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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (April 29, 1980)
THE BATTALION Page 11 W' orld TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 1980 iing candil r esidentsi ing thefi diplomat Failures ‘stun officials Choppers got no special care United Press International WASHINGTON — Navy mainte nance men aboard the USS Nimitz were not told their helicopters would be employed on the disastrous 500- mile flight that sank American hopes for a rescue of the 53 hostages Tehran. And Pentagon officials said the Light RH-53 “Sea Stallion” choppers (were not the same aircraft as those performed flawlessly through sandstorms and other difficult condi- [tions during practice runs in the Un- id States. Officials said the eight choppers conMlised in the rescue mission were ia and Ajltransferred from the United States to Jthe Indian Ocean island of Diego he wonll|Garcia as long ago as December. From there, the 7-year-old aircraft that hewlwere shipped to the carrier USS Cuba,”ljJlimitz and maintained by crews. A senior military officer said those Latin Analnaintenance teams did not know the is isjustdpielicopters were to be used for any- :hing but routine operations and inly one or two officers on the entire filliamP.lhip knew just how important the :s hehaiiAiachines really were, he presdl President Carter and military offi- to staterJ irofoneofj le, saidKij of" cials were in agreement the rescue plan had an excellent chance for suc cess. It was to have worked like this: Six C-130 Hercules transport planes flew early Thursday from a base in Egypt, made a rest stop on the Gulf of Oman, then made it to a desert rendezvous point near Tabas, 200 miles southeast of Tehran, where they were to refuel the heli copters. The eight choppers, carrying 90 men from an elite antiterrorist group trained at Fort Bragg, N.C., were to fly from the deck of the Nimitz 500 miles, mostly across desert, to the desert refueling point. From there, the choppers, each capable of carrying 55 passengers, were to take the men to a mountain hideout near Tehran. The rescuers were to have driven to the embassy compound in trucks and other vehi cles, attacking Friday night, and us ing incapacitating gas if necessary. The raiders, the hostages, and presumably their Iranian agents and helpers were then to have been pick ed up by helicopters, taken to a new rendezvous point with the C-130s outside Tehran for a freedom flight away from Iran. But Pentagon officials said they were stunned that three of the heli copters failed on the first leg of the mission. Of the eight CH-53s that left the Nimitz, one developed trouble with its gyros during a sandstorm, causing the artificial horizon to disappear from the panel. With safe flight en dangered, they chose to return to the Nimitz. A second helicopter came, down on Iranian territory short of the rendez vous point for unexplained mecha nical reasons, and its crew was res cued by its “buddy” aircraft. Once all the other crafts had land ed, a third helicopter was found to have drastic hydraulic problems. Since officials felt they needed a minimum of six helicopters to carry out their rescue plan, the comman der recommended the mission be aborted. It was at that point that one of the remaining five good helicopters crashed from an altitute of 15 feet into a parked C-130 transport. Tito 5 con dition improves —barely llnited Press International BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Doctors Monday reported Presi dent Josip BrozTito, 87, emerged from a state of shock and was im proved enough his condition could be described as “very grave'’ rather than “exceptionally grave.” “By application of correspond ing measures of medical treat ment, the critical stage of shock into which Cojnrade President fell in the afternoon of April 22 has been overcome,” the official medical bulletin said. “But, the general condition of his health is still very grave. In tensive medical treatment is being continued.” Tito, hospitalized for 107 days, presumably was still in a coma. Doctors had described Tito’s state of health as “very grave” for about six weeks until just a week ago — April 21 — when internal bleeding and liver failure forced them to downgrade their descrip tion of his condition to “excep tionally grave.” Tito lapsed into critical condi tion with the onset of shock April 22, and remained in that state for two days. He suffers liver failure and acute jaundice, total kidney fai lure, pneumonia, high fever, in ternal bleeding and cardiac weak ness and serious disorders of the digestive organs. These were complications which followed his Jan. 20 leg amputation. OOOOQOOOOOOoooooo SKYWAY TWIN , 2000 E. 29th 822-3300 i France starts withdrawing troops lout of civil war-stricken Chad tterisjl jmment 1 ' t is said any Mai United Press International ie state® PARIS — France Monday began r Clem rithdrawing its last 1,100 troops rom Chad, engaged in a civil war ad where renewed fighting began a nonth ago between rival Moslem actions. French Foreign Ministry sources 1 the withdrawal operation from »air base near the capital city of r i’djamena would take several leeks. I The French forces had been under |trict orders to remain neutral and I say it's it.’ Nugent! has dont| lers, ski] /as nission. favors a serve as a protective mission during the fighting that began March 21 in N’djamena. More than 1,000 people were kil led and 3,000 injured in the fighting in the impoverished African nation. Thousands of others have fled into neighboring Cameroon, including nearly the entire 800-member fore ign community. French sources said sporadic shelling and bombing have con tinued in N’djamena since the latest cease-fire collapsed April 9. USED “The French military troops have accomplished their protective mis sion,” a statement from the Elysee presidential palace said Sunday. “The withdrawal is being carried out under the provisions of an accord with the Chadian government of na tional unity.” The latest round of fighting in volves a power struggle between forces of President Goukouni Oued- dei and Defense Minister Hissen Habre. AMERICAN gigoloii WEST 7:30 LOVE AT FIRST BITE ALSO AT 9*15 6^PACk ANNIE east 7:30 KILL OR BE KILLED ALSO AT 9:15 BUCKSTONE COUNTY ^ PRISON 5 oooooooooooooooooo OOOOOOOOOO 0OOOOO00O oooooooooo oooooo § MANOR EAST 3 MANOR EAST MALL 823-8300 •ridor kl i SanAisi imodatej been aki m advertf Nugenli m will i -vj. WANTE D! NOtfRTDUAl H^SMEfN .tfOATPafU. manic FORKS! V 0^RT *U S#« Bax>6 imi wCtMftjCWR jOMh aw «fWDRcxii GRAfRtWHOCON-'WSnweOC ^Vff1C«) StORWO o_. 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