A hive of activity during ‘Dragon Rouge’.
At Paulis the paratroopers found the condition of the hostages to be as bad as - or worse than at - Stanleyville. Phyliss Rine, an American missionary from Ohio had been systematically tortured and beaten until death mercifully brought relief. Meanwhile, back at Stanleyville, the Belgians and mercenaries who made their way into the city shortly after the parachute assault found more white victims. A missionary family from New Zealand was brought to the airport. The father had been slain, the mother cut with machetes, while the two young daughters had scalp wounds inflicted by the Simbas. Only the two sons were spared injury. Such senseless carnage caused the mercenaries and even the well-disciplined Belgian paratroopers to lose their restraint. Most rebels they encountered were slain on the spot. Congolese government soldiers frequently exhibited the same lack of concern for human life as their brothers on the other side, in one case kicking to death a Simba ‘priest’ captured near the airport.
After leaving the airport, the Belgian rescue team made haste to reach the Victoria Hotel before the Simbas carried out their threats to kill the hostages if a rescue was attempted. Several blocks from the hotel a paratrooper rounded a corner just in time to prevent the Simbas from firing a second volley of shots into the assembled hostages, who had evidently been walking toward the airport. Some of the hostages later said they thought the Simba officers intended to turn them over to the Belgians unharmed, but some of the Simbas, who had been drinking and smoking Hemp all night the night before, decided to take matters in their own hands. They shot their own officers and then turned their guns on the hostages. They had fired one volley, picking women and children as their targets and were preparing to fire another when the Red Berets showed up on the scene. At the sight of the Belgians, the Simbas lost their courage and ran!
Cheerful National Congolese troops gathered around one of the USAF C-130s on Operation ‘Dragon Rouge’.
On the evening of the 27th the last Belgian troopers were withdrawn from Stanleyville and flown to Kamina to begin the first leg of their journey home. Their departure was somewhat premature, largely due to a huge outcry of discontent in the Third World over Belgian and American intervention in Africa, as demonstrators made their feelings known. Sometimes the demonstrations got out of hand, as in Cairo, Egypt, where the new John F. Kennedy library was burned to the ground in protest over the white presence in Africa. A wellorganized propaganda effort in Communist and Third World nations placed the blame for the atrocities in Stanleyville on American and Belgian shoulders. Some nations, including China, pledged aid to the Congo rebels.
But even though the fighting in the Congo would continue for several months, with many white still to be slain by the rebels, Operation ‘Dragon Rouge’ was over. On the morning of 29 November the rescue force departed Africa for Ascension. From there, it flew to the Canary Islands, then on to Melsbroek airfield, outside of Brussels. There the rescuers were welcomed home by several hundred high-ranking officers, news reporters, television camera crews and relatives. King Baudouin received the Belgian paratroopers and American aircrews at a review on the flight line and presented Colonels Laurent and Gradwell with the Order of Leopold II. After the ceremony, the Americans were taken on a tour of the city.
For the American and Belgian military personnel involved in ‘Dragon Rouge’, the operation was one that all would remember with pride. Even thought the rescue was not without cost to the Belgians, the mission had been an overall success, resulting in the release of hundreds of hostages who doubtless would have been killed had it not occurred.
‘After ‘Dragon Noir’ the rescue force retired to Kamina to await further orders’ concludes Sam McGowan. ‘While they were waiting, an African thunderstorm prompted one C-130 crewmember - none of whom had had a bath in days - to grab soap and go out into the rain for an impromptu shower. The rest of the force followed his lead as the airmen and paratroopers ran around naked in the rain! A few days later, in response to political pressure from the Third World, President Lyndon Johnson ordered the force out of Africa. For their role in ‘Dragon Rouge’, the C-130 crewmembers received the 1964 MacKay Trophy for the most meritorious flight of the year by USAF aircraft. All of the crewmembers were decorated with the Air Medal, while Captain Mack Secord received the Distinguished Flying Cross.’
Chapter Six
Operation ‘Thunderbolt’
My biggest fear was not being shot at from the ground, but making a mistake as a pilot. All I could think the entire time was ‘Don’t screw this up!’ True, the risks to my life were real, but I was more worried about botching the landing and endangering the success of the entire operation. Think about it - how many people would have died at Entebbe if I had made a mistake? In case something did go wrong, though, I was prepared for the worst. I was wearing a helmet, a bullet-proof vest and I had an Uzi. I was also given a thick wad of cash in case I needed to use it to escape Uganda. Luckily, I never had to use it. I returned the cash after returning to Israel.’
Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier General) Joshua Shani.
In June 1976 Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Shani was at a wedding when Aluf (Major General) Benny Peled who had become commander of the Israel Air Force (IAF) in 1973 when he was 45 years old, approached him and began asking questions about the capabilities of the C-130H. Peled, born Benjamin Weidenfeld in Tel Aviv in 1928, started as a mechanic in the beginnings of the Israeli Air Force. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War he had assembled the first Messerschmitt Bf 109 which had arrived in Israel dismantled. He then became a pilot and fought in the Independence war. After the war he commanded the first Meteor, Ouragan and Mystère squadrons and was the first Israeli pilot to use an ejection seat when he was shot down near Sharm el-Sheikh in the Sinai Campaign in 1956 during Operation ‘Kadesh’ when he was the victim of Egyptian anti-aircraft. He was later rescued by an IAF Piper. Peled was a base commander during the Six-Day War. During the Yom Kippur War his son Yoram, flying a Phantom, was also shot down and rescued. ‘It was a strange situation’ recalled Colonel Shani ‘the commander of the IAF asking a lieutenant colonel questions about an aircraft. But the C-130 was new and the IAF ‘top brass’ were always focused on fighter jets, not transport planes. Peled asked me if it was possible to fly almost 2,500 miles to Entebbe Airport, Uganda; how long it would take and what it could carry.’
Joshua Shani’s parents lived in what is now Ukraine. Their small town was part of Poland at the time. They escaped the Nazis and ended up in Siberia, where Joshua was born in 1945. They were refugees, wherever they were. Soon after the war ended, Joshua’s family lived in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp in Germany, which was run by the British. They were there for almost a year. And then they made their way from Germany to Israel, via France and Egypt. His parents were lifelong Zionists and fluent in Hebrew, which they spoke to him as a baby. They were thrilled to arrive in Israel and begin a new life, never again to be refugees. ‘I wasn’t interested in airplanes as a teenager’ recalled Shani. ‘I wanted to be an electrical engineer. On my draft day I was sitting on the grass with other new recruits at the Bakum (the Israeli Defence Force induction base) and a major with wings on his uniform approached us. He said, ‘You are all fit for flight school. Who here doesn’t want to volunteer?’ I started to raise my hand, but when it was about halfway up I realized that nobody else around me was raising his hand. So I put my hand down.
‘The rest is history. I was drafted in 1963. I received my pilot’s wings in 1965 from Ezer Weizmann, who was then the commander of the Israel Air Force. The first plane I flew was the Nord Noratlas, a transport plane. I was also a Fuga instructor for two years. The Air Force then sent me to the United States to learn how to fly the C-130 Hercules cargo plane. First I was in Little Rock, Arkansas and later in Pope, North Carolina. It was my first time in the United States. In 1967, during the Six-Day War, I supplied fuel and ammunition to IDF soldiers fighting in the Sinai Peninsula. In 1973, during the Yom K
ippur War, I was a squadron commander. I was involved in fueling and reconnaissance missions with the C-97 Stratofreighter. I also flew the C-130 across the Suez Canal, deep into Egyptian territory in order to supply fuel and ammunition to the ground forces that were holding territory west of the Canal. Those forces, by the way, were led by Ariel Sharon.’
Yonatan ‘Yoni’ Netanyahu, born 13 March 1946, who commanded the elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal during Operation ‘Entebbe’. He was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service for his conduct in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. In June 1975 Netanyahu left the Armoured Corps and returned to Sayeret Matkal as unit commander. He was killed in action on 4 July 1976 while commanding an assault unit in Operation ‘Entebbe’. Netanyahu was the only Israeli soldier killed during the raid (along with three hostages, all of the PLO members and dozens of Ugandan soldiers). Netanyahu was shot outside the building being stormed and soon died in the arms of Efraim Sneh, commander of the mission’s medical unit. The operation itself was considered a success by Israel and was renamed as ‘Mivtsa Yonatan’ (Operation ‘Yonatan’) in honour of Netanyahu. (IDF Spokesman’s Office photo)
On Sunday 27 June 1976 what was supposed to be a routine flight for the 246 mainly Jewish and Israeli passengers on Air France flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris (via Athens) spiralled into a nightmare seven minutes after the jet rose into the sky from Athens. At that moment Air France Airbus F-BVGG found itself the latest target in the Palestine Liberation organization’s endless war against Israel when it was hijacked by four terrorists. Two of them were German members of the Baader-Meinhof guerrilla organisation and the others Arab members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The hijackers instructed the pilot to fly the airliner first to Casablanca, where it spent the night and then to Khartoum and Entebbe airport near Kampala, the capital of Uganda, 2,500 miles from Israel. The Israeli and Jewish hostages were confined in an old unused terminal building, and the hijackers demanded that Israel’s government release 53 Palestinian prisoners, forty held in Israel and thirteen held in France, Kenya Switzerland and West Germany. If the prisoners were not released at a specified time, they would execute the 94 Jewish passengers in retaliation. With a new captain, the A300B4-203 set course for Benghazi, Libya. Upon arriving, the jet rolled to a stop and refueling began. During this time a pregnant passenger feigned a miscarriage and managed to get released. In all seven hours passed on the blistering tarmac before the A300 began taxiing into takeoff position for departure to its unknown final destination. As the airliner began descending in the darkness, the broad expanse of a freshwater lake appeared to grow before it disappeared into land and the passengers felt the gentle touchdown at a small airport deep in the African jungle, where it parked on the tarmac at 3:15 am at Entebbe.
The old terminal building at Entebbe at the time of the raid on 4 July 1976. Inset right: Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier General) Joshua Shani, who accumulated 13,000 flight hours in his Israeli Air Force career.
Spotlights glared through the windows as soldiers in camouflaged uniforms surrounded the jet. There were no orders to prepare for debarking, just silence and casual talk among the hijackers. Another nine hours passed before the plane taxied towards an old terminal building where an airstair bumped against the fuselage and a hatchway opened. The hijackers screamed at the passengers to hurry off and into the terminal building where they were herded together in a dilapidated departure lounge. Here the hijackers met up with four other Palestinians and quickly complimented their pistols, with AK-47s and hand grenades. The terrorists relaxed, not yet issuing demands and waited for another arrival. A few hours later it came in the sound of an approaching helicopter, which set down close to the terminal. Stepping down from it in a camouflaged uniform was the rotund leader of Uganda, Idi Amin and his eight-year-old son in similar dress. He entered the lounge exulting: ‘Shalom! Shalom!’ And began a speech to the captives berating and reassuring them the only way they could be saved was if Israel agreed to the hijackers’ demands. As he walked out, the prisoners were under no illusion that Amin was going to do nothing to free them and in fact, was likely involved in the plot itself.
Throughout the next day news trickled all over the globe that the hijackers had set down at Entebbe and the press stood by awaiting word of their demands. But the anticipated radio transmissions never materialized, leaving the world wondering what demands the terrorists were going to make and what would be the response, especially from Israel. Israel maintained a simple policy in negotiating with terrorists. There would be no negotiations, for to do so simply emboldened future enemies of the Jewish state to commit more terrorism. Such enemies whose only goal from the beginning was Israel’s destruction. For them, that too, was non-negotiable. And Israel learned early on that groups of this nature understood and respected one thing. Force.
And so it began with that silent day in Entebbe, that Colonel Ehud Barak, Israel’s Assistant Chief of Military Intelligence and commander of Special Operations Forces, convened an informal session of Israel’s leading Counter-Terrorism experts. In it, he asked for an assessment of the Ugandan military and the necessary forces that might be mobilized for a rescue mission should negotiations, if they started, were to fail. Additionally, the Air Force began a feasibility inquiry into sending a rescue force the 2,200 miles to Uganda. On 28 June a PFLP-EO hijacker issued a declaration and formulated their demands: In addition to a ransom of $5 million for the release of the A300, they demanded the release of 53 Palestinian and Pro-Palestinian militants, forty of whom were prisoners in Israel. They threatened that if these demands were not met, they would begin to kill hostages on 1 July. At 3:30 pm on 29 June the terrorists released their demands over Radio Uganda. All the designated prisoners were to be released and flown to Entebbe by their captive nations. There, the hijackers would join them and fly to a safe haven in the Middle East. A sum of five million dollars was added for the safe return of the A300. All this must be achieved by 2:00 pm Israeli time on 1 July or the hostages would be executed.
In the sweltering insect ridden terminal the hostages settled in for a future of uncertainty when a short while later the German terrorists began a process that harkened back to the days of the holocaust and fueled further the urgency of someone to act. Amin made another visit that afternoon and gave a speech. A short time after he left, Ugandan soldiers pounded a partition wall with sledgehammers until a jagged entrance was completed. The female German terrorist began ordering those with Jewish passports through the opening into the other room, eerily reminiscent of the selections by Nazis of who would go to the gas chambers and who would be allowed to live as slaves. In fact, some of the very people transferring to the room were Holocaust survivors, terrified and incredulous that the same thing seemed to be happening again in 1976 and at the hands of a German at that. Thereafter, this became known as the ‘Room of Separation.’
In Israel, 30 June began with a number of rescue options presented to Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin. None were deemed satisfactory. Lieutenant Colonel Joshua Shani, later said that the Israelis had initially conceived of a rescue plan that involved dropping naval commandos into Lake Victoria. The commandos would have ridden rubber boats to the airport located on the edge of the lake. They planned to kill the hijackers and after freeing the hostages, ask Amin for passage home. The Israelis abandoned this plan because they lacked the time necessary and also received word that Lake Victoria was infested with crocodiles. Planning sessions continued onward while the country contacted Amin and tried to convince him to arrest the terrorists before realizing he was colluding with them. As the day drew to a close, 47 Gentile hostages were released and flown to Paris, supposedly secured by their self-confessed ‘saviour’, Idi Amin. At the airport they were greeted by their families and French officials then later debriefed by members of French Secret Service and the Israeli Embassy. The intelligence the former captives, particularly a former military officer gave proved invaluable; chief among them was the exact locatio
n of the hostages, guard routines and the hijacker’s expectation that Israel would not respond, leading to an almost casual nature of security about the place.
On the morning of 1 July the remaining 101 Gentiles boarded another flight from Entebbe. This left 94 Jews and the twelve Air France crew. In Israel, with the 2 pm deadline looming, the public was greeted by the word Selektzia (Selection) as a banner headline on newspapers across the country. Family members besieged the Israeli government pleading for them to give in to the hijackers’ demands. Inside a closed room heated arguments raged among Rabin’s cabinet over the proper course of action. With great reluctance they agreed to negotiations and asked for an extension of the deadline, which was granted until 4 July. But back at Entebbe such news brought little comfort and they them remained unsure if the reprieve of three days was just delaying the inevitable. Now was the time to act.
With some time bought, reviews of different rescue proposals began. Four were presented only to have three vetoed as too large or too risky. The final one, involving a smaller force was approved, but still needed a final authorization. Shimon Peres, then Defence Minister in Yitzhak Rabin’s (first) government, asked for the military options. As Benny Peled later remembered: ‘I presented Shimon Peres with the plan to fly commandos to Uganda to rescue the people.’ With the government determined not to give in to the hijackers’ demands, Peled’s idea was eventually adopted.
C-130 Hercules Page 21
