Operation Ivory Coast was a mission conducted by United States Special Operations Forces and other American military elements to rescue U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. It was also the first joint military operation in United States history conducted under the direct control of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The specially selected raiders extensively trained and rehearsed the operation at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, while planning and intelligence gathering continued from 25 May to 20 November 1970.
On 21 November 1970, a joint United States Air Force and United States Army force commanded by Air Force Brigadier General LeRoy J. Manor and Army Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons landed 56 U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers by helicopter at the Sơn Tây prisoner-of-war camp, which was located 23 miles (37 km) west of Hanoi, North Vietnam. The objective of the operation was the recovery of 61 American prisoners of war thought to be held at the camp. It was found during the raid that the camp contained no prisoners as they had recently been moved to another camp.
Despite the absence of prisoners, the raid's execution was nearly flawless, with only two casualties and two aircraft losses (one of the aircraft losses was due to a planned crash landing during the assault on the prisoner compound). Criticism of the failure to detect the removal of the POWs prior to the raid, both public and within the administration of Richard Nixon, led to a major reorganization of the United States intelligence community a year later.
Planning, organization and training
The concept of a rescue mission inside North Vietnam began on 9 May 1970. An Air Force intelligence unit concluded through analysis of aerial photography that a compound near Sơn Tây, suspected since late 1968 of being a prisoner of war camp, contained 55 American POWs and that at least six were in urgent need of rescue. 12,000 North Vietnamese troops were stationed within 5 miles (8.0 km) of the camp. After validation of their findings, Brigadier General (BG) James R. Allen, the deputy director for plans and policy at Headquarters USAF, met in the Pentagon on 25 May with Army BG Donald Blackburn, Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities (SACSA). Blackburn reported directly to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and had also been the first commander of the covert Studies and Observation Group in Vietnam.
Blackburn immediately met with General Earle G. Wheeler, the outgoing JCS Chairman, to recommend a rescue of all the POWs at Son Tây. To study the feasibility of a raid, Wheeler authorized a 15-member planning group under the codename Polar Circle that convened on June 10. One of its members was an officer who would actually participate in the raid as a rescue helicopter pilot. The study group, after a review of all available intelligence, concluded that Sơn Tây contained 61 POWs.
When Blackburn's recommendation that he lead the mission himself was turned down, he asked Colonel Arthur D. Simons on 13 July to command the Army's personnel. Eglin Air Force Base was selected as the joint training site for the prospective force. Personnel selection proceeded over the objections of the Marine Corps, which was excluded from participation, but selection and planning was performed by Special Operations "operators", not by the JCS, to avoid service parochialism, resulting in a force chosen for mission needs, highlighting combat experience in Southeast Asia and operational specialty skills, and not rank or branch of service.
The second phase, Operation Ivory Coast, began on 8 August 1970, when Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, the new JCS Chairman, designated Manor as commander and Simons as deputy commander of the mission task force. Ivory Coast was the organization, planning, training, and deployment phase of the operation. Manor set up an Air Force training facility at Eglin's Duke Field and brought together a 27-member planning staff that included 11 from the prior feasibility study.
Simons chose 103 personnel from interviews of 500 volunteers, most were Special Forces personnel of the 6th and 7th Special Forces Groups at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. USAF planners selected key Air Force commanders, who then picked personnel for their crews. Helicopter and A-1 Skyraider crews were put together from instructors at Eglin and personnel returned from Southeast Asia. Two crews for C-130E(I) Combat Talons were assembled from squadrons in West Germany and North Carolina. All were then asked to volunteer for a temporary duty assignment without additional pay and without being told the nature of the mission. 103 Army and 116 USAF personnel were selected for the project, including ground force members, aircrewmen, support members and planners. The 219-man task force planned, trained, and operated under the title of the "Joint Contingency Task Group" (JCTG).
The planning staff set up parameters for a nighttime raid, the key points of which were clear weather and a quarter moon at 35 degrees above the horizon for optimum visibility during low-level flight. From these parameters, two mission "windows" were identified, 18–25 October and 18–25 November. Training proceeded on Range C-2 at Eglin using an exact but crudely made replica of the prison compound for rehearsals and a $60,000 five-foot-by-five-foot scale table model (codenamed "Barbara") for familiarization.
Air Force crews flew 1,054 hours in southern Alabama, Georgia, and Florida conducting "dissimilar (aircraft) formation" training with both UH-1H and HH-3E helicopters at night and at low-level (a flight profile for which procedures had to be innovated by the two selected crews), and gaining expertise in navigation training using forward looking infrared (FLIR), which, until Ivory Coast, had not been part of the Combat Talon's electronics suite. A vee formation in which the slower helicopters drafted in echelon slightly above and behind each wing of the Combat Talon escort aircraft was chosen and refined for the mission to give the helicopters the speed necessary to keep pace with the Talons flying just above their stall speeds.
Special Forces training began on 9 September, advancing to night training on 17 September and joint training with air crews on 28 September that included six rehearsals a day, three of them under night conditions. By 6 October, 170 practice sessions of all or partial phases of the mission were performed on the mockup by the Special Forces troopers, many with live fire. On that date, the first full-scale dress rehearsal, using a UH-1H as the assault helicopter, was conducted at night and included a 5.5-hour, 687 miles (1,106 km) flight of all aircraft, replicating the timing, speeds, altitudes and turns in the mission plan. The rehearsal spelled the end of the option to use the UH-1 when its small passenger compartment resulted in leg cramps to the Special Forces troopers that completely disrupted the timing of their assault, more than offsetting the UH-1's only advantage (smaller rotor radius) over the larger HH-3. Two further full night rehearsals and a total of 31 practice landings by the HH-3E in the mockup's courtyard confirmed the choice.
On 24 September, Manor recommended approval of the October window to US Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, with 21 October as the primary execution date. However, at a White House briefing on 8 October with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and General Alexander M. Haig, Kissinger delayed the mission to the November window because President Nixon was not in Washington and could not be briefed in time for approval of the October window. This delay, while posing a risk of compromising the secrecy of the mission, had the benefits of additional training, acquisition of night-vision equipment and further reconnaissance of the prison.
Manor and Simons met with the commander of Task Force 77, Vice Admiral Frederic A. Bardshar, aboard his flagship USS America on 5 November to arrange for a diversionary mission to be flown by naval aircraft. Because of policy restrictions of the bombing halt then in place, the naval aircraft would not carry ordnance except for a few planes tasked for Combat Search and Rescue (CSAR).