DUKE FIELD — A reflective Roland Guidry leaned against the interior wall in the cockpit of a Combat Talon I aircraft.
The plane the retired Air Force colonel was crouching in — the same plane he’d flown in a covert attempt to rescue more than 50 Iran hostages 33 years ago — was being retired.
“It’s pretty emotional,” Guidry said Thursday as he looked out the windshield at the crowd gathered in the hangar at Duke Field for the ceremony.
He held his hands up to his eyes to mimic how he’d been positioned with night-vision goggles to help the pilots land in the desert sand swirling below on April 24, 1980.
Guidry’s plane, the first of Operation Eagle Claw, was sent in to test the ground at the Desert One site to make sure the sand was solid enough to support the 190,000-pound aircraft and crew.
It was.
His crew took off and the next round of Talons, one more ill-fated than his, were sent in.
A helicopter, its pilot disoriented in the sand the rotors had kicked up, crashed into one of the Talons and the aircraft exploded in a massive fireball in the night.
The mission was aborted, leaving eight Americans dead and the hostages behind for about nine more months.
However, from the rubble of the failed mission the modern-day Special Operations forces were formed, and the Combat Talon that was close to being sent to the bone yard was resurrected for decades of more service.
“We weren’t ready for that mission. We got caught with our pants down,” said retired Air Force Col. Ray Turczyniski, who also was flying in one of the C-130s that day.
“The failure of Desert One, though, would prove to be the salvation of the Combat Talon and a catalyst for the rebirth of Special Operations,” he said during the ceremony.
Shortly after, military branches formed their own Special Operations units, the Joint Special Operations Command was born and funding was shifted to meet Special Ops’ needs, Turczyniski said.
Leaders who gathered for the aircraft’s retirement ceremony said that in its almost 50 years in service the Talon I had a place in almost all conflicts, including more recently when it played a major role in dismantling al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
The remaining Talon I aircraft at Duke Field, the last in the Air Force, flew their final missions last week.
The five regal, slate gray planes were posted outside the hangar during Thursday’s ceremony. An American flag poked from the roof of one above the four looming propellers, waving to the crowd gathered for its sendoff.
Dozens of airmen who participated in Desert One attended the ceremony, along with hundreds of people who crewed, worked on or developed the planes over their 50 years in service.
View a photo gallery of the ceremony. >>
Chief Master Sgt. Thomas Mason had been a loadmaster on the Talon Is at Duke Field for 17 years until he recently was promoted to command chief at the 919th Special Operations Wing.
He got to take his final flight as loadmaster on one of the C-130s’ last missions.
“It was a bittersweet moment,” he said. “To have it work out like (that), I couldn’t have scripted that.”
Mason had been deployed with the Talon I seven times since 9/11, including the very first operation in Afghanistan, known as Hit Night, on Oct. 19, 2001.
“I was there when it all kicked off,” he said.
He was also flying on Dec. 7, 2001, and remembers the crew’s idle chatter as they cruised along. Then they heard a helicopter mission had gone awry and quickly shifted gears to rush in and rescue the crew and destroy the choppers before they were discovered by the enemy.
On April 2, 2003, two C-130 Talons led a formation of helicopters to seize Sadaam Hussein’s palace in Iraq. The pilots had to descend to 85 feet to narrowly avoid missile fire, but were able to complete the mission, said Lt. Col. Dan Flynn, commander of the 711th Special Operations Squadron at Duke.
Flynn was flying in a Talon I on Feb. 12, 2009, that was sent out in the middle of a snowstorm in Afghanistan to rescue four people injured in an improvised bomb explosion. They had to land the plane on a tiny strip covered in black ice on the side of a mountain, but it made it, he said.
The longevity of the plane’s combat time is a testament to its design and usefulness, officials at the ceremony said.
“It’s a sad but proud day for us,” Flynn said.
The Talon Is are being replaced by new iterations of the planes that have been developed over the years.
“They still look great, but they’ve seen the end of their days,” said Col. Andy Comtois, commander of the 919th Special Operations Wing. “It’s time to retire this 50-year-old airframe.”
The 919th no will longer fly Talons. Instead, crews will fly the smaller C1-45s, which fly some, but not all of the same missions, Comtois said.