Colonel reflects on attempted rescue mission

  • Published
  • By Capt. Michael G. Johnson
  • 376th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
MANAS AIR BASE, Kyrgyzstan (AFPN) --  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 Hercules navigator with the 1st Special Operations Squadron at Kadena Air Base, Japan. He said he had not expected a call that weekend and wondered what was so important that it could not 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 the news.

“The mission was predicated on night-time operations,” Colonel Sumida said. “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 [using] night-vision goggles [during] blackout training … the other task was getting an altimeter reading on our own.”

In 1979, flying with NVGs was not common in the Air Force.

“When we practiced (nighttime) landings, some interesting things happened,” Colonel Sumida said. “I remember the (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.”

Once the crew had taped up all the lights, they taxied the airplane up to the runway to practice the landing. The crew soon discovered they had overlooked one light, the radar altimeter, a device used to signal distance from the ground during landing.

“[On] our first approach, we gave it a shot. The light (came) on, everybody (said) ‘Wow!’ because we were all blinded,” Colonel Sumida said.

Crews spent weeks training several different scenarios, planning for the unexpected and continuing to refine their skills. In the end, six C-130s comprising two from Kadena carrying the extraction team and four from Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., carrying fuel, converged with eight helicopters. The helicopters picked up the extraction team, refueled and went on to a location in the mountains where they met with ground transportation.

The C-130s arrived at the predetermined 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, [the extraction team’s 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 low on fuel since they had waited for the helicopters with engines running to avoid restarting the engine in the desert.

“We were not going to shut down an engine,” Colonel Sumida said. “The reason is, 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.”

One of the helicopters had positioned itself behind one of the low-fueled C-130s to prepare for refueling. When the mission was aborted, refueling was no longer necessary. The helicopter crew was told to move so the C-130 could taxi for takeoff -- that is when tragedy struck.

“He lifted off [in the] blackout environment, no horizon to talk about … just black, kicking up sand and dust. The helicopter pilot got vertigo, went forward over the [C-130’s] left wing and landed on top of the [C-130’s] flight deck, killing five of the crew up front and three in the helicopter,” the colonel said.

At that point, the helicopters were abandoned; everyone was loaded onto the C-130s and prepared to leave the area, but the harrowing experience was not over yet.

Several of the C-130s were “heavy” because of the extra fuel and people onboard. The aircraft turned 180 degrees, ran engines up and began to take off. They had landed just beyond a road on sandy soil, and 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,” Colonel Sumida said. “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 … drag to make the surface catch enough air to maneuver the controls. We got to that speed, as I recall it was somewhere around (100 mph).”

A flat road by itself would not 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 (night-vision) 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,” Colonel Sumida said. “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 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 rescue attempt haunted Colonel Sumida during the next 20 years. He said he could not get over feeling that the mission was a total failure, and he had left people behind. April 25, 2000, the 20th anniversary reunion of the Iranian hostage crisis was held in Washington. 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 a luncheon, one of the hostages stood up and asked to speak.

“He said he’d really like to thank the (leaders) of the United States and the team that went in and risked their lives for them,” Colonel Sumida said. “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.”

Finally, 20 years later, some solace and peace of mind came for the crewmembers of the fateful rescue attempt.

April 24 and 25, 2004, marks the 24th anniversary of the rescue attempt. The colonel will observe that anniversary in the same area of responsibility that the Iranian hostage crisis occurred, serving as the 376th Air Expeditionary Wing vice commander here. The 376th AEW is the strategic airlift hub for Operation Enduring Freedom and provides tactical-airlift and air-refueling support to the area.

The colonel is deployed from the 302nd Airlift Wing at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo. He lives in Denver and, as a civilian, works for a defense contractor.

Twenty-four years later, as an Air Force reservist, Colonel Sumida is still ferrying important cargo as a C-130 navigator. This time it is people and equipment in and out of Afghanistan supporting the war on terrorism.