The Team House - Delta Force Plank Owner SGM Mike Vining, Ep. 40

Episode Date: May 2, 2020

Sergeant Major Mike Vining is one of the original members of Delta Force. In 1980, he was a participant in Operation Eagle Claw, a failed attempt to rescue 52 American hostages held in Iran. Forty years later, Vining reflects on the mission, its legacy, and the impact it had on today's Special Operations Forces. We are also excited to announce our second sponsor, HighSpeedDaddy.com. Use the discount code "JACK" at checkout to claim 10% off your purchase. Support the stream on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/TheTeamHouseBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. Being a parent can be really challenging. It's normal to feel uncertain about whether you're doing the right things to raise healthy and happy children. That's why Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents,

and those with kids under the age of five, with free support services to help them build confidence in their parenting journey. Everyone deserves to have someone they can turn to for support with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. It says we're streaming. Yeah, I found out the step I, I have to say not me. All right, folks, here we are, episode 40 of the team house. I can't believe we got to 40 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 that opportunity to twice before, and it's always really a lot of fun. Sergeant Major Vining entered into U.S. Army Basic Training in 19, and became an explosive ordinance disposal technician. He was deployed to Vietnam and received the Bronze Star in 1971.

And in 1978, 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 1980, 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 the bulk of this stream will be talking about Eagle Claw because just on the 24th last week, we came up on the 40th anniversary of Eagle Claw. And that was a Delta Force mission to attempt to rescue 52 American hostages being held at the U.S. 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, and the breaching sergeant major. And then he rounded out his career at J-Socck as the special plan 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 enthusiast and Spalunker, just really so many amazing things that Mike has done in. life and we're really honored to have him 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 Clause since it is the 40th

anniversary to hear about Mike's experience there and what the legacy is of that operation all these years later and the impact that 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 Vining. 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 Clause, I guess it started on 4 November of 1979 when the U.S. 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 Arapahoe, Keystone, Loveland 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 into 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 where the facilities that we stayed at was where 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 3D model of the whole embassy compound, the buildings you could take apart. The agency built this model for us. It was like 10 foot by 10 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 of our training. It was 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 Yuma Proving Grounds. They're out in a remote area where there's this hangar out there. And then we started working with the helicopters out there. Now, these were the RH 53 helicopters. And we had Navy crew that crewed these. The RH53D helicopter is a Navy helicopter used for counter mining. And what they normally do is fly during daylight hours.

They do a grid pattern search. They have some type of sensor that they drag in the 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 fly in desert nighttime 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 160th, the night stalkers?

What about all those cool helicopters? 1980, that unit did not exist. Those helicopters literally did not exist. Yeah. That's a good point, Jack. In the U.S. inventory, the 53 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-47s that we could do aerial refuel and, you know, like the late model CH-47s. And so we were stuck with the 50, the old 53s.

Well, we had problems with the Navy crew. They just couldn't learn fast enough to operate. So 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 53s.

They would get lost. They wouldn't land where we wanted them to land and just had difficulty with the 53s. And that was always been the issue we had. And a lot of times we'd be flying into 53s. And it's just like while they were learning. and we just felt like sandbags. We didn't really need to be in those 53s

while they were learning how to fly at night with night vision goggles, but we were. And so then we went out to Fort Irwin. We did a rehearsal out at Fort Irwin with the aircraft, the MC-130s while we used the MC-130 E-models and we also did exercises out there at Nevada test site. We set up at area 25.

We set up a wall to simulate 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, then can climb down the knotted ropes. and we did that every day we put our kit on and 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 of 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 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 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. I could sew, and we had a lot of people who 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 14, everybody carried a 14 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 one 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 that's kind of our uniform. And we would have to practice crawling with it 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 a white, red, and blue element. The red element was A squadron. The white element I was in was B Squadron, and we had a blue element, which was the sniper observer support element. And then we divided up the different things. 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, a stairway led up to the second floor. And we would, my team, that I was a four-man team, Bill Zumat, was the team leader. We would clear the second floor of the ambassador's residence. And once that, and 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 120 foot nylon rope that we would throw over the building. And then Buckey Burris, Lieutenant Colonel Burris was down at the bottom.

And people that had M72's laws would drive. drop those off there and we would then he would tie them to our rope and we pull them up on roof and we will Bill 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 believe there was hostages in those areas. Those are some of the area. It was a big compound. Mike, 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. You know, Delta formed started going together in October of 19. I got there in February of 78. So, but we did not, you know, we had, there was another element with fifth special forces that 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's the same thing. But Blue Light was set up with fifth group guys as an interim rescue force until we stood up. 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 organizations. Weren't they somewhat, I've heard that they were somewhat competitive at one point in time

where it was a question of who was going to stick around? Is that accurate or no? Jack, do you want to answer it? Well, I mean, just based on my interviews with Blue Light members, they were a stopgap. They were never going to fill that role. But the members, they did feel competitive. Like it was a competition between these new upstarts and Delta Force and these Blue Light guys who, and honestly, many of those Blue Light guys were MacB. Saug, Mike Force, Sonte Raiders. I mean, they were real guys.

They were the real deal. So they did feel like it was very competitive, but blue light was never going to be the permanent CT unit. No, but I think they had visions that they may. Right. There was aspirations. And then a lot of them, Beckwith went and talked to them about coming once they were standing down to come over it. And a lot of them 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 light still around when the whole Iranian 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. So Delta was new. So it was all very conceptual at that point in time. Was this hostage rescue mission something that had sort of been not obviously not in Iran, but had you trained for this prior? Was this part of the concept of what Delta would be when it stood up? Well, we had one unclassified mission, and that was P.O.W. Rescue. 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 Sonte-type mission. That was our unclassified mission. And other things, this is the,

all the terrace hijacking, airliners and taking buildings and stuff. And that's what we practice on was hostage rescue against terrorists in buildings, trains, buses, 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 70s was a hot spot of, like, when we thought, of terrorism in the 70s, it was, it was generally like aircraft hijackings and, and thing, you know, train, you know, that they would take over something and demand, you know, or take over a vehicle.

So they'd have political demands, yeah. Yeah. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey. Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for how. help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. And then we had different scenarios that these missions would be in, whether they'd 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, 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. A lot of people tried to do comparisons between what the Israelis did it in Tebi, Uganda. But we had more, it was just much more difficult on a scale than the Tebi-type mission.

So how long did it take? How long did it take? Because you're right, because in Temi, it was kind of a, it was permissive of where the Israelis went in there with the permission of the federal. No, no. No, they didn't. I'm sorry. But they, yeah, they flew in, landed. They had some lemel cars that like Ediamin would, you know, so they didn't know what was going on, whether it was Ediamin 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-130s down the Red Sea, turned into Uganda, landed, did the operation. And the mission you guys planned, I mean, maybe you talk about it, Mike, the scheme of maneuver

that developed throughout planning for Eagle Claw. It was very complicated. Yeah, because, yeah, so we picked out a Desert One site that would be a refill site. And we looked at different scenarios in how to refill these helicopters. One was doing an aerial drop with fuel bladders. 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 MC130s lead in, followed by three EC130s,

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 3,000, or 3,000, 5,000 gallon JP5 fuel bladder. So it was like a giant waterbed inside of the EC-130. So we had those come in there. And then we would have the eight helicopters come in from the aircraft carrier, the Nimitz, and fly into the Desert One site. We would refill the, helicopters, the EC's and MCs would take off back to go to Oman, Maasaria 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, a hide site. There was a warehouse

that would put us up into the helicopters would go someplace else and just put Camelanet up there. We'd wait during the next daylight 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 and they're taking an airfield. And so then when we get the hostages, 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 intelligence piece and how that developed as this operation went on. I mean, I think Wade Ishimoto 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 Tehran. Yeah. Well, the CIA people that were part of the embassy were trapped, were now hostages. We really didn't have 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. I know, 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 MC130. When we ran into the dust storm, the fixed wings all flew on top of the dust storm. We were going to 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, and that they would tip off Iran that we were coming. So we were going to fly in low nap of the earth. But dust storms obscure radar. And so you don't, so what the helicopters should have done, done when they encountered the dust dorm, just try to get above the dust dorm and keep booking, but they just kept flying through that, and they flew through two dust storms.

And 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 statcom radios, and the helicopters had secure satcom radio. radios, but back then, in order for them to use the SATCOM, they would have had to land the helicopter, set the radio up, and you get the antenna, the right asthma, and then 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 a satcom radio. Well, if you want me to go to Desert One

and when we landed and seen all the headlights? I would. But I would also like to ask, of course, that 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.

So one reason that I heard was because of operational security. We just did pieces of the mission. And that was probably a big failure. But there was never a full rehearsal with everything. Yeah, that was somebody's judgment call. Another little interesting sidebar that I don't think. think many people are aware of is that Dead A had a small presence also on the mission. Right. The Berlin Detachment, Dead A.

Beckwith just wanted our group to focus on the embassy. There was, I mean, was there three others that were held over there at the... The Chancellery, the MFA. Yeah, yeah. And so that was given to Dead A people. And they were carrying MP5s and we were all carrying car 15s. So that piece was given to them. And they had some suppressed MP5s too. 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 flew into Wadikina, Egypt, which was an old Soviet base, had hangers 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 be caught your ISB intermediate staging area and our forward staging base was in mosseria 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 C-141s to Mosseria, and then from there we picked up our 130s. And so that was it. Then we launched. And when we got to Desert One, the Desert One site, there was headlights down on the road. This road was supposed to be

dirt road that, and it was a dirt road, that very little travel on it. And but then we saw headlights down below. So we actually had to circle a few times before we did land. And as soon as we landed, opened up the ramp and everything, here we see a pair of headlights coming down the road. And Beckwith says stop. It was a bus and said stop that bus. So, somebody fired a 40 millimeter in front of the bus and the bus stopped. And the next thing you know, there's 44 Iranians on there. So we had 44 Iranian detainees. I just learned that they were, everybody on that bus was actually related to each other.

And I just learned this recently. It was like a family reunion? Yeah, that's what they were going to is a family. family event and they were traveling 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 baggage to make sure that nothing, there was nothing that they carried in. That 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 just detain people for a period of

time so they were detainees not so we had 44 of our own and uh i can they were just uh they were just scared um aircraft were landing people were walking by and it just uh to them i don't know what was going they thought was happening and then world war three yeah well then up down the road comes this fuel truck and so the range of the road ish and the ranger road block 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 a law and hit underneath the fuel truck and caught the fuel truck on fire. So that's, the fuel 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 44 people. We got a fuel

truck that's burning and then eventually the fuel truck explodes and it's a big huge fireball and the dark dark sky and just lights up the whole area and then the other aircraft 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 So the helicopters started landing. And of course, they were at least 45 minutes late landing there. And of the eight helicopters, we only got six on the ground. And the six is the minimum that we had determined to do the mission.

One helicopter turned back to the Nimitz. Another helicopter was abandoned. 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 overheat, something was overheating. So now we have six there, and then they find out that 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. So it was 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 health. 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 so Colonel Beckwith

had to make a pretty difficult decision at that point. Right. And of course Carter went along with it. It was the criteria. You needed six and mission would be abort at five and that's what it was. So but now, you know, time you get all the stuff around. The fixed wing now were running very low on fuel. They had the fixed wing aircraft needed to leave quick. The helicopters had all been refueled. So what, so we got into one of these EC-130s, I think it was E-C-130s.

I think it was EC 130 number five. And we get in there and we're heading back. We're going to, the plan was that maybe we could restart the mission in 48 hours. We would take the, we would take the Iranians that we have with us. And, you know, later on, you know, 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 flattened its tires. So it could not move on its weak. wheels. So it had, so the CCTV guy had to tell it to, because we were, our prop wash was blowing dust on these two helicopters because we wanted to take off. So the CCTV 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. Being a parent can be really challenging. Child and Family Resource Network focuses on connecting pregnant parents and those with kids under the age of five with free support services to help them on their parenting journey.

Everyone deserves someone they can turn to for help with parenting. Visit child and family resource network.org today. 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 cavilar 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 10,000, everybody was carrying $10,000. I had $5,000 in Iranian money and $5,000 in U.S. money. And so, but I, where I'm going to carry, I put it between the, the, my cavlar, the different parts of my cavlar, I had my money stuffed in there. And, but then when the helicopter crashed into us, the rotor blades cut into the top of the fuselage. And, 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 53D had ruptured. and the pilot and co-pilot of the 53 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 so all 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 open up the right rear paratrooper door and the flames are intermediate. There's flames and then there's not flames.

When that helicopter crashed into us, the observers on the ground that were watching this whole thing, the 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 load master 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, haul ass, next thing I know he's flat on his face down.

He's on the ground and 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. Yeah, there's flames inside the aircraft and we're on a 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 just ran. I could hear hang grenades cooking off the explode of hang grenades, and then not getting very far. We had six red-eye missiles on board our aircraft. And the red-eye missiles were our air defense.

If we were at Desert One and Iranians came in and spotted us or whatever, we did have some red-eye missiles. The predecessor to the Stinger missile. Yeah. 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, 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 EC 130. And, and then there was the pilot. for the Marine pilot was on the ramp of the, somebody had carried him and put him on the aircraft. And he, he, he was having difficulty breathing. He had a nylon 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, the four-hour flight back to Oman. Just trying to comfort him. You know, 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 on the 130s 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 had go already, 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.

guys and we started get injecting the pilot and the co-pilot with morphine and give them water. I mean, they were burned. They get there. One of the Air Force guys said take off his gloves because his hands were burnt. The pilot's hands were. I says, no, we're not taking off his gloves. Take off his gloves. His skin's 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 bank, burn. We hit that berm really hard. Our aircraft did. And we lurched 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 on on. And then when we get to flying for, and it's a four-hour flight, we're 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 I'm like, wow, what a night, you know. No landing year. Now we're going to have to might ditch a sea, but we made it back. And the landing gear did come out of the aircraft. And the landing gear did come back out. Obviously, you guys didn't know what happened when, when everything started.

Did you think you were under attack? Like 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. we might have got an attack. 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 1-30s, which are the planes for those of our viewers who don't know, they're,

you know, cargo planes or transport planes, how many of those were on the ground at the time at Desert one because you said you had six helicopters we had six we had six aircraft we had three mc 130 e models and we had three EC 130 e models so we had six aircraft on the ground and uh and roughly how many personnel i think our assault force was around a hundred and twenty some people our totals i don't know the numbers all of these squadron was on that helicopter on that EC-130 that the helicopter ran into. And so we all made it out of there. The loadmaster made it. The loadmaster was burnt pretty bad, the Air Force loadmaster. A couple of 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 load master. So now we have, you know, five fixed wing on the ground. And immediately, I don't know why, but the helicopter crews abandoned their helicopters and their rotors are running, everything. They abandoned them first thing and jumped in on the fixed wing. So all the helicopter crews got out of the helicopters left and left and run and got on the fixed wings. True. Yeah. I don't

know why they did that. They had been refilled. They could have flew back to the aircraft carrier. Also, we provided each aircraft with a destruct charges. We had an ammo can. They had

C4 thermic grenades. We had time fuse in there. So if a 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 Nimitz 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.

And I've seen some of these documents with Iranian markings on them, explaining in Farsi what these documents are for. But they had all the routes and everything. Which would have revealed Desert 2 as well, I imagine. Yes, yes. It had our hindsight, it had their way. where they were going to go, had the approach to the embassy, how to leave the embassy, where we were, the Aranger 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 there 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 is there, why it wasn't destroyed or taken with them or why even what some of that stuff was even present on those helicopters. But yeah. And this is probably before like group AARs were a thing where these where these helicopter pilots or crews would stand up in front of the group and say, yeah, well, we left the helicopters because, right? I mean, there were nobody ever, 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 wiped out. 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 when they got to Desert One. And the thought of getting back in a helicopter and flying back to the aircraft carrier, they didn't want no part of that. So I can't know.

I don't know who gave them permission to abandon those 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. Because like I say, the fixed wing were running low on fuel. And of course, this even the accident delayed the aircraft there longer. So there was one story that you had shared with me that is not in Colonel, Colonel Beckwith's book, which would be kind of funny except for the loss of life on the mission where Colonel Beckwith is ordering people onto the back of the C-130 and then the crew chief

in the plane are 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 Oman, when we got to Oman and they had one of the C-141, ones was set up as a Metavac C-141. And so we were told, so we got to Oman, that's when we did a head count. Who was here? Who was it? There we determined that we left eight people behind, you know, 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, Eric Haney and Bill Zumwalt were where they were. Chris Abel and I were together on our aircraft. So not until we got to Amon did I see Bill Zumaunt and Eric Haney. So know that they made it out okay. And so then we had to get on. So they told us, you know, we only had few medical casualties. The Air Force loadmaster and the two Marines pilot, co-pilot Marines.

But they had the whole C-141 with stretchers. stuff, we were told to get on that aircraft. Somebody on the ground told us that's the aircraft we're taken back to Egypt. So as we get on that aircraft, they're screaming at us and telling us to get out. So 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 out of the aircraft and getting out. And also Beckwith, I was with it standing next to Beckwith. with Don Feeney and Beckwith says, looks at Don and me and says, where's your weapon? I said, my weapon is on at EC 130, you know, everything I just, this is all I got out with.

You know, I didn't grab my weapon or anything. And he said, and a lot of people just abandoned, if you had your weapon physically in your hand, then you might have got out with it, but he said that, well, you're stupid. Beck was called Don Feeney and I stupid. 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 that aircraft went back in that aircraft but uh 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 uh did you leave your uh kevlar with the 10,000 dollars on the aircraft did my caviar when everybody else heard that story did they all leave their 10,000 dollars on the aircraft too yeah I had to sign a statement that's what happened but yeah and truly you got burned up. Yeah. Was there an anecdotal story of somebody who had fallen asleep and thought that the plane was airborne? Frank McKenna. Well, see, as we got in the aircraft, it all got was dark. And the props were 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, we're releasing the

brakes and we're going to start to move. But yeah, people were whipped and stuff. And, and Frank McKenna, he since, 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 going to worry about getting. out of this aircraft, then he'll worry about landing Nix 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 to roll 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 staying in that airplane. So that was Frank. And then another funny incident once we got in with a 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 percadan. And so I think it was Glenn Nicol hollered out and said, somebody checked their E&E kit for an he perka dan, you know. And Bruno Eubaniac turns to, I forget who he turns to, turns to, oh, Jim Switters, I think, and says, Nick, Nick says, we need the E&E to Perka Dan. And Jim says, well, I'm not leaving this aircraft. So luckily Bruno, you know, didn't get off the airplane and head to perked in wherever that was right but 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 as i think it's called honey badger well let me get the 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 picks up on what we're doing, they might associate it with some mission in Southeast Asia. So initially, the planning phase was Operation Rice Bowl. and then 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, maybe? Yeah, Snowbird, yeah. And I think Snowbird was the part with the putting the rocket motors on 1.30. That was Snowbird. And, of course, that plane, they put these rocket motors on. and tried to lift off with it.

Not an aircraft carrier. Yeah, not all the rocket motors fired and that's completely destroyed that C-130. They had all the rocket motors on. They were going to land that 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,

to do a second mission. How did the press find out, to call it the debacle at Desert One, one they had to know of the mission and two, they had to know of 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. And this time on April 24th, every year, They have a big celebration there. It's a big deal. You can see the wreckage of still there, the helicopter and the EC-130.

And so the press were there. And, of course, in the initial press reports, they said that the C-130 ran into the helicopter. When you first news were cut. They were trying to figure out what took place, here and trying to put the pieces together. And in the beginning, they had it really all messed up when they were first reporting what 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 went there to get 53 hostages, not 52 hostages. And I always hear 52, 50, 52. Because 52 was the end number that was released 44 days later. What in this this mission took place in April 24th of the 24th, the morning to the 25th.

In July, one of the hostages, and his last name was Queen, got really, really sick. And he, they released him. He had MS. I think he was later diagnosed with MS. So he was released in July. in July. And then now there was 52 hostages. So 50, so on the inauguration day when 44 days, there was 52 hostages that were released at that point. But Queen was there when we were doing it. We were, we were after 53 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 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 then the Canadian embassy assisted in getting these others that Americans out. What was it, nine of them? Nine of them. Eight or nine. And it was a Tony Mendez that went and got them out, I believe. Right. And it's, yeah, The movie Argo is very accurate in that part of the mission. So at this time, Delta is kind of a fledgling organization.

And I think that we'll probably go into how this affected the whole J-Soc idea and things like that. But obviously this was a pilot error that caused this, but were there any repercussion? I mean, did any of this fall on Delta immediately? 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, interoperability, 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 the. 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 J-Socq stood up on Pope Air Force Base, which adjoins Fort Bragg. And that's where J-SAC formed up. And then 1992, I served in J-Soc from 92 to 99. I was still signed to Delta, but I was duty at J-Soc. And so because of the mission, J-SAC stood up to, that was the joint counter-terrorist organization. And J-SAC, one of the things they did was they did quarterly exercises,

the joint training readiness exercise, 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 J-Soc. And so in 92, I went over and I was a sergeant major from 92 to 96 in J-Socc, the exercise Sergeant Major.

My job was to go out and find training sites to exercise sites to do these joint quarterly exercises and involved everybody, Rangers, Air Force, all the players, Navy SEALs, SEAL Team 6, 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 a 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 going to ask, Mike, how did your experience from Eagle Claw, your lessons learned? How did that impact how you ran the training exercises and these readiness exercises down the line? Yeah, I wish we would have.

I always wanted to do a joint training exercise that was Eagle Claw. The whole to redo Eagle Claw all over again. I would have liked that to have been done. We never did that when I was there. I would like to see how, say, 10, 15 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 their piece of pie. And we always had a seal target and a Delta target. And seal targets could be a ship that was underway. way. We did a lot of, you know, improvised nuclear devices type exercise. A terrorist group has a improvised nuclear device, or they've captured a real nuclear device and fixed it up to make it an improvised nuclear device. So we would have to go in there and we take that. And of Of course, 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 them. Mighty Derringer was another nest with a nuke 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. So those were some of our JRXs. And this is 160th, the special aviation wing got, was stood up around. After Eagle Claw, yeah, yes. The 160 special operation regiment. Yeah. So it stood up. And was that, I mean, I don't know if how, because you aren't air wing, but was that a competitive?

thing for the Army to get what I mean did I mean obviously the Navy the Marine you know Marine pilots on a Navy bird didn't didn't work out and they were in experience it's not it's not really their fault because they didn't have that training up to that point that's true because then Navy Navy Navy 53s are different than Marine 53s and they were and when you have a if you're in a Marine 53 and you have a blade indicates malfunction light come on. 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've got a crack rotor blade. Marine helicopters, you got a land that immediately land that helicopter if the blade indicate. Not so, I guess, with the Navy ones. You could still fly the Navy ones. the Navy ones with a blade indicator. That's what I've been told.

And so how did the, 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 it's primarily Delta and Rangers. I think they looked at the CH-47s and figured that, they could modify the CH-47s, 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 CH-47. So I think 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 Blackhawk for the first time in Grenada. And that's another story. We went in with six Black Hawk 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 23s that they were shooting at us, 12.7s and 7.62. We were hitting from both from the Fort Frederick that was shooting to us at Richmond Hill Prison. And then the 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 seven.

self-sealing fuel tanks in those Blackhawks. And that was amazing. Those help, I really like the Black Hawk helicopters compared to the Hueys. But 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 U.S. Socom was, they did another investment. investigation and informed the U.S. Special Operations Command formed after that.

So what is the difference for our viewers? What is the difference? So Joint Special Operations Command stood up after Eagle Claw. And then Grenada happens, was that 84? 83, October 83. So that happens, October 23rd. So that happens in October of 83. And then what and then so then they come up with a so what what's the difference between the two organizations? Why why the need for the two of them? Well USO comes as a is a. J SOC is basically a black unit. Okay.

It's it's primarily the assets are what we call black cove that black units what black soft. USOCOM is both black and white. It's a broader spectrum. In J-Soc, you really have the, like, Seal Team 6, you got Delta, you got the Rangers. Whereas with USOCOM, you've got the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, you've got all of the SEALs. And it's a four-star position. J-Socq, I believe now, is a two-star position.

is that, I think, today. I believe. Yes, a two-star, whereas USOCOM is a four-star. So J-Soc is a smaller, it's a smaller element. Do the units in J-Sop, do they also fall under So-com or are they two separate things? Yeah, we fall under U.S. So-com. J-S.-O-C does. J-Soc is more of an operational organization.

It controls whatever missions are going on on the ground, whereas U.S.OCOM is the larger four-star sink command, and, you know, it lets J-SAC run the missions. There's a real good book. out about J-Soc. 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, that's an excellent book. Have you read it? Yeah, yeah, that's Sean Naylor's book. Yeah, yeah, great book. So I recommend if you want to know more about J-Socke, 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, let me go get a copy of me right now. So guys, thank you for watching tonight, 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 the book right there. and it is a by Osprey it's part of the raid series which excellent raid series and just in williamson put this together it's got a lot of photographs in it illustrations um you know so this this book came out for the 40th

anniversary of eagle claw and colonel nightingale do you you know room do you know keith nightingale Huh? Keith Nightingale. He's got a brand new book, I think, comes out in August. Really? Yeah. And it's on Amazon. You can pre-order it. 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, Grenada and books. I think that one comes out in August. All right. His name's going on my list for potential guests. August guests. We have some questions that we should probably get to because I haven't been. So Alex, thank you, Alex. First off, thank you everybody for joining us. Please subscribe to the channel if you have on already and hit the little bell for your notifications. Alex, thank you.

Alex, sorry, Andrew, Alex wants to know what is it like being the ultimate life form? life or 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 10 years in EOD I wanted to go into special forces I had put in for special forces as a medic I had a school date to be a special forces medic but then I got the phone call that they formed up the unit in Fort Braggies. a new unit. They wanted six EOD people as part of the unit to be operator qualified. So I put, you know, being a special forces medic, I went to Fort Bragg for the interview. And two weeks later, I was in starting OTC, operating training 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? How? How? How? How? I mean, how? How? How did they differentiate themselves between, you know, Delta and 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 EOD people. And, you know, peacetime, you know, I've been Vietnam, and this is post-Vietnam, EOD, we're doing rain, you know, you know, Deg 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 Bragg.

It sounded really interesting. We had an OTC1, we had six EOD guys try out. Only two of us made it through OTC1. And then in OTC2, we had another 6 EOD 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 78, we all went through the selection assessment course, and only three of us passed the selection. So you went to OTC before, you went to the operator trainer course before you went. We did it backwards. We went to OTC first, five months of OTC. Then I went through the fall of 78, went through the select. I didn't, we had two back-to-back selection courses in fall of 78. I got pulled 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 Beck, court of 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 within 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 in the spring of 79, I went to seventh group at Fort Bragg was actually running an airborne course. So I went through airborne school at Fort Bragg with seventh group. That's amazing. We did things a little backwards.

David Maynard, thank you, David. When the Chuck Norris movie came out, I'm assuming it means Delta Force. When the Chuck Norris movie came out, did you guys know about it? And did you get a group together to see it? Yeah, we knew about it. Chuck Norris, you know,

John Wayne was an iconic figure, and Martha Ray, were for special forces. Chuck Norris wanted to be our special movie star, and Beckwith had nothing to do with Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris tried to contact us, and Beckwith just didn't want anything to do. Of course, also, after Eagle Claw,

we got a lot of letters actually came to the unit, people writing and thanking us. So when we had staff duty, we would go through all the letters and read them. There was people that wanted Beckwith's autograph, but he did not do any autographs. Now, you were a top secret unit and people were sending you letters. Yeah, I don't know how they addressed them, but we had a regular post office box there at Fort Bragg. And so we get all these letters, and we read them at when we had staff duty at night. that's pretty cool though

so you had john wayne as the iconic sf guy then chek norris wanted to be the delta again then we had what nicholas cage as the ranger in air america or not air america but uh con error but yeah check norris never got through the door no

so was the movie not well received it was pretty hokey uh you know it had nothing to do with eagle claw It had more like, you know, there was some hostage, plane hijacking, some hostages. But, yeah, it was, it was entertaining. Yeah. Matt, thank you very much.

Zach, 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's just Jonathan's. cousin. Yeah, the name sounds very familiar, but I can't say how I can place him. DJ, thank you very much for a $20 donation. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Is there anything you can share about the rumors about a possible Laos mission for MIAs in the early 1980s? Commander Major Haney mentioned it in his book as after concurrent with Desert 1. Yeah, that was always, we always had that mission. We had 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, say they killed a 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 all different kinds. And our unit, only a small number of people would be privy to any of these operations. They would, you'd be read into the program and then when you left the program, you have to be read out. So, yeah, but as far as, you know, because who was that? The ex- Special Forces guy when, oh, oh, um, two times. Yeah, bold grits. Yeah, bold 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, you know, like that lost pilot during the first desert storm with whether or not he was being held prisoner. Oh, yeah, remember this. Yes, I'm trying to remember his name.

And we would always plan on that. We were even planning on going to, to his aircraft crash site and searching that in Iraq. But we never did do that. But that was, but he was determined that he was killed in that plane crash. Did you have many Sonti Raiders either in the unit or that were part of that had the input or anything?

We had two. Jack Joplin was our medic, a chief medic, and he was on Sante mission. And we also had Dick Meadows. And those were the two Sante people that we had. Interesting. And for, I mean, for those who don't know, what's the book on Sante?

Is it the right? No, that's synthetic. 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, there's also a book out that I just became aware of about J-Soc planning a potential POW rescue mission in Laos for, you know, POWs from the Vietnam War. And I ordered it. I haven't read it yet, but I guess I'll get back to you with if there's anything in there that's useful. Ian, thank you very much.

Thanks so much, Sergeant Major for sharing your experience with us. We truly appreciate it. hopefully you understand Gwatt humor. Here goes, could you beat Chuck Norris in a fight? Because we think yes. No, I don't think so. I think he's got more moves than I got. I'm a demo guy.

You know, if it has to do with explosives, 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 Bradbury, thank you.

Good day. It's an Australian donation. So he starts out with, can I, good day. Who can do good day? Good day, mate. Good day, mate. All right.

I just know, look at the size of that, Gwana. Gwana. Anyway. Gwana. Did you get any T.D. Did you get any TDI trips to Hereford, UK, or down to Perth, Australia?

for some decent Aussie beer. Yeah, Hereford. I've been to Hereford several times working with the SAS. I did a lot of stuff. The first time I climbed Mount Dinelli, Mount McKinley at the time, Denali 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 the first time I climbed it in 1990 was with nine Ozzy. I mean, nine Brits from the S-A-2-SAS. I've worked with the New Zealand S-A-S, been to New Zealand twice, working with them when I was in. They used to have an exercise every other year called Gone for One. So it's a joint exercise between the Malaysian Scouts, the Australian SAS, the New Zealand SAS, the British SAS, the British SBS, and then we had the Air Force CCTV guys, and you had the SEALs and Special Forces, Delta. And so we used to have those exercises.

And so I went on one of those in New Zealand and worked with the New Zealand SAS. did some climbing with the New Zealand SAS down in the South Island. We did mountain training. When I was in B Squadron, we had different troops with different teams in B Squadron. I was on assault troop, but we had like mobility troop, air troop, water troop, mountain troop. And so I was on a mountain team in Delta. And so we did mountain training all the time.

So we were doing skiing when Eagle Claw happened. I was out from Grenada happened. I was out rock climbing at Leavenworth, Washington, doing rock climbing when we got called back for Grenada. Did you, for what were the similarities and differences between Delta, the Australian SAS and the British SAS? I really don't know too much with the difference between the two Australian and British SAS. They all have their selection and assessment things, but the New Zealand SAS guys, a lot of them,

great majority of them 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. And we copied everything from the Brits Delta did from the SBS. During OTC1, we had instructors from the SAS teaching us how to shoot and with 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 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 boathouse? What color is the what? The boathouse. 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 McBryor and Larry Vickers what does Delta do better than other spec options units in the US or other or any other military yeah I knew a new Larry Vickers and who's the other one Katie Katie was in a blue light so I don't think Katie McVeyer's paths yeah okay I know Larry Vickers. What we do different, you know, we work closely with the SEAL Team 6. In two areas we work closely with our sniper observers cross-train with both units and our breaches. And so I was a breacher. I was EOD, 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&D research.

And when we did a breaching trip, research trip, whether it was SEAL Team 6 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&D trip of how to get through, I'm looking at getting through some concrete walls with rebar and stuff like that, coming ways to defeat that, then the SEAL Team 6 breaches and the HRT breaches would be on the same trip. So we cross-trained in those areas really well.

You know, the SEAL team six guys, you know, their forte is, you know, water ops and operating close to the shore. And, you know, and, and of course, we, you know, our stuff's more inland stuff. But we, you know, we did have water teams and we did a little bit of water stuff. But, you know, we just have our own niche. Do you, how, how, I mean, when, when J-Soc was being formed or maybe later on, because there's a lot of mission creep now, but was it? still was there a lot of mission creep then were people competing for the same job you know different yeah 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 favorite for certain missions over them but you know we all had our special thing and so you know it's you put the right unit to to do that the mission and if it was more of how we were trained, 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 14, 15 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 breaches, those two, we, we trained together.

And we did a lot of training. So, Mike, 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 40 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 your fellow operators personally when you look back on it. Well, you know, it was, yeah, 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 same. 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, we had a lot of issues, a lot of problems. And of course, we already talked about J-Soc being formed to South. some of those joint issues that we had interoperability issues.

And then, of course, after Grenada, we had USOCOM. And so, you know, when Desert Storm came out, you know, we were given the Scud hunting mission in Western Iraq, along with the British SAS. So they divided, we divided the pie up between them and us to do the scud hunting. And 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 launch. We were afraid we wanted to keep Israel out of the conflict. And if they would have launched a couple scuds and hit Israel, then Israel got in there.

and that would have made things messy. But I think we did pretty good. We had an accident. Helicopter crashed into it, just outside the airfield. We were at a place caught in Saudi Arabia called RR. It had a small hill, about the only hill around. And it was really, visibility was really poor. The helicopter came in.

It was medevacking one of our guys, Sergeant Major Pat Hurley, had injured his back. And so we had two Delta medics on that flight, Otto Clark and Rodriguez, and the helicopter ran into the mountain and everybody on that mission on that helicopter died. Yeah, I had to go in and clean up all the ammo 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-66. So that was the Joint Task Force headquarters.

We had two-star general. Peter Schumacher was the commander of the thing. and we were going to invade Haiti and put the reestablish the government in Haiti. So we had had two teams of SEAL Team 6 on board that held on the aircraft carrier. 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, of course, Task Force 160 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 44 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 it Colin Powell was involved? Anyway, they convinced the government that for a peaceful, they would go to exile someplace and that reinstall state the government. And so that went pretty well. That was the first time we operated on a float forward support base on USA. And there was a lot of lessons learned to operate on the aircraft

carrier. And that was in 1994. Four. You know, my opinion, we should have been operating on an aircraft carrier during Somalia in 8093. We should not have been at that air base in Somalia. And that was a big mistake because every move 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. When you said there were a lot of lessons learned working off an aircraft carrier. or floating forward operating base. 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 24K piece for the, for the, for the, for the, for the galleys there on the ship. I had 24 hours, you know, 24 hours, seven days a week, I had to have 24 of our guys. 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 J-Soc elements and all the ship's chiefs from the different compartments on the chief. And twice a day we would have meeting and we would iron out all the problems that we would have. And so the Rangers said that they would provide the KP's if I didn't assign them any other details on the ship. So the Rangers said, the Rangers said,

took over that. We had to do underway unreps on the ship. So the seals said that they would do all the unwraps. They would have to move the cargo from the hangar bays to where they needed to go into stores. And so I had the seals do that. So everybody stepped up or part, but we had to work out laundry issues. We've spent 44 days on the ship. So we had in 40, so we had laundry issues. We had library issues. We had the weight room, the gym. Our guys were actually breaking the gym equipment. And the only difference between a prison gym and an aircraft carrier gym is the prison gym is a better gym than the aircraft carrier gym. Because our guys kept breaking all the gym equipment. So I told this guy, I said, 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 their ID cards. At 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 a book, you're going to get that book back. I guarantee it. And then I told all the Ranger Sergeant Majors, that book, if you get your guys check out a book, it's going back. And so that kind of stuff. The ship has a new No tobacco policy ship. Well, the Rangers are dipping and chewing and stuff like that.

They live on dip. 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. They got a crossbar thing with a hole. 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, a foreign object damage walk. So anybody up on the flight deck when they call a Fod Walk, everybody gets online and you walk the flight deck

to look for washers, nuts, screws, anything, and every paddye 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 rotor wash or a jet could take that, and that could kill somebody or damage equipment. So you do a Fodwold. Well, in the beginning, when they called a Fod Walk, everybody would head down below deck. You're not do, it's a, you're on deck when a Fod Walk calls, you got to do a Fod Walk. You got to walk the deck. Well, when you're searching those paddyes with tobacco juice, was a, So I 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 withdrawals. So we set up a special area on the ship, Sponson 6 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 an Olympic up. We had to keep the Rangers. Rangers, you have to keep busy. Otherwise, you just get into trouble. We had different things to keep Rangers busy, you know, different things 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 that tells you where you are. And so it was a learning curve. So some of our 160th guys were putting decals on some of the Navy equipment, some of the stickers on Navy equipment. 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 fights in the kitchens, some cookie two, telling the range spec for Ranger to do something. And that ranger wasn't going to do it. And the next thing you know, they go, they start fighting. How did the army, especially Rangers and young privates, how did they adjust? just to Navy culture because it's very, it's very different.

You know, like the officers in 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. Then we had to figure out laundry. You know, we'd sign people to go down to the ship's laundry and do the laundry for your group and stuff. Like 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 able 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. And that's the biggest thing. 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 and line, except if you're a chief, if you're, you know, E7 or above, you don't have to wait in line. You have, 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 6 guys. Everybody standing out there is E7 or above. And this Navy chief tries to cut in front of us. And he said, hey, hey, hey, you know, getting 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. Yeah.

Getting the back of the line. Well, because not only are they wearing their rank, but they're wearing a different uniform. Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting. Yeah. It was interesting. I spent a lot of time with the ship's captain.

We would actually, him and I would then 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, when the thing was done, And so what we did was we, you know, we left it, parted North, Norfolk, Virginia on the aircraft carrier without any air component. So then we flew down to Georgia coast and then 160th 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 account 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 the 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 flight deck for any operations for our guys. Because we have a bunch of Army guys now flying helicopters on and off and make sure everybody's got the right equipment on there.

And so I've got a picture hanging up on the wall with the USS America and all of our Army helicopters on it. Yeah. Mike, we've 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. Yes. And he said he was a son, he was also a son Trey Rader. So he figured you guys knew each other.

Yeah, 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 brief? with a night armament's master key. Do you know where the idea of putting a shotgun under the barrel of a rifle came from? Well, we had, we did, we carried, we carried, we carried 12-gauge shotguns,

and we had some 10-gauge shotguns that we would do for breaching, shooting locks and such forth like that. We used, you know, we came up with different explosive breaching, charges using linear shape charge, flexilinear shape charges. We used, one of the things we use is conveyor belt material, Goodyear 330B rubber conveyor belt material. To absorb the, using that to the, we put the explosives on top of that, the explosives then compresses the rubber.

It distributes the force evenly out. and so and we would do different charges like a platter charge well yeah like a strip charge yeah but but using conveyor belt rubber yeah and did you come up with that because like just applying the the whatever it was

C4 C2 whatever you guys using would blow through the door so so you came up with the idea of using the strip of the strip 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, otherwise you put explosives on top.

It's just going to punch through that. Right. Using a medium such as the conveyor belt rubber, and we found out that was the best kind of rubber. It could your 330B. It had three layers of nylon cord through it. And sometimes we would make fast. 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. So we've,

for hostage rescued, the FBI they like to do a lot of water impulse charges using explosives and 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. So our stuff is more designed for non-permissive environments. So different thinking between the FBI.

Well, you're using like an IV bag. I mean, it's heavier, right? It's heavier than just using 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 amazing. 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. Yeah, yeah, you don't have the, um, the institutional knowledge gets lost. Right. So I actually put together the first breaching book in Delta, actually assembled it.

And every, every, uh, 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, the law enforcement does it ever. You can find level one breaching charges on the internet and stuff like that. And so that 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 have stuff that we can use to open doors on passenger aircraft, for example.

If the doors are denied, if they tie down the doors, like one aircraft, they took the neckties, the Egyptian aircraft, they took nicties off the passengers and the exit, overwing exits, they used the neckties and tied them up. Well, 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 no stuff. only 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, a professor. Like, how are you gaining all this knowledge? Oh, yeah. I also, I belong. to the I also became a member of the Society of Explosive Engineers when I was in the unit and he had access to all the scientists like at Lawrence Livermore Sandia and and so we had all these engine you know Dr. Cooper all these experts we did a lot of testing out at Nevada test site. We do a testing out there. We did testing at Socorro, New Mexico, out at New Mexico Tech. 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 at 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&D things, the Corps of Engineers instrumented all of our tests. Fascinating. Yeah. It's a science.

My budget was several million dollars. I had a $7 to $8 million breaching budget. You must have been like a kid in a candy store. Yeah. Because I mean, this is your thing. This is your passion. Right. Yeah, it was, it's really neat to be able to come up with that stuff.

I mean, we had to, one of our things was in Libya. Have you guys heard of Tarhuna in Libya? Gaddafi had these had, in the mountains, the Tarhuna Mountains, he had bought two Swiss tunnel boring machines, you know, like they did the channel under the English Channel. Gaddafi bought two of them, And he dug two parallel tunnels in this Tarhuna with this tunnel boring machine. And what he was going to do is set up a chemical production, underground chemical production facility.

When Gadda, 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 Tarhuna 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 of, 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 J-Socc, J-3 Special Plan Sergeant Major, I was in charge of target defeat 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 on sandstone. So we found the right sandstone out at New Mexico Tech, is Socorro. 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 would be a big operation. We would have had to gone in with hovercraft. We would, we plan on having garbage trucks full of slurry explosives. We would have drilling rigs. So we would go in. And so this was, we were planning on doing all this and actually going and taking all the tunnels and then floating them.

But anyway, somebody decided that it better to tell the world what Gaddafi's up to. And so it was announced to the world what he was doing. And Gaddafi ceased operations because of the publicity and stuff like that. but that was going to be a major operation. I was going into Libya and imploding. That would have been pretty cool, too. So we were trained on how to do, you know, today now we have what we call a heavy breaching cell in the unit. And people to, because it started getting, breaching 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 tours in Sudan when I was in the unit in the early 80s. 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 I, 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 ISA. Isa is an intelligence security agency. It's the, it was a military intelligence cell that was. set up at the time. And so we went in and we evaluated his security. All of his, his looked at his palace, his, 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 9mm and shotgun, 12-gate shotgun shells. So I went there and looked at the

production, looking 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, everything was, I went into this powder magazine. and I go in there. There's no lightning protection. I go in there and there's pallets, wooden pallets with nails on it. 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, my gosh, just one spark. And this whole thing would go off in Sudan.

And so I made a, and they had, and then they show me some Russian blasting caps and stuff like that. Well, the Russians don't shunt their electric blasting caps. Or whatever reason, these were electric blasting caps all unshunted. And it's just so I made a lot of safety records. recommendations and stuff like that. So we did this thing, and I set up a proposed that they have a VIP IED search team that does presidential security sweeps looking for improvised explosives, and I set all this stuff up and told them what they needed.

So when we left there, and normally the agency goes in and would do that. the next phase is going in there and train, take these people, whether they bring them back here to the states in a secure location or go there. They would, the agency is 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 Khartoum, they were having terrorist attacks. They were problems of Civil War was going on in Chad. And they were electronic timers, sophisticated electronic timer devices going off in the city of Khartoum at this time.

So I worked with the Army EOD 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. I 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 CEMTX explosives.

Just packed full, nothing but CEMTICs 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 machine. They didn't have x-ray machines. We brought in x-ray machines. And I told them how to remotely open suitcases like these.

I told them 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 him all that stuff. And then, of course, as soon as Nomari went to Egypt, they had a coup and he was out. I'm going to, I mean, you've been very generous with your time, Mike. I'm going to 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 target, we would have to put two rounds into every target before we transition to the next target to ensure that we had a kill. That came from the SAS. One of the things we had to shoot is instinctive. We had to, they took off our sights on our weapons.

So like we had, our first weapon was an M3, M3 submachine gun, 45. That was our first assault weapons, and they took our sights off that. And with an M3, you can trigger control two rounds, really easy. Go to two rounds, two rounds, two rounds, two rounds. It's really easy to trick once you learn to shoot at M3 grease gun. 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, Sergeant 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 I, you know, I have a grandson in the Army right now. He's with fifth group. He's in a support. He's in one of the fifth group battalions, but he's a 91B. He's a wheel v. vehicle mechanic with fifth group at Fort Camel. So I have a grandson there. He wanted to, his passion was to work on vehicles, learn to 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 chose to want to school at Fort Lee. And strange, he's a 91B vehicle wheel mechanic. When I was in, a 91B was a medic. Yeah. Al, I'm sorry, go ahead, Mike. But you can make the, 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 was about 50 years ago coming up to 50 years ago today was the largest enemy Yeah was the largest enemy ammunition weapons cash Found in the Vietnam War in Cambodia During May and June of 1970 Nixon 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 cache was found by the first calf, second of the 12th. It was the first of the ninth paint team actually found the cash site from an OH6 helicopter. And they found the stacks of ammunition in the jungle. and the second of the 12th captured the thing became known as Rock Island East, you know, named after the famous Arts in Iowa Rock Island. There was over 300 tons, 320 tons of weapons and ammunition in these caches.

There was several stacks of site. I think there was 28 stacks in the jungle on a trail. that was a quarter mile long. And then we had to, they 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 hauled out. But, yeah, we used 300 cases of C4.

on and we used 12 cases of detonating cord there's 3,000 feet and in each case and so we had we buried the detonating cord 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 10 priming systems of 15 minutes each to make sure this whole thing go. And if they came in and cut one of our detonating cord lines, we had another detonating corn line to go ahead. So we pull our 15 minute fuses. The E8, myself, we run to the helicopter. And as we get to the helicopter, the, the captain in the helicopter says, cut the fuse, cut the fuse, cut the fuse. So 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 then he says, light it, light it, you know. And we didn't have no more fuse igniters, you know. So we had to go back over now. Our 15-minute lines are cut. We don't know what kind of time we got. So we're splitting, we're splitting time fuse.

We're putting a match head in and lighting it. And when you get a spit back, you can light a second one quickly off us. So we light a bunch of them. And then we get on the helicopter. And while we're lighting this stuff, now our primitive charges are going off. And so there's 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. and they're ready to leave, you know, because they think we're taking incoming. So we like the things. We get on the helicopters, and then the helicopters can't lift off. We're too overloaded and stuff. So the door guard 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 they have the same problem.

They drop off a couple people, and then these two helicopters take off. There's like five of us on the ground. And I'm the only EOD guy on the ground. The rest of the guys are infantry, Echo Recon guys, on the ground. We've got the charges are 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 stays off. And this other helicopter comes in, and he was in the 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. 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 50 miles away. And that was Rock Island East. I just Amy Wept from cashier. The last question, then we get, we, We should probably start wrapping this up. Do you have any funny stories about inexperienced officers?

Yeah, I see. It sounds like you just told one, actually. Yeah. I have a funny teammate. This guy, I'm going to mention his name. He's a great guy and stuff like that. His name's Don Dreher. He reminds me so much of Wiley Coyote, you know,

the character on Wally 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 recon on targets. We're dressed in civilian clothes. Our cover was we were two school teachers from the United States. We were on bicycles,

and we were reconing different military sites and stuff like that. And Don, one of the things, we had to cut across 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 and and as he starts to slide his fingers were digging in his toes were digging in and he was clawing and sliding and eventually he just went down into the water splash 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 was something wali coyote would do and there was some other things like that but it was had a blast with with him Mike, thank you. We also want to say thank you to DJ real quick. DJ left a comment. Thank you. My father spent time in Sudan in the 80s,

as well as a member of the African Nations Peacekeeping Nation, as well as the Congo. And he has similar stories about the craziness there, too. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thank so much for joining us tonight, Mike. It's always a pleasure and really a lot of fun to speak with you. And you hear some of these stories,

especially has a special importance because of the 40th anniversary of 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 Georgia prison riot and Operation Pocket Planner. Yeah, that was really interesting. We'll start that after we finish here, if that's okay. And if you want to see that, join us on Patreon.

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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, a guy I know, really good dude, and I'm excited to have him here next Friday. And just the very last thing I have to say is please go and visit our sponsor for this podcast. It is high-speed daddy, and they make tactical equipment for today's dad. If you need lunch pails, if you need diaper bags, things like that that are made out of tactical nylon. They have all of it for you. It is at high speed daddy.com. And if you go there, you will get a 15% discount. If you enter the discount code on your order, it's just my name. It's Jack, J-A-C-K. So yeah, go check them out. And again, the link to our

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