of the soldiers, seeing the plane's crew chief trapped near the forward compartment where the rotor bladr had chopped into the plane, swiftly returned to free him and bring him out. That happened about 48 minutes after the decision to abort the mission had come from Washington. With amnr nitinn and shrapnel from the collision flying around, th- commander on the scene decided to abandon the remaining helicopters because they had been hit and he feared some might break dowr. in flight. He ordered everyone into the Cl3os still on the ground, two of the six hav-

ing already left. Once his troops were aboard, the colonel patrolled the area one last time to be sure that no-one was left behind.

Then he got aboard the last Cl3O and they took off. It was then about 4 a.m., not long before dawn, and about four hours after they had landed. The colonel has been unofficially identified as Colonel Charlie A. Beckwith. commanding officer of a special anti-terrorist troop fnm Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The briefing officer yesterday said that the commanding officer on site had decided not to bring out the bodies of the eight dead men because they had not been able to be extracted from the burning planes. Even as the planes took off, he said, the fires had continued to burn and ammunition had kept on exploding.

The troops may also have left behind, however, secret maps and other documents about the mission and possibly some sensitive navigation and other equipment, according to the spokesman. The senior officer also disclosed that the colonel on! the ground was not the over-all mission commander. That was General James B. Vaught at an undisclosed 10-. cation, possibly aboard the; aircraft carrier Nimitz.in the{ Arabian Sea, or in a control I plane circling over the Per-1 sian Gulf, or at a command! post on the ground. He disclosed, too, that communications among the commander on the scene, the mission commander, and General David C. Jones, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who monitored the operation from the National Command Centre in the Pentagon, had been secure and “the best available.”

Sources other than the senior officer who briefed reporters gave fresh indications of how. the six Cl3O Hercules transports got into the remote landing site known as Desert One. They evidently left from Egypt, flew along the Red Sea, and turned left across the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea to a landing point in Oman, where they were refuelled.

Three of the Cl3os carried troops weapons, jeeps, and motor-cycles. The other three were fuel tankers for the helicopters.

While officials declined to discuss methods of preserving secrecy on that long

flight, several military offi-| cials indicated that other' aircraft loaded with electronic counter-measure devices had flown cover over the operation and had suppressed the radar in Soviet installations in Ethiopia and Aden. Simliar suppression had blanked out whatever remains of Iran’s radar capabilities. The briefing officer said no violation of air space had taken place except over Iran. Other sources said the Cl3os did not fly over Saudi Arabia.

After refuelling, the Cl3os took off again to make landfall over Iran at dark. The eight helicopters from the aircraft carrier Nimitz did 'the same. All aircraft flew very low to avoid radar detection and over routes that had been carefully planned to take them over the least populated areas possible. One helicopter had to turn back to the aircraft carrier when it got caught in a sandstorm and both gyro-scope-3 went out preventing the pilots from knowing where the horizon was and which way was up or down. The pilot was able to i climb out of the sandstorm and to re-establish his bear-i ings but apparently had lost so much fuel and time that he decided to return to the! carrier.

! Another helicopter suffered a hydraulic failure, and glided down to the desert without injuring the crew. They were picked up and taken to Desert One.

A Cl3O with a security force was the first plane down. The troops, according to plan, jumped out, got two jeeps and a few motorcycles off the plane, and sped out to set up roadblocks on the highway alongside the landing site. The briefings officer said that place had been picked because geological evidence, other intelligence, and its remote location made it the best available. He also said they knew what the traffic pattern along there might be, and thus the troops were not surprised when a busload of Iranian tourists showed up three minutes later. They were passing at that time, near midnight, to avoid the day’s heat in the desert. The troops stopped the bus and brought the 44 Iranians under control. A minute later, a truck showed up and tried to crash the

barricade. The soldiers, again according to plan, fired into the engine and set it aflame. The driver jumped from the truck, slipped into a following pick-up truck, and tied across the desert. The soldiers fired low in an effort to hit the tyres, but missed, and the pick-up truck got away. While that i caused some concern, the ( briefing officer said, the soldiers recognised the operating method of Iranian smugglers. They also thought those in the pick-up truck may have taken them for Iranian soldiers. There was no evidence that the passengers in the pick-up truck had alerted Iranian forces.

The American troops were dressed in United States camouflage uniforms, with small American flags as shoulder patches. Several •spoke Farsi, the language of Iran.

Shortly after, the rest of the Cl3os and the six helicopters landed on schedule. The operation continued to proceed on time until the third helicopter broke down. According to plan, that was a point at which a decision had to be made as to whether to continue the mission. i After discussion with his officers, Colonel Beckwith recommended to the mission ' commander that the operation be called off. The General agreed, and so recommended to General Jones. He talked to the Secretary of Defence (Mr Harold Brown), who took the recommendation to President Carter.

The President gave the order to cancel. The briefing officer said that while there had been discussion about the decision all along the line, there had been no dissension.

Then, as the extraction was taking place, the accident happened. The briefing officer, like other officials was reluctant to disclose details of the plan beyond Desert One. But he did elaborate on why the number of helicopters was important.

The operation was planned, like most military operations, in phase, with the number of helicopters calculated for each phase. Then others were added to give a margin for safety in case, as happened, there were mechanical failures.

Six were needed beyond Desert One, so eight were started to allow for two

breakdowns. Thus, the task force was down to its margin when the third chopper failed. The briefing officer said that six were needed to go forward to a mountain hide-out north of Teheran because the marginal number to leave there was five.

The plan from there on was left unclear, except that the last part of the plan would I have involved the collection of the hostages in the helicopters, minus perhaps one more that might have failed or been damaged in a fight. Four helicopters would have been needed to carry out the 90 men in the rescue force and the 53 hostages.

Beyond that, the briefing officer said little, except to confirm earlier reports that! the helicopters with the hostages aboard were to have met the Cl3os somewhere else and to escape from Iran.