Many if not all of people living in the US or Canada have heard of the Iranian Hostage Crisis in which fifty-two American diplomats were held captive for 444 days after the American embassy was stormed and eventually taken control of by Iranian Students. But many have not heard of "Operation Credible Sport" a project which seeked to utilise a Lockheed C-130 to land in and take off from a soccer stadium in Tehran with the help of rockets.
Shortly after the failure of Operation Eagle Claw which failed due to multiple equipment and coordination problems the US Armed Forces set out to plan another rescue plan. The only thing stopping them from successfully completing the rescue operation was just how they would extract the Armed Forces team and hostages from Tehran. In order to solve this, the "Credible Sport" team was assigned to designed and create a "Super STOL" aeroplane that could replace the need for a heavy load helicopter and land in the stadium.
The plan for the rescue that the "Credible Sport" team had to follow called for an aeroplane to be used in situations that it have never been designed for. The plan stated that the plane needed to land and take off in Amjadien Stadium which was located across from the American Embassy
The "Credible Sport" team created a concept plane that required a C-130 to be outfitted with 30 rockets that were located in multiple groups around the plane. Eight pointing forward on the front fuselage in order to stop the aircraft, eight downward in order to slow the descent, eight pointing toward the rear in order speed up the plane for takeoff and two pairs of two rockets located in the rear to help with stabilisation. With the plan created in was time to move onto the testing phase. On the 18 of September 1980 the plane had been outfitted with the rockets and it was time for the first test flight. After numerous flights were made to test all the differents aspects on the plane a full test flight of the plane was scheduled.
On the morning of October 29th 1080 the retrofitted C-130 took off with the assist of rockets, which set multiple short takeoff records. Then came time for the landing, blinded by the light of already ignited rockets the flight engineer thought that the plane had touched down. But the plane was still twenty feet above the ground. Not knowing that the plane was still in the air the engineer fired the forward facing rockets, which reduced the speed of the aircraft to almost zero. This dropped the plane hard on the runway fracturing the starboard wing. This created a small fire on the now broken wing which was quickly put out by a quick response team. Luckily, all crew survived. The injured plane was dismantled and buried on site in order to keep the project a secret. The rebuilding of the rescue plane was nearly complete, but President Jimmy Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagen in the 1980 election. After the shift of presidents the rescue missions plans were cancelled.
Here is a video of the plane in action!
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