The Guts to Try: The Untold Story of the Iran Hostage Rescue Mission by the On-Scene Desert Commander
A powerful eyewitness account of the disastrous April 1980 attempt to rescue the American hostages in Tehran. Kyle, an expert in Special Operations and the officer in charge of the Air Force component, describes the mission from the earliest planning at the Pentagon through the subsequent rehearsals to the operation in Iran. Criticizing analyses by other participants, he offers his own diagnosis of five factors that contributed to the mission's failure: the weather forecast, poor communications equipment, pilot decision error, restrictions on tactics, and a poor flight plan. Comparable to Ken Follet's On Wings of Eagles ( LJ 8/83), which described Texas industrialist Ross Perot's successful rescue effort in Iran, Kyle's book contributes to our understanding of the hostage crisis and will add fuel to the controversy surrounding it. Recommended for a wide range of readers.- Sanford R. Silverburg, Catawba Coll., Salisbury, N.C.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.