Word: deserting
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...crack Special Air Services Regiment (S.A.S.), which has been effectively employed against Irish Republican Army terrorists in England and Northern Ireland. West Germany's Grenzschutzgruppe (G.S.G. 9), similar antiterrorist specialists, are also said to have helped in the training. With its diverse support forces, the team flew to undisclosed desert sites in the U.S. Southwest, where it conducted seven full rehearsals of the operation, some at night, to overcome the problem of operating in clouds of sand kicked up by high winds or the landing and take-offs of huge helicopters and cargo craft...
...seemed ripe. An International Red Cross visit had determined that all 50 hostages seized at the embassy were still being held in the compound. U.S. planners had learned that the number of militants guarding the captives had declined. Soon the protective darkness of the nights would shorten, and the desert temperatures would soar by day, making it even more difficult for the helicopters to operate in the hot, light air. The period for best operational conditions was narrowing fast. On Thursday, with the Common Market Foreign Ministers having just bowed to Carter's pleas for allied solidarity, the President gave...
...transport planes carried about 90 commandos in camouflage garb and another 90 crew members. Following an undisclosed route, the small air fleet droned along as low as 150 ft. to foil Iranian radar as it approached its first staging site in the desert near the isolated village of Posht-e Badam. Other planes are reported to have helped by jamming Iranian detection systems...
...many ironies of the entire mission was the fact that the C-130s were heading for a remote spot in the desert that the Iranians had feared might some day be used by U.S. forces. Indeed, they even had a map of the spot. It was discovered in the papers of Mahmoud Jaafarian, a pro-Shah counterinsurgency strategist who was executed after the revolution a year ago. Jaafarian was actually trying to burn the map when he was seized by the revolutionaries. Jaafarian told his captors that the staging site had been secretly built by the CIA, with the Shah...
...cumbersome C-130s roared in over the desert and landed on the strip marked out on the salt flats near Posht-e Badam. Meanwhile, the eight RH-53 helicopters were finding the going much more difficult. As they emerged over land from the Gulf of Oman, flying without lights in the moonlit night, two of the choppers ran into a fierce desert sandstorm. Both developed crippling problems. One could not stay aloft because of hydraulic troubles and settled down in the bleak desert. Another helicopter crew found the disabled craft, picked up its occupants and completed the five-hour...