tip of the spear (pdf) - The Air Commando Association

was damn glad to get out of that airplane when we landed.”
Their plane was a decent size for three people, but not
when they were sharing it with a fuel bladder and a fold-up
motorcycle. The motorcycle was his ground transportation.
Carney’s mission was to install runway lights, take soil
samples and perform several other tasks on the ground. His
escorts were two CIA operatives.
He’d have one hour on the ground before the airplane
left.
“It was the shortest hour of my life,” said Carney. “I had
so much to do and so little time to do it, I didn’t really think
about anything but getting the job done.”
The landing site was next to a road. Carney would use
the road to set up the landing strip. He would march off a
Tip of the Spear
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BULL SIMONS
The Coach, retired Col. John Carney (sitting on dirt bike), with members of his combat control team at Masirah, Oman, prior to
taking part in Desert One in April 1980. Courtesy photo.
A map depicting the route to Desert One.
“box-and-one” landing strip. The corners of the box, where
he would bury the lights, were 90-feet wide by 300-feet long.
Then a strobe light would be centered on the box and placed
3,000 feet in front. The concept: land in the box and stop
before the strobe light.
“As a football coach, marching off yards was easy,” he
said. What was hard was the ground. “I had to use a K-bar
[knife] to chip away the ground to bury the lights.”
After setting up the airfield, Carney went back to check
his work. He discovered his escorts landed in a different spot
than they had discussed. Hence, the road, his only orientation
point, wasn’t where it was supposed to be, but the landing
strip would have to suffice.
“There wasn’t time to go back, and I wasn’t missing that
plane out,” Carney said. If he missed the plane, he had two
options to get home. One was to walk. The other was to use
the Fulton recovery system. The system was an ingenious,
albeit dangerous, recovery device. The person needing
rescuing puts on a harness attached to a wire which is
attached to a balloon. The balloon goes up and then a
specially equipped MC-130 swoops in, snags the wire, and
whisks the person away.
Carney didn’t fear being in Iran in the middle of the
night, but he was apprehensive of the Fulton “thing.”
“I was getting on that plane,” he emphasized.
Carney’s coolness and courage was recognized by the
Special Operations community.
“Alone and unafraid, John Carney surveyed drop zones