This looks too familiar
The Pentagon reports that in an operation involving hundreds of special operations troops, the U.S. successfully rescued the missing weapons officer from the F-15E shot down on Friday by Iran over Isfahan province. It was the second U.S. plane shot down last week despite Donald Trump’s claims that the U.S. has “overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies.”
The New York Times reports:
A senior U.S. military official described the mission to rescue the airman as one of the most challenging and complex in the history of U.S. special operations given the mountainous terrain, the airman’s injuries and Iranian forces rushing to the location.
In a final twist after the weapons officer was rescued, two transport planes that would carry the commandos and the airmen to safety got stuck at a remote base in Iran. Commanders decided to fly in three new planes to extract all the U.S. military personnel and the airman, and they blew up the two disabled planes rather than have them fall into Iranian hands
It’s great that Pete Hegseth’s “warfighters” don’t just kill but rescue as well. The family of the crewman got its Easter miracle.
Still, that photo at the top looks eerily familiar. Those of a certain age will recall the fate of President Carter’s failed attempt in April 1980 to rescue 53 American hostages held by Iran since November 1979. Operation Eagle Claw ended in failure before the rescue. Mechanical problems en route and dust storms at the staging site named Desert One turned to calamity. The Air Force Historical Division notes that at the time “the United States had few bases or resources” to support such a mission:
Once at Desert One, the RH-53 with hydraulic problems could not be repaired, which left the team with one less helicopter than was required to carry the assault team and hostages. With just five helicopters available, the on-scene commander aborted the mission. The plan then shifted to getting the assault team back on the MC-130s while the helicopters refueled and returned to the Nimitz. At that point, tragedy struck. One of the helicopter’s rotor blades inadvertently collided with a fuel-laden EC-130. Both aircraft exploded, killing five airmen on the EC-130 and three marines on the RH-53. The team commanders ordered the remaining helicopters abandoned and everyone to board the EC-130s, which soon departed for Masirah Island. With that, Operation Eagle Claw came to an end. President Carter was notified of the mission’s failure, and the wreckage at Desert One was broadcast to the world by the Iranian government. In the remaining months of his presidency President Carter continued to work toward the hostages’ release, although the government of Iran did not do so until the day of President Ronald W. Reagan’s inauguration on January 20, 1981.
Carter lost his reelection. Reagan won in a landslide. The greed-is-good 1980s followed. Wealth did not “trickle down.” Anger bubbled up instead, especially after the election of the first Black president and fallout from the Great Recession. Then came Donald Trump.
It isn’t tied directly to the debacle in the desert under Carter. But then everything is connected to everything else, isn’t it?
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