Operation Credible Sport was a secret U.S. military mission devised in 1980 to rescue hostages held at the American embassy in Tehran after the failure of Operation Eagle Claw. The plan called for a heavily modified Lockheed C-130 Hercules to land and take off from a soccer stadium in downtown Tehran—an impossibly short and confined space for a standard cargo plane. To accomplish this, engineers outfitted the aircraft with an elaborate system of 30 rocket motors for rapid deceleration and near-v