Operation Eagle Claw - the role of AF combat controller

[2RHPZ]

A Night to Remember Combat controller performed secret mission to Desert One Iranian landing site

by Master Sgt. Jim Greeley

Before a C-130 or a helicopter ever touched down in the Dasht-e-Kavir, Iran?s Great Salt Desert as part of a U.S. force to rescue 53 hostages in Iran, an Air Force combat controller had been there and back. Maj. John Carney, the lead combat controller for Operation Eagle Claw, secretly performed a reconnaissance mission to ?pave the way? for the Desert One rescue mission.
In March 1980, Carney, nicknamed ?The Coach? because he spent eight years as an assistant football coach at the Air Force Academy, was ?volunteered? to check out the proposed landing site.
?I remember Charlie Beckwith [the commander of the Army Special Forces team that was to perform the rescue at the American Embassy in Tehran] volunteered me at a meeting in North Carolina,? recalled Carney. ?He said, ?We need a set of eyeballs on that site, and Carney ought to go.??


Not too long after that meeting, Carney flew from Charleston, S.C., to Athens, Greece, where he met up with his CIA transportation. In a small aircraft, Carney and two CIA pilots flew to Rome and then to Oman. On April Fools? Day, Carney ? clad in black Levi?s, a black shirt and black cap ? was secretly slipped into Iran to survey the Desert One landing site. The site would be a pivotal forward staging area for the rescue mission.
Despite the stakes and the circumstances, Carney said, ?I was damn glad to get out of that airplane when we landed.?
Their plane was a decent size for three people, but not when they?re sharing it with a fuel bladder and a fold-up motorcycle. The motorcycle was his ground transportation.
Later Carney would lead a six-man controller team into Desert One and witness the accident that claimed eight American servicemen?s lives [See ?Desert One,? April ?01]. But before any of that transpired, Carney had to approve the site as a landing strip for the operation.
Carney?s mission was to install runway lights, take core samples and perform several other tasks on the ground. His escorts were two CIA operatives who did this type of thing for a living.
He?d have one hour on the ground before the airplane left.
?It was the shortest hour of my life,? said the now-retired colonel. ?I had so much to do and so little time to do it, I didn?t really think about anything but getting the job done.?
The landing site was next to a road. Carney would use the road to set up the landing strip. He would march off a ?box-and-one? landing strip. The corners of the box, where he would bury the lights, were 90 feet wide by 300 feet. Then the ?one? light would be centered on the box and placed 3,000 feet in front. The concept: land in the box and stop before the ?one.?
?As a football coach, marching off yards was easy,? he said. What was hard was the ground. ?I had to use a K-bar [knife] to chip away the ground to bury the lights.?
After setting up the airfield, Carney went back to check his work. He discovered his escorts landed in a different spot than they had discussed. Hence, the road, his only orientation point, wasn?t where it was supposed to be.
One hour. After that his escorts were out of there.
?There wasn?t time to go back, and I wasn?t missing that plane out,? Carney said.
If he missed the plane, he had two options to get home. One was to walk. The other was to use the Fulton recovery system. The system was an ingenious, albeit dangerous, recovery device. The person needing rescuing puts on a harness ? attached to a wire, attached to a balloon. The balloon goes up and then a specially equipped MC-130 swoops in, snags the wire, and whisks the person away.
Carney didn?t fear being in Iran in the middle of the night, but he was afraid of the Fulton ?thing.?
?I was getting on that plane,? he reiterated.
In his hour on the ground, four vehicles drove past.
?It was surprising,? Carney said of the vehicles. ?All I could do was hit the dirt. There?s not a whole lot of places to hide in a desert.?
Carney had people counting on him for his special mission.
?I was praying that all would go well for John ? that he would return safely with a good report on Desert One,? wrote retired Col. James Kyle in his book, ?The Guts to Try.? Kyle was one of the lead planners and the on-scene commander at Desert One. ?One thing I was sure of ? if anybody could do it, John could.?
Out and back
Carney made it out of Desert One, only to return 23 days later with the rescue force.
When he left Iran the first time, he was worried about the landing lights. But, after jetting back to America on the Concorde, Carney said, ?When I saw the satellite imagery, it was a perfect diamond-and-one.?
Not quite the plan, but it worked.
?I was happy to see those lights come on,? said retired Col. Bob Brenci, who flew the lead C-130 into Desert One. He was relying on Carney?s lights to help him land in the Iranian Desert. They worked. He landed.
?He is a true American hero,? Brenci said about Carney. ?Crazy, but a hero.?
Crazy, maybe, but Carney said he?s no hero.
?I was just doing what needed to be done,? Carney said.
Today, Carney is the president of the Special Operations Warrior Foundation in Tampa, Fla., a nonprofit organization that helps children who have lost a parent in a special operations mission or training accident.
At 61, his hair is a little gray, but he still looks like he could jump out of planes and take down airfields. The former controller has a presence about him.
?He?s a natural leader with tremendous charisma,? said Chief Master Sgt. Rex Wollmann, the superintendent of the 22nd Special Tactics Squadron at McChord Air Force Base, Wash. Wollmann has known Carney for more than 21 years. Their first mission together was Desert One. ?He?s the kind of guy you?d follow anywhere,? Wollmann said of his former boss.
?Men like Carney are worth a hundred planes or ships,? Kyle said.
Coach went on to participate in operations in Panama, Grenada, the Persian Gulf War and others he can?t talk about. But, he?ll always remember his ?volunteer? reconnaissance mission to Iran.
?It was the shortest hour of my life,? he said.

Picture:

http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0501/carney1b.jpg

The Coach, retired Col. John Carney (sitting on dirt bike), with members of his combat control team at Masirah, Oman, prior to taking part in Operation Eagle Claw in April 1980. To this day, Carney wonders if there was something he could?ve done to have prevented the accident that claimed eight servicemen?s lives.

[2RHPZ]

Quite old article but still worth reading:

Navy SEALs Led Covert War Against Al-Qaida
Ventura County (CA) Star | September 22, 2002 | Seth Hettena

Posted on 09/24/2002 7:33:08 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen

CORONADO -- The occupants of the multistory fortress perched at 13,000 feet in
the Afghan mountains had no idea they were being watched.

For several days in February, the people inside the suspected al-Qaida and
Taliban stronghold were monitored by members of a U.S.-led special operations
unit called Task Force K-Bar. They reluctantly emerged from the fortress at Ali
Kheyl when helicopter gunships swooped overhead in the middle of the night and
ordered them out.

It was then the U.S. special operations troops breathed a sigh of relief: The
operation revealed the occupants of the fortress included 56 children.

"It averted a tragedy," said Lt. Cmdr. Darryn James, a spokesman for the Navy
SEALs. "That probably happened more than people think."

The children had not been seen until then because their parents weren't allowing
them outside in the bitter Afghan winter. Their discovery was made possible by
deployment of a new kind of versatile, special operations unit known as K-Bar.

Defense analysts say the United States may come to increasingly rely on such
units as the military realigns itself to fight the war on terrorism.

The Ali Kheyl mission was one of about 75 carried out by the 1,300 U.S.
commandos in K-Bar and their counterparts from seven countries under the command
of Commodore Robert S. Harward, a veteran Navy SEAL, who recently provided a
briefing on the unit.

In a first, K-Bar's troops worked hand-in-hand with FBI agents who were brought
in to help determine which prisoners should be let go and which were "keepers"
headed for further interrogation, Harward said.

Special operations forces have played support roles before. But in Afghanistan,
commanders gave K-Bar far wider latitude and more authority as it rooted out al-Qaida
and Taliban from mountain hideouts.

"They were taking the war to the terrorist network," James said. "K-Bar special
operators have done more to prevent another Sept. 11 than almost anyone else."

Between October and the end of March, K-Bar -- named for a military knife used
by SEALs -- took 107 detainees and tallied at least 115 confirmed enemy deaths,
Harward said from his office at Naval Special Warfare headquarters in Coronado.

In Harward, K-Bar had a well-traveled commander who learned fluent Farsi in his
youth in Tehran, Iran, where his father worked in the U.S. embassy. During a
summer off from high school, he had hitchhiked through Afghanistan, but the land
he saw during Operation Enduring Freedom had become much harsher, drier and
poorer.

"It just seems like it had worn very hard," he said. "I think hope did not exist
in their vocabulary."

In its size and scope, K-Bar -- the vision of Rear Adm. Bert Calland, now in
charge of Navy SEALs -- added a new page to the playbook of the U.S. military,
which in the past typically used Army, Navy and Air Force commandos in small
numbers with limited support roles.

Missions included a search-and-destroy operation in January against a honeycomb
complex of 70 caves near the Pakistani border. Inside, troops found piles of
ammunition, tanks, rockets and communication equipment along with al-Qaida
recruiting posters.

Hostile fighters fled the caves to nearby hills and K-Bar forces called in
carrier-based Navy airstrikes, killing an unknown number of al-Qaida members.

"It's what I call the 'Gilligan's Island' operation. It started out as seven
hours and ended up being nine days," said Harward, a rock-ribbed 46-year-old
with deep-set blue eyes.

In late February, K-Bar captured Mullah Khairullah Kahirkawa, a former Taliban
governor, Harward said. The night operation was put together with 30 minutes'
notice when unmanned aircraft spotted a convoy leaving a compound where
Khairullah was believed to be, he said.

As they struck deeper into al-Qaida's power structure, K-Bar began to see a new
kind of enemy emerge.

Pointing to a photo his men took of an al-Qaida surveillance post high in the
mountains, Harward said matter-of-factly: "We saw here, for the first time, when
we killed these guys, these were not the dark-skinned Afghans. These were the
red-haired, white-faced Chechens." The suspected al-Qaida members, who appeared
to be well-funded and well-equipped, wore Adidas shoes as they manned an anti-helicopter weapon, Harward said.

K-Bar attracted some unwanted attention in a Jan. 23 raid at Hazar Qadam that
killed about a dozen people who turned out not to be al-Qaida or Taliban. But
who they were remains unclear. Harward said Afghanistan is a place where the
line between friend and foe is often blurred.

Harward said his men opened fire only after an Army Special Forces soldier was
shot and wounded in the ankle.

"There were allegations that we shot people in their sleep, that we assassinated
people," said Harward, who dismisses such claims. "If we want to assassinate
someone, we just put two bullets in their head."

Harward said K-Bar's operations overall were a success, and validation of the
extensive training poured into special operations forces, from rock climbing to
underwater swimming to cold-weather training in Alaska.

"We won the war in Afghanistan with relatively a small number of guys on the
ground because they had those skill sets that are so important," Harward said.

To analysts, it's no surprise that the U.S. military tapped the Navy's "Sea,
Air, Land" teams, who usually work with one foot in the water, to head up a
force fighting in one of the world's few landlocked countries.

"It reflects the diversity of the training they get," said Ron O'Rourke, a naval
analyst with Congressional Research Service. "They're not just swimmers and
divers but they're trained to do other things once they get inland."

Some analysts maintain that U.S. weapons would have been of little use in
Afghanistan without special operations forces on the ground to guide them to
target.

James noted that at Zhawar Kili, special operators found craters outside the
entrance to a mountain cave and scorch marks from U.S. cruise missiles launched
in 1998 by President Clinton against Osama bin Laden, but the insides of the
caves were untouched.

"Because the country is so primitive, without people on the ground to collect
intelligence, find targets and get a good feel for the ebb and flow of combat,
we simply would not have had the information we needed to prevail," said Dr.
Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute.

Harward, a former fellow at the RAND think-tank in Santa Monica, said he sees
Afghanistan as the first battle in the war on terrorism.

"I think it's going to be a long war. ... What people don't understand is we're
dealing with a whole different enemy. Time is irrelevant to them. Targets are
everywhere," he said.

"If you think it's hard to get on a plane now. If you think the stock market's
had repercussions now, the potential is greater than ever."

[2RHPZ]

EDIT

[2RHPZ]

EDIT

[2RHPZ]

Pilot Reports from Afghanistan

First Wave: The Soldiers? Story. U.S. Soldiers Recount Details of Battle,
Filling in Blanks of Operation Anaconda.

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, March 22 ? Operation Anaconda began in the dead of
the night on March 2 and for the next 16 days, U.S. infantrymen from the 101st
Airborne Division, the 10th Mountain Division and the helicopter crews who
ferried them into action engaged al Qaeda forces in the deadliest ground
offensive of the war in Afghanistan. This is their story:

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Jeff Simon, Chinook pilot: "In the days leading up to
it, they really didn't give us a lot of information other than the fact that
there was a big mission coming up. And it got delayed because of weather ? two
days. And then obviously, as we got closer, we went into our planning cycle, and
that's when we started getting a lot more information on exactly where the
target area was, what routes we were gonna fly."

Ground and air troops sat through seemingly endless rounds of briefings to
prepare themselves for the battle.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 John W. Quinlan, Chinook pilot: "We were told it was
going to be one of the largest missions to date, since Operation Enduring
Freedom started."

Simon: "For us, the objective was to get the infantry on the ground where they
wanted to be at, at a particular time. And then we usually get a little bit of,
of background of exactly what they're going to do on the ground, so we can help
them do their mission. But, for us, the objective is always get them on, on
target, plus or minus 50 meters, plus or minus 30 seconds."

Quinlan: "I was most worried about the terrain in the landing area. We had
imagery of the landing areas Those pictures didn't do us a lot of good. The
terrain analysis on the maps, we knew we were going to be in jagged areas. So
basically, getting that helicopter in there safely and landing and getting those
guys up, that's what everyone was focused on."

Lt. Russell Berman, platoon commander: "Everyone's intense and they're pretty
much looking forward to it because pretty much an infantryman's career is to go
to do this. So this is what everyone pretty much looks forward to."

Chief Warrant Officer 2 John Ketchum, Chinook pilot: "Most of the times before I
go out and fly, I do say a prayer that I will be watched over."

Anaconda?s Mission

The operation's goal was to destroy al Qaeda and Taliban forces fortified in
mountainous positions in eastern Afghanistan. On the morning of March 2, Apache
attack helicopters were deployed to clear the area where the heavier, MH-47
Chinook helicopters were to land and deploy the ground troops they carried. Some
of the Chinooks, normally based in Bagram, came under heavy fire during their
90-minute trip to the battle zone.

Capt. William Ryan, Apache pilot: "My aircraft took some fire on the right
canopy. It came through the door there and ricocheted up where it went off my
face here and out the top glass of the canopy where it exited the aircraft."

Chinooks Faced Unexpected Fire

Four American Chinook helicopters, two from Bravo Company 159th Aviation
Division carrying troops from the 10th Mountain Division, and two from 101st
Airborne Division carrying troops of the 101st were among the first involved in
Operation Anaconda.

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Scott Breslin, Chinook pilot: "[We were] actually
enjoying some of the scenery. It sounds crazy, but it's really pretty country
that we're flying over here. Until you get to that last couple of minutes, it's
kind of an enjoyable flight."

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Ken Gunter, Chinook pilot: "Probably 10 minutes out the
entire helicopter was just silent, and everybody was just doing their jobs and
getting ready for those last few minutes inbound."

As the Chinooks dropped off the troops, they came under heavy fire almost
immediately.

Quinlan: "Immediately on the ground, those guys were pinned down. The al Qaeda
was firing down off the mountains into the valley and the situation was
developing. But we had another turn to make. We had to bring more infantry guys
in. We had to get our helicopters back here to Bagram to do the next
infiltration."

Breslin: "I think everybody was doing that, watching the rearview mirror to see
how fast they were getting off the back and scanning the hills around us just in
case."

Berman: "It's the rush, that's what you want, you want to be the first guy in."

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Derrick Goodrich, Chinook pilot: "Troops getting off of
airplanes were getting shot at a lot sooner than they thought they would [be]."

Breslin: "I don't think they anticipated the type of resistance they encountered
when they got on the ground there. I think that a lot of us anticipated it going
a lot smoother than it did."

Signaled for Support

There was heavy radio chatter as the ground troops called for air support.

Breslin: "I realized it's not a training mission any more. There's really people
that are shooting at us, or at least at the helicopter."

Simon: "They were actually attacking our guys as opposed to trying to flee. So
it wasn't what we expected."

Choppers continued to fly missions to drop troops off, until they were prevented
from doing so, as the battle heated up. At the same time, commanders on the
ground were trying to determine the source of the al Qaeda fire.

Lt. Joe Harosky, second platoon commander: "We had initially thought it wasn't
directed at us or a company. So I just kept walking in a normal speed, thinking
hey, the firing is on the other side of a mountaintop or ridge."

Breslin: "The direct fire, you get used to with the rounds crackling around you
and over your head. And you can actually hear the bullets that fly past you when
they break the sound barrier."

Harosky: "After a few minutes ? maybe not ? maybe after a minute, five different
bursts and I realized, hey, that was coming at us. And then, I heard the company
RTOs (Radio Telephone Operators) screaming that our company was taking fire."

William Reed, Apache pilot: "Nothing, nothing prepares you for that. I mean out
of our platoon, maybe three people, four people have been in combat. The rest of
us had never seen combat until now."

Harosky: "The enemy was not only firing at us with small arms, they were firing
mortar rounds and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) up at our location."

Lt. Col. Jim Mayre, aerial assault commander: "I had feelings of concern. I
mean, but probably the thing that concerned me most was the welfare of my
soldiers. I just wanted to ensure that they all returned safely."

Harosky: "I called the company commander on the radio, requested permission to
pick up my platoon and move them back because, I told them they had our
positions pegged. And he authorized it, he told me to pick up and get the heck
out of there."

Rescue Team Prepared Plan

Back at Bagram Air Base, Chinook rescue teams monitored the firefight on radios.

Ketchum: "There were three Apaches that were almost shot down. Two of them had
taken RPG fire and heavy machine gun fire, .50 cal (caliber) rounds to the
fuselage."

Goodrich: "[We] immediately started thinking about them, started thinking about
the infantrymen they put down. You know, what is going on? What is going wrong?"

Simon: "One plan was to send two of us in to try to get some of the casualties
out, bring in more supplies and some more guys We couldn't get in there,
unfortunately. The ground commander wouldn't give us clearance to go in because
the area was so hot."

Quinlan: "You're frustrated because you want to help the infantry out. You want
to try to get those helicopters in there to get their casualties out and to get
their mortar teams ? reinforced mortar teams ? in there."

Ordered to Extract

By nightfall, 18 hours after the first troops had been inserted, they received
orders to extract them. Pilots began flying out wounded and exhausted soldiers
as Air Force bombers bombarded the caves. Eight U.S. soldiers were killed during
Anaconda.

Ketchum: "Having never been in contact with the enemy or been shot at before
except some sporadic stuff over in Pakistan, I was very nervous going in And we
weren't sure how the infantry guys, the guys on the ground were going to signal
us We came around and I saw them waving a kind of stick in the air and that was
really a sigh of relief. My aircraft had five wounded that had taken shrapnel to
the leg and different parts of their body. So they had fellow soldiers helping
them, carrying [them] onto the aircraft and they were bleeding."

Goodrich: "We were going to be the final aircraft out of there When we left, no
one was coming back. We were pretty much the last air crew."

Berman: "When we finally pulled those guys out they'd been there for about 24
hours."

On the morning of March 4, two U.S. special forces Chinook helicopters took off
from the same area. They came under unexpectedly heavy fire and a Navy SEAL,
Petty Officer 1st Class Neil Roberts, 32, of Woodland, Calif., fell out of the
first craft and was captured and killed by al Qaeda soldiers. First-person
accounts were not available, but Quinlan was quick to hear about the problems
they faced.

Quinlan: "When we'd found out that the MH-47 crew, two of them have gone down in
the exact area where we were putting in 10th Mountain, [it] kind of hit close to
home, that they [the enemy] could be that effective with their rocket-propelled
grenades, to take down an aircraft. I [think] that hit the special operations
community pretty hard."

Goodrich: "It really hit me and it really made me think. And the first thing I
think about is those guys' families, their friends, their co-workers, just
people's feelings in general. I mean, we heard there was a loss of life, so you
can't even begin to comprehend what people are going to go through."

Quinlan: "Obviously, they're fellow Chinook guys. We know a lot of those guys.
And the special operations guys we've worked with in the past as well, so it was
? you don't like to hear about a brother getting hurt or someone getting killed
like that. No one wants to hear that It goes into that fallen, fallen comrade.
You don't want to, you don't leave a soldier behind."

Last updated: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 05:27:57 GMT