MANAS AIR BASE, Kyrgyzstan -- It was
Thanksgiving weekend in 1979 when then-Capt. Michael Sumida received an
unusual call on a day off summoning him to the squadron from the comfort
of his home.
Captain Sumida was a C-130 navigator with the 1st
Special Operations Squadron, Kadena Air Base, Japan. He hadn't expected a
call that weekend and wondered what was so important that it couldn't wait
until after the holiday weekend.
"It turned out two full crews had been called
in and we were briefed on a hostage rescue mission," said now-Colonel
Sumida.
On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian militants seized the U.S.
Embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage, a crisis that would last
444 days and would play out daily on CNN.
"The mission was predicated on night-time
operations," said Colonel Sumida. We needed sufficient cover of
darkness to complete the mission. We knew there were certain features of
the mission we had to start practicing immediately, one was night vision
goggle blackout training...the other task was getting an altimeter reading
on our own."
In 1979, night vision goggle flying was not common
in the Air Force.
"When we practiced night vision goggle
landings, some interesting things happened. I remember the very first NVG
mission we ever flew, we knew we would have to make some adjustments. The
first one was, you put the night vision goggles on and the lighting in the
plane was too bright, it would blind you so we had to figure out how to
dim it. Our approach was masking tape. We just went out with rolls of
masking tape and started taping up every light we could possibly think
of," said Colonel Sumida.
Once the crew had taped up all the lights, they
taxied the airplane up to the runway to practice an NVG landing. The crew
soon discovered that they had overlooked one light, the radar altimeter, a
device used to signal distance from the ground during landing.
"Our first [NVG] approach, we gave it a shot,
the light comes on, everybody goes 'Wow!' because we were all
blinded," said Col Sumida.
Crews spent weeks training several different
scenarios, planning for the unexpected and continuing to refine their
skills. In the end, six C-130s, two Talons from Kadena carrying the
extraction team and four from Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., carrying
fuel, were to converge with eight helicopters. The helicopters would pick
up the extraction team, refuel, and proceed on to a location in the
mountains where they were to meet with ground transportation. The C-130s
arrived at the pre-determined desert location without incident. Only six
of the eight helicopters arrived 40 minutes to one and a half hours late
and one of the six had mechanical problems.
"At that point in time the mission was
aborted," the colonel said. "The importance of that sixth
helicopter being borderline broken, he [extraction team commander] knew he
had to have five helicopters to get everybody out. He was not going to
risk any lives because he didn't have enough helicopters."
Quickly the focus shifted from the mission to
redeploying. Several of the C-130s were becoming fuel critical since they
had waited for the helicopters with engines running to avoid an engine
restart in the desert.
"We were not going to shut down an engine.
C-130s start by blowing air past the front end of the jet engine...and
that gets your jet spinning. That air is turned on and off with valves and
if we got a grain of sand in the valves and had shut the engines down and
had failed to open up one of the valves, we would have not been able to
start an engine," said Colonel Sumida.
One of the helicopters had positioned itself behind
one of the fuel critical C-130s in preparation for refueling. When the
mission was aborted, refueling was no longer necessary. The helicopter was
told to move so the fuel critical C-130 could taxi for takeoff, that's
when tragedy struck.
"He lifted off, blackout environment, no
horizon to talk about...just black, kicking up sand and dust, the
helicopter pilot got vertigo, went forward over the left wing [C-130] and
landed on top of the flight deck [C-130], killing five of the crew up
front and three in the helicopter," the colonel said.
At that point, the helicopters were abandoned;
everyone loaded on the C-130s and prepared to leave the area, but the
harrowing experience wasn't over yet.
Several of the C-130s were 'heavy' due to the extra
fuel and personnel onboard. The aircraft turned 180 degrees, ran engines
up and began their takeoff. They had landed just beyond a road, on sandy
soil, now they were headed toward the road on takeoff.
"There are a couple of speeds that are
important on a C-130, one of them is takeoff speed, the speed where you
can fly. We never got there. The other critical speed is called minimum
control speed. It is the speed where you have enough air going over the
surfaces of the airplane where you've got enough barn door drag to make
the surface catch enough air to maneuver the controls. We got to that
speed, as I recall it was somewhere around 88 knots," he said.
A flat road by itself wouldn't have been a concern,
however as is the case with many roads around the world, this one had a
ditch.
"I remember the engineer saying '88 knots, 88
knots, 88 knots,' and there was that road coming," the colonel said.
"We're coming up on that ditch, we can see it
with the NVG goggles and I think we're all thinking we're going to hit the
ditch and tear the landing gear off, slide to a stop and we're going to
have to walk out," said Colonel Sumida. "Low and behold, we hit
the ditch and it bumped us into the air, and we still didn't have flying
speed. There's a law of physics ... the laymen's term would be an 'air
bubble,' we call it 'ground effect.' It's where you pop up to an altitude
approximately the wingspan of an airplane. The pilot immediately
recognized that situation and started milking it for all it was
worth," the colonel said.
The pilot worked with the air bubble, which lasted
just long enough for the airplane to reach takeoff speed, and the crew was
finally on their way home.
Thoughts of being part of that historic and heroic
rescue attempt haunted Colonel Sumida over the next 20 years. He couldn't
get over feeling that the mission was a total failure and he had left
people behind until April 25, 2000, when the 20th anniversary reunion of
the Iranian hostage crisis was held in Washington, D.C.
As the colonel remembered the guilt and the reunion,
his voice quivered and his eyes watered.
"It's tough because you kind of live with a
little bit of a stigma of a failure," he said.
The reunion brought together crewmembers and some of
the hostages, whom the crewmembers had never met. During the luncheon, one
of the hostages stood up and asked to speak.
"He said he'd really like to thank the
leadership of the United States and the team that went in and risked their
lives for them. The hostages knew about the rescue attempt and that it
failed, but they couldn't believe that about 200 Americans believed [the
hostages'] lives were so important that [the team members] would put their
lives on the line," he said.
Finally, 20 years later, some solace and peace of
mind came for the crewmembers of the fateful rescue attempt.
April 24 and 25 mark the 24th anniversary of the
rescue attempt. The colonel will observe that anniversary in the same AOR
that the Iranian hostage crisis occurred, serving as the 376th Air
Expeditionary Wing vice commander at Manas Air Base, Kyrgyzstan. The 376th
AEW is the strategic airlift hub for Operation Enduring Freedom and
provides tactical airlift and air refueling to the AOR.
The colonel is deployed from the 302d Airlift Wing,
Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. He lives in Denver and, as a civilian,
works for a defense contractor and has 24 years of aerospace experience in
launch vehicles, ICBM's and satellites.
Twenty-four years later, as an Air Force Reservist,
Colonel Sumida is still ferrying important cargo as a vice commander and
C-130 navigator. This time it's people and equipment in and out of
Afghanistan in support of the Global War on Terror.