Word: nimitz
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...official stationery. He asked his wife Grace to drive in from their home to lunch with him, and he read her the letter. After making a few changes, he carefully copied it over in his tight, slanting script. That afternoon?as the C-130s were being readied and the Nimitz was steaming into position?Vance delivered the message to Carter in an eight-minute private session in the White House Map Room...
Under Phase 1 of the raid, three C-130s carrying some 90 air commandos and three others transporting fuel for helicopters took off from an airfield in Egypt. Eight Sikorsky RH-53 helicopters, flying in pairs, left the nuclear carrier Nimitz in the Arabian Sea. All were to meet at "Desert One," an unimproved landing strip in the Great Salt Desert southeast of Tehran...
...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, 500 nautical mile flight to the landing strip. The second laboring chopper discovered a faulty gyro and turned back to the Nimitz, which was standing offshore. Finally, six of the eight RH-53s reached their destination...
...strongly supported by Shimon Peres, who was Israel's Minister of Defense during the successful Entebbe raid in 1976. Peres told TIME: "On an operation like this, one must be satisfied with the minimum of equipment. If you have too much, you blow the whole thing." Nor could the Nimitz dispatch more helicopters to help out when the three were disabled. There had been only eight on board. Had there been more, the force in the desert would have had to wait the whole night for their arrival, an unacceptable risk...
...possibility stems from the fact that the Sea Stallions had spent three months aboard the Nimitz in the steamy heat of the Indian Ocean. Under the best of circumstances, salt air can insidiously corrode electrical and mechanical systems. Another possibility is that the choppers were inadequately maintained because technicians aboard the Nimitz were overworked and underexperienced (the average age of those tending the Sea Stallions' various systems: 19 years). Says a civilian aircraft accident investigator: "I would guess that the probable cause of this mess will turn out to be fatigued, minimally qualified and experienced mechanics who were overwhelmed...