Quote:
Originally Posted by I B Hankering
They are not right about Operation Eagle Claw. That operation reflected military unpreparedness stemming from lack of training and Carter's budgetary constraints.
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What?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw
The plan called for a minimum of six helicopters; eight were sent in.
[3] Two helicopters could not navigate through a very fine sand cloud (a
haboob) which forced one helicopter to crash land and the other to return to the aircraft carrier
USS Nimitz (CVN-68). Six helicopters reached the initial rendezvous point, Desert One, but one of them had damaged its hydraulic systems. The spares were on one of the two helicopters that had aborted. From the early planning stages, it had been determined that if fewer than six operational helicopters were available, then the mission would be automatically aborted, even though only four were absolutely necessary for the operation.
[3] In a move still debated,
[4] the commanders on the scene requested to abort the mission; Carter gave his approval.
Bluebeard 6 was grounded and abandoned in the desert when its Marine pilots interpreted a sensor indication as a cracked rotor blade. Its crew was picked up by
Bluebeard 8. Then, the remaining helicopters ran into an unexpected weather phenomenon known as a
haboob (fine particles of sand suspended to a milky consistency in the air following dissipation of a thunderstorm).
Bluebeard 5 flew into the haboob, but abandoned the mission and returned to the
Nimitz when erratic flight control instrumentation made navigating without visual reference points impossible, just 25 minutes from clear air. The scattered formation reached Desert One, 50 to 90 minutes behind schedule.
Bluebeard 2 arrived at Desert One with a malfunctioning second-stage hydraulics system (which powers the number-one automatic flight control system and a portion of the primary flight controls) leaving one hydraulics system to control the aircraft
Quote:
Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn
. He was told that they needed at least 10, eight for the mission and two backups. Carter said they would use eight only (micromanaging the professionals). .
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