Operation Eagle Claw: How a Failed Hostage Rescue Led to Improved Systematic Problem Solving by the U.S. Government

Lessons Learned are Part of the Hacking for Defense Course that Solves National Security Problems

The following is an excerpt from the NEW textbook for Hacking for Defense, a graduate-level course focused on defense tech entrepreneurship taught at more than 70 colleges and universities across three continents. More than 2,000 students have successfully completed the intensive project-based program.

OPERATION EAGLE CLAW:

Operation Eagle Claw is a prime example of a mission gone wrong. In any mission, there are an infinite number of inflection points where just one failure can thwart a list of successes. The same is true of problem-solving or starting a business. A thousand things can go right, but if one element goes wrong, it can sink the mission - or the company. Operation Eagle Claw represents what can happen when a series of things go awry and demonstrates the importance of having systematic decision making processes in place to avoid impulsive or overtly risky decisions. 

SITUATION:

On November 4, 1979, 53 American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, after a group of students seized the embassy. Three additional American diplomats were held at the Foreign Ministry. After every effort at diplomatic negotiations failed to secure the release of hostages, President Carter authorized a daring, and improbably risky, two-day hostage rescue operation on April 11, 1980. The bold operation became one of the U.S. military's biggest disasters in history. 

TASK ORGANIZATION: 

Two Navy aircraft carriers, eight Marine Corps helicopters with pilots and crew, six Air Force C-130 airplanes with pilots and crew, one Air Force combat-control team, 118 Army special operations operators (96 Delta Force, 13 Special Forces, and 12 Rangers), and an unknown number of Central Intelligence Agency operatives.

MISSION:

Operation Eagle Claw was a 5-step plan: 1) U.S. forces use airplanes and helicopters to penetrate Iran and rendezvous at a makeshift airstrip in the middle of the desert 200 miles outside of Tehran, code-named Desert One; 2) Helicopters fly the U.S. special operators to a location within 50 miles of Tehran, code-named Desert Two; 3) on day two, ground vehicles would infiltrate the operators responsible for rescuing the hostages; 4) Hostages taken to a local stadium and flown by helicopter to an airfield, and; 5) then flown to Egypt on airplanes. 

EXECUTION:

The operation began when the first Air Force C-130 took off from an island off Oman, embarking on a four hour flight that weaved through Iran’s coastal defenses while also avoiding military bases and populated areas. The first flight carried the Air Force combat control, Special Forces, a Ranger team, and the remaining five planes took off an hour afterwards. One C-130 carried the Delta assault force, three transported fuel for the helicopters, the last was a back-up plane with the remaining Delta team and communications equipment. Soon after departing Oman, the eight Marine helicopters took off from aircraft carrier Nimitz in the Arabian Sea, beginning a 60-mile trip to meet at the rendezvous point at sunset. The problems began as the aircraft entered the Iranian desert.

Rangers offload an aircraft on jeeps and motorcycles as part of Operation Eagle Claw. Photo by Chuck Cannon, Fort Johnson Public Affairs Office.

The C-130s were expected to reach Desert One before sunset to unload the assault force, set up communications with the White House, and prepare for refueling the helicopters. While traveling to Desert One, the C-130s encountered two “haboobs,” intense unexpected sandstorms. The second haboob was over 100 miles long, obscuring the Air Force pilot’s vision and causing the engines to overheat. The Air Force pilots did not have communications in place with the Marine helicopter pilots to warn them of the haboobs, which would cause the slower moving helicopters major problems. The planes made it through the haboobs and landed on time at Desert One. 

As the C-130s were being unloaded and prepared for refueling, the Ranger team spotted three vehicles smuggling fuel across the desert. After refusing to stop, the Rangers blew up a pickup truck. The driver fled into another vehicle and escaped. The U.S. presence in the desert was no longer a secret. Shortly after the fuel smugglers dashed across the open desert and two C-130s were unloaded and took off, a bus carrying Iranian passengers improbably approached the airstrip. The bus was disabled and the passengers searched. 

Meanwhile, the eight helicopters struggled across the desert and ran late. One helicopter landed due to a crack in its rotor. The helicopter was destroyed before the crew loaded onto another helicopter. The seven helicopters were then surprised by the two haboobs. They made it through the first but were completely blinded by the second. They could neither see nor communicate with each other. One helicopter turned around after its compass broke and started having problems with its navigation equipment. It turned around unable to alert its fellow helicopters or the force waiting at Desert One. The remaining six helicopters made it to Desert One, but two of the six helicopters were damaged and the operation needed six helicopters to conduct the mission. After talking to the White House, the force decided to abort the mission and began preparing to return to base, but things only got worse. 

Before they could return, the helicopters needed to be refueled. During refueling, the poor visibility caused one helicopter to collide with the parked plane that was still holding fuel reserves and Air Force and Army personnel. In the end, the force lost eight servicemen (four injured), one Iranian civilian, seven helicopters and a C-130 without even seeing combat. Classified information, including the names of Iranians working for the U.S., fell into the hands of the adversarial revolutionary Iranian government after some of the helicopters couldn’t be destroyed in time. Operation Eagle Claw was worse than a failure, it was an embarrassment that exposed the inadequacies of the world’s strongest military power. 

The catastrophic failure of Operation Eagle Claw led to the establishment of the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in 1987. SOCOM was the first unified combatant command (as opposed to commands based solely on geography, like Southern Command or Africa Command, for example) established and charged with overseeing the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy special operations mission planning and execution. SOCOM provides a process for inter-Service planning and execution. 

We remember the five #AirCommandos and three #Marines who lost their lives during the attempted rescue mission, #OperationEagleClaw, in Tehran, Iran. This mission led to the creation of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to unify military branches in future joint war-fighting missions. #NeverForgotten. Photo by Senior Airman Andrea Posey, 1st Special Operations Wing Public Affairs.

HINDSIGHT & H4D: 

Similarly to Tolstoy’s opening quote in Anna Karenina, successful missions are all alike; every unsuccessful is a failure in its own specific way. Operation Eagle Claw failed because the people conducting it lacked systematic processes for communicating and planning between the different organizations involved. Ultimately, President Carter’s desire to come across as a strong commander in chief and counter the public perception of him as weak and hapless in the face of the hostage crisis led to this poorly thought out and unnecessarily risky plan. The failure plagued the Administration and was one of the reasons Carter wasn’t re-elected. 

The H4D class uses a systematic decision making process to help students build knowledge and great valuable solutions. The process relies on tools like Customer Discovery interviews, Minimum Viable Products, and the Mission Model Canvas, which force the problem solver(s) to justify why a certain course of action is necessary and how past failures can inform future successes. These tools, and the H4D process, ensure that teams are making data-driven decisions when thinking through thorny problems and attempting to avoid the pitfall of doing things simply because it feels like it would be the right thing to do – like Operation Eagle Claw. 

To learn more about the H4D Textbook, visit h4dtextbook.com.