C-130 Short Take off With Rocket Engines

first published on November 8, 2015 by Will

6.9k SHARES Share Tweet

This C-130 cargo plane can land and take off within the confines of a sports stadium… in theory.

Operation Credible Sport was a U.S. military project to add rocket engines to a C-130 cargo plane in an attempt to give it Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) abilities for a specific mission to rescue American hostages being held by Muslim revolutionaries at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran.

According to the plan, after five midair refuelings, the C-130 would land in a sports stadium very near the embassy, and Delta Force operators with their freed hostages would board the plane, and they would fly to the safety of a waiting aircraft carrier.

Due to a testing hiccup in which the planes wing broke off, as can be seen in the video, and because of President Carter’s electoral defeat to Ronald Reagan, the project was scrapped, and all hostages were later freed after spending 444 days in captivity.