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I was a Sergeant in the Hydraulics shop with HMT-361, a CH-53 (A and D models) squadron at MCAS(H) Tustin in California when this went down. They came in asking for volunteers. At that time you did not volunteer for anything. Usually, for a Sergeant, it meant supervising a buncha PFC's and L/Cpls on a clean-up detail of some kind. A Corporal Davis finally volunteered and only later found out what he had volunteered for. We then spent two days getting everything we could think of ready for him to go on board ship. By that time we all had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

The gates were closed and the base was locked down til the mission was over. I worked for 54 hours straight after that, helping to get everything ready for that little "DET". Corporal Davis and the Hydraulic shop portion of that little exercise were well prepared. Once they were on their way, I remember just crashin' out where I was...onna concrete floor. Keep in mind that the helo community in the Marine Corps were chronically under line T/O strength by a substantial margin at that time.

Among the Marines who died in that clusterfuck were men I'd worked with in the past. The helo community in the Marine Corps is rather small. By the time you become an NCO, if you don't know someone, you know who trained them.

Out of that incident at the embassy in Tehran was born the terrorism we know and finally recognize today. They thought we were weak because we didn't fight. To display any sign of weakness in any way to that culture is to become a victim.

It was not the men or machines who failed in that mission. It was political gamesmanship at the highest levels of the Pentagon, along with lackluster, if not criminal, leadership from our C.I.C.

I find this article very interesting, I am retired from the AF, I was a Combat Controller. I know what happened leading up to and including that day. In an earlier post someone asked for the names of the Casualties at Desert One

Air Force
Maj. Richard L. Bakke
Maj. Harold L. Lewis, Jr.
Capt. Lyn D. McIntosh
Capt. Charles T. McMillan
Tech. Sgt. Joel C. Mayo

Marines
Staff Sgt. Dewey L. Johnson
Sgt. John D. Harvey
Cpl. George N. Holmes, Jr.

These brave Airman and Marines gave their lives for an operation that was doomed from the start. I still have nightmares about what happened, I some times wake up at night yelling to get out of the plane, my wife wakes my from these nightmares and asks what is wrong, we have been married 20 years and I still can not tell her what is wrong.