Word: assaults
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Surprise and speed were essential. The attackers, confident that they knew where the hostages were within the compound, planned to scale the embassy walls and shoot or capture the guards. The assault team was armed with automatic weapons but, contrary to some published reports, did not carry disabling gas, which would have knocked out the captives and required them to be carried to safety...
...assault began, four of the choppers were to fly to the embassy's soccer field. In the last stage of the assault, the hostages (by now joined by the three from the Foreign Ministry) and the 90 commandos would all leave in the four choppers. They would join the C-130s, which would have flown from Oman, at yet another airstrip, "Desert Two." There the choppers would be abandoned, and everyone would fly to safety in the transport planes...
...during the rescue, Navy fighter aircraft from the carriers Nimitz and Coral Sea would fly along the Iranian border, ready to dart toward Tehran if the assault party got into trouble. The U.S. planners did not fear Iran's once potent air force. Of the country's 76 advanced F-14 fighters, no more than seven can fly, and none can fire its Phoenix missiles, owing to the lack of maintenance. Iran has 187 operational F-4 fighters, 50 of them near Tehran, but none is equipped for night combat. Moreover, insists a Pentagon official, "we knew where...
...finds the mountain hideout scheme more practical than it might sound, noting that there are several well-concealed plateaus in the remote mountains. But few experts can understand the contention of both Carter and Brown that the Tehran phase of the plan would have been easier than getting the assault team into position in the desert in the first place; both of them have refused to explain why they think so. Even some of the military planners concede that the complex mission violated an old Army rule called KISS, meaning "Keep it simple, stupid...
Outsiders claiming firsthand information from the Special Forces officers involved in the mission insist that earlier plans called for at least 600 men and 30 helicopters in the assault force. Some of these critics contend that the plan was scaled down by President Carter and his National Security Council in the belief that a smaller strike would prove less bloody, less provocative to Iran's Arab neighbors and more politically acceptable at home...