Operation Credible Sport was a second United States military operation planned attempt to effect a rescue in the Iran hostage crisis in which highly modified C-130 Hercules cargo planes were to have landed in a soccer stadium not far from the American Embassy in Teheran and airlift the hostages out. The over-complex first attempt, Operation Eagle Claw, had failed for a variety of reasons. Three aircraft were modified to YMC-130H configuration with rocket packages blistered onto the forward and aft fuselage under a top secret project at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida named Credible Sport which would have 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, serial 74-1683, fired its braking rockets a few seconds early resulting in an extremely heavy landing that tore off the starboard wing with fire breaking out and the airframe being written off. Fortunately, all the crew on board survived the accident.

This failure, coupled with the defeat of Jimmy Carter by Ronald Reagan in the presidential election on November 4, 1980, resulted in the cancellation of this rescue mission plan. The hostages were subsequently released concurrent with Reagan's inauguration in January 1981.

The other two airframes, serials 74-1686 and 74-2065, were stripped of their rocket modifications and returned to regular airlift duties. In 1988 74-1686 was placed on display at the Robins Air Force Base museum, Georgia.

Trivia: 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 discrete operations into the 1990s.

Sources - Some data extracted from the Lockheed Hercules Production List by Lars Olausson, Sweden, annually, to which this author has contributed since the 1970s.

Footage of the YMC-130H crash landing now generally available through various sources.