The Iranian Hostage Crisis: During the first part of 1980 I was working for the Commander of USN Carrier Wing 8 as a flight deck maintenance control chief. All requests for aircraft movements for parking spaces came to our desk first. The moves were then coordinated and approved by the Nimitz aircraft handler.
The location of the helicopters for the Iranian rescue attempt was secret. Therefore, they came aboard at night from Diego Garcia – an Indian Ocean Atoll – and hidden in the Nimitz hangar bays. Their movement to and from the flight deck had #1 priority. That meant the shuffle was always on and very difficult at times because of their priority; they had to always be hidden from satellite, over flight and foreign ship detections.
In these pictures they hadn’t been aboard very long and that’s the reason for all the yellow shirts around them. The yellow shirts are aircraft directors and handlers. They were becoming familiar with moving such large aircraft around the flight & hangar decks. The blue shirts are chock walkers.
