Recently catching a late-night showing of The Delta Force (1986, starring Chuck Norris & Lee Marvin), I was sent across the internet to track down its inspiration. Enough of the film reminded me of a real-life mid-eighties hostage situation onboard a plane that I was ALMOST able to ignore the inadvertent 1980 Flying High (aka Airplane!) references.

(Nuns & planes, 'eh? Hilarious!)

I learned that The Delta Force was Lee Marvin's last film before he died suddenly of a heart attack in 1987. And that Marvin v. Marvin is the 1979 case between Lee Marvin and his ex-partner, Michelle Triola Marvin, that paved the way for the concept of the de facto divorce (though Triola Marvin's $104,000 award decision was later rescinded).

I also learned that the film was based on the events of the 1985 hostage situation aboard TWA Flight 847 by the Organisation for the Oppressed of the Earth (likely a Hezbollah front). 153 passengers and crew were initially captured, some were traded for fuel, some were released, one was beaten and killed (US navy diver Robert Stethem), and 39 of the hostages remained for 2 weeks under guard before being released.

Flight attendant Uli Derickson was credited with saving the lives of many passengers by negotiating with the hijackers in German (the only language anyone shared with the men) for passenger release, by hiding the passports of passengers with jewish names, & by using her own personal Shell Oil credit card to purchase $5,500 worth of jet fuel in Algiers when officials refused the hijackers' demands.

The hijackers are believed to be still at large.

Also apparently credited as an inspiration for the film is Operation Eagle Claw (aka Operation Evening Light aka Operation Rice Bowl -- why do military operations need so many names?), a failed 1980 attempt to rescue 53 US Embassy hostages in Iran. The hostages ended up enduring 444 days of captivity, finally being released on the first day after President Jimmy Carter, who initiated the rescue attempt, hung up his spurs (day 1 of Ronald Reagan's reign). The US military endured months of training, 2 nights of being outwitted largely by _sand_, and eight dead American soldiers.

Also amongst the dead was one Iranian citizen: a passenger on a fuel tanker that had been fleeing the landing point area when the US arrived, and was blown up when the tanker was hit by a shoulder-fired rocket.

En route to the landing point, the eight military choppers had been flying close to the ground to avoid radar detection. That close to the ground, they flew right into a sandstorm which disabled two of the choppers and damaged a third.

President Carter was convinced to abort the mission. The choppers were deemed to be unreliable, & thus a minumum of six was needed for proper risk management (she said, noting at last the 'project management' side of her interest).

On the second night, the choppers were refuelling for return when one lifted off the ground and thew enough dust into the air that the pilot became disoriented. He flew his chopper directly into the 'fuel bird' that had been refuelling his chopper. The resulting explosion is what killed the servicemen -- though the pilot was one that survived.

Like I said, defeated by sand.

Fleeing the area in confusion, the survivors of the aborted rescue left behind classified documents identifying local CIA agents. The agents' lives appear to have been spared solely through luck and timing: they were busy exiting Iran at just that moment.

Following Iranian discovery of the mission (via those forgotten documents, most like), the hostages were scattered across the country to deter any other rescue attempts. A second attempt was planned but remained unexectuted.

The Holloway Report -- the result of the official investigation into the failure -- cited "deficiencies in mission planning, command and control, and inter-service operability" (not 'sand', notably). It was this report, by Admiral James L. Holloway III (retired), that lead to the formation of the inter-operations body, the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).

There you have it. All that from a Chuck Norris movie. Proving Norris is Cool and the internet is Cooler.

And yet: when I started my morning's readings, all I wanted to know was what year that quaint little movie was made.