April 25th, 1980. President Jimmy Carter was under siege at home and abroad. Inflation had risen to almost 20 percent, and unemployment was more than 7 percent. Americans sat in lines at gas pumps. Pummeled from the Left by Senator Edward Kennedy and from the Right by Ronald Reagan, Carter saw his quest for a second term foundering. The shah of Iran had been overthrown, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan, the Sandinistas had seized power in Nicaragua, and fifty-two Americans sat captive in Tehran. It was, as Walter Cronkite told his viewers, “Day 175 of America held hostage.”

At seven o’clock that morning, the president addressed the nation. “Late yesterday,” he explained, looking exhausted and grim, “I cancelled a carefully planned operation which was underway in Iran to …rescue … American hostages, who have been held captive there since November 4.” The photographs of the crumpled hulks of US helicopters in the Iranian desert seared deep into the American psyche. They seemed to illustrate the absolute collapse of US power and prowess.

The photographs resonated – a helicopter framed the disgraced Richard M. Nixon as he waved farewell on the White House lawn in August 1974; helicopters lifted the last, defeated Americans from the roof of the US Embassy in Saigon in April 1975; and the insistent rhythm of chopper blades suffused the memory of the war in Vietnam, constructed by movies like Apocalypse Now.