hendersonjones 9 on the airfield, two in the village during the initial break-in. The original demand was for a plane to an Arab capital, release of Palestinians held by the Israelis (some 300 odd), later expanded to include the release of the Baader Meinhoff pair from the Red Army faction and the Japanese Red Army.
The whole thing was an almighty fuck up by the West German authorities who ignored warnings of an attack and suffered from restrictions on what they could do militarily after WWII so had no trained specialist officers and no experience, even less so for a Palestinian hostage type scenario. Even the German bulletproof vests were not bulletproof. They had no specialist sniper rifles readily available and no trained snipers. They had recently acquired specialist sniper rifles but had no one trained in their use. Why on earth they decided on a sniper operation to resolve the situation I've no idea - makes no sense at all. What made it even worse is that they had only 5 men designated as snipers (they had the best scores on the normal rifle range). For 8 targets they should have had at least 16. The West Germans were offered specialist units from Israel who were already good at this killing shit, having had the best part of 50 years experience in terrorism on both sides of the coin, but they were knocked back. Logistical support to the Palestinians was given by a West German neo-nazi group, so those cunts never really went away.
The West Germans had a couple of failed rescue attempts before the total fuck up at the airfield (the first because plans were broadcast over the radio). Germans were shooting Germans, Palestinians and anything else that moved, helicopters were exploding and what seemed like total chaos ensued. At that stage they still had no idea how many hostage takers there were - was it 5 or 8 or something else? Eventually the Palestinians resigning to the fact there was no way out wiped out whatever they could. This was probably the first 'never give in to terrorism' thing and propagated by Golda Meyer.
As it happened 3 of the hostage takers survived but were released by West Germany and shipped to Libya when a further hi-jacking took place, allegedly after an agreement between Black September and West Germany would leave West Germany alone in the future. Mossad took two of them out, the 3rd died of Kidney failure in Damascus.