Operation: Eagle Claw
¨This doomed mission was designed to rescue the 52 hostages from Tehran using 6 RH-53D Helicopters and 4 refueling EC-130’s . The failure of this operation led the the creating of the United States Special Operation Command (USSOC) and the U.S. Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR). There was problems in the planning and execution phases of this plan. In the planning stage when the United States sent people to survey the airstrip that the helicopters would be landing at, they placed UV markers and a strobe to show the helicopters where to land. They also took soil samples to see if the ground could hold the weight of the helicopters. At time they took the samples the soil was packed hard and able to carry weight, but after the 3 weeks when the mission actually to place there were feet of powdery sand deposited by sand storms. The problems in the execution were when the helicopters left two of them did not even get to the first check point because they could not navigate through the thick sand cloud they had to fly through. After this the rest of the helicopters had to abort because they didn’t have enough man power to continue the mission. And then on the way back one of the helicopters needed to refuel and the helicopter crashed into the refueling plane causing them both to crash and the deaths of 8 servicemen.