C-130 Hercules
Page 24
‘As the MC-130 approached the landing area, Carney activated his runway lights, but just then the newfangled FLIR (forward-looking infrared radar) detected something moving, which proved to be a truck hurtling along the dirt road that ran through the landing site. The pilots passed over the spot and then circled back around. On the second pass the stretch of desert was clear. They circled around for the third time and touched down -Logan Fitch was amazed by how smoothly. The plane coasted to a stop and when the back ramp was lowered, the Rangers roared off in the Jeep and on a motorcycle to give chase to the truck. Word that an American plane had landed in the desert, relayed promptly to the right people, could defeat the whole effort.
‘The hard-packed surface of three weeks prior was now coated with a layer of sand the consistency of baby powder - ankle-deep in some places - that accounted for the extraordinary softness of their landing. This fine sand made it more difficult to taxi the plane and the backwash from the propellers kicked up a serious dust storm.’
The landing however, resulted in substantial wing damage to the heavily loaded MC-130 but no one was hurt and it remained flyable. ‘Dragon 1’ 64-0565 captained by Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Brenci of the 8th SOS in off-loaded a USAF Combat Control Team (CCT) consisting of 120 Delta operators, twelve Rangers forming the roadblock team and fifteen Iranian and American Persian-speakers, most of whom would act as truck drivers.
‘Fitch followed with his men, walking down the ramp and stepping into a cauldron of noise and dust. His team had nothing to do at ‘Desert One’ except wait to offload camouflage netting and other equipment from the second C-130 when it arrived, then board helicopters for the short trip to the hiding places. The big plane’s propellers were still roaring and kicking up sand. Shielding his eyes with an upraised arm, Fitch turned to his right and was shocked to see, coming straight toward him, a bus! Literally out of nowhere. The odds that the plane would encounter one vehicle at midnight on such an isolated desert road were vanishingly small, but there it was, honouring an absolute law of military operations: the inevitability of the unexpected. This second vehicle was a big Mercedes passenger bus, piled high with luggage, lit up like midday inside and filled with more than forty astonished Iranian passengers.
‘Suddenly the night desert flashed as bright as daylight and shook with an explosion. In the near distance, a giant ball of flame rose high into the darkness. One of the Rangers had fired an anti-tank weapon at the fleeing truck, which turned out to have been loaded with fuel. It burned like a miniature sun.’
Shortly after midnight things grew louder and busier as the second and third MC-130s, using both runways roared in for a landing, right on schedule and discharged the remainder of the Delta operators.
‘As Burruss and his men came down the lowered ramp of their plane, they gaped at the ball of flame, the bus and the passengers sitting on the sand.
Welcome to World War Three!’ Fitch greeted them.
‘Desert One’ was now looking more like an airport and Carney’s men were busy directing traffic, preparing for the arrival of the helicopters. Within the hour, all three C-130 bladder planes were positioned and parked, along with the [EC-130E ABCCC Airborne Battlefield Command and Control Centre) aircraft] communications plane.’
‘Dragon 1’ and ‘2’ took off at 23:15 for Masirah to make room for the EC-130s and the RH-53Ds and to return to base to allow the crews to prepare for the second night operations.
‘The unloading had gone pretty much as planned, with one exception: the second MC-130 had landed a few thousand feet farther away from the landing zone than expected, so the job of transferring the camouflage netting from it to the choppers was correspondingly bigger. The netting would be draped over the helicopters at their hiding places at daylight. It was not an especially warm night in the desert, but all the men were overdressed in layers of clothing and they were sweating heavily with exertion. Moving through the loose sand made the task even more difficult. The Air Force crews struggled to unfurl hundreds of pounds of hoses from the parked tankers, for fuelling the choppers.
‘What is the status of the choppers?’ Beckwith asked over a secure satellite radio.
The helicopter pilots had been told to fly at or below 200 feet to avoid radar. This limitation caused them to run into a haboob that they could not fly over without breaking the 200 foot limit. They had never even been briefed on the existence of haboob conditions, or their effects on low-flying formations. Two helicopters lost sight of the task force and landed, out of action. Another had landed earlier when a warning light had come on. Their crew had been picked up but ‘Bluebeard 8’ the helicopter that had stopped to retrieve them was now twenty minutes behind the rest of the formation. Battling dust storms and heavy winds, the RH-53s continued to make their way to ‘Desert One’. After receiving word that the EC-130s and fuel had arrived, two of the Sea Stallions that had landed started up again and resumed their flight to the rendezvous. But then another helicopter had a malfunction and the pilot and Marine commander decided to turn back, halfway to the site. The task force was down to six helicopters, the bare minimum needed to pull off the rescue. However, less than two hours into the mission, ‘Bluebeard 2’ had an indicator light warn of a main rotor blade spar crack. This was often a false reading on RH-53Ds, but when the crew landed at ‘Desert One’ they decided to abandon the helicopter after inspecting the rotor blades. Six Sea Stallions had been deemed as the minimum number of helicopters needed for the mission and they were now down to five.
When Logan Fitch returned from rounding up the rest of his men, he was surprised to find that his second-in-command, Captain E. K. Smith, was still waiting with his squadron in the dust. Fitch told Smith to get the men on the helicopters.
‘The mission is an abort,’ Smith said.
‘The abort scenario, which they had rehearsed, called for Fitch and his men to board not the helicopters but one of the tankers. The choppers would fly back to the carrier and the planes would return to Masirah. Fitch told Smith to prepare the men to board the plane, but said they should wait until he returned.
‘When the decision to abort was relayed to Wadi Kena and to Washington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national-security adviser broke the news to Carter. Standing in a corridor between the Oval Office and the president’s study, Carter muttered, ‘Damn. Damn.’
‘He and Brzezinski were soon joined by a larger group of advisers, including Walter Mondale, Hamilton Jordan, Warren Christopher and Jody Powell. Standing behind his desk, his sleeves rolled up and hands on his hips, the president told them, ‘I’ve got some bad news … I had to abort the rescue mission … Two of our helicopters never reached ‘Desert One’. That left us six. The Delta team was boarding the six helicopters when they found out that one of them had a mechanical problem and couldn’t go on.’
‘At least there were no American casualties and no innocent Iranians hurt,’ Carter said.’
At ‘Desert One’ there was no time to dwell on the abort decision. Fuel consumption calculations had showed that the extra ninety minutes idling on the ground had made fuel critical for ‘Republic 4’. When it became clear that only six helicopters would arrive at ‘Desert One’ authorization was given for the EC-130Es to transfer 1,000 US gallons from the bladders to their own main fuel tanks, but ‘Republic 4’ had already expended all of its bladder fuel refuelling three of the helicopters and had none to transfer. To make it to the tanker refuelling track without running out of fuel, it had to leave immediately. Logan Fitch directed his men to board. They piled in on top of the nearly emptied fuel bladders, which rippled like a giant black water bed. Everyone was weary and disappointed. Delta officer Eric Haney stripped off his gear and his black field jacket, balling it up behind him to form a cushion against the hard metal angles of the plane’s inner wall. He and some of the other men wedged their weapons snugly between the bladder and the wall of the plane to keep them secure and out of the way. Some of the men immediately fell asleep.
A RH-53D - ‘Bluebeard 3’ - that needed additional fuel required it to be moved to the opposite side of the road. To accomplish both actions, ‘Bluebeard 5’ had to be moved from directly behind EC-130E (ABCCC) 62-1809. The aircraft could not be moved by ground taxi and had to be moved by hover taxi (flying a short distance at low speed and altitude). Just behind their tanker, a USAF Combat Controller in goggles, one of Carney’s crew, appeared outside the cockpit of the RH-53 and informed Major Jim Schaefer, ‘Bluebeard 3’s pilot that he had to move his helicopter out of the way. Schaefer had refuelled behind that tanker and he now had enough fuel to fly back to the Nimitz, but first the C-130s needed to get off the ground. Schaefer lifted the front end of his Sea Stallion. His crew chief hopped out to straighten the nose wheels, which had been bent sideways when they landed. Straightened, they could be retracted so that they wouldn’t cause drag in flight. The crew chief climbed back in.
‘How much power do we have, Les?’ Schaefer asked Petty his co-pilot, performing his usual checklist.
‘Ninety-four percent,’ Petty said.
Schaefer lifted the helicopter to a hover at about fifteen feet and held it, kicking up an intense storm of dust that whipped around the Combat Controller on the ground. He was the only thing Schaefer could see below, a hazy black image in a cloud of brown, so Schaefer fixed on him as a point of reference. The Combat Controller attempted to direct the manoeuvre from in front of the helicopter, but was blasted by desert sand churned up by the rotor. To escape the cloud created by Schaefer’s rotors, the Combat Controller retreated toward the wing of the parked EC-130E. Concentrating on his own aircraft, Schaefer did not notice that his blurry reference point on the ground had moved. He kept the nose of his blinded helicopter pointed at the man below and as the combat controller moved, the Sea Stallion turned in the same direction, drifting to a point almost directly above the Hercules. Schaefer perceived that he was drifting backward and thus attempted to ‘correct’ this situation by applying forward stick in order to maintain the same distance from the rearward moving marshaller. Then Schaefer heard and felt a loud, strong, metallic whack! It sounded like someone had hit the side of his aircraft with a large aluminium bat. Others heard a cracking sound as loud as an explosion, but somehow sharper-edged, more piercing and particular, like the shearing impact of giant industrial tools. The Marine pilot’s main rotor had clipped the EC-130E’s vertical stabilizer and crashed into the wing root, metal violently smashing into metal in a wild spray of sparks. Instantly the helicopter lost all aerodynamics, was wrenched forward by the collision, its cushion of air whipped out from beneath and it fell with a grinding bang into the EC-130E’s cockpit, an impact so stunning that Schaefer briefly blacked out. Schaefer had just filled his tanks and the EC-130E still had fuel in the bladder in its rear and the sparks from the collision immediately ignited both of them with a powerful, lung-emptying thump that seemed to suck all the air out of the desert. A huge blue ball of fire formed around the front of the C-130 and a pillar of white flame rocketed 300 feet or more into the sky, turning the scene once more from night into day.
‘Charlie Beckwith pivoted the moment he felt and heard the crash and started running toward it. He pulled up short, a football field away, stopped by the intense heat and thought with despair of his men: Fitch’s entire troop, trapped.
‘Inside the EC-130, Fitch had felt the plane begin to shudder, as though the pilots were revving the engines for takeoff. The hold had no windows and he couldn’t tell if they were moving yet. Then he heard two loud, dull thunks. He thought maybe the nose gear or the landing gear had hit a rock, but when he looked toward the front of the aircraft he saw flames and sparks. He thought they were under attack. He had removed his rucksack and leaning against it was his weapon, an M203 grenade launcher. He grabbed it and stood, in a single motion. Beside him the plane’s load master, responding wordlessly to the same sight, pulled open the troop door on the port side of the plane. It revealed a solid wall of flame. Fitch helped the load master slam the door down and push the handle in to lock it. He and the men were perched on a thousand gallons of fuel and they appeared to be caught in an inferno.
‘Open the ramp!’ Fitch shouted, but lowering it revealed more flames. The plane was going to explode. It was an enormous bomb on a short fuse and the fuse was lit. The only other way out was the starboard troop door, which had been calmly opened by three of the plane’s crewmen. That way proved blessedly free of flames. Men started piling out of it before it was completely open.
‘Still inside, Sergeant Major Dave Cheney, a bull of a man with a big deep voice, kept shouting, ‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ as the men crowded toward the only escape. Flames were spreading fast along the roof, wrapping down the walls on both sides and igniting in each man a primitive flight instinct that none of them could control. One of the junior Air Force crewmen fell and was being trampled by fleeing Deltas when Technical Sergeant Ken Bancroft fought his way to the man, picked him up and carried him to the doorway and out. Cheney’s natural authority and clarity helped prevent an utterly mad scramble and kept the men in a steady flow out the door. They were used to filing out this way on parachute jumps, so the line moved fast. Still, it was torture for the men at the rear.
‘Ray Doyle, a load master on one of the other tankers, more than a hundred feet away, was knocked over by the force of the initial explosion. Jessie Rowe, a crewman on another tanker, felt his plane shake and the temperature of the air suddenly shoot up. Burruss saw the plane erupt as he stepped off the back of his C-130. He was carrying incendiary explosives down the ramp, to destroy the disabled Sea Stallion and the sight buckled him. He sat down and watched the tower of flame engulfing the plane, the downed chopper perched on top of it like a giant metal dragonfly, thinking, ‘Man, Fitch and his whole squadron gone, those poor bastards.’ But then he saw men running from the fireball. Pilots of the other craft quickly spread the word to their crews that they had not been attacked.
‘Haney was still inside the burning plane, near the end of the line of men trying to get out. He and those around him had been jarred alert by the noise and impact of the crash and Haney had seen blue sparks overhead toward the front. Then the galley door at the front of the plane blew in and flames blasted in behind it. ‘Haul ass!’ shouted the man next to him, leaping to his feet.
‘Captain E. K. Smith, who had dozed off right after boarding the plane, woke up to see men trying to gain their footing on the shifting surface of the fuel bladder and thought it was amusing - until he saw the flames. He and the men around him scrambled toward the door as best they could, fearing they would never outrace the flames. Ahead, men were jammed in the doorway. When Haney finally reached the door, he threw himself out, dropping down hard on the man who had jumped before him. They picked themselves up and ran until they were about fifty yards away. Then they turned to watch with horror.
‘Fitch felt it was his duty to stay in the plane until all the men were off, but it was hard. As the flames rapidly advanced, he realized that not everyone was going to make it. Instinct finally won out and both he and Cheney leaped out the door, falling when they hit the ground. Other men crashed on top of them. They helped one another up and over to where the others were now watching, brightly illuminated by the growing fire.
‘Fitch ran to what seemed a safe distance and then turned around, still assuming they were under attack and lifted his weapon. He looked for the enemy and saw instead the awesome and ugly sight: the chopper, its rotors still turning, had clearly crashed down on the front of the plane. It wasn’t an attack; it was an accident.
‘He saw two more men jump out - one of them Staff Sergeant Joe Beyers, the radio operator, whose flight suit was burning. Other men rushed to put out the flames and drag him clear. Then ammunition started ‘cooking off,’ all the grenades, missiles, explosives and rifle rounds on both aircraft, causing loud, cracking explos
ions and throwing flames and light. The Redeye missiles went off, drawing smoke trails high into the sky. Finally the fuel bladders ignited, sending a huge pillar of flame skyward in a loud explosion that buckled the fuselage. All four propellers dropped straight down into the sand and stuck there, as if somebody had planted them.
The eight USAF and USMC crewmembers killed on the failed attempt to release the Iranian hostages on 24 April 1980.
‘In the chopper, Schaefer at last came to. He was sitting crooked in his seat, the chopper was listing to one side and flames engulfed the cockpit.
‘What’s wrong, Les, what’s wrong?’ he asked, turning to his co-pilot. But Petty was already gone. He had jumped out the window on his side.
‘Schaefer shut down the engines and sat for a moment, certain he was about to die. Then, for some reason, an image came into his mind of his fiancée’s father - who had never seemed much impressed by his future son-in-law - commenting a few days hence on how the poor sap had been found roasted like a holiday turkey in the front seat of his aircraft. Something about that horrifying image motivated him. His body would not be found like a blackened Butterball; he had to at least try to escape. He ejected the window on his side and as fire closed over him, badly burning his face, he dropped hard to the ground and then ran from the erupting wreckage.