![]() "He said, 'I need some help.' And I remember reaching back and holding his arm, and I heard this horrible scream, and he let go." Three Marines, including his crew chief, were in the back. Schaefer's rotor blades sliced into the C-130: "The next thing I know, we were on fire and on the ground." "As he backed up, he was getting closer to the C-130, and I didn't realize I was kind of drifting sideways to the right." "Not realizing that the air traffic controller guy on the ground was getting dust so bad into his mask that he was backing up," Schaefer said. Schaefer started moving his helicopter away from a C-130. With the mission scrubbed, the rescue force had to get out of Iran as fast as possible. "The plan said we must leave Desert One with at least six viable helicopters," said Ishimoto. The mission was now down to five helicopters, which was not enough to pull off the rescue. It was the only place we'd been able to find so far that we could land."īut that was not the worst of it a hydraulic pump on one of the remaining helicopters was glowing red hot. President Carter called Joint Chiefs Chairman Jones to find out what was happening.Ĭarter: "Do you recall why we decided to land just adjacent to a highway?" Ishimoto said, "And the next words out of my mouth are, 'Holy mackerel, a fuel truck!' We hit a 3,000-gallon fuel transporter truck."Ī mission which depended on Delta Force reaching the embassy without being detected was lighting up the nighttime sky.īurruss said, "I remember looking at that thing burning and seeing this bus and these shadows, and Beckwith saying, 'Welcome to World War III.'" ![]() Then, Wade Ishimoto saw another set of headlights coming and ordered one of his men to stop it with an anti-tank weapon. As illustrated in the documentary, Delta Force stopped it with a grenade round, and detained the passengers. A bus full of Iranians had appeared on a dirt road that ran through the landing zone. The remaining six finally made it to Desert One, where Delta Force was having its own problems. We were about 300 feet and we couldn't see the ground at 300 feet."ĭisoriented, another helicopter turned back. At first, Jim Schaefer thought it was fog: "I licked my finger, stuck it out the little window on the side, brought it back in, and it was full of dust," he said. The remaining seven had to grope their way through unexpected clouds of dust. But one helicopter dropped out because of an impending blade failure. Jones: "They have passed the point of no return, and they are only within 30 minutes out from the landing point."Įight helicopters had to fly nearly 700 miles to a desert landing strip, where they would rendezvous with Delta Force, flying in on C-130s. David Jones.Ĭarter: "Do you have any reports on the helicopters' location?" What happened on that high-risk mission is relived in a new documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Barbara Kopple, "Desert One." It includes never-before-heard conversations between President Carter and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. "Jerry Boykin lead us in prayer and then I led us in singing 'God Bless America,' and off we went." Beckwith gave us a pep talk," Burruss recalled. Jerry Boykin was one of his squad leaders, and Bucky Burruss was his deputy. "You either loved him or you hated him – and sometimes you did both on the same day," Ishimoto said.īeckwith and his force of 123 men took off from an isolated airstrip in Egypt. The hostage rescue team was led by a charismatic Army colonel, "Charging Charlie" Beckwith.
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