374. Operation Eagle Claw: Disaster in the Desert

In the latest instalment of our Battleground: Special Forces series, Saul David and Patrick Bishop deconstruct one of the most ambitious and ill-fated missions in modern military history: Operation Eagle Claw.

In April 1980, with 53 American diplomats held captive in the US Embassy in Tehran and President Jimmy Carter’s political future hanging by a thread, the newly formed Delta Force was called upon for its first-ever mission. The plan was a daring, multi-stage rescue involving clandestine desert airstrips, sea-stallion helicopters, and CIA agents. But between the sandstorms of the Great Salt Desert and a series of mechanical failures, the mission spiralled into a tragedy that would leave eight servicemen dead at the site known as Desert One.

As Saul notes, while the mission was a devastating blow to American prestige, it provided the hard-won lessons that would later enable the success of operations like the raid on Osama bin Laden.

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