Operation Credible Sport

Operation Credible Sport was a joint project of the U.S. military in the second half of 1980 to prepare for a second rescue attempt of the hostages held in Iran. The concept included using a Lockheed C-130 Hercules airlifter modified with the addition of rocket engines to make it a very short take off and landing (STOL) aircraft, able to land on the field within a soccer stadium in Tehran. Operation Credible Sport was terminated when on 2 November, the Iranian parliament accepted an Algerian plan for release of the hostages, followed two days later by Ronald Reagan's election as the U.S. President.

The concept of a large military transport STOL aircraft was carried forward in 1981–82, with the follow-up Credible Sport II project. The project used one of the original Operation Credible Sport aircraft as the YMC-130 prototype for the MC-130H Combat Talon II.

Within two weeks of the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, an attempted rescue of the hostages in Iran, the Pentagon began planning for a second mission. The first mission failed due to equipment and coordination problems, culminating in the crash of a RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter into a parked C-130 Hercules in the Iranian desert, killing eight servicemen.

A new organization, the Joint Test Directorate (JTD), was established to assist and support the Office of Secretary of Defense Directorate (OSD) joint planning staff. Under the name "Honey Badger", the JTD conducted a series of large-scale joint-force exercises and projects to develop and validate a variety of capabilities that would be available to OSD when mission requirements were identified. JTD trained a large and diverse force of U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force special operations and aviation units, but the critical factor remained extracting the rescue team and freed hostages from Tehran. The Credible Sport project, a joint undertaking of the U.S.A.F., U.S. Navy, and Lockheed-Georgia, was created within Honey Badger to develop a reliable extraction capability. The Credible Sport project team was tasked to create a large "Super STOL" fixed-wing aircraft to extract the rescue team and hostages and overcome the "weak link" in the previous plan, the heavy lift helicopter.

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