Combat Search and Rescue, the Prequel

A US pilot has been shot down over Iran. US Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR) teams have been dispatched to effect a rescue. History shows just how dangerous--and ultimately futile--such ops can be.

MH-53J helicopter hovering over the Iraqi desert at night

On the afternoon of January 18, 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, Iraq launched four modified Scud missiles, known as the Al Hussein, towards targets in Israel. Three of the Al Hussein missiles fell in Tel Aviv, with one scoring a direct hit on a multi-story building. The warhead failed to explode, however, and was recovered intact by Israeli explosives disposal crews from a ground-floor jewelry store. A second Al Hussein hit directly next to a municipal center in Tel Aviv’s Hatkiva district, blowing open an unoccupied basement bomb shelter; this missile landed a scant 300 meters from an Al Hussein impact from the day before in the Ezra district of Tel Aviv. Of the 30 people reported injured in this attack, most of the casualties were from this strike. A third Al Hussein struck Yarkon Park, adjacent to the Tel Aviv exhibition center. The fourth and final Al Hussein flew long, landing in the water off the coast of the city.

The commander of the US Air Force’s air campaign planning center (better known as “the Black Hole”. Brigadier General Buster Glosson, had nearly panicked as a result of the Iraqi action. The Iraqi SCUD attack on Israel had Washington, DC in an uproar—something needed to be done to demonstrate to the Israelis that the United States had the SCUD problem under control. That “something” was to divert 12 F-15E fighters from a planned bombing mission on an ammunition dump in southern Iraq to basically repeat the first night of the war, bombing the fixed arm launchers in western Iraq.

A four-aircraft flight of F-15E’s was also dispatched to hit targets around Al Qaim. As had happened on the 17^th, the moment the first bomb went off, “it was like someone turned on a light switch,” Captain Keith Johnson recalled, “the whole world just erupted. It was like a flowing river of light. The whole earth was a different color, with white, orange and red fireballs coming up.”

Many of those fireballs were from SA-2, SA-3, and SA-6 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), a threat the F-15E’s did not have to face the on the first night. The first two F-15E’s managed to drop their bombs before having to execute a series of violent maneuvers designed to get the missiles to miss. The last two F-15E’s did not even get that opportunity—they were forced to stop their attack runs and flee the area, evading more missiles as they did so.

The F-15E’s were sent back to Al Qaim the next night, again for the purpose of being seen to be doing something—anything—to stop the Iraqi SCUDs. This time the Iraqis were waiting for them. The Iraqis greeted the F-15E’s with a mass launch of ground-launched flares, which rose to the height of 13,000 feet before going off. “They would go whoosh, pop, and they would just hang and slowly fall in the air,” Captain Larry Bowers, a Weapons Systems Officer, remembered. “They were everywhere just to light us up.” His pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Robin Scott, noted that “It was an old World War Two technique, and it worked like a champ.”

The F-15E’s had flown into a well-prepared ambush. In addition to massive amounts of AAA, the crews had to deal with up to fourteen SAMs being launched against them. Colonel Dave Eberly was ten miles away from his target—a fixed arm launcher located in Wadi Jabariyah—when the Iraqi air defenses opened fire. Eight miles out, as he started to maneuver his aircraft to avoid an incoming SA-2, he was struck by AAA, forcing both he and his Weapons Systems Officer, Major Tom Griffith, to eject.

In the early stages of the Missile War, the Iraqis had drawn first blood.

Both Eberly and Griffith were able to successfully eject. Avoiding capture, the pair made their way toward the Iraq-Syria border. They were able to deploy their rescue beacon and made voice contact with several different US aircraft. These acts were used to confirm they were still alive and not (yet) captured, and a search and rescue operation was launched.

While Colonel Eberly and Major Griffith evaded capture on the ground, the US military turned to the CIA for assistance. The CIA had organized a network of agents, recruited from Bedouin tribesmen who had family in both Syria (where they were recruited) and Iraq (where they operated.)

These agents were controlled by paramilitary officers belonging to the secretive Special Operations Group (SOG, also known as the Special Activities Division), part of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. The SOG team worked out of a forward operating base in Batman, Turkey, under the auspices of Brigadier General Potter, the commander of Special Operations Command, Europe. Prior to the start of the war, the SOG team, led by an experienced operator named Mick McGrath, had recruited, trained, and equipped approximately 100 Iraqi operatives to assist coalition pilots shot down over western Iraq to evade capture. These agents were subsequently infiltrated from Turkey into western Iraq, via Kurdistan, immediately prior to the start of the war.

Brigadier General Potter, working through the US Ambassador in Damascus, tried to plan with Syria for a pair of MH-53J helicopter, accompanied by a C-130 tanker aircraft to provide in-air refueling to increase the helicopter’s time on station, to overfly Syrian airspace before entering Iraq near Al Qaim. In addition, McGrath and his SOG team were forward deployed into Syria, where they staged across the border from Al Qaim. Here they established radio contact with their Iraqi agents and were prepared to provide a quick reaction force capability if needed.

While Brigadier General Potter awaited clearance from the Syrians, the plight of the F-15E crew grew from bad to worse. Thirsty, hungry, and verging on hypothermic, the crew’s physical condition was deteriorating rapidly. McGrath and his SOG team, across the border in Syria, monitored the signal from the beacons carried by the aircrew, and requested permission to cross into Iraq on their own to rescue the downed American pilots. McGrath’s requests were turned down by the US Ambassador to Syria.

McGrath then made the risky decision to have their Iraqi agents break cover, organize themselves into teams, and actively seek to locate and rescue the aircrew. One of these teams was able to locate the wreckage of “Corvette 3”, verifying that it had been shot down by anti-aircraft artillery as opposed to surface-to-air missiles (as had been originally thought). However, this was as close as anyone got to finding the downed crew.

Colonel Eberly and Major Griffith were captured by the Iraqis on the morning of January 23. The two had made their way to the Syrian-Iraqi border, where they attempted to cross. Instead, they walked headlong into an Iraqi border guard position, where they nearly perished in a hail of machinegun fire from guards who were as surprised to see two American pilots as the Americans were to be fired at. Only yards away from Syria and freedom, the Americans were taken into custody. They spent the next 30-odd days being shuttled from prison to prison, “guests” of the Iraqi Government.

By the evening of January 23, with the fate of Eberly and Griffith unknown, the decision was made to launch a rescue attempt out of Batman. Two US Air Force MH-53J “Pave Low” helicopters of the 21st Special Operations Squadron, each carrying a mix of Air Force pararescue/combat controllers and Army Special Forces, entered Syrian air space without permission of the Syrian government and flew along the Syrian-Iraqi border until they approached Al Qaim, where they spent nearly 30 minutes trying to contact the lost aircrew.

The helicopters eventually crossed into Iraq, expanding their search. Within minutes, it was apparent the Iraqis were waiting for them. “I got on the radio and started trying all the different frequencies to contact him [Eberly],” Captain Matt Shozda, one of the MH-53J pilots said afterwards. “Somewhere at that point, we realized that the [search and rescue] net was nothing more than a radio-controlled AAA, pilot-controlled AAA. We would key the mike [of the radio] and they would start firing. I told Harden, ‘Look! They’re DF-in’ [direction finding, a technique where one uses radio receivers to home in on the source of a transmission] us. Watch this!’ So I made a radio call and they started shooting again.”

The Iraqis were using Eberly and Griffith’s rescue beacon to draw in the search and rescue helicopters in hopes of shooting them down. “They definitely had a trap set up for us. They were waiting for us because the final location that we got—that’s where all the AAA was coming from.”

It was clear to everyone that the crew of “Corvette 3” had been taken prisoner by the Iraqis. Shozda and the others reluctantly returned to their base in Batman.

(This article consists of passages from my book, The SCUD Hunters, which I am currently publishing in serialized fashion on my Substack page. While the events in this article pre-date the current war in Iran by some 25 years, the basic problems surrounding CSAR operations remain the same. This article is presented in an effort to take the reader inside the complexities and hazards associated with trying to recover a downed pilot in hostile territory.)