40th Anniversary Operation EAGLE CLAW 🇺🇸

[Slater]

I was across town from you at the University of Arizona, @ 21 days before I commissioned. That fiasco was a contributory factor to the build up of SOCOM and my first long term aviation assignment.

I am guessing you weren't at Davis-Monthan in October 1978 when the A7-D crashed on the south side of the U of Arizona campus? I was on the mall in front of the Student Union building when I heard the pop from the pilot ejecting. After that they changed the pattern for landing at Davis-Monthan.

I was there and I remember that. In fact, I'd only been on base about two months. DM was my first assignment out of Tech School.

[OH58D]

I was there and I remember that. In fact, I'd only been on base about two months. DM was my first assignment out of Tech School.

Then you were there when you could take Speedway Blvd all the way east and it would be nothing but Sonoran Desert by the Saguaro Monument East, or head over the Tucson Mountains to the west over Gates Pass, and nothing out there. Now houses all over the place.

I was a poor Army Reservist with a wife (also in school) with a baby son. I was doing one weekend a month at Fort Huachuca and working part-time at KVOA-TV 4 the NBC affiliate. I was an ENG (Electronic New Gathering) photog and tape editor. The wife was working towards her undergrad in Nursing, and I was doing two majors - Management Information Systems and a science major in Archaeology with an emphasis on pre-Columbian culture. My MOS at the time in the Army was Intel Analyst, working Imaging at Huachuca prior to aviation. I liked Tucson back then.

[Slater]

Good times

When I arrived on DM, the first aircraft I can recall seeing was a pair of F-106 Delta Darts taking off. They looked sharp even considering their age.

[Grand58742]

Good times

When I arrived on DM, the first aircraft I can recall seeing was a pair of F-106 Delta Darts taking off. They looked sharp even considering their age.

Sorry for the thread drift, but the first and only time I saw F-106s was during the evacuation for Hurricane Erin back in 1995. They were the QF-106 drones from Tyndall that came up to Dobbins with our birds from Eglin, however, had pilots in the seat for the trip.

Absolutely beautiful aircraft. Though those J75s were LOUD.

[Grand58742]

I was 11 at the time, I remember feeling like the US was pretty powerless. The hostage crisis in general, this disaster, pali-rags throwing terror tantrums left and right. Despite the talk of all the vets at the barbershop, it didn't seem like we were much of a power in the world let alone a "superpower".

I don't think we truly were. We had no way of projecting force back then. Or at least of sustaining it when they did send out troops. I certainly think some of the special ops guys of the time were a bit ahead of the power curve in terms of trying to build more specialized units for that counter terror role as the threats were starting to grow away from nation states. Of course, funding and a significant post-Vietnam funk was not helping matters.

[chuckman]

I don't think we truly were. We had no way of projecting force back then. Or at least of sustaining it when they did send out troops. I certainly think some of the special ops guys of the time were a bit ahead of the power curve in terms of trying to build more specialized units for that counter terror role as the threats were starting to grow away from nation states. Of course, funding and a significant post-Vietnam funk was not helping matters.

We were actually behind the curve; Beckwith (and Marcinko) were ahead of the curve in the US. England, France, Germany, certainly Israel, had far better CT/AT resources. You are right on about funding, the entirety of the US military was in a financial funk in the 70s, and it took Eagle Claw to change that (for SOF), and Reagan's presidency to change it in general.

[Slater]

I recall Jim Kyle as saying that, with regard to the helicopter pilots selected for the mission, the USAF had H-53 pilots that had flown long-range special ops missions in Vietnam and who might be more suitable for the role. But rounding them up from across the various MajComs was seen as an unacceptable security risk.

[WillBrink]

We were actually behind the curve; Beckwith (and Marcinko) were ahead of the curve in the US. England, France, Germany, certainly Israel, had far better CT/AT resources. You are right on about funding, the entirety of the US military was in a financial funk in the 70s, and it took Eagle Claw to change that (for SOF), and Reagan's presidency to change it in general.

And Eagle Claw demonstrated in a fireball and unneeded deaths and international embarrassment the costs of it. Typical of the US, we don't do anything small so when the changes took place, at least they went big and all encompassing to do it, at least how it appeared to the outsider like myself.

[ramairthree]

It’s amazing what a smaller place the world is now compared to then.

We can project massive or surgical force in a matter of hours over vast distances.
Communication virtually anywhere in real time.

Even fifteen years ago I was thinking the roles of forward deployed CIFs and ambassadors were very much just a remnant of the original purpose.

[Diamondback]

When I arrived on DM, the first aircraft I can recall seeing was a pair of F-106 Delta Darts taking off. They looked sharp even considering their age.

Offtopic: The ones still in existence still do--I may be biased though, because my grandfather wrenched 'em (318th FIS, Osan deployment) and the prof I think of as "the dad I never had" flew 'em.