I found out this step, I have to say not me.
All right, folks, here we are episode forty of the Team House. I can't believe we got the forty already. I'm Jack Murphy here. I think a few screens over, Depending on how your view is organized, you'll see co host Dave Park and you will also see our guest for tonight, Sergeant Major retired Mike Vining. Sergeant Major Vining is you know, honestly, you're one of my favorite veterans to interview. I've had the opportunity to twice before and
it's always really a lot of fun. Sargeant Major Vining entered into US Army Basic training in nineteen sixty eight and became an explosive ordnance disposal technician. He was deployed to Vietnam and received the Bronze Star in nineteen seventy one, and in nineteen seventy eight he volunteered for a new unit that was being formed. He became one of the original members of Delta Force, and when the unit was validated and stood up in nineteen eighty, Sergeant Major Vining
was one of the participants in Operation Eagle Claw. This is the operation we're going to talk about the most tonight, I think that the bulk of this stream will be talking about Eagle Claw, because just on the twenty fourth last week, we came up on the fortieth anniversary of Eagle Claw, and that was a Delta Force mission to attempt to rescue fifty two American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran. Now, Sergeant Major Vining went on to do much more in his career. He was
also an Operation Urgent Fury, the Invasion of Grenada. He went back to Delta Force where he served as the chief EOD Technician, the Research and Development Sergeant major, in the Breaching Sergeant Major, and then he rounded out his career at Jaysock as the Special Plans Sergeant Major. On top of that, as we were talking just before the stream started, Mike Vining is also an avid mountaineering and climbing,
rock climbing enthusiasm and spelunker. Just really so many amazing things that that Mike has done in life, and we're really honored to have them here tonight. We can't possibly get to all of it, so we're really not going to try. We're going to try to focus on Eagle Class since it is the fortieth anniversary to hear about Mike's experience there and you know what the legacy is of that operation all these years later and the impact it had on special operations. And then we'll take some
questions from the viewers. I think many of you will probably have questions for Sergeant Major Binding, so we'll try to get to as many of those as possible. So Sergeant Major, thank you again for joining us tonight.
Well, thanks Jack, and thanks Dave. Well Eagle cost I guess it started on four November of nineteen seventy nine when the US Embassy in Tehran was taken over for the second time, and this time it was a more permanent takeover. I was with B Squadron and we were out in Breckenridge, Colorado during this time, and we were on a ski trip winter training and skiing at a Rapahoe Keystone Love One at the time, and when we got the word that we need to get back to
the unit. So we didn't know what was going on, So we got in Colorado Springs, took a flight out, landed at McCall, got picked up at Camp McCall, and got into the unit. It was briefed that the US Embassy was taken over, and we started the planning immediately to retake the embassy. We went into isolation up at Camp Perry, Virginia, place called the Farm. It was also like the facilities that we stayed at was were some of the people that participated in the Bay of Pigs,
the Cuban operation that didn't go so well either. So we did the training there. We got the embassy layouts. We had a three D model of the whole embassy compound, the buildings you could take apart. The Agency built this model for us. It was like ten foot by ten
foot model of the facility. Then every day we would go and lay out and use an engineer tape the layout of the buildings and stuff like that, and go through the steps and then we'd have to take the engineer tape down because of any Russian Soviet satellites that would come over. And that was most of the thing. We would do all our training and sleep during the day, do our training at night, and so that was the start. Then we went out in December time frame. We went
up to Ume approving grounds. They're out in the remote area where there's this hangar out there and then we started working with the helicopters out there. Now, these were the RH fifty three helicopters, and we had Navy crew that crew these. The RH fifty three D helicopter is Navy helicopter used for countermining, and what they normally do is fly during daylight hours. They do a grid pattern search.
They have a some type of sensor that they dragged in water behind the helicopter to search for these mines, and so they just do grid patterns. And these are the crew and pilots that we had. They were not used to flying desert night time and with night vision goggles, and that was a totally new experience.
Just to point out real quick, Mike, For some of our younger viewers, they're thinking, what about one sixtieth the night Stalkers, What about all those cool helicopters nineteen eighty That unit did not exist. Those helicopters literally did not exist.
Yeah, that's a good point, Jack. In the US inventory, the fifty three was the only helicopter that had the lift capacity and the distance with an internal fuel to do the mission, to carry the number of people. We didn't have those CH forty sevens that we could do aerial refuel and you know, like the late model CH forty sevens, and so we were stuck with the fifty fifty threes. Well, we had problems with the Navy crew.
They just couldn't learn fast enough to operate. So they we got Marine crews Navy helicopters, but this was a mixed group of airmen from the Marine Corps. These were not people that worked together. So it was just people from the various Marine Corps crew members pilots, and then they had to start to work together as a team. And we still always had problems with the fifty threes. They would I don't get lost, they wouldn't land where we wanted them to land, and just had difficulty with
the fifty threes. And that was always been the issue we had. And a lot of times we'd be flying into fifty threes and it's just like while they were learning, and we just felt like sandbags. We didn't really need to be in those fifty threes while they were learning how to fly at night with night vision goggles, but we were. And so then we went out to Ford, Irwin. We did a rehearsal lot for Irwin with the aircraft. The the MC one thirties and the well we used
the MC one thirty models. And we also did exercises out there at Nevada test site. We set up at Area twenty five. We set up a wall to assimulate the embassy wall and we would practice going over the wall. We would have ladders with ropes on them and we would put the ladders up, throw the ropes over, and then hand climb down the knotted ropes. And we did that every day. We'd put our kid on in practice going over, putting ladders up and going over the wall.
We even had a wall built and still there in the old stockade on button A Road at Fort Bragg, and every day we'd have to go over that wall.
Could you talk a little bit about the kit you were wearing and as far as rehearsals, your what the projection was, that, what your role would be, you know, what building you were going to, what the actions on were. Because also I think it's interesting that like a lot of the kit was kind of custom designed for this operation.
Yeah. Well, our vests were each of us made our own vest. You know, I could sew and we had a lot of people it could sew and we would sew up our own vest, customize our vest to fit whatever kit we were carrying. We would have like a fourteen everybody carried a fourteen foot sling rope nylon sling rope. So we basically our uniform was blue jeans, civilian shirt, and then we all had a dyed green field jacket.
We had American flag that we could expose put on with velcro on time came so that they would know that we were Americans. We had watch caps, we had we grew beards, let her hair grow long, and and and that's kind of our uniform. And we would have to practice crawling with on the floor so that we wouldn't make any noise. Everything had dummy cords tied to it so we wouldn't lose it. We had three elements. The delta had we had a white, red, and blue element.
The red element was a squadron, The white element I was in was was B squadron. And we had a blue element which was the sniper observers support.
Element, and and and then we divided up the different things for the For the white element, one of our areas was the ambassador residence, and so my team once.
We went over the wall. We would approach the ambassador's residence, go through the kitchen door, and then there was a stairway since we entered the kitchen, we would stairway led up to the second floor and we would my team that I was a four man team. Bill Zumont was the team leader. We would clear the second floor of the ambassador's residence and once that we felt that there
was hostages there. And then once that was cleared, Bill and I would go up to the roof of the Ambassador's residence and we had like one hundred and twenty foot now on rope that we would throw over the the Bill and then Bucky Burriss, Lieutenant Colonel Burris, was down at the bottom and people that had seventy two's laws.
We dropped those off there and we would then tie them to our rope and we'd pull them up on roof and we build and I would overwatch the main gate in case anybody came in through the main gate with the laws. The chancery was another area where hostages were that was the red element. There was a building called the warehouse called the mushroom. We believed there was hostages in those areas, so those are some of there. It was a big compound. Mike, how old? How old
was Delta at this point in time? How old was Delta? We so we became activated just I would say just a few We were only a few months activated. Delta Form started going together in October of nineteen seventy seven. I got there in February of seventy eight, So but we did not you know, we had There was another element with Fifth Special Forces. It was called Blue Light. Now, back then, the news media and a lot of people even today do not know the difference. They think blue
Light and Delta is the same thing. But blue Light was set up with Fifth Group guys as an interim rescue force until we stood up, And then once we stood up, blue Light then went down. Some of the Blue Light people then went through our selection course and came into the unit. So we had several Blue Light members. But blue Light and Delta was two different or weren't they? Weren't they somewhat?
I heard they were somewhat competitive at one point in time where it was a question of who who was going to stick around?
Or is that accurate? Or no, Jack, you want me, you want to answer it?
You want me I mean, I just based on my interviews with Blue Light members, Uh, they were a stop gap. They were never going to fill that role. So but the members, they did feel competitive, like it was a competition between this new these new upstarts in Delta Force and these Blue Light guys who and honestly many of those Blue Light guys were macbe soag Mike for SUTA Raiders. I mean they were real guys, they were the real deals.
So they did feel like it was very competitive. But Blue Light was never going to be the permanent c T unit.
Now, but I think they had visions that they may right there, and then a lot of them beckw went and talked to them about coming once they were standing down to come over it, and a lot didn't think they would have to go through the selection process that they should just be able to go into because of their background their history. But everybody had to go through selection. So was Blue Lights still around when when the whole
Iran Iran hostage thing kicked off. Yeah, they were still I would say, yeah, I don't know exactly when they were deactivated, but I think they thought that they would have a part in the mission, right.
But so so Delta was new, so it was all it was all very conceptual at that point in time.
What was was this.
Hostage rescue mission something that had sort of been not not obviously not in Iran, but but had this how.
Do you how do you trained for this? Prior?
Was this part of the concept of of what Delta would be when it stood up.
Well, we had one uncle classified mission and that was that was POW rescue uh. And there was always felt that there were maybe people held in Laos, North Vietnam still from the Vietnam War. So our unofficial thing was like a Sante type mission. That was our unclassified mission. Other things, this is the all the terrace hijacking airliners and take buildings and stuff. And that's what we practice on was hostage rescue against terrorists in buildings, trains, buses,
uh and that kind of stuff. We even brought it. We brought a train in and practice on trains there at Fort.
Bragg For the younger viewers, like the seventies was was a hotspot of like when we thought of terrorism in the seventies, it was it was general like aircraft hijackings and things, you know, uh.
You know train you know that.
They would take over something and demand, you know, or take over a vehicle that political demands.
Yeah. Right, And then we had different scenarios that these missions would be in whether they be permissive, that we would have the permission from the government to go in and do that hostage rescue, they'd be semi permissive. I don't know exactly what you call semi permissive. But then there was non permissive and and you know, we really didn't think we would have a non permissive mission. And of course the hostage rescue in Tehran was a non
permissive mission, and it was just difficult. You know, a lot of people compare try to do comparisons between what the Israelis did it in in Tebbi Uganda, but we we had more. It was just much more difficult on a skill than the type mission. So how long did it take? How long did it take?
Because you're right, because and Temmy, what was kind of a it was permission and I'm right where the Israelis went in there with the permission.
On the No, they didn't, I'm sure they know. They they flew in landed. They they had uh some Lemo cars that like ed I mean, would you know, so they didn't know what was going on, whether it was ed I mean coming in there or what. So, yeah, it was.
It was much more streamlined in the sense that they flew like what like one or two C one thirties down the Red Sea, turned into Uganda, landed did the operation and the mission you guys planned, I mean maybe and talk about it like the scheme of maneuver developed throughout planning. Eagle Club was very complicated.
Yeah, because Yeah, so we picked out a desert one site that would be a refill site, and we'd looked
at different scenarios in how to refill these helicopters. One was doing an aerial drop with fuel bladders that didn't we did test on that and like some of the parachutes didn't open and the bladders hit and exploded, and so it was that we decided to have three MC one thirties lead in, followed by three EC one thirties, which is a command electronics bird that has an electronics module in there, but we just took he took that out and then you put in a three thousand or
three thousand and five thousand gallon JP five fuel bladder. So it was like a giant WATERBD inside of the EC one thirty, so we had those who come in there, and then we would have the eight helicopters come in from the aircraft, carry the nimics and fly into the Desert one site. We would refill the helicopters. The EC's and mcs would take off back. They go to Oman Masorea in Oman and wait for us, and then we would take After the helicopters are fueled off, we'd go
to a Desert two site hide site. There was a warehouse that would they would put us up into. The helicopters would go someplace else and we just put camel net up there and we'd wait during the next day like hours there. Then the following night trucks would come in that had already been arranged. Dick Meadows and his group had trucks that were already in there. They would come and pick us up and we take these trucks to the embassy. While we're doing that, the rangers are
coming in. Then they're taking an airfield and so then when we get the hospit, we take them over to the Stadium soccer stadium across the Roosevelt Road, and once we got on that we go to the Ranger airfield and then get onto the fixed wing aircraft and go on go on out with the hostages. So it was a two night operation inside of Iran.
And could you speak a little bit to the to the intelligence piece and how that developed as this operation went on. I mean, I think wade Ishi Moto was the chief intel officer for the unit at the time. But as I think we've also talked about in the past, there was a problem with getting reliable information out of Teurin.
Yeah. Well, the CIA people that were part of the embassy were trapped. We're now hostages. We really didn't have any country, any in country assets that we were getting intelligence from because they were now hostages. So there was a lot of you know, that was a big lack of intelligence. That was a big failure. Another thing was
the weather conditions at this time of year. You know, I've experienced the dust storms, the haboos, and somehow I don't know, that piece of the puzzle got really the weather part got really explained to the weather conditions to the Marines and what to do if they run into a dust storm. So when we ran into the dust storm, I was on the lead MC one thirty when we ran into the dust doorm. The the fixed wings all flew on top of the dust storm. We were gonna
fly low because there was Iran. Iran had some radar. We knew where their radar was. We was also worried about getting picked up by the Soviets the Russians uh, and that they would tip off Iran that we were coming. So we were going to plant. They were going to fly in low nap of the earth. But dust storms obscure radar and so you so, what the helicopters should have done when they encountered the dust storm is just try to get above the dust dorm and keep keep booking.
But they just kept flying through that, and they flew through two dust storms and they that was pretty tough on them. And we did not have any communications with the helicopters because we were all, you know, radio silence, But we did have satcom radios and the helicopters had sacked secure satcom radios. But back then, in order for them to use the sackcom they would have had to land the helicopter, set the radio up and you get the antenna the right Asthmas and nang all that and
then talk to us. They did not have it mobile on the aircraft, so they did carry I think a few of the helicopters did carry U Satcom Radio one. You want me to go when to desert one and when we land landed and seen all the headlights.
I would But I would also like to ask, of course, if this is a loaded question, you know, Mike, was there ever a full mission rehearsal that brought all the elements together before you guys kicked off the mission in April.
We never had a full mission rehearsal. One reason that was I heard was because of operational security. We just did pieces of the mission and and that was probably a big failure. But there was never a full rehearsal with everything. Yeah, that was that was somebody's judgment call.
There Another little interesting sidebar that I don't think many people are aware of is that dead A had a small presence also on the mission.
Right the Berlin detachment. Dead A beck With just wanted our group to focus on the embassy. Uh there was I mean was there three others that were held over there at the chancel the m f A. Yeah, yeah, And so that was given to dead A people and
they had. They were carrying MP fives and we were all carrying CAR fifteens, so that that piece was given to them and they had some suppressed MP five's two and so yeah, our mission was just focused on the embassy, so there was another those other guys that were over there at the other place.
And so then what happened when the unit got spun up and they said this is going forward and you guys launched. I think the first location was Egypt, Yeah, we are. We flew into Watakenya, Egypt, which was an.
Old Soviet base had had hangars for meg aircraft and it was in pretty bad shape the so but we took it over and so that was our staging area to get everybody flew into there. And then that'd because your is B intermit staging area and our forward staging by base was in mass Area, Oman and it's an island and the Brits had a base air base on there that we took over or shared with the Brits
and then from there's where we launched. So we took CE one forty one to Mass Area and then from there we picked up our one thirties and so that was it. Then we launched.
Uh.
And when we got to Desert one, the Desert One site, there was headlights down on the road. This road was supposed to be a dirt road, that it was dirt road that very little travel on it, and but then we saw a head lights down below. So we actually had to circle a few times before we did land. As soon as we landed, opened up the ramp and everything. Here we see a pair of headlights coming down the road and beck With says stop. It was a bus
and said it says stop that bus. So one of the somebody fired a forty milimeter in front of the bus and the bus stopped and the next thing you know, there's forty four Iranians on there. So we had forty four Iranian detainees. I just learned that they were everybody on that bus was actually related to each other they and I just learned this recently. Was that a family reunion? Yeah, that's what they were going to, is a family event.
Uh.
And they were traveled from one city to another city, and so they were all So once they stopped the bus, we got everybody off there had to go through their bag to make sure that nothing there was nothing that they carrying they could be a threat to us. And so for a while then our team and a couple of other teams, we were guarding these detainees because you know, as Americans, we do not take hostages. We we just
detained people for a period of time. So they were detainees, not so we had forty four of our own, and I can they were just they were just scared. Aircraft were landing, people were walking by, and it just to them, I don't know what was going they thought was happening.
And then yeah, well then down the road comes to this fuel truck, and so the ranger, the road ish and the ranger roadblock team went out there and they fired a couple few rounds in the radiator of the fuel truck and then one of the rangers shot along and that hit underneath the fuel truck and caught the fuel truck on fire. So that's the field truck sat there burning. The guy in the oil tanker truck he got out and ran into a vehicle that was behind him,
and then they took off. So now we got a bus with forty four people, we got a fuel truck that's burning, and the final they then eventually the fueld truck explodes and it's a big, huge firebone in the dark, mid dark sky and just lights up the whole area. And then the other airs, some of the aircraft that were coming in when the fuel truck was burning, that
was affecting their night vision goggles. And then finally the helicopters seeing a fuel truck on fire, so the helicopters started landing, and of course they were like forty least forty five minutes light landing there, and of the eight helicopters, we only got six on the ground, and the sixth is the minimum that we had determined to do the mission.
One helicopter turned back to the mnemens. Another helicopter was a band It had a blade indicator light came on, so they abandoned that helicopter, and then another helicopter landed and that crew jumped down to that. So there was only six helicopters that arrived there. The one that turned back was having some kind of problems with heat overheat, something was overheating, so now we have six there, and then they find out that the one of the helicopters
has a hydraulic some kind of hydraulic issue. Which is a that's it, you know, it's grounded. So it was made. The determination was made that now we only have five helicopters, which is not enough to do the mission is at that point, it was determined that because we said we needed six, and the thing is, we also estimated we could have lost another helicopter at the hide site, like the next night when they would start the helicopters up
for some reason, one won't start up. Then we'd be down to four helicopters, so that we would have had to leave some of our rescue force behind to get the hostages out. And that was.
Colonel Beckwith had to make a pretty difficult decision at that point.
Right of course Carter went along with it. It was the criteria, you needed six and mission would be a boart at five, and that's what it was. So but now you know, trying to get all the stuff around the fix wing, now we're running very low on Phiel. They had the fixed wing aircraft needed to leave. The helicopters had all been refueled. So what so we got into one of these EC one thirties, I think it's EC one thirty number five, and and we get in
there and we're we're heading back. We're gonna The plan was that maybe we could restart the mission in forty eight hours. We would take the we would take the Iranians that we have with us, and you know, later on, you know, get they get find their way back to Iran, but we would take up everybody with us and we would try to do the mission again. So what they needed to do was the two helicopters was behind our aircraft. They needed to move them. But the one helicopter that
was to our left rear behind us. When it landed, it landed hard. It had flattenous, so it could not it could not move on its wheels, so it had so the CCT CCT guy had to tell it to because we were our prop wash was blowing dust on these two helicopters. We wanted to take off, so the CCT directed that helicopter to leave to reposition. Well, when it took off, it kicked up dust. The pilot got vertigo and he came around and he ran into our front left side and crashed into us. And we were
inside the helicopter, I mean inside the aircraft. I was up near the front of the aircraft and some of the guys had took We had taken off all of our equipment. I had a besides, I was carrying a five gallon water can on my back. I had a rucksack frame with a five gallon and so I took my kavlar off and put it on top of the five gallon water can, and then we all carried We had everybody had E and E kits and sewed into our jackets with maps and everything. We had ten thousand
everybody was carrying ten thousand dollars. I had five thousand dollars in Iranian money and five thousand dollars in US money. And so but where I'm going to carry I put it between the my kavlar, the different parts of my cavlar. I had my money stuffed in there. But then when the helicopter crashed into us, the rotor blades cut into the top of the fuselage. But we didn't have a
clue what was going on. What was that? And the next thing I knew, there was like this rocking motion as we rocked, and then there was an explosion and the left front cockpit door blows in, just boom and nothing but fire flames just come in what happened was the internal fuel tank on that RH fifty three D had ruptured, and the pilot and co pilot of the fifty three actually made it out of their helicopter through their cockpit windows, but they were burned pretty bad. They
had up to third degree burns. They had inhaled this hot gas and fumes, and so they crawled out from their helicopters. But the three marine crewmen were trapped inside the back of the helicopter and they perished. And then in the front of our cockpit, the five crewmen up at the Air Force up in the front, they were trapped in there and they all were killed and saw this fire. Just flames came in. So one of the airmen crew members tried to open the left rear paratrooper door,
that's the side that the helicopter crashed on. When he opened the door, cracked it a little bit. There was nothing but flames there. So he shuts the door and then they opened up the right rear paratrooper door, and the flames are intermediate. There's flames and then there's not flames. When they cracked. When that helicopter crashed into us, the observers on the ground that were watching this whole thing.
That fireball completely engulfed our aircraft and they thought that everything was gone to the observers on the ground, and so we just started bailing out of that right rear paratrooper door. Somebody hollered, don't panic. I thought it was Dave Cheney, that Sergeant Major Cheney that hollered at, but maybe one of the air force LoadMasters said that. But anyway, just people were not no panic, just getting on out. And you're on this giant fuel bladder that you're bouncing
up and down. I remember Chris Abel stood up and he says hall Assnick saying, I know he's flat on his face down, he's on the ground on the fuel bladder. And it just was difficult. And then you could hear small arms start cooking off, just popping off inside the aircraft. And then when I didn't think I would make the door, I thought it was impossible because the flames are still coming towards you. There's flames inside the aircraft and we were on the giant fuel bladder and I thought, I said,
oh God, is this how it's going to end? You know, because I just thought that I only had seconds to live that I didn't make the door, and then when I got to the door, I just dove out and rolled there was some hot metal there, rolled on some hot metal and got onto my feet and uh just ran. I could hear hangarnads cooking off, the exploded hangernads and
then not getting very far. We had six red Eye missiles on board that on board our aircraft, and the Red Eye missiles were our air defense if we were at Desert one and our Iranians came in and spotted us or whatever. We did have some red.
Eye missiles, the predecessor to the Stinger missile.
Yeah. Sweet, And then those started cooking off and going out into the desert. These red Eye missiles started shooting off. And then the first aircraft I tried to get on, they waved me away. They were all the aircraft were moved because there was stuff coming flying through the air so that all the aircraft were just trying to clear out away from the carnage here. And so eventually I got on another EASTC one thirty and then there was
the pilot for the marine. Pilot was on the ramp of the somebody had helped carried him and put him on the aircraft and he he was having difficulty breathing. He had an eylon cord around his neck that was burnt into his neck. I took the cord off his neck and and so I stayed with the pilot and worked with him at the four hour flight back to Oman, just trying to comfort him. And we did not have each I don't know why we didn't have a medical
pack on each aircraft. All they had was these little first aid things that the on the the one thirties that didn't have nothing but dressings and different other things. We needed a medical we needed IVS, we needed morphine, We needed all this stuff. And every aircraft should have had a medical package on it because we're trained to use it. I was. I had go already, I had prior to going to Delta. I had gone through EMT training, so I was nationally certified as an EMT. But we
just didn't have any of this stuff. And then so when we did so, the dead A guys actually were carrying morphine. So we got morphine from the dead A guys and we started getting injecting the pilot and the copilot with morphine and give them water. I mean, they were burned they got there, one of the air force guys said, take off his gloves because his hands were burned. The pilot's hands were. I says, no, we're not taking off his gloves. Take off his gloves. His skins coming
off too. And so we did get that, and when we took off. We never had accountability at desert one of who was there and who wasn't there. When we our aircraft and we took off, we ran into that next to the road was a dirt burnt bank burm. We hit that burm really hard, our aircraft did, and we learnted up into air and came down and then
kept going. But then once we got airborne, they came over and said over the speaker saying that we may have damaged our landing gear and we may not have any good landing gear when we get ready to land and oman and then when we get to flying for and it's a four hour flight. We were flying for a little bit and they said, well, we may not have enough fuel to get back. We may have to ditch at sea. So and I wow, what a night.
You know, no landing gear. Now we're have to make ditch to see but we made it back.
The landing gear did come out of the aircraft.
And they are landing gear did come back.
Did the guys when obviously you guys didn't know what happened? When when everything started, did you did you think you were like did you think you were under attack?
Like?
What what was going through your mind when all that started off?
Initially thought we got hit by something, but didn't know what, you know that yeah, like we might have got attack at first, that being a helicopter running into us. That wasn't in their mind. Wasn't in my mind that we got hit by a helicopter at first, but it soon became apparent that that's what happened.
And how many how many uh one thirties which are the planes for those of our viewers who don't know there there you know, cargo planes or TRANCSPT planes. How many of those were on the ground at the time at Desert one Because you said you have six.
We had six. We had six aircraft. We had three MC one thirty E models and we had three EC one thirty E models, So we had six aircraft on the ground and roughly how many personnel I think our assault force was around one hundred and twenty some people are totals. I don't know the numbers. All of Bee Squadron was on that helicopter, on that EC one thirty that the helicopter ran into and so we all made it out of there. The loadmaster made it. The loadmaster
was burke, pretty bad air Force load master. A couple guys helped him out. He was kind of on fire, and Paul Lawrence was one of the people that helped him out of the aircraft. And I think he was the last person out of the aircraft, was the loadmaster. So so now we have, you know, five fixed wing on the ground and immediately, I don't know why, but the the helicopter crews abandoned their helicopters and their rots
are running everything. They abandoned them first thing and jumped in on the on the fixed wing.
So all the helicopter crews got out of the helicopters, left and running and got on the fixed wings.
True, yeah, I don't know why they did that. They had they had been refilled, they could have flew back to the aircraft carrier. Also, we provided each aircraft with a destruct charges that we had an animal can. They had C four thermicronades. We had time time fuse in there. So if helicopter had to be abandoned, it was supposed to be destroyed, and none of those were destroyed. Those helicopters.
Now the thought was that they might call some fixed wing off the mnemens to come in there and destroy those helicopters, but they decided against bringing in the fixed wings. And then they had the helicopter crews. They had documents that they shouldn't have had on those helicopters. There was and I've seen some of these documents with Iranian markings on them explaining in farcie of what these documents are for. But they had all the routes and everything, and which
would have revealed Desert two as well. I imagine. Yeah, yes, yes, it had all had our hide sight. It had they had there where they were going to go, had the approached to the embassy, how to leave the embassy, where we were, the arranger airfield. They had all that information that they had left behind. It was a treasure trove of documents and information. So of course, you know we had the Dick Meadows and his crew, Uh they're in
Tehran that was supporting us. So they you know, they had to get out of Tehran because they know that they had inside, you know, inside help that inside in the country. So I don't know why all that stuff was there, why it wasn't destroyed or taken with them, or why even some of that stuff was even present on those helicopters.
But yeah, and this is probably before like Group a ARS, we were a thing where where these were these helicopter pilots or crews would stand up in front of the group and say, yeah, well we let the helicopters because right, I mean they there was nobody. I mean, you never found out why no.
They I can tell you I saw the helicopter crews when they came in there, the pilots and co pilots, they were they were wiped out. That I can tell you that that those dust storms took a lot out of them. They struggled through that, they were mentally I think whipped uh when they got to Desert one and the thought of getting back in a helicopter and flying back to the aircraft carrier, they they didn't want no
part of that. So I can't know, I don't know who gave them permission, yeah, to abandon us when and why they weren't destroyed. Our guys were considering going there to destroy those helicopters, but they were told to just we need to get out of here, uh because like I say, the air the fixed wing, we're running low on fuel. And of course this even the accident delayed the aircraft there longer. So it was.
There's one story that you had shared with me that is not in colonel Colonel Beckwith's book, which would be kind of funny except you know, for the loss of life on the mission where Colonel Colonel Beckwith is ordering people onto the back of the sea one thirty and then the crew chief and the plane or ordering them out. So they're all going in like a circle up the ramp and then out the side door and around and around as they get yelled at by two people.
Yeah, that was in Oman when we got to Omar. When we got to Oman and they had one of the was set up as a metavac and so we were told so we got to o'mon, that's when we did the head count who was here, who was there? We determined that we left eight people behind, you know, the five Air Force, three Marines and so and like my team got split up during the accident, and so I didn't know who Bill's, Eric Haney and Bill Zoomwalt where they were. Chris, Abel and I were together on
our aircraft. So not until we got to Aman did I see Bill Zoomwant and Eric Haney to know that they made it out okay. And so then we had to get on and so they told us, you know, we only had few medical casualties, the air Force loadmaster and the two marines pilot copilot Marines, but they had the whole with stretchers and stuff. We were told to get on that aircraft. Somebody on the ground told us to get that's the aircraft were taken back to Egypt.
So as we get on had aircraft, they're screaming at us and telling us to get out. So we go. We go in the aircraft and up the ramp and then we're leaving out the front door, and then they were told to get back in line. So there's a continuous circle of people getting the aircraft and getting out. And also beck With I was with it, standing next to beck With with Don Feeney, and beck was says looks at Don and me and says, where's your weapon. I said, my weapon is on at EC one thirty.
You know everything I I just this is all I got out with. You know, I didn't grab my weapon or anything. Uh And he said, and a lot of people just bend and if you had had your weapon physically in your hand, then you might have got out with it. But he said that, Well, you're you're stupid. Was called Don Feenie and I stud and we're like, well we may be stupid, but we're alive, you know. And he had heard that somebody had gone back into
that aircraft and got their weapon out. He had heard that nobody that left had aircraft went back in that aircraft. But you know, that's just that's back with He's a character. He'd fire you in a minute and then hire you back.
Did did you leave your kevlar with the ten thousand dollars on the air I did my cavelar. When everybody else heard that story, did they all leave their ten thousand dollars on theraf to?
Yeah? I had to sign a statement that's what happened. But yeah, it truly it got burned up. Yeah.
Was there an anecdotal story of somebody who had fallen asleep and thought that the plane was airborn.
Frank mckinna, Well, see, as we got in the aircraft, it August was dark and the props running, and when that helicopter, it almost felt like the brakes were being released when the helicopter ran into us. At first I thought that that's the we're releasing the brakes, that we're going to start to move. But yeah, people were whipped and stuff. And Frank mckinna he since pat Frank since passed away with cancer. But Frank woke up and then
saw the commotion. He saw the fire, and he saw the people running out, and he said to himself, what are these fools doing, because he thought we were actually in the air and we were jumping out. We didn't have parachutes, and but he got in line with the rest of us and he just thought, you know, he's gonna worry about getting out of this aircraft and he'll worry about landing Nicks one thing at a time. So when he jumped out, he went out and he got
flat and stable. Well, he hit the ground and it knocked the wind out of him, and of course people were walking over the top of him. He had rolled out of the way but yeah, he actually thought we were in the air but he jumped out with us because it wasn't no fun, you know, staying in that airplane. So that was Frank. And then then another funny incident whence we we got in with the you know, with the pilot and co pilot, and we're looking for something
to give them. The only thing that we had that they gave us in our survival kit was percocet or perkadan and so so I think it was Glenn Nicol hollered out and said, uh, somebody checked their E and E kit for any perkadan, you know, and uh, Bruno, your baniac turns to forget who he turns to, turns to oh, Jim Sweeters, I think, and says Nick. Nick says we need to E and need to Perkadan and uh and Jim says, well, I'm not leaving this aircraft. So luckily Bruno you know, didn't get off the airplane
and head to Perkadan wherever that was. But anyway, we got the morphine and that's what we needed instead of pills.
So after after you know what blew up in the press and was called the Debacle at Desert one. You guys almost immediately went into planning a second attempt to go in and rescue the hostages.
Yeah, we did this. I think it's called Honey Badger. Well, let me get these. We had different operational names. For example, the planning for the Iran hostage rescue mission was called Rice Bowl in the beginning. And there's a confusion with all these different names. But the reason we called it Rice Bowl was that if anybody picked up on what we're doing, they might associate it was submission in Southeast Asia.
So so initially the planning phase was Operation Rice Bull, and then the the operational phase was Eagle Claw, and then we had the Honey Badger, which was the follow up. And there was another code name to Snowbird Baby. Yeah, snow Bird, Yeah, And I think Snowbird was the part with the putting the rocket motors on UH one thirty. That was Snowbird. And of course that that plane they put these rocket motors on, I think, and tried to
lift off with it, and not all their rocket career. Yeah, not all the rocket motors fired, and they just completely destroyed that C one thirty. They had all the rocket motors on. That was they were going to land ad in there and take it off with this. That was one plan. But they took the hostages and took them and moved them out to different areas, different prisons, and we never had intelligence to you to do a second mission. How did the press find out to call it the
debacle Desert one one? They had to know of the mission and two they had to know Desert one. How did they find out? Well, of course the Iranian press was the first group of people there at the Desert one site. Today it's a very popular tourist site. There's a building there, there's commemorative in this time on April twenty fourth every year they have a big celebration there.
It's a big deal. And you can see the wreckage of still there, the helicopter and this EC one thirty, and so the press were there, and of course in initial press reports they said that the C one thirty ran into the helicopter. When you when you first news recovered, they were trying to figure out what took place here, trying to put the pieces together, and in the beginning they had it really all messed up when they were first reporting what was what took actually took place there?
So yeah, I don't know again, how you know, Jimmy Carter came on and explained to the American people that he gave the order to do the mission, and the mission there was casualties and eight servicemen died, and of course Jimmy Carter took full responsibility. I know. One of the things is we we went there to get fifty three hostages, not fifty two hostages. And I always hear fifty two, fifty fifty two, because US fifty two was the end number that was released forty four days later.
What in this mission took place in April twenty fourth night of the twenty fourth morning of the twenty fifth. In July, one of the hostages, and his last name was Queen, got really really sick and they released him. He had MS. I think he was later diagnosed with MS. So he was released in July. And then now there was fifty two hostages. So on the inauguration day when forty four days there was fifty two hostages that were released at that point, but Queen was there when we
were doing it. We were after fifty three of them.
And just for viewers who were interested, it might also be worth pointing out that this is when the whole Argo incident happened as well.
Yeah, yeah, because some of the embassy employees were not in the embassy at the time of the takeover, and so they went they had some safe houses and eventually they seeked help with the Canadian Embassy and the and then the Canadian Embassy assisted in getting these others that Americans, what was nine of them, nine of them eight or nine?
It was a Tony Mendez that went and got them out, I believe, right, And it's yeah, the movie Argo is very accurate and at that part of the mission.
Was so at this time, Delta is a kind of a fledgling organization and and I think that will probably go into like how this affected the whole Jaysack idea and things like that. But obviously this was a pilot error that caused it. But were there any repercussion, I mean, did did any of this fall on Delta immediately?
Like? Okay? So there was a Holloway commission was formed up to investigate what happened, and they made a bunch of determination. It was mostly command and control, inner operability, be able to communicate with different forces and to have a unified joint force that's trained together. So they made so they came up with all these what some of the stuff that went wrong, you know, by putting all these different organizations together, and so that was the genesis
for the Joint Special Operations Command. So Jaysocks stood up on Pope Air Force Base, which adjoint Sport Bragg, and that's where JAYSAK formed up. And then nineteen ninety two I went over to I served in Jaysock from ninety two to ninety nine. I was still signed to Delta, but I was duty at Jaysack. And so because of the mission JAYSAK stood up to that was the Joint Counter Terrorist Organization and JAYSAK one of the things they did was they did quarterly exercises, the Joint re Training
Readiness exercises, and they did IDRIS emergency exercises. And so we put all these pieces together and had one headquarters, you know, Air Force, Marine, Navy, and Army in Jaysack. And so in ninety two I went over and I was a sergeant major from ninety two to ninety six
in Jaysck. The exercise sergeant major. My job was to go out and find training sites, to exercise sites, to do these joint quarterly exercises involved everybody, Rangers, Air Force, all the players, the Navy Seals, Seal Team six, UH, Navy Dev Group, and then I was always going to when I was there, I was always the controller on the Ranger target, so I was the safety controller for
the Rangers, which I had. That was always a pleasure for me to work with the Rangers and it was a really great bunch of guys, So I really liked that.
How did I was just gonna ask Mike, how did your experience from eagle Claw, your lessons learned? How did that impact how you ran the training exercises and He's readiness exercises down the line.
Yeah, I wish we would have. I would always wanted to do a joint training exercise that was eagle Claw, the whole, to redo eagle Claw all over again. That was I would have liked that to have been done. We never did that when I was there. I would have liked to see how, say, ten fifteen years later, how we would do eagle Claw today at that time, and I think that would have been a great experiment to do, but we never did that. Most of our joint exercises was you know, the Rangers always did the
airfield seizure. That was always there's piece of pie. And we always had a seal target, an adulta target, and seal targets could be a ship that was underway. We did a lot of you know, improvised nuclear devices type exercise. A terrorist group has a improvised nuclear device, or they've they've captured a real nuclear device, uh and fixed it up to make it and improvised nuclear device. So we would have to go in there and we take that.
And of course NEST and the NEST the Department of Energy Nuclear Emergency Search Teams would be involved in those type of exercises. We did several like SunDog was one of a Mighty Derringer was another NEST with a new type scenario and we do you know a biological you know, we might be a chemical biological facility that we have to take and destroy. Uh. So those were some of our j r x's.
And this is one sixtieth the Specialation wing got was stood up around after after Claw.
Yeah, yes, the one six sixty Special Operation Special Operations Regument.
Yeah, it just stood up and was that. I mean, I don't know how because you are airwing. But was was that a competitive thing for the Army to get what I mean? Did I mean obviously the Navy, the Marine, you know, the marine pilots on a Navy bird didn't didn't work out, and they were in experience, and it's not it's not really their fault because they didn't have that training at that point.
That's true, because maybe fifty threes are different than Marine fifty threes, and they were. And when you have a if you're in a Marine fifty three and you have a blade indicator malfunction, like, come on, what they have nitrogen in the rotors and the blades, and if there's a crack, the nitrogen leaks out. I guess it's a
radioactive nitrogen. A sensor goes off saying, you got to crack rotor blade Marine helicopters, you got you got a land that immediately land that helicopter to the blade indicate not So I guess with the Navy ones you could still fly the Navy ones with a blade indicated. That's what I've been told.
So how how did the arm I mean, was it ever competitive or do you know how the Army got the gig or was it just because it was the Army working with a primarily army. You have the seals, but but it's primarily Delta and rangers.
I think they looked at the CH forty sevens and figured that they could modify the CH forty sevens, make them air refuelable, make them so that they have a larger carrying capacity, cover a greater distance. So you know, only the Army was flying H forty seven, so I think they it was mainly I would think it was aircraft driven. And then, of course, and after that, Blackhawks came online after and so we had we used black Hawks for the first time in Grenada, and that's another story.
We went in with six helic Blackhawk helicopters there at Richmond Hill Prison, and I tell you we lost one of our helicopter, Number four was shot down. But had those been six Huey helicopters there in Grenada, all six of those helicopters would have we would have crashed all six helicopters because they shot us up pretty bad. They had ZSU twenty threes that they were shooting at us
twelve point sevens and seven point six to two. We were hitting from both from the Fort Frederick that was shooting to us at Richmond Hill Prison and then that people came out from the prison and were shooting up at the bottom of our helicopters, and bullets were going through our helicopters. But we had self sealing fuel tanks in those black Hawks and that was amazing those hell I really liked the Blackhawk helicopters compared to the Hugheys.
That was our first use with those. And of course after Grenada, you know, we had still had interoperability problems with Grenada talking to the Marines, talking to the Navy. So, and that's where US so COM was. They did another investigation and formed the US Special Operations Command formed after that. So what is the difference for for our viewers? What is the difference?
So Joint Special Operations Command stood up after Eagle Claw and then Grenada.
Happens was that eighty four eighty three, eighty October eighty three, three October twenty third.
So that happens in October eighty three, and then what and then so then they come up with, uh, so, what's the difference between the two organizations? Why why the need for the two of them?
Well, USL comes as a is a JAYSK is basically a black unit. Okay, it's it's primarily assets are what we call black cod that black units what black sauce. Us SO COM is both black and white. It's a broader spectrum. And JAYSK you really have the like Seal Teams X, you got Delta, you got the Rangers. Whereas with us SO COM you've got the US Army Special Operations Command, You've got all of the seals. It's and it's a four star position. Uh, Jaysack, I believe now
is a two star position? Is that I think today? I believe yes, it's a two star Whereas us SO comes the four star.
So so Jason is a smaller it's a smaller element. Do the out did the units in Jasock do they also fall under so calm or are they two separate things?
Yeah? We fall under us SO come, Uh JAYSK does. JAYSK is more of an operational organization. It controls whatever missions are going on on the ground, whereas us SO COM is the larger four star Uh sink command and you know it it it lets like Jaysack run the missions. Uh. There's a real good book out about Jaysuck. I'm trying to think of the title of the book, but I read it and it's an excellent Are you talking about Relentless Strike? Relentless Strike as an excellent book? Have you
read it? Yeah, yeah, that's Sean Nilard's book. Yeah, yeah, great book. If so, I recommend if you want to know more about Jaysack, that's the book to read.
And you also mentioned that there's a new book out about Eagle Claw that really fleshes out the operation in a way that's never really been done before.
Yeah, I have we go and get a copy of right.
Sure, guys, thank you for watching the Live with Sergeant Major Mike Vining. We're going to get right back to him. But again thanks for joining us live, and please remember to subscribe.
Okay, this is it. That's that's the book right there, and it is a by Osprey. It's part of the Raid series, which excellent Raid series and Justin Williamson put this together. It's got a lot of photographs in it, illustrations, you know. So this is this book came out for the fortieth anniversary of Eagle Claw and Colonel Nightingale. Do you you know Ningale? Huh? Keith Nightingale. He's got a brand new book I think comes out in August. Really yeah,
and it's it's on Amazon. You can pre order. I can't. I got it on my want list because I knew him working with the Rangers and he's got Eagle Claw and all the other you know, Green Aida and and and and books. And I think that one comes out in August.
All right, his name's going on my list for potential guests, August guest. But we have some questions that we should probably get to because I haven't been. Uh So, Alex, thank you Alex. First off, thank you everybody for joining us. Please subscribe to the channel for you have already and hit the little belfer in your notifications. Alex, thank you, uh Alex Uh. Alex wants to know what is it like being the ultimate life form.
Life for I'm just an average guy, but you know, I just wanted to do something different. When I was in the Army and I had spent ten years in e O D. I wanted to go into Special Forces. I had put in for Special Forces as a medic. I had a school day to be a Special Forces medic. But then I got the phone call that they formed up the unit in the Fort Bragg, a new unit. They wanted six EO D people as part of the
unit to be operate or qualified. So I put, you know, being a Special Forces medic and I went to Fort Bragg for the interview, and two weeks later I was in starting OTC.
Course And I mean, how did they sell the unit to you? I mean were you aware of blue Light at the time, Like, how how did they differentiate themselves between you know, Delta and uh Special Forces.
Well, I called up and talked to somebody there at the stockade, and I just knew that they were forming a special unit, and they wanted six e O D people And you know peacetime, you know, I've been Vietnam, and this is post Vietnam EO D. We're doing ring you know, you know, dud grenades at the grenade range at Fort Leonard Wood. I wanted something different, and so I went for the interview, flew there, and then they talked to me about what they were trying to do.
And so two weeks later I got PCs orders to Fort Brag. It sounded really interesting. We had in OTC one, we had six EO D guys try out only two. Two of us made it through OTC one, and then in OTC two we had another six E O D guys and only two made it through that part, and of course we went to We got there late. They had already run the selection Assessment course and we were going into the operator training course. But under the thing we had to go through the selection assessment. We had
to pass that. So in the fall of seventy eight we all went through the Selection Asessment course and only three of us passed the selection.
So you went to OTC before you went to the Operated Trainer course.
Before that, we did it backwards. We went to OTC first five months of OTC, then I. Then I went to the fall of seventy eight went to select I did. We had two back to back selection courses in fall seventy eight. I got polled on the first selection course after about five days because my times were slow, so I got pulled. I had to go in and talk to Colonel Backcourt. Colonel Beckwith says do you want to stay here? And I says yes I do. He says, well,
you're going to have to go through selection again. So we then the next selection course I went through and I passed it. Wow. And then I went to Airborne School because we were all legs. So and then so in the spring of seventy nine, I went to seventh Group at Fort Bragg was actually running an airborne course. So I went through air Warn School at Fort Bragg with seventh Group. That's amazing. We did things a little backwards. Uh, David Maynor, Thank you, David. Uh.
When the Chuck Norris movie came out, I'm assuming you means delth Force. When Chuck Norris movie came out, did you guys know about it and did you get a group together to see it?
Yeah, we we knew about it. Uh. Chuck Norris, you know, John Wayne was an iconic figure and Martha Ray were kind for Special Forces, right Uh. Uh. Chuck Norris wanted to be our special movie star and Beckworth had nothing to do with Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris tried to contact us, and beckw just didn't want anything to do. Of course. You also, Uh, after Eagle Claw, we got a lot of letters actually came to the unit, people writing and thanking us. So when you we had staff duty, we
would go through all the letters and read them. There's people that wanted back with autograph. Uh, but he did not do any autographs.
Now, you were a top secret unit and people were sending you letters, but.
Yeah, I don't know, I don't know how they addressed him. But you know that we had the regular post office box there at Fort Bragg and so we, yeah, we get all these letters and we read them when we had staff duty at night. That's pretty So you.
Had John Wayne as the iconic SF guy, then Chuck Norris wanted to be the Delta guy, and then we had what Nicholas Cage as the ranger and Aaron or not Aaron America but con AerR uh huh.
But yeah, we Chuck Norris never got through the door. Now, so was the movie not well received? It's pretty hokey. Uh, you know, it had nothing to do with Eagle Claw. It had more like, you know, there was some hostage Plaine Hijen backing some hostages. But yeah, it was it was entertaining.
Yeah, uh, Matt, thank you very much, Dak, thank you very much. They just donated with no questions, I don't think. And then Jonathan w did Mike know Ronnie Strahan s t R A H A N.
Yeah, the name sounds familiar. He told me he's a Jonathan's cousin. Yeah, the the name sounds very familiar, but I can't say how I can place him. Uh. DJ thank you very much for a twenty dollars donation at stort. UH.
Thank you for sharing your experience. Is there anything you can share about the rumors about a possible Louise mission for m I as in the early nineteen eighties, UH Commander Major Hani mentioned in his book as after concurrent with Desert one. Yeah, that was always uh. We always had that mission.
Uh. We had a a planning cell for the pow if we ever found in Southeast Asia any of our POWs were still being held for whatever reason, because they may not have been We felt that they may not have been considered POWs. If they had committed a crime, then they would be charged. You say, they killed the guard or something like that, then you lose your POW status and you're a criminal and or whatever for whatever reason.
So we always had a cell that was looking into I was never part of that planning cell, but we had several of these planning cells for different all different kinds, and our unit, only a small number of people would be privy to these any of these operations, they would be read into the program and then when you left the program, you have to be read out. So yeah, but I as far as you know, because who was that the ex Special Forces guy when yeah, Bo Grits. Yeah,
I don't think we ever got anywhere. None of that stuff ever panned out. We had a lot of missions that we would spin up for uh, you know, like that lost pilot during uh the first desert storm with whether or not he was being held prisoner. Yes, I'm trying to remember his name. And we would always plan on that. We were even planning on going to the his aircraft crash site and searching that in Iraq, uh,
but we never we never did do that. But that was but he was determined that he was killed in that plane crash.
Did did Did you have many Sane raiders either in the unit or or that were part of that had the input or we had two?
Jack Joplin was our medic, a chief medic and he was a SANTE on SANTE mission and we also had dig meadows, uh. And those were the two Sante people that we had.
And for I mean, for those who don't know on the what's the book on Sante is No, that's Sentenctic, but it is Sante, right.
Yeah, there's a good operation Ivory Coast, I think, yeah, it sounds right. Yeah, so yeah, about the Sante raid.
And there's also uh, there's also a book out that I just became aware of about Jaysk planning a potential p O W rescue mission and laws for you know, POWs from the Vietnam.
War, and I ordered it. I haven't read it.
Yet, but I guess i'll. Uh, I'll get back to you with if there's anything out there that's useful.
Thank you very much, thanks so much starting me here for sharing your experience with us.
We truly appreciate it. Hopefully understand.
G Watt humor here goes, could you beat Chuck Norris in a fight, because.
Yes, no, I don't think so. I think he's got more moves than I got. I'm a I'm a demo guy. You know. If it has to do with explosives, that's that's it. I could out demo Chuck Norris with explosives, I know. So there you go.
Chester Brown, thank you very much, and he just said, thank you guys for your service. Gordon Bradberry, thank you. Uh, good day. It's an Australian it's an Australian donation. So he starts out with good day.
Who can do? Good day? Good day mate, good day mate? Right, I just know. Uh, look at the site of that guana. Any Atlanta. Did you get any TV?
Did you get any tdy trips to Hereford, UK or down to Perth, Australia for some decent aussy beer.
Uh, yeah, Herford. I've been to Hereford several times working with the SAS. I did a lot of stuff. The first time I climbed Mount Danale Mount McKinley at the time Dnale today was with nine guys from the SAS. They invited a couple of US got Americans to go with them from Delta. I was the only one. So so the first time I climbed it in nineteen ninety was with nine Aussies, I mean nine Brits from the essay to t SAS. I've worked with the New Zealand SAS,
been to New Zealand twice working with them. When I was in Uh it used to have an exercise every
other year called gone from On. So it's a joint exercise between the Malaysian Scouts, the Australian s A S, the New Zealand s A S, the British s A S. They had British sbs UH and then we had the CC, the Air Force c CT guys and we had the Seals and Special Forces Delta and every so we used to have those exercises and so I went on one of those in New Zealand and worked with the New Zealand s A S and did some climbing with the New Zealand SA S down in the South Island, did
mountain training. When I was in B Squadron, we had different troops, different teams. In B Squadron, I was an Assault troop, but we had like Mobility troop, Air troop, water troop, mountain troop, and so I was on a mountain team in in Delta and so we did mountain training all the time. So we were doing skiing when Eagle Claw happened. I was out when Grenada happened. I was out rock climbing at Leavenworth, Washington, doing rock climbing when we got called back for Grenada. So did you UH for.
What were the similarities and differences between Delta, the Australian S s and the British SAS.
Hmmm, Uh, I really don't know too much with the difference between the two Australian and UH British s A S. They all have their selection in sessment things in the but the New Zealand UH SAS guys, a lot of them, great majority of were of Maori descent. They did really well for selection assessment and they did you know, of course, the British SAS does it in the Beacon Hills. They and we copied, We copied everything from the britge Delta
did from the SBS. During OTC one we had instructors from the the SAS teaching us how to shoot and a lot of things. And so our selection assessment was modeled under THEIRS. The New Zealand SAS they do it more in the North Island and the more of the tropic swampy areas and stuff like that. But I was really impressed with the New Zealand SAS guys that I worked with. Fascinating.
Oh and since you have been to Hereford, can you answer the universe question of what color is the boat house?
What color is the what the boat house? I don't know, never mind Rod of God thank you for the donation and that.
The oh no and Alex thank you. What was it like to work with Kate McBriar and Larry Vickers? What does Delta do better than other spec OP units in the US or other or any other military Yeah.
I knew, I knew Larry Vickers. And who's the other one, Katy? Katy was in blue Light, So I don't think, Okay, I know Larry Vickers. What we do different? You know, we work closely with the Sealed Team six in two areas. We work closely with our sniper observers across train with both units and our breachers. And so I was a breacher, I was e O D. But I was also a master breacher in Delta, and I was for a while for many years, I was in charge of the breaching
R and D research. And when we did a breaching trip research trip, whether it was Seal Team six was doing it, Delta was doing it, or the FBI Hostage Rescue Team was doing it, all three of us worked together. So if I did a breaching R and D trip of how to get through, I'm looking at getting through some concrete walls with reebar and stuff like that. Coming ways to defeat that, then the Seal Teams six breachers and the HRT breachers would be on the same trip.
So we cross trained in those areas really well, you know, Seal Team six guys, you know, their forte is you know, all water ops and look up right and close to the shore and you know, and and of course we you know, our our stuff is more inland stuff. But we you know, we did have water teams and we did a little bit of water stuff, but we you know, we just have our own niche Uh do you.
How how I mean when when Jaysock was being formed or maybe later on, because there's a lot of mission creep now, but was it still was Was there a lot of mission creep then? Were people competing for the same job, you know, different units?
Yeah, there was some of that, you know, whether they felt that, you know, Delta was being favorite or you know, Seal Team six might have felt that Delta was being favored for certain missions over them. Uh, but you know, we all had our special thing and so you know, it's you put the right unit to do the mission. And if it was more of what how we were training, we would never think of trying to do a maritime mission. We're trying to board some cruise ship that was cruising.
You know, it's fourteen to fifteen knots and try to board on a cruise ship. And you know, so we all had our different specialties, but certain things that we cross changed. Like I said, with the snipers observers and with the breachers, those two we we we trained together, and we did a lot of training.
So Mike, uh, you know, before we move on, and I don't know if there'll be a few more questions, but I definitely wanted to get in there. Going back to Eagle Claw on you know, now that we've come up on forty years, what do you think the legacy of that mission is all these years later, you know, both for special operations and maybe for you and you know your fellow operators personally when you look back on it.
Well, you know it was you know, we felt confident in Eagle Claw are part of the mission. We knew if we could get to the embassy, we would be successful. We trained so hard in that I even would dream about it at night when I was asleep, you know, going through and up that stairs and you know, on the second floor and searching the rooms. So it was real disappointing when we knew we could be successful and we never got a chance to do what we were
trained to do. And but the legacy, of course was there was a lot of pro We had a lot of issues, a lot of problems, and of course you we already talked about Jaysok being formed to solve some of those joint issues that we had interoperability issues. And then of course after Grenada we had USO com and so you know, when Desert Storm came out, you know, we were given the scud hunting mission in western Iraq
along with the with the British sas. So they divided, we divided to pie up between them and us to do the scud hunting. Uh what you know, we were not very successful in finding the scuds and having them taken out, but just our presence there on the ground really prevented them from exposing those scud launchers. We were afraid. We wanted to keep Israel out of the conflict, and if they would have launched a couple of scuds and hit Israel, then Israel got in and that would have
made things messy. But I think we did pretty good. We had an accident. The helicopter. Helicopter crashed into it just outside the airfield. We were at place called in Saudi Araba called our Ur had a small hill about the only hill round and it was really visibility was
really poor. The helicopter came in, it was metavacing. One of our guys, Sergeant Major Pat Hurley, had injured his back and so we had two Delta medics on that flight, at Otto Clark and Rodriguez, and the the helicopter ran into the mountain and everybody on that mission and that helicopter died. Uh Yeah, I had to go in and clean up that all the animal they had on that
helicopter and destroy it. But you know then now you know after that, probably the next mission we had was Haiti, and we operated off the aircraft carrier USS America CV sixty six I, so that was the Joint Task Force headquarters. We had two star General Peter Peter Shoemaker. Schoomaker was the commander of the thing, and we were going to invade Haiti and put the re established the government in Haiti. So we had had uh two teams of Seal Team
six on board that held on the aircraft carrier. We had. We had a whole battalion of rangers from one battalion on board, a company from another battalion, and a platoon I think from a third battalion on that aircraft carrier, and we had course Task Force once sixty one sixtieth on there. And so I was the senior enlisted advisor. I was a senior ranking person enlisted on the aircraft carrier for the Joint Task Force. And that was interesting.
We spent forty four days on aircraft carrier operating off that. Of course, you know that we did not have to do a forceful seizure of Haiti. Former President Jimmy Carter. I'm trying to think who else was involved. Was a colon Powell was involved. Anyway, they convinced the government that for a peaceful, peaceful they would go to exile someplace and reinstate the government. And so that went pretty well.
That was the first time we operated on a float forward support base on USA, and when that was a lot lot of lessons learned to operate on an aircraft carrier, and that was in nineteen ninety four four. You know, my opinion we should have been operating on an aircraft carrier during Somalia in eighty ninety three. We should not have been at that air base in Somalia, and that was a big mistake because every movement we made operating off that was we were watched and we should have
been offshore and been flying missions in from offshore. But that's a lesson learned. Well.
When you said there were a lot of lessons learned working off an aircraft carr or floating for an operating base, like, what are some examples of those lessons learned?
Well, we were like the air wing, the air component on the aircraft carrier. So when you we had to you know, we had to provide I had to provide twenty four KPIs for the for the for the galleys there on. The ship had at twenty four hours ship, you know, twenty four hours, seven days a week. I had to have twenty four of our guys. So the rangers came to me and every day I'd have two meetings.
I take all the senior enlisted from all of the Jaysak elements and all the ship's chiefs from the different compartments on the chief and twice a day we would have a meeting and we would iron out all the problems we would have. And so the Rangers said that they would provide the KPS if I didn't as sign them any other details on the ship. So the rangers took over that we had to do underway unreps on the ship. So the Seals said that they would do
all the unreps. They we'd have to move the cargo from the hangar bays to where they needed to go into store, and so I had the Seals do that. So everybody stepped up their part. But you know, we had to work out laundry issues because we've spent forty four days on the ship, so we had and forty so we had laundry issues, we had library issues, we had the weight room. You know the gym. Our guys
were actually breaking the JIM equipment. And you know the only difference between a prison gym and an aircraft carrier JIM is the prison gym is the better gym than the aircraft carrier JIM. Because our guys kept breaking all the JIM equipment. So I told this guy, I says, you give me a list of all broken equipment, what parts you need, and I'll get them to you. The library guys wanted our guys to leave their ID cards when they've checked out a book, to leave the ID cards.
Any minute we could be calling people up on deck and we can't be going around. I said, I guarantee that if a guy checks out the book, you're going to get that book back. I guarante. And then I told all the ranger sergeant majors that book. If you get your guys check out a book, it's going back. Uh and and so that kind of stuff. The ship has no tobacco policy ship. Well, the rangers are dipping
and chewing and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, and so what they were doing when they were on the flight deck, the rangers were, and this is in the beginning, they have what you call pad eyes on a flight deck. A pad eye is where you lock down secure aircraft machinery. A couple they got a crossbar thing with a whole, and that's where you connect to Well, the rangers were spitting in the pad eyes with their tobacco stuff. Well, before any air operations, you have to do a FOD
walk for an object damage walk. So anybody up on the flight deck when you all when they call a fodwalk, everybody gets online and you walk the flight deck to look for washers, nuts, screws, anything and every pad I has got to be searched in case there's a nut or screw because you know that could during air operations. That could be the world or wash or a jet could take that and that could kill somebody or damage equipment.
So you do a fidwalk. Well in the beginning, Uh, when they called a fodwalk, everybody would head down below deck. Cannot do it. You're on deck when a fodwalk calls. Uh, you got to do a fodwalk. You got to walk the deck. Well, it's when you're searching those padiyes with tobacco juice. Was a so I said to it, said that we cannot stop the rangers from chewing and dipping at this time. You do not want to have a bunch of rangers on board the ship without you know,
going through nicotine withdraws. So we set up a special area on the ship up Sponsor six at the back of the ship. Or the rangers could chew and dip all they wanted. We had events on it. We had like a little Olympic, had to set Olympic up. We had to keep the rangers. Rangers, you have to keep busy just into trouble. So we had different things to keep rangers busy, you know, different things like like a
scavenger hunt type thing. Also where they can learn how to get around and move in the ship from one location to another, because the aircraft carrier can be quite confusing. You got all the different markings that you have in the ship because you where you are. And so it was a learning curve. So some of our one sixtieth guys were putting decals on some of the Navy equipment, some of the stickers on Navy equipment. So then so then the Navy started putting stickers on the helicopters, and
I said, you got to cut that stuff out. Nobody's putting stickers on anything. And yeah, so whenever my telephone would ring, I always got bad news. I never got good news. I had. I had fights in the kitchens, some some cookie too telling the range spec for ranger to do something and that ranger wasn't going to do it, and next thing you know, they go, they start fighting.
How did how did the the army, the especially rangers and young privates.
How did they adjust to maybe culture.
Because it's very it's very different, you know, like the officers and the army and the officers in the navy.
On board a ship, it's a different culture. Yeah, it is. It was problems, but we got a lot of them sorted out. It was a big learning curve.
Uh.
And we had to figure out laundry. You know. We'd sign people to go down to the ship's laundry and do do the laundry for your group and stuff like that. I did. I did. I did every detail on the ship. I personally, I did, went down did laundry, so I knew how the process went so that I could be to say, okay, you know, I did it, so you guys can do it. Yeah. The rangers were good. You just got to keep you know, keep them busy.
Uh.
And that's the biggest thing. Uh. You know, it's all about rank on a ship. Like you know, if you were like the ship store, for example, there's only so many people allowed in a ship store. I don't know, maybe three people can go in a ship store, and everybody waits outside the ship store in the line. Except if you're a chief, if you're you know, East seven or above, you don't have to wait in line, you if you can go and up there. So we were
all standing out there. I mean, this is Seal Team, this is myself, a bunch of Seal Team, six guys. Everybody standing out there is E seven or above. And this navy chief tries to cut in front of us, and he said, hey, hey, hey, you know, get in the back of the line. And the guy says, you know, we're not wearing rank. And the guy says, chiefs, chiefs can cut in front of the line. We're all chiefs here, get in the back of the line.
Well, because not only are they wearing their rank, but they're wearing a different uniform. Yeah, and everybody else.
Yeah, it was, it was. It was interesting. I spent a lot of time with the ship's captain. We would actually him and I would then would get out when there's no air ops going on. We'd walk the flight deck and just talk with the ship's captain. I had I dined with the ship's captain several times, got to really know him. And at the end of the day, when this thing was done, so what we did was we you know, we we left it parted Norfolk, Virginia
on aircraft carrier without the air any air component. So then we flew down the Georgia coast and then then one sixtieth flew onto the aircraft carrier off the Georgia coast, and then we steamed down to Haiti and then we did different drills. We had to do like man overboard drills where you had to count for everybody, had to do battle stations, we had to go through all that
kind of stuff. So it was really different. And so I was like the senior enlisted advisor for the Joint Task Force, but I was also safety during air operations. I put on a white jersey, had a helmet on, had my ears, and I would be up monitoring safety on the floor for any operations for our guys, because you know, we have a bunch of army guys now flying helicopters on and off, and I make sure everybody's
got the right equipment on there. And and uh so I've got a picture hanging up on the wall with with the USS America and all of our army helicopters.
Yeah, Mike, we got a couple more questions here, Jonathan. He said he wanted to add a little bit more context about Ronnie Strahan he was a retired CSM out of Socom. Yeah and uh and he said, uh, he was a son. He was also a Suntay raider. So he figured you guys knew each other.
Yeah, I did. I knew the name. I heard of him, but we never met. I don't think we've met.
David Asks. Did you learn to breach with a Knight Armaments master?
Key?
Do you know where the idea of putting a shotgun under the barrel of a rifle came from?
Shock?
Well, we we had we did. We carried we carried twelve gage shotguns and we had some ten gage shotguns that we would do for breaching, shooting locks and set forth like that. We used, you know, we came up with different explosive breaching charges using linear of shape charge FLEXI linear of shaped charges. We used. One of the things we use is cavetor belt material good Year three point thirty B rubber cavetor belt material to absorb the using that to we put the explosives on top of that.
The explosives then compresses the rubber. It distributes the force evenly out. Uh and so, and we would do different charges a planner charge, well, yeah, like a stript charge. Yeah, but using conveyor belt rubber. Yeah, and it is did you call it with that, because like just applying the the.
Whatever it was for two whatever you guys using would blow through the door. So so you came up with the idea of using the lubber stript charge.
Yeah. It's more of a kinetic thing. It distributes the force out evenly. You know, sometimes there's like maybe metal and reinforcing underneath that metal. Well, otherwise you put explosives on top, it's just going to punch through that, right, using a medium such as the carvertor belt rubber. And we found out that was the best kind of rubbers the Good Year three p. Thirty B. It had three layers of nylon cord through it, and sometimes we'd make
fancy stuff. We would cut through certain areas, add more explosives to different parts of it. We'd make a sandwich type thing with it, and so that worked really well. We've so we hostage rescue. The FBI. They like to do a lot of water impulse charges using explosives in water. But you know that's in a permissive environment where you've got water and you're right next to your structure and you can just take your bunch of water and fill it up. But if you're in a non permissive environment,
you're not going to be carrying extra water around. You're going to be drinking it to so we we our stuff is more designed for non permissive environments. So different thinking between the FBI.
Well, like using like an IV bag, I mean it's heavier, right, It's heavier than just using the like a good year strip charge or something like that, which is just a really flexible charge. That's fascinating because you guys probably developed so many of the charges that are just like standard.
Now. Yeah, it was, it was, I you know, initially Beckwith did not want us to write anything down during his tenure as commander. He did not want I don't know, he didn't want us to document anything, Mike.
If you read in his memoir, he got that from the SAS because when he was over there, they believed you had to have it all up here and if you couldn't hold it in your brain, then you didn't need to be in the unit.
Yeah, but that doesn't good when you start losing people. People are leaving. No, Yeah, you don't have the knowledge.
The institutional knowledge gets lost.
Right, so I actually put together the first breaching book in Delta, actually assembled it, and every every team breacher had a copy of the breaching book. Because our charges became so sophisticated. You know, we had different levels. We
had four different levels of breaching charges. We had what level one breaching charge is a charge that's open source thing, you know at the law enforcement doesn't every You can find level one breaching charges on the Internet and stuff like that, and so, you know, so that was our level one. Level two stuff was starting to get more specialized where you know, some of our wall charges and stuff like that. Then we had level three charges where
they were more complicated. We had we have stuff that we can use two open doors on passenger aircraft for example, if the doors are denied, if they tie down the doors, like one aircraft they took the neck ties. The Egyptian aircraft they took nick ties off the passengers and the exit overwing exits they used the neck ties and tied them up. But we had charges that you could put on there and if they had them tied up, it would just snap the handle and the door would go in.
So you know, that was kind of like our level three stuff. Then we had level four stuff, which is limited to know stuff. Only a few people in the unit were privy to our breaching charges that we considered level four information charge. And that's I'll leave it at that. Were you were you doing?
Obviously you were exchanging techniques with like the FBI's HRT and the SAS, yes, and then experimenting. But then were you also consulting I don't know, professor, Like, how were you gaining all this knowledge?
Oh? Yeah, I also I belonged to the I also became a member of the Society of Explosive Engineers when I was in the unit, and we had access to all the scientists like it, Lawrence liver More, Sanda uh and uh. So we had all these enginees, you know, doctor Cooper, uh, all these experts. We did a lot of testing out at Nevada test site. We'd do a little testing out there. We did testing at sequorl New Mexico,
out at New Mexico Tech. Uh And so we worked with different people, and of course we got to the point where all of our stuff was instrumented. We would have a high speed cameras, we'd have pressure sensors and stuff like that. So we hired the Army Corps of Engineers Waterways Experiment Station out of Vicksburg, Mississippi. And so when we did any breaching R and D things, the Corps of Engineers instrumented all of our tests. Fascinating. Yeah,
and science. My budget was several million dollars. I had seven to eight million dollar breaching budget.
Well, you must have been like a kid in a candy store. Yeah, like, because I mean, this is your this is your thing, this is your passion.
Right, Yeah, it was. It's really neat to be able to come up with this stuff. I mean we had one of our things was in Libya. Have you guys heard of Tarhunah? In Libya? Kadaffi had these head and in the mountains, the Tarhunah Mountains. He had bought two Swiss tunnel boring machines, you know like they did the channel under the English Channel. Kadaffi bought two of them and he dug two parallel tunnels in this Tarhunah with
his tunnel boring machine. And what he was going to do is set up a chemical production underground chemical production facility. One cut out. Kadaffie was there. He had one set up at rafta Rafta was a small scale chemical. He made some mustard and different other things, but it was small scale. It was open. But he wanted to take this big, big production chemical agents underground. And we knew all this was going on. We could see the construction
at Tarhoona and stuff like that. Now he told the world that this was the great man made water project. He told the reason he bought these two tunnel boring machines was going to make water reservoirs for the town, you know, for Tripoli and all that kind of stuff. But we knew that he was going to do these
two things. He's going to make side channels in there and put it under So the plan was when I was in jaysck J three Special Plan Stars at Major I was in charge of target the feet of hardened targets. Our goal was before he would set up a chemical production facility, we were going to go in and destroy
his tunnels. We were. And so you know, tunnel boring machines are huge and as they go in, they do the concrete, the reinforcing steel and stuff as they go in to the tunnel, and there wouldn't be nothing to destroy except for the tunnel itself. We would have to implode the tunnels. So we found the right and this was all sandstone. So we found the right sandstone out at New Mexico Tech at SoCoRo. I went all over the country looking at sandstone with the Corps of engineers
and we picked the sandstone there. So we set up concrete just exactly like the tunnel boring machines, and we'd go in with drilling machines and drill parallel holes outside of the concrete between the concrete and the sandstone with these drilling rigs, and then we would pump in bulk explosives and actually implode these tunnels. It'd be a big operation.
We would have had to gone in with hovercraft. We would we planned on having garbage trucks full of slurry explosives, we would have drilling rigs, so we would go and so this was we were planning on doing all this and then actually going in and taking all the tunnels
and imploding them. But anyway, somebody decided that better to tell the world what Kadaffi's up to, and so it was announced to the world what he was doing, and Kadaffi ceased operations because of the publicity and and stuff like that, but that was going to be a major operation. I was going into Libya and imploding, So we were
trained on how to do. Now you know today now we have what we call a heavy breaching cell in the in the unit and people because it started getting preaching started to be a big thing.
On that note, actually, someone asks if you have any experiences in Africa that you might be able to speak of. I guess aside from Libya.
Yeah, the only thing I did, I did a couple of tours in Sudan when I was in the unit in the early eighties. The president of Sudan was a guy named Namari at the time, and his vice president came over and talked to the United States and stuff. He wanted somebody to go a team to go over and evaluate the presidential security of Sudan. So there's two of us from the unit that were part of that detail, Bud Morgan and myself. So we went with team and the other guys were from a unit called ISAT. This
is a is an intelligence security agency. It's the It was a intell military intelligence cell that was set up at the time, and so we went in and we evalue weighted his security, all of his his looked at his palace and his you know, all this stuff. And then when I was there, they realized my background. And so I went and I looked at all the storage facilities. They had a plant there in Cartoon that made nine
millimeters and shotgun twelve gate shotgun shells. So I went there and looked at the production safety, look at safety and all that, and they had two ammunition storage areas there, and I tell you that was a mess. You know, they you know, nothing, everything was. I went into this powder magazine and I go in there. There's no lightning protection, there's I go in there and there's palettes, wooden pallettes
with nails on it. There's there's powder on the floor, loose powder on the floor, there's no static no static electricity precautions where you have to ground yourself and wear non sparking shoes and all this kind of stuff. And I go. I walked in there, and I'm like, oh my gosh, just one spark, this whole thing would go go off in Sudan. And so I made in the head and then they showed me some Russian blasting caps and stuff like that. Well, they the Russians don't shunt
their blasting electric blasting caps. Well, whatever reason these were, these were electric blasting caps, all unshunned, unshunted, and it's just so I made a lot of safety recommendations and stuff like that. So we did this thing, and I set up a I propose that they have a vip ied search team that does presidential security suites looking for improvise explosives. And I sent all this stuff up and
told them what they needed. So when we left there, and normally the the the agency goes in and would do the next phases, go in there and train take these people, whether they bring him back here to the States in a secure location or go there. They would train. They would agencies responsible for training that. But the agency was busy. So I was asked to go back into Sudan and train an army team to search for IEDs and to be able to dispose of IEDs. And so I went back into Sudan and at this time in
Khartom they were having terrorist attacks. There were problems, that civil war was going on in Chad, and there they was electronic timers, sophisticated electronic timer devices going off in the city of Khartoon at this time. So I worked with the Army EO D team there in Sudan. We had a call. They had a great intel network. I don't know if anything, the Sudanese had a good intel got a call where there's two suitcases of explosives coming
into the airport. So we go over to the airport and they find these two suitcases their international airport and they take them into this room and big suitcases. They go click click, and they open up the suitcases and they're full of Semtex explosives, just packed full, nothing but Semtics explosives, these two suitcases. And I'm standing watching them do this, and I'm saying, you know, you intercept very many of these. Next time you go click, click and open,
it's going to go boom, you know. So I, you know, we had to bring in X ray. They didn't have X ray machines. We brought in X ray machines, and I told him how to remotely open suitcases like these. I told him how to remotely open to search cars, and how to remotely open and search cars, and how to do all this kind of stuff. So I taught them all that stuff. And then of course as soon as Numari went to Egypt, they had a coup and he was out.
I'm gonna I mean, you've been very generous with your time, Mike. I'm gonna get try to get through just a couple more questions here real quick, and then we still have the bonus segment to do, so thank you for being patient with us. One guy here is asking is it accurate to say that the Brits trained Delta.
I would say that would be good because we had instructors come in here. We had one guy named Ginger Flynn. He was a shooting instructor. They taught us how to shoot, how to double tap. That was a big thing that every when we every target, we would have to put two rounds into every target before we transition to the next target to ensure that we had to kill. That came from the the sas One of the things we
had to shoot is instinctive. We had to learn to They took off our sites on our weapons, so like we had. Our first weapon was an M three sub machine gun forty five. That was our first assault weapons, and they took our sites off that and with an M three you can trigger control two rounds really easy, go to two rounds, two rounds, two rounds. It's really easy to trigger once you learn to shoot at M three and so that was our first assault weapon. And we had to shoot three by five inch cards, so
they would have instinctively shoot three by fives. Wow, at what range? It's close. It was all instinctive like your room clearing. So it was all close quarter battle type instinctive shooting. But our targets were three by five inch cards.
Max asks search at Major Vining. Do you have any advice for someone who plans on enlisting in the army.
Oh, well, it depends on your passion. You know, you know, you know what you know. I have a grandson in the Army right now. He's with fifth Group. He's in a supports, he's in a one of the fifth Group battalions, but he's a ninety one B. He's a wheel vehicle mechanic with fifth Group at four AM. So I have a grandson there. He wanted to His passion was to work on vehicles, learn the trade so that when he
gets out of the army. He had a scholarship to go to a tech school as a mechanic, but he choose to learn want to the school at Fort Lee and Strange. He's a ninety one B vehicle wheel mechanic. When I was in a ninety one B was a medic.
Yeah, uh al, I'm sorry, go ahead, Michael, but but what you can make that I made the army whatever you want to make and I think you go in with the right attitude, you can make it whatever you want to make it.
And it's a great learning experience.
Alex asks, what's your favorite thing that goes boom?
Large stuff? Big stuff? The biggest thing I blew up was in uh it was about fifty years ago, coming up to fifty years ago today. Was the largest enemy. Yeah, it was the largest enemy ammunition weapons cash found in the Vietnam War in Cambodia during May and June of nineteen seventy. Nixson authorized us to go into Cambodia and so that so we went in there and of course they had all their staging areas, their stockpiles and stuff.
And this one cash was found by the first calf second of the twelfth was well, it was a it was the first of the ninth Pink team actually found the cash site from a from an oh WASH six helicopter and they found the stacks of ammunition in the jungle, and the second of the twelfth captured. The thing became known as Rock Island East, you know, named after the famous artsen on Iowa Rock Island. There was over three hundred tons three hundred and twenty tons of weapons and
ammunition in these caches. There was a several stacks of site. I think there was twenty eight stacks in the jungle on a court trail that was a quarter mile long. And then we had to set up a perimeter and we had to set it up and blow. I was part of a seven man EOD team that flew in and we blew that up. It took us about six days to set put explosives on it and set it up to blow. And now some of the ammunition and
weapons were back called out. But yeah, that we used three three hundred cases of C four and we used twelve cases of detonating court. There's three thousand feet and each case. And so we had we buried the detonating chord lines underground and then and then when we would withdraw, we had a two ship HLZ and we set up charges around the perimeter to go off at interval times to keep the enemy because the enemy was out there
wanting to retake back the rock the cash site. So we had these charges to go off, and then when the last two helicopters came down, then we had ten priming systems of fifteen minutes each to make sure this whole thing go. And if they came in and cut one of our detonating chord lines, we had another detonating cord line to go. So we pull our our fifteen minute fuses. The eaight and myself we run to the helicopter and as we get to the helicopter, the captain
and the helicopter says, cut the fuse. Cut the fuse, cut the fuse. We run back out and we just cut fuses. So cut all our lines. We don't know what's going on. Go back to the helicopter and they says light it, light it, you know, and that we didn't have no more fusing nighters, you know, so we had to go back over. Now our fifteen minute lines are cut. We don't know what kind of time we got,
so we're splitting. We're splitting time. Fuse are putting a match head in and lighting lighting it and when you get a spit back, you can light a second one quickly. Office So we light a bunch of them, and then we get on the helicopter and while we're lighting this stuff, are now our primitive charges are going off, and so there's an explosion. Well, these helicopter people have don't have no idea what's going on. They think we're being mortared,
and you can see they're bouncing. They're ready to leave, you know, and because they think we're taking incoming. So we light the things, we get on the helicopters, and then the helicopter can't lift off that we're too overloaded and and stuff. So the door guy taps me on the shoulder says, you you you get off. You have to get on the helicopter behind me. Well, we get off on the ground and and they have the same problem. They drop off a couple of people and then these
two helicopters take off. There's like five of us on the ground, and you know, I'm the only U D guy on the ground. The rest of the guys are infantry echo recon guys. On the ground. We got the charges of burning and no other than their helicopters just took off. So I was getting ready to go back and cut fuses again because I don't want to be
on the ground when this thing's off. And this other helicopter comes in and I don't he was in orbit out there, comes in and picks us up and takes us out and we're not very far away when it goes off, and it was pretty impressive. Uh. We did take some ground fire on taking off and then it blew up. I have slides of this too, and they could see our mushroom cloud from fifty miles away and that was rocking on the east largest amy up from.
The last question, then we get we uh, we should probably start wrapping this up. Do you have any funny stories about inexperienced officers?
Yeah, let's see. It sounds like you just told one. Actually, yeah, I have a funny teammate, this guy. I'm gonna mention his name, these great guy and stuff like that. His name is Don Dreer. He reminds me so much of Wily Coyote, you know the character in Wily Coyote. When we were in New Zealand we had to go. I was working with him. He was a sniper observer and we were doing recount on targets. We're dressed in civilian clothes, are cover was. We were two school teachers from the
United States. We were on bicycles and we were recounting different military sites and stuff like that. And down one of the things we had to cut across. There's this creek or river with this big clay bank, and we had to cut sneak, had to traverse across this thing to get to our target site, you know, without it being exposed, to stay concealed. So Down starts going across this clay bank and it was just like Wally coyote.
You could see him climb and as he starts to slide, his fingers were digging in and his toes were digging in, and he was climbing and sliding, and eventually he just went down into the waters. Flash. And just I tell you, I was laughing so hard up on the hill, I was my stomach was hurting. It was the funniest thing. It reminded me so much of while it with something while a coyote would do, and there were some other things like that that it was. It had a blast
with him. Mike, Thank you. We also want you so much. DJ Real quick dj DJ left a comment thank you.
My father spent time in Sudan in the eighties as well as a member of the African Nations Peacekeeper mission as well as the Congo and he has similar stories about the craziness there too.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Thanks so much for joining us tonight, Mike. It's always a pleasure and really a lot of fun to speak with you, and and he hears some of these stories. Especially it has especial importance because of the fortieth anniversary and Eagle Claw. I'm really glad we got to have you here and talk about that.
We kind of blew right through what I wanted to talk about for the bonus segment, so maybe like for that, if you don't mind, Mike, we could talk about the Joy to Prison riot and Operation Pocket Planner.
Yeah, that was really interesting.
Well we'll start that in the after we finish here. If that's okay and you want to.
See that, join us on Patreon one dollar a month, one dollar a month.
It's there.
So yeah, thank you everyone who joined us live. Thanks Dave, Thanks again, Mike. If you like what we're doing here, please subscribe to the channel. The little subscriptions right down there and you give us a little thumbs up and hit the belt icons so you get notified when we go live next time next week. And on that note, our guest next week is a veteran of third Special Forces Group, served a lot of time in Afghanistan. Has some really hairy stories. Guy, I know, really good dude,
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