Operation Credible Sport

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After the fiasco of Operation Eagle Claw, the United States made one more attempt to extract the workers held hostage at the American embassy in Tehran in 1980. The program was called either "Credible Sport" or "Honey Badger," depending on who you talk to, and you can read more about it here:
Operation Credible Sport

Eagle Claw failed mostly because of the complexity of the operation. It required a squadron of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters to rendezvous at a remote location in a hostile country under harsh weather conditions and set up a forward operating base, then go recover civilians under intense guard in the capital of Iran. Credible Sport aimed to simplify. One airplane, one landing, one extraction, one takeoff. It was simple, but the mission was so demanding it required a bit of creativity in airplane design.

The plan was to modify a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, an airplane with plenty of cargo capacity and admirable short takeoff and landing (STOL) capability, and strap rockets to the front, back, and bottom of the airplane Wile E. Coyote style. After taking off from the US mainland and refueling on the way five times, a C-130 would cruise low on a moonless night toward Tehran, then land at a soccer stadium across the street from the embassy. To slow the airplane down in time to land at such a short field, braking rockets would decelerate it while lifting rockets would prevent it from crashing to the ground during the inevitable aerodynamic stall that would occur while slamming on the brakes. A team of Delta Force commandos would then rush out, storm the embassy, retrieve the hostages, fight their way back to the the C-130, then rocket themselves off the ground and toward a friendly aircraft carrier waiting in the Persian Gulf. It was expected that the carrier's sickbay would then begin treating about 50 wounded troops and ex-hostages, probably the most reasonable assumption in the whole plan.

In the end the plan was doomed by its schedule. There wasn't enough time for adequate testing of all the subsystems shoehorned into the aircraft, and during one of the final tests before it was to go into action the retrorockets fired early and the C-130 slammed into the ground, hard, breaking the back of its structure. Somehow nobody got killed, which might be the most remarkable part of the story. It's probably just as well. The hostages would soon be freed after a negotiated settlement with no loss of life, and Credible Sport surely would've been a bloody operation in practice. Good or bad, the video of the the flight testing is a spectacle to behold: