Mission Impossible
Twenty-five years ago, on April 25, 1980, 92 Delta Force soldiers launched their first-ever mission, a high-stakes rescue of 53 American hostages being held in Tehran. The failure of the mission would doom President Carter's re-election bid, cost eight servicemen their lives, and sear the memories of their comrades forever. Last week, surviving participants, hostages, and family members gathered at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia and Hurlburt Field in Florida to honor the fallen. Wade Ishimoto was the intelligence chief for Operation Eagle Claw, the code name for the top-secret plan. One of the first soldiers off the C-130 transport plane when it touched down on the salt-flat desert of central Iran, "Ish" raced down a dirt road on a motorcycle to set up a roadblock. Soon a truck came barreling toward him. The 39-year-old veteran of secret operations in Vietnam ordered the young Ranger sergeant beside him to fire his light antitank weapon, saying, "Rube, cock your LAW." The truck turned out to be a 3,000-gallon tanker full of gasoline: Flames shot from its top for the next two hours as the commandos waited for helicopters to arrive to carry them to Tehran. A raging sandstorm and hydraulic problems left only five of the eight RH-53 Sea Stallions in flying condition. So the Delta Force commander, after consulting with the White House, decided to scrub the mission. As the soldiers clambered back onto the C-130s, one of the RH-53s lifted off and crashed into the fuel-filled wing of a plane, burning and killing eight pilots and crew members. Tech Sgt. Joel Mayo left the safety of another plane to help, sacrificing his life as explosions racked the other aircraft. Last week, Mayo's sons, Brett and Doug, now 31 and 35, laid flowers at their father's grave in Arlington. "It was the greatest disappointment of my professional career," Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin--who led one of the Delta units on the mission--recalled last week, "because we didn't bring home 53 Americans." The American hostages were finally released after 444 days in captivity.
This story appears in the May 9, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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