Mike Durant

Everybody knows about Eagle Claw.

Not everybody, but people that follow the military.

But not everyone knows that there was a second attempt going to be made, and that's the birth of the 160th.

The 160th was put together and conducting rehearsals and modifying aircraft in order to be better prepared for the second go-around.

Because the reason Eagle Claw didn't work as well as it should have is it was just kludged together.

It was...

Not treated like a like, you know a joint readiness train up It was grab these helicopters here and these pilots here and stick them on this ship and you know They're just gonna all meet in the desert and go hit us off the target.

There's not an adequate Train up or preparation and the results were catastrophic so anyway

so this unit's formed and the best decision that could have ever been made with regard once the once the hostages got released i'm sure you know most people may not remember this but when ronald reagan took office within days the hostages all got released and so now you got this task force that has been created to go do a rescue that doesn't need to be done

What do you do?

Well, somebody went to the Hill and said, we got to maintain this.

I mean, you just don't know where it's going to happen next.

And if you try to throw together assets at the 11th hour, the outcome is probably going to be the same as it was in Eagle Claw.

So there was a decision made to maintain the unit, and that was the birth of the 160th.

So TF160, no shit, what year was that?

Uh, early eighties.

I mean, probably, probably 83, 82, 83.

Cause I'm in, I'm in Korea, uh,

in 85, 86.

No, I'm not one of the plank holders.