Details... (sorry will stop spamming yer thread now.)
Operation Credible Sport was a United States military operation plan in late 1980 to rescue the hostages held on American soil in Iran using C-130 cargo planes modified with rocket engines. The Credible Sport operation was to follow the dramatic failure of Operation Eagle Claw in which a C-130 Hercules and a Sea Stallion helicopter collided in the Iranian desert, killing 8 servicemen. Credible Sport was abandoned after the election of Ronald Reagan as President in November, 1980.
The Credible Sport plan called for highly modified C-130 Hercules cargo planes to land in a soccer stadium not far from the American Embassy in Teheran and airlift the hostages out. Three aircraft were modified under a top secret project at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida to YMC-130H configuration with rocket packages blistered onto the forward and aft fuselage, which theoretically enabled the planes to land and take off within the confines of the sports arena.
During a demonstration at Duke Field, Eglin Auxiliary Field 3, on October 29, 1980, one of the modified Hercules fired its braking rockets a few seconds early. The aircraft suffered an extremely heavy landing, tearing off the starboard wing, setting off a fire, and resulting in the airframe, serial 74-1683, being written off. Despite this, the entire crew survived.
This failure, coupled with the defeat of Jimmy Carter by Ronald Reagan in the presidential election on November 4, 1980, led to the cancellation of this rescue mission plan. The hostages were subsequently released concurrent with Reagan's inauguration in January 1981.
* Footage of the crash landing at Duke Field has become publicly available in recent years, sourced from a United States Air Force briefing film.
* Duke Field was the location for much of the filming of the "918th Bomb Group's" flightline and story action in the 1949 film Twelve O' Clock High starring Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger, who won an Academy Award for his performance. This airfield, which is not open to the public, has also been used by the Central Intelligence Agency for covert operations into the 1990s.
* One of the test pilots during the Credible Sport program elaborated on the test failure, the test with the footage now available. The pilot states that during the test the braking rockets did NOT fire prematurely, but right on time. It was the descent-arresting rockets, rockets that were supposed to fire after the braking rockets to slow the drop of the aircraft as the aircraft's forward velocity was halted and the wings ceased to provide lift that failed to fire. Looking at the video, it would appear that the braking rockets should be fired after the airplane touched down to quickly stop the landing roll. However, the braking rockets were supposed to be fired while in the air, then the descent arresting rockets would fire to allow a controllable and almost vertical landing. It was these rockets that failed, with the crash landing and aircraft breakup resulting.
From here (full details)
http://crediblesport.quickseek.com/