The rest of Friday afternoon the pilots were left mostly to themselves to read, relax in their barracks, or wander the base. Meanwhile, the tech crews and mechanics checked out the twelve F-16s sequestered in their hangar. The familiar blue six-point Star of David and white circle on the wings were painted out with the sand, brown, and green iguana pattern of desert camouflage. The MK-84s, external fuel tanks, and everything else was checked and rechecked.
That night, after all the pilots had landed and been billeted in the officers’ barracks, the men watched a 16mm Israeli war movie in the squadron room and then turned in to bed early in the large dormitory-style room.
Saturday morning, the pilots were up by 0600 simply out of habit. It was to be a day of so-called leisurely activity—a torture for soldiers waiting to attack. The pilots were used to short-time combat. You were up, you spotted an enemy MiG, you got cleared to engage, and then you engaged and killed—all in less than ten minutes. Or in combat, you flew sortie after sortie, landing, refueling, rearming, and taking off again. In both cases Israeli pilots had no time to think, to ponder the unknowns and the what-ifs. This mission was an entirely new experience for the IAF, and it brought new problems. The squadron had just discovered the latest: time. It was their own personal version of Ha-Hamtana, literally “the waiting,” what the Israelis called the tense, maddening, interminable period of time in 1967 after Egypt reoccupied the Sinai and the nation waited for the inevitable war to follow.
The men picked at their breakfast without enthusiasm. That afternoon they organized a basketball game in the base gym, Raz’s squadron 117 team against Nachumi’s 110. The friendly game, however, quickly turned competitive. They were all young, aggressive fighter pilots and no one liked to lose. The play grew rougher and more serious. Relik Shafir was a great shooter and drew a crowd of defense from Raz’s 117. Soon elbows were being thrown, then body blocks and head butts. Shafir was knocked to the ground and a scuffle broke out under the basket. Some of the unspoken rivalry between the two leaders, perhaps, and maybe lingering resentment over Spector’s gambit to join the squadron, had found its way into the game. Driving to the hoop, Yaffe was knocked hard to the floor under the basket, almost cracking his head open against the post. He climbed back to his feet, surprised. The fall snapped the men back to reality. The two teams decided to call it a game and headed back together to the dorm to shower and cool off.
Saturday night, as they lay on their bunks after lights-out, sleep came to no one. Ivry’s wife, Ofera, a hundred miles away to the north, wasn’t the only one tossing and turning. Staring up at the ceiling in the dark, each alone with his thoughts and trying not to think about tomorrow, the pilots began to joke and kid one another to relieve the tension.
Yaffe piped up from the dark.
“Ilan, you know, chances are, one of us will be staying in Baghdad,” he said in mock gravity. “We talked it over, and we decided it was you.”
“Why?” Ramon cried.
“Because,” Yaffe replied.
“Because what?”
“Well, you’re the youngest, you’re the only one not married, you’re the only captain, and you’re number eight,” Yaffe said matter-of-factly.
Ramon was speechless. This was his first combat mission. Yaffe’s hazing was almost cruel. Complete silence filled the room. And then the pilots broke out laughing. It was the first real release of the pent-up tension of these last days.
“Hell with you,” Ramon groused. “I bet we all come back.”
“You’re on,” Yaffe snapped, not thinking about what he was saying.
The men erupted once again. After a minute or two, Ramon spoke for the last time that night.
“That’s one bet I hope I collect.”
Sunlight from the first blush of dawn in the east crept across the Negev and broke through the barracks windows, eating away at the last shadows of nighttime lingering in the corners of the room. Just five o’clock, it was already warm in the desert as the first sounds of life stirred outside. In the distance, a truck engine turned, the gears grinding. Sunday, June 7, 1981, had dawned.
Raz lay on his back, hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. He had been awake for a while. None of the men had slept well. There was little talk as they stirred and fell into their morning routines—showering, shaving, pulling on their air force fatigues, and lacing up their boots. Again, the pilots had no appetite for the breakfast of rolls, fruit, and coffee set up outside the dormitory. A final briefing was scheduled for noon. Until then, they were on their own.
The adrenaline level was palpable in the room. The mess steward could feel it when he came to refill the coffee urn. The pilots spent until 1100 picking at the food and drinking tea or coffee, each man individually looking over the latest intelligence reports again, the maps, flight plans, and lists of code words. Everyone had long ago committed them to memory, but there was no room for error. And besides, it was something to do. They organized their notes and flight plans and navigation calculations, then clipped them to their kneeboards, the compact, hardbacked clipboards that fastened to their thighs so they could quickly flip to the pages they needed during flight. Strictly speaking, the kneeboards carried in the planes were frowned upon. Flight commanders warned that if forced to eject, the boards could become entangled in the seat harness or the ejection seat itself and rip their leg off. Some of the pilots had arranged special places in the cockpit to hang their boards so they could access them easily. This was also against regulations, since the boards, during an ejection, could become dangerous missiles in the updraft. But most pilots routinely ignored the regulation.
The pilots also spent time packing up their personal effects. These would be transported back to Ramat David later in the day. Hopefully, their wives would not be forced to retrieve them later.
They were served an early and large lunch. The men forced themselves to eat, even though no one was hungry. They knew they would need all the nutrients and energy they could get in the next seven or eight hours. At 1200 the men filed past the beefed-up security detachment outside the squadron room, the guards toting M-16s as they stood alert to any movement. The pilots carried their kneeboards and pencils to take notes. Inside, they took seats in the rows of armchair desks. Only those personnel directly involved in the raid were to be briefed. That included the F-16 pilots, the six F-15 support pilots, the two F-15 pilots and their radiomen who would form the communications link, and the briefers from Operations. The mission commanders were also there: General Saguy, IAF head General Ivry, and Avi Sella.
And standing next to Ivry was the chief of staff, Raful Eitan. The men were stunned. He was still sitting shivah. They had not expected him to be there. Eitan met their looks. He was unshaven, his eyes red-rimmed and ringed with dark circles, but his uniform was immaculate, his shirt laundered and starched. The briefing began and everyone took their seats. The weather report was first: clear with some cumulus clouds over the mountains to the east. The desert air would be hot, making for a bumpy ride in at only fifty feet off the ground.
“You new guys, take your airsick bags,” the briefer quipped a little stiffly.
The men tried to force a laugh. The tension in the room seemed to suck the energy out of everything. The briefer also repeated the intelligence that because it was Sunday, the foreign workers would all be at home.
“What if they’re not?” Shafir asked.
Ivry stirred in his chair.
“We didn’t ask them to be there,” he snapped. His eyes burned angrily. “We warned them and their leaders many times to go home. If they don’t want to, they are on the side of the terrorists, and whatever happens to them is their choice.”
Saguy, as head of army intelligence, went over the enlarged ground photos of Osirak and the al-Tuwaitha complex taken by Mossad, pointing out their target, the dome of the reactor. He reviewed the intelligence reports on the latest placements of AAA and SAM batteries as well as the SAM-3s and SAM-6s that fanned out all the way
to Baghdad. Intelligence also reported a new brigade of SAM-6s at the site. Each brigade included five batteries, each battery armed with twelve telephone-pole-size missiles carrying 145-pound warheads. That added up to sixty surface-to-air missiles to fire at the Israelis. This was new information, and unwelcome at that. There were photos, too, of the present positions of the mobile ZSU 23-4 radar-guided antiaircraft guns, which looked like missile tanks.
“Remember,” Saguy said, “the SAM-6s are smokeless. You can’t see them. And they fly twice the speed of sound. In our estimation, the SA-6 missiles pose the most dangerous threat.”
Saguy then retraced the navigation route, which would dogleg south of Jordan from Etzion to avoid Jordanian radar and combat patrols, then cut across Saudi Arabia and through the western border of Iraq straight through to al-Tuwaitha. The Saudis had four American-supplied AWACS equipped with powerful long-range search radar extending as far out as 350 miles. IAF did not have the power to jam the AWACS. But intelligence reported that the Saudis would deploy only one AWAC during the mission parameters, and that plane’s normal search pattern focused on the Persian Gulf to the south, not to the west.
“We think there is a hole, a strip of desert all the way to Baghdad, with no radar coverage by anyone,” Saguy concluded. “But keep your head on a swivel, just in case.”
Ophir, Ramon’s girlfriend, covered the remaining intelligence details. When she finished, to the mild surprise of the assembled fliers and fighters, she blew him a kiss. He gave her a small wave of the hand, but it was not enough to hide the anxiety on his face.
Raz stood up from his desk and took the podium to review the entire mission—call signs, takeoff procedures, navigation routes, code words, radio frequencies, radio silence protocols, and emergency procedures in case of mechanical failure. The F-15s, billeted in the underground hangar, would taxi out for takeoff at 1455, or 2:55 P.M. Avi Sella would fly in one of the F-15s, operating a large, bulky SSB HF long-range radio. His job was to follow some twenty miles behind the attack force and function as the relay station between the mission leader and command.
A Boeing 707 communications command post had already taken off and would orbit above Israel. Sella in the F-15, following behind the attack group, would relay his radio messages to the Boeing communications post, which would in turn relay the messages to IAF control and command on the ground at Etzion. The F-16s would taxi out at 1500 hours for takeoff at 1600. The attack group should arrive at the target just before sunset, flying eastward out of a blinding sun. On their return, fighters would be scrambled over Israeli airspace to escort the F-16s home. GCI, ground-controlled intercept radars, would monitor any Jordanian activity.
They would fly in two teams led by Raz and Nachumi. Each pilot would have a call sign according to his place in the bombing order.
“I am Blue One,” Raz said. “Yadlin is Blue Two. Doobi and Hagai, Blue Three and Four. Amir, you are Blue Five, Colonel Spector Blue Six. Relik and Ilan, Blue Seven and Eight. Any questions?”
The teams, Raz continued, would fly at 360 knots, or six miles a minute, then increase to 480 knots, or eight miles a minute, for the approach to target after passing the IP, or initial point, the final navigation point at which the bombing run would start. The IP, Raz reminded them, pointing to the map of Iraq that hung behind the podium, was the edge of an island in the middle of Bahr al Milh Lake, about four miles west of al-Tuwaitha. At that point the pilots should line up and fly with thirty seconds’ separation between the planes. Iraqi radar would probably pick them up then, as they climbed out of the “snow,” the clutter of low-elevation radar. At this time the F-15s, which had shadowed the attack group twenty miles behind, would close and flip on their search radar, hunting for MiGs as they climbed to umbrella the target area.
Raz looked toward the six F-15 pilots.
“Your job is to protect us from MiGs,” Raz said. “We cannot be deterred by dogfights.”
Zeev looked at his own team.
“Remember, if you have trouble and have to eject, climb no higher than one hundred feet,” Raz reminded them.
The ejection charge would shoot the pilots to five hundred feet. Since Iraqi radar made sweeps only every twelve seconds, chances were a parachute drop from six hundred feet would show up as a blip only once before the pilot hit ground, so odds were good the blip would be read as a mistake.
“If you are hit by AAA and can fly, head west as far as you can. Drink your emergency water as soon as you get on the ground,” Raz said. “It’ll help you get over the shock of bailing out. Gather your parachute and bury it, then begin walking west. Wait until dark before activating your PRCs. We can’t afford any strange events like a rescue beacon before the attack. The success of the mission depends entirely on surprise.”
He stopped for a moment and shuffled his notes together, then looked back up.
“We have to destroy this target at all costs. There is no secondary target.” Raz stopped again, and looked at Nachumi.
“This will be tough for you, Amir. You’re used to being high up in dogfights rather than down below pounding sand like the rest of us,” he smiled.
Nachumi and the pilots laughed.
“If I’m hit, Amir will be in command,” Raz added, becoming serious again. “If Amir is hit, Amos is in command. After escape, once everyone has checked in, I will call headquarters and let them know how many of us made it.”
He looked up from his notes and eyed the pilots sitting before him.
“So, if there are no other questions . . .”
Eitan stood up from his chair next to Ivry and walked to the front of the room. The men stirred in their seats a moment, then a deep silence filled the room as the general stood before them.
“This is an important mission, and a dangerous mission. I worry for your safety,” he said, his voice clear and strong, but strangely soft. “If something happens, I want you to know that we’ll do all we can to rescue you. Don’t try to be some special kind of hero in the face of torture. Tell them what you have to. We want you back with sane minds. We understand what you’ll be going through.”
Yadlin realized the general was addressing them like a father. Eitan had just lost his son, and he could not stand the thought of losing another of his “children.”
“Your government and the people of this country are appreciative of your efforts and sacrifice. Your willingness to risk your lives, so we might live, will never be forgotten by Israel. This is no ordinary mission. Never before has the Israeli Air Force flown an attack to such a distant point—and for such an urgent need. Our history as a nation and as a people is at stake.”
Eitan looked at the faces of the pilots sitting before him, indeed, like schoolchildren at their desks.
“You’ve all read the Bible. You know the history of our people. You know how God brought Moses and the Jewish people out of Egypt. You know the battles Joshua fought to gain entry to the Promised Land. You know about the just rule of King David and the wisdom of Solomon. You know about the dispersion to Babylon. We’ve kept our identity as a people. And now, nearly two thousand years later, we are reunited as a nation.
“Our people have overcome the agony of the Holocaust. We’ve gone through a modern-day exodus. We’ve survived wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, the War of Attrition in 1970, and the Yom Kippur War. And now we are faced with the greatest threat in the long history of Israel—annihilation and destruction of our country with atomic bombs by a madman terrorist who cares nothing for human life. We must not allow him to achieve the ability to build the bomb that could destroy us.
“That’s what this mission this afternoon is all about. Protecting our country. The future of Israel rests on your skill and ability to destroy that nuclear reactor. You must be successful—or we as a people are doomed. This is a pivotal point in the history of Israel. . . .”
Eitan raised his arm, his hand tightened into a fist. His voice now was strong, loud but without being raised.
“If we a
re to live by the sword, let us see that it’s kept strong in the hand rather than at our throat!”
The room seemed to almost shake with the energy pulsing through the bodies of the men. One could almost hear a roar echo in the silence. Embarrassed by the hypnotic focus his words and passion had wrought among the assembled men, Eitan tried to defuse the tension, pulling out a bag of dates—a notorious staple of prison food in the Middle East.
“Here,” he said, offering the official fruit of Iraq to the troops. “Have some of these. You’ll have to get used to them where you’re going.”
The men, including the assembled generals, broke into laughter as each pushed forward to grab a date and share in this final “toast.”
As the men began to gather their kneeboards and file toward the doorway, Ivry called out.
“God be with you.”
The pilots suited up back in the barracks. Each man wore a lot of gear. First the flight suit, then the G-suit, the torso harness, survival gear, and finally, once in the cockpit, the helmet. For a normal flight the special suits were not a problem, but the pilots would be strapped into these uncomfortable combat clothes for nearly four hours. Sleeves that pinched under the arms or a collar that chafed at the neck could be painful and distracting after hours cooped up in a stuffy cockpit. Then each man grabbed two PRCs, emergency radios about the size of a Walkman that sent out a homing signal to the rescue choppers in case they were shot down. Normally a pilot took only one along. But there was nothing normal about this mission. No one wanted to take a chance of being stranded in the Iraqi desert with a dead PRC. The men clipped the radios to their torso harnesses and headed out to the four vans waiting to take them to the hangar.
Raid on the Sun Page 17
