Acting upon the orders of President Jimmy Carter, on 25 Apr 1980, a United States special operations task force entered Iran to rescue 53 hostages being held at the American Embassy in Teheran. They had been seized the previous November by radical supporters of the Ayatollah Khomeini as his minions overthrew the Iranian government. This recovery force included eight RH-53Ds assigned to Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 16 aboard the USS Nimitz and flown by USMC crews. They would land with a task force of Special Forces soldiers aboard several US Air Force M/EC-130s at an airstrip called “Desert One,” in a desolate area of Iran, where the soldiers would then board the helicopters for insertion into and extraction from several sites so that they could rescue the hostages. Unfortunately, after taking off from the Nimitz the crews encountered a severe sand storm which challenged them to their limits, and only six of the helicopters arrived at Desert One, where it was then determined that one machine had a serious maintenance problem and could not continue with the mission. The on-scene commander, Colonel Charlie Beckwith, knew that the operation needed to have an absolute minimum of six helicopters and aborted the mission. Unfortunately, as the helicopters refueled for their return flight to the Nimitz, one of them collided with one of the accompanying C-130s. In the ensuing chaos, eight troops were killed and five were wounded.

President Carter directed that another effort be prepared. Analysis of the Desert One debacle indicated that a specialized force of long-range, heavy-lift special operations helicopters was needed. US Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, General Robert Mathis responded, directing that nine HH-53H “Pave Low III” helicopters, recently modified to perform combat rescue in night and / or all-weather conditions, be reassigned from rescue duty to special operations with the 20th Special Operations Squadron (SOS) assigned to the 1st Special Operations Wing (SOW) at Hurlburt Field, FL. The aircraft were quickly flown to Hurlburt and hand-picked crews began training with them for participation in the second effort. However, the hostages were subsequently recovered through diplomatic efforts, obviating the mission. Regardless, the Pave Lows remained with the 20th SOS, developed and maintained their long-range, heavy-lift special operations capability, and became a key element in the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), activated in 1987.

Throughout the 1980s, the 20th trained rigorously, and its crews and support elements constantly deployed for training with other special operations forces (SOF). Its aircraft were also being constantly upgraded with improved communications, navigation equipment, and other enhancements. However, it was not until the summer of 1989 that the unit was called upon to use this capability on an operational mission. In support of our efforts against narco-terrorists in Central America, the 20th received a classified tasking in the Caribbean region designated Operation Pokeweed. The 20th SOS commander, Lt Col Gary Weikel, was ordered to generate four aircraft to fly to the USS Forrestal, which would be on-station at a specified set of coordinates at a specific time south of Jamaica. There those four aircraft would pick up a team of SEALs and fly it to Panama for an attempt to capture Pablo Escobar Gaviria, the Colombian drug lord from the Medellin cartel. Intelligence sources indicated that he would be traveling to an island hacienda off Panama’s Pacific coast.

The 20th had most of its aircraft and crews deployed to other locations, and Weikel had to work closely with his maintenance troops to get the required number of aircraft airborne. The plan called for a long overwater outbound leg to the Forrestal, with in-flight refueling provided by MC-130s at low altitude in bad weather; a landing aboard the ship to pick up the SEALs; a delivery leg; and a long flight home. Capt Joe Becker planned the mission, and Weikel led it. The 1st SOW commander, Col George Gray, was aboard one of the aircraft to witness his men in action. Capt Tom Trask was aboard as the copilot on the second aircraft with Capt Corby Martin, and Becker as a spare pilot.

The mission went well for the first three refuelings, but then the aircraft ran into a heavy line of thunderstorms that could not be avoided. The helicopters needed one more refueling to make the aircraft carrier and no safe alternate airfields were in range. The remaining MC-130 had only the right refueling hose working. To best avoid the weather, the pilot dropped down to 300 feet above the water. As the crews fought to hook up and receive their vital fuel, Trask remembers, “Lightning was going off everywhere; everyone’s got vertigo. It’s just black as . . . . You couldn’t see anything, even with goggles . . . except when the lightning bolts illuminated the sky.”

During this refueling, Trask was in the right seat, with Martin in the left. The weather was so rough that they fell off the boom several times. Martin and Trask swapped the controls about every 90 seconds because fighting the turbulence was so fatiguing. Martin remembered,

The second tanker had no left hose; … so it was right hose only. Tom Trask is in the right seat. He gets on the hose and says, “I’ve got vertigo.” I said, “Tom, hang on, buddy. You’re it. Just watch that wing,” because I needed to take the helicopter when we came off in order to keep us from going into the water. We had plenty of altitude. I said, “Just fly it. Watch the wing.” And he did; he stuck with it, watched the wing, got our gas, got off, and carried on. The visibility was bad; we were probably one or two discs off of lead. We had to fly a little low to keep him in sight.

Joe Becker came up and offered, several times, to swap seats with either pilot. Both refused because they did not want to have even a few seconds where two pilots were not in position to control the aircraft. Several other pilots also experienced severe vertigo and had to strictly discipline themselves to maintain full and thorough instrument crosschecks to control their aircraft. All they really knew was that they were flying to a set of coordinates in the midst of a large body of water; there they were supposed to find the Forrestal, which was proceeding to the designated position at over 35 knots.

There was a palpable sense of relief when they began to see the ship on their radars. Then they saw it through their goggles. The entire mission was taking place with the barest communications so that the possibility of detection was minimized. They could see that the carrier deck was clear, so the four helicopters landed on it, with Weikel putting his aircraft out on the angle deck. As they settled, no Navy personnel were visible. One of the Pave Low gunners jumped off of his helicopter and literally went over and banged on the deck door to the carrier island. Navy personnel then came out to secure the aircraft and instructed them to shut down their engines and come inside. The crews did so, logging 12.8 hours on the flight. The sailors were horrified to discover that one aircraft had landed on the angle deck, explaining that “nobody ever goes out there in the dark.” Weikel had no way of knowing that.

Weikel and his somewhat shaken airmen then joined the ship’s crew inside, only to be notified that the mission had been scrubbed when the intelligence sources reported that Escobar had not traveled as planned. Regardless, the Forrestal crew warmly welcomed the Pave Low guys aboard. In fact, Colonel Gray was personal friends with the ship’s captain because they had previously served together on the staff at US Atlantic Command. The captain told the assembled Pave Low crews that he thought the plan was absolutely crazy and expected that at least one Pave Low and possibly crew would be lost in the operation. The commander of the carrier air group then debriefed the Pave Low crews on the complete operational aspects of the mission. Joe Becker remembered:

The one-star admiral … came in and talked to us. He said that when he was briefed on the mission, he was absolutely certain that we were going to lose a helicopter, if not all four. He had strongly advised against it; didn’t think it was possible for a helicopter to fly that far and find a ship in the ocean and successfully get on to her. But he was impressed and we did it.

When the admiral had finished, the captain allowed Weikel to conduct a crew-only debrief. It was an astounding event. Deeply shaken by the experience, Trask felt that he could not do this job for a living, that it was much too scary, and that he was on the very edge of his capabilities. He just could not believe that Corby Martin could be sitting there so calm and cool throughout the mission, while he was so shaken. Trask assumed, too, that he was the only one who felt this way. The crew debrief was an epiphany. Trask recounts,

We get into the debrief, … in the ward room. They left us to do a crew debrief, and even Weikel, after everyone else had left, nothing but Pave Low pilots in the room, said, “Damn, that was the most scared I have ever been in my whole f—ing life!” Everyone kind of exploded with emotion about how rough that flight had been. Then I felt much better that at least I was not the only one who had been scared to death through that night.

The 1st SOW commander, Colonel Gray, also sat in on the debrief. However, he had a very different opinion. Sure, the flight had been rough, but they had made it, and he was ecstatic at their performance. Several years of hard training by the right crews matched with the right equipment had supplied the piece of the puzzle missing at Desert One – the MH-53s of the 20th SOS were now the validated long-range, heavy-lift special operations helicopter force for USSOCOM. It was a seminal event for the Pave Lows, and Gray sensed the signal importance of their accomplishment. Approaching Puerto Rico, the Pave Lows lifted and flew to Roosevelt Roads NAS. There Gray put the crew members up in a nice hotel for a few days so they could unwind before returning to Hurlburt. Just a few months later, those same crews and aircraft would be returning to Panama for Operation Just Cause.

About the Author: Darrel Whitcomb is the author of: The Rescue of Bat 21 (1998), Combat Search and Rescue in Desert Storm (2006), Call Sign – DUSTOFF: A History of US Army Aeromedical Evacuation from Conception to Hurricane Katrina (2011), and On a Steel Horse I Ride: A History of the MH-53 Pave Low Helicopters in War and Peace published in 2012 by the Air University Press. This excerpt and all others from: On a Steel Horse I ride: A History of the MH-53 Pave Low Helicopters in War and Peace by Darrel Whitcomb is used by the ACJ with permission.