Eagle Claw: A special ops family legacy

  • Published
  • By Dan Neely
  • 919th Special Operations Wing
April 24, 2016 marks the 36th anniversary of Operation Eagle Claw, the ill-fated joint U.S. military attempt to rescue 53 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days.

For one Duke Field reservist, that day in history hits close to home.
Chief Master Sgt. Raymond Beyers, 2nd Special Operations Squadron superintendent, remembers that day all too well -- his late father, Staff Sgt. J.J. Beyers, was an aircrew member on that perilous mission.

The elder Beyers was performing duties as a radio operator aboard his EC-130 that sat parked in the Iranian desert at a location designated Desert One. Plans called for the crew to refuel several inbound Marine Corps RH-53 helicopters. Moments later, one of the helicopters, severely hampered by blinding dust clouds and hydraulic problems, collided with his aircraft.

Both aircraft exploded, killing five of his fellow Airmen on the EC-130 and three Marines on the RH-53. He was knocked unconscious attempting to egress the aircraft.

Regaining consciousness, he crawled over empty fuel bladders while fighting an overwhelming temptation to give up. But, as the chief recalls his father telling him, he was spurred on by the thought, “I’m not going to die [here].”

He made it to the right-side troop door and was pulled out of the aircraft by Army Delta Force medics.

“The medics pulled him out and, with one at each arm, ran to catch the last EC-130, “Chief Beyers said. “The aircraft could not stop because if it did, it would get stuck.” The Airman suffered severe burns to 60 percent of his body and a permanently damaged lung.

Chief Beyers remembers vividly the day he, then just 10 years old, first learned of his father’s situation.

“I was in school, came home, normal day,” he said. “I walked into the house and it was immaculate. I’m thinking something is awry here. We didn’t live in squalor by any stretch, but it was a house with five kids, so usually there was some degree of clutter.

“Our neighbors had come over and cleaned the house,” he added. “I thought, something’s amiss. That’s when they told me, ‘Hey, your Dad’s been in an accident.’ I’d seen him play softball, and he was constantly hurting himself playing sports, so I thought, okay, a little accident, I get it. Then they said, ‘Oh, no, it’s pretty serious.’”

Moments later, Chief Beyers’ world turned upside down. News reporters came calling and throngs of his father’s squadron members descended on their house to hastily prepare the family to fly to a Texas hospital where he would spend a grueling year in recovery.

“The doctors truly thought that he wasn’t going to live much longer, but as soon as we walked into the room, all of his vital signs came up,” the chief said, choking back tears as he recalled seeing his father for the first time.

“By this point we couldn’t go anywhere without being followed by reporters, and we actually laid down in the back of cars with coats covering us just to drive us out to someone’s house to go outside and play,” Chief Beyers said.

Chief Beyers said he was proud to follow in his father’s military aviation footsteps, but prefaced his own flying career with a stint in the Navy as a P3-C inflight avionics technician before switching to the Air Force and becoming a loadmaster and instructor aboard various C-130 aircraft. He took it a step further more recently by transitioning to remotely piloted aircraft as a sensor operator.

But the chief said he’ll never forget the stark images of his father as he lay in his Brooks Air Force Base hospital burn ward. He was bandaged virtually head to toe and fighting through the searing pain of countless skin grafting procedures.

“They had fused all of his knuckles together because there was no connective tissue left,” Chief Beyers said. “One finger and the thumbs were good, but the rest of the knuckles were fused.

“And yet with all of the stuff that happened to him, the burns and everything, he never whined,” the chief added. “He was a very strong man. There were times we had to dress him, because he had pins in his fingers, so he couldn’t do very much. Even then, he had this kind of twisted sense of humor. Later on when one of the pins was loose he would take it out and point to stuff on a menu to freak waitresses out.”

When J.J. Beyers learned that the pilot of the crashed Marine helicopter had become despondent when his own skin grafts were failing, he immediately reached out to him.

“Dad made a point of going and talking to him,” Chief Beyers said. “He told him, ‘It wasn’t your fault. We don’t blame you and I don’t blame you’ -- another testament to the man he was.”

Despite the tragic losses suffered at Desert One that day, Chief Beyers is quick to remind others about the pride he maintains in his father’s key role and the power of lessons learned by the entire U.S. special operations community.

“It was the driving factor that started the resurgence of special ops because, after the Vietnam War, special ops had languished and was being drawn down,” he said. “After this incident they say it’s like the Phoenix rising from the ashes kind of thing, and it was the rise of special ops ultimately into the (U.S. Special Operations Command) we see today.”

One of Chief Beyers’ most powerful memories of his father unfolded a year ago, coinciding with an annual Hurlburt Field, Florida, based Eagle Claw anniversary observance. Barely a month before he passed away at age 72, despite being confined to a wheelchair, he was there to personally help tack on his newly promoted son’s stripes during his chief induction ceremony.

Thinking about his father’s attendance, the chief’s voice again choked up.

“It was a huge day because it was a culmination of a career” he said. “And yet his own career got cut short, and nobody knows how far he would’ve gone. But to see his son make the top enlisted rank was huge for him and huge for me, of course.

“To do that in front of people he served with, guys that looked up to him … first- and second-generation air commandos … was amazing, especially on the 35th anniversary of the incident,” he said. “I’m still learning lessons from all of them.”