Loud and Clear

by Iftach Spector

  Rami was a broad-shouldered, robust guy with a curly white forelock. I first met him twenty years before, when I arrived at the Scorpions. He was one of the central figures in that talented squadron. Later Rami became one of the first Phantom fliers, together with Sam Khetz and Avihu. In the War of Attrition, in one of the battles against the SAM arrays, Rami was shot down and spent the next four years in an Egyptian prison. After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, prisoners were repatriated, and Rami, who was intact physically and mentally (he once told me that being a POW had been a very educational experience), returned to active duty while keeping a kibbutz member, which he remains to this day.

  Rami began with the story of the early days of the F-16. When we first heard about it, some felt it was going to be hard. But he had been the project manager.

  “I said, ‘So they are coming a year or two earlier than expected? Bring it on.’”

  For someone like Rami, who personally had experienced the difficult integration of the Phantoms in 1969, saying that might sound reckless. But he knew the quality of his northern base’s men.

  “There is no such thing as ‘impossible’ in the lexicon of Ramat-David,” he said. From my seat in the corner I smiled to myself. When I inherited the base and the project from Rami on January 1, 1980, the clock already was running toward the landing of the F-16s, and I saw with my own eyes what he meant.

  “Ramat-David was an obsolete field,” said Lieutenant Colonel Amikam, the construction officer, when his turn came to speak. “All the underground hangars were old, and the worst thing was that the entrances into some of them were too small for the new aircraft.” Amikam projected photos on our living room wall. They showed how huge concrete chunks had to be sawed off the revetments to provide larger entryways for the new fighters. This was a difficult and hazardous engineering task. The F-16, though relatively small, was a tall machine with a wingspan wider than that of a Mirage, which had fit into those hangars like a hand into a glove.

  “The technical labs also couldn’t absorb the multitude of new technical systems coming in. We began a vigorous effort of construction and renovation. We worked around the clock.”

  Even twenty years later it was hard for us who were there in 1980 to understand what a revolution had occurred at our base. Rami had to arm and service the new, expensive assets he was about to get, and he had neither place nor services for them. It was impossible to rebuild the whole base, or to evict its current inhabitants, so he and his staff had to think outside the box.

  Rami and Amikam armored old parking lots and sheds with concrete, precast plates, then routed into them electricity, fuel, and communication lines. Everything they touched needed to change, and every day a new plan had to be approved and budgeted—power generators, fuel lines, ammo stores. They built housing and installed water and sewage pipes. They even invented a theory to convince themselves that those updated shacks were much better than the traditional underground shelters.

  “The pressure was so great,” said Amikam, “that we were forced to deviate from our own schedules and began working on the most pressing matters. When the first four F-16s landed in July 1980, they found just one hangar ready for them (the night before, workers were still hanging lamps on the ceilings, and painting), and the next hangar was still in pieces and surrounded by scaffolding. It was scheduled to be opened on the very day the second formation of four planes arrived. And so on. The technical servicing equipment was put to work in provisional labs, while building blocks were being set, roofs cast, cables and pipes laid out for it somewhere else.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Ami Rabin, the maintenance officer of the base and a serious guy, had his own problems. The F-16 was a very sophisticated, innovative machine. It was the first aircraft in the world to be an unstable, “fly by wire” fighter. This meant that the trim was computer-controlled. It could not fly without constant computer monitoring of its flight. To this end, Ami had to develop a whole new culture of computers and computer engineering in the maintenance of the base. The jet engine was very special, too. No one had experience in maintaining this aircraft or operational know-how. The Americans themselves hadn’t put the F-16 on an operational basis yet. There was a shortage of good men, so Ami drew whole technical teams out of the existing fighter squadrons of the base—the Skyhawks, Phantoms, and Israeli-produced Kfirs—and almost stripped them of their technical staffs. This, of course, caused hardship and risk—the squadrons based at Ramat-David, like the rest of the air force, continued to fly and fight—but people were needed, and he took them from every other mission, and told them to concentrate on the F-16 alone. A local technical school was opened, and hundreds of technicians were retrained there, using books sent from the United States. The demands were enormous, and the pressure built up accordingly on all levels. Sometimes it was difficult to cope. One day Ami returned with the base commander from a discussion in the air force’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. Rami said to him, “Take note, Ami, you were wrong.”

  “Why?” asked Ami Rabin, who was still recovering from an argument over something.

  “You were right about everything you said,” said Rami, “but why did you have to shout?”

  “How can one keep calm—”

  “One can. You just decide that you won’t get angry, and you don’t.”

  After four years of outstanding leadership among his ten comrades in a Cairo prison, Rami definitely knew how to control himself.

  AND TRULY, RAMAT-DAVID of 1979 didn’t seem the right place to base a large number of modern fighters. It was an antiquated RAF base that had had repeated face-lifts for decades, and was all patched and speckled with tar barrels, among which the aircraft taxied. The base’s installations were inferior even to Hatzerim’s in the time my Orange Tails were established there, a decade earlier. As in all the other installations we inherited from the Brits, you could find in Ramat-David ultra-modern machines and super technologies functioning inside shacks with patched ceilings.

  We all recalled that stormy and rainy night at the end of December 1979 when the brook outside of the northern fence overflowed its banks and flooded the base. This was the surprise from hell. Aircraft revetments were filled with streams of murky water. Fuel tanks floated down slopes like kayaks, jet fighter aircraft were covered with water up to their air intakes, bombs and missiles sank and were lost under layers of mud. Soon the electricity also went out, leaving black winter darkness. Water kept falling from the skies and gushing out of the new river, the pumps died, and the water level rose.

  I was then just a visitor in Ramat-David. We had moved there few days before, since I had to assume command the next week. I saw this and understood the meaning of having only seven months to turn this junkyard into a decent place for seventy-five new F-16s. But it was still that night, and I left home and hurried to the operational sector of the base to try to help not as a commander, but as an ordinary pair of hands. With the lights of my car, I found my way to hangar sixteen, where there was only a lone figure, the technical officer, Lt. Dov Bar Or, working in the water with a small tractor trying to drag a Phantom from the underground hangar up to the runway. The hangar was pitch dark like a huge cave, and full of chest-high, muddy water. Closing my eyes, I dived in and felt my way around in the freezing, dirty water. With fumbling fingers I connected the tractor fork to the Phantom’s front wheels, and watched how it began moving through the mud and up to the still-open taxiway.

  We did this six times in a row, and the tiny diesel tractor, skidding in the mud, pulled six Phantoms one after another out of the shelter, cruising submerged in the rising water like a submarine, sucking air from the pipe on top, and farting bubbles from its exhaust pipe under water. Even a year later I was still dealing with inquiries and lawsuits over who had been responsible for the loss of expensive equipment and weaponry that night.

  In those muddy moments I understood that nothing was free, and it all depended on hard work and covering every aspect of operations and maintenance, from digg
ing to deepen the wadi to feeding the last mechanic trainee; from good absorption of the new F-16s to correct employment of the older squadrons on base, Skyhawks, Phantoms, and Kfirs. Still, creating the conditions for the establishment of three F-16 battle-ready squadrons was the main mission and demanded every bit of experience and good sense I had accumulated in the establishment of the Orange Tails. And indeed I hurried to put my stamp on all the programs Rami left me, and implemented the lessons I had learned from those earlier days.

  During those two stormy years 1980 to 1981 I sent nobody to fend for himself and find the materials he needed. My entire base, and through it the whole of the air force, stood behind the three new “children” I was raising. If what they needed was somewhere, my people ran and got it for them. If somebody wasn’t diligent enough, he was gone. Those who thought to use the situation to gain personal power—gone, too. And when things needed were not in existence anywhere, I didn’t forget the contract I had signed with Briar in the Orange Tails—“all clean”—and kept tough and fair. Then at least my subordinates received clear explanations and the commander’s instructions on how to get it done another way, and not just empty promises.

  After my experience from the Phantom era I demanded and got mutual cooperation from my new three squadrons. Their commanders were trained to help each other. When after a year one of the three was relocated to a new base in the Negev, her two sister squadrons equipped it with their best men—pilots and technicians—and the base’s best equipment, greased, clean and newly painted. Not a word of envy or complaint was heard.

  ‡

  IN JULY 1980 THE FIRST FOUR aircraft landed, and in less than one year, on June 7, 1981, we attacked Tammuz.

  Duby screened on my white wall the gunsight video of the eight F-16s that attacked the nuclear reactor. Square, irrigated fields passed rapidly through the windshield, then roads and high-tension towers. This was the delta of the Euphrates, its looks reminiscent of the Nile delta on the other side. A bend of a river, then Relik’s voice mumbling either to himself or for the pages of history: “It’s all the way we hoped—the SAM batteries are silent, no MiGs.” And then the flight leader, Zeev Raz: “Light ack-ack.”

  The sound of rapid breathing filled the speakers, and the windshield revealed an empty sky: the attacking aircraft had just executed a high-G pull-up and was climbing over the Tammuz, readying himself for his dive to the target. An electronic system chirped. Ilan Ramon’s voice muttered: “Yes, some ack-ack,” and then went on, reminding himself in a calm and measured voice, like a student doing his exercises, “afterburner on, deploy chaff.” Lieutenant Ilan Ramon was the kid of the operation, the youngest of us all. The gunsight rolled and a large, square yard appeared, growing fast as the aircraft dove on it. Details became visible, the dirt walls around it, the inside crammed with square structures and narrow alleys. At one side there was a very large building. This was the French nuclear reactor, Osirak—Tammuz itself. It was as large as Madison Square Garden, with a white dome over its center.

  The bombsight aligned and began to advance slowly toward the dome. In the distance, the water of the Euphrates River gleamed. A muddy island could be seen in the middle.

  And now the bombsight clicked in place, touching the base of the building. A small black dot appeared on the side of the picture, and a short beep indicated that the trigger had been pressed. The small F-16 trembled as two tons of iron and explosives—a fifth of its own weight—leaped free to speed to the target. And again the measured voice went through proper procedure, “Afterburner off.”

  “Cluster,” demanded Nahumi of his three following aircraft, “sound off.”

  “Two,” I answered him. I was out, following him east.

  “Three.” That was Relik.

  Silence.

  “Cluster four?” and again, now in a harsher voice: “Cluster four, come in!”

  We all breathed a sigh of relief when at last young Ilan Ramon, Cluster Four, finished his postattack checks and got around to answering, “Four here.”

  Now the operation commander, Zeevik Raz, could confirm to the relay man, Sela, and through him to the chief commander: “Charlie all.”

  We came out fast, leaving the cultivated delta behind, and again we were over the desert. It was time to go for some altitude—we still had a thousand kilometers to go. Lighter now, but low on fuel, we climbed to thirty-three thousand feet. Six F-15 air-to-air fighters were waiting for us, to escort us on the long way home. We had carried two tons each all the way to Baghdad, and now we had no fuel left to take on any enemy fighters on the ninety-minute flight back to Israel. We finally landed with minimum fuel, but safe. Ramon’s complicated calculations proved out; he had brains, the kid.

  “YOU, THE PILOTS OF RAMAT-DAVID,” Ivry resumed with a reality check, “know only what you saw from your cockpits. But reality is multifaceted.”

  Ivry, the air force commander at that time, described to us the big picture in which our mission had played its part. He laid out for us an array of situations, pressures, considerations, and even emotions that ordinary people rarely know about and that we, on the front lines, could only imagine. If we thought that Opera, our attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor, was the main item on the agenda of the leaders, we were wrong. It was not the highest in importance. There were other issues, no less critical.

  “At the same time Opera was being mounted, the peace process with Egypt was under way,” Ivry told us, “and there was a danger that this crucial development might be brought to a standstill because of the operation. At the same time, there was something else: the IDF was evacuating the Sinai Peninsula. And at the same time, the fighting in Lebanon kept heating up. After you F-16s shot down the two Syrian helicopters in Lebanon”—this was the first aerial victory achieved by our new F-16s, and Duby Yoffe permitted himself a slight smile—“the Syrians introduced SAMs into Lebanon.” The entire world was occupied with Lebanon. We all were sure that the next clash would take place there.

  AND TRULY THERE WERE many aspects in my command of Ramat-David in that fateful time that reminded me of the establishment of the Orange Tails. Ramat-David was farther away from Tel Aviv and isolated in the North, and the air force at large was occupied in other, more important things than the building of its new combat spine. And so it happened that the absorption of the F-16 into the force was given to us in the North almost exclusively, as in the days of the Orange Tails in the South. David Ivry, the all-knowing, was informed of every detail, but still I felt that sometimes this worked like a private business. The whole project was handed to me as an add-on to the command of Ramat-David. I even received the formal title of “project manager,” which confirmed that I had two hats to wear on my one head. This was an unusual management quirk that gave me considerable freedom.

  I admit that I liked this exceptional arrangement; the assignment was totally mine, with all responsibility and authority. Rami left me good plans, which I could alter if necessary. All the budgets allocated to the project were at my disposal, and as an added gift I received a civilian comptroller to watch my documents and check my decisions and expenditures, lest I was stealing anything. Throughout these two years, my staff officers and I squeezed out of Ramat-David everything that fine base could give us, and stood the new backbone of the air force on two firm legs. My men and I streamlined and saved, stretched every dollar, and at the end—after the project goals were fully achieved—we were so proud to return the few millions that were left over.

  Of course, the comptroller looked at this with a jaundiced eye, and dragged me to Tel Aviv explain that improbability to the Ministry of Defense chiefs. I didn’t mind; it was really fun to answer that yes, I sent my F-16s into battle before the designated date and even though we hadn’t spent all the allocated money, and they brought back good results. The chief laughed, and the comptroller collected his papers and vanished.

  It’s not wholly disadvantageous to be an orphan.

  “THE DECISION TO ATTACK th
e Iraqi reactor,” continued Ivry, “was taken only when it became clear that a quantity of nuclear fuel had left France on its way to Iraq. These seventy-five kilograms of nuclear material, once inside the reactor, would make it ‘hot.’ After that, the implications of an attack would be far more serious. The attack would spread nuclear contamination over a wide area. This compelled the government to decide quickly, before the material reached the reactor.”

  Ivry was very well prepared. Every now and then he pulled out of his file a handwritten note and showed it to us silently, as proof. This is how secret objects began to be shown.

  “Menachem Begin, the prime minister and minister of defense, required full consensus in his cabinet regarding this attack, so there were delays. Meanwhile the Iran-Iraq War went on, so every time the Iranians attacked near Baghdad, more SAM batteries were added around the Tammuz plant. More antiaircraft was deployed there, defensive walls were built around the site, and barrage balloons were anchored in the air above it. Finally, a division of mobile SAM-6s was deployed there, too. The degree of difficulty of the attack went up and up, and together with it the difficulty of deciding whether to do it or not. On January 1981, the last minister who until then had opposed the operation—Deputy Prime Minister Yigael Yadin—consented.”

  When he finally agreed, the attack on the reactor was approved, and Opera was ready to go.

  “After the attack, some people criticized Prime Minister Begin for arranging the attack with the elections in mind,” Ivey reminded us. “I don’t agree. Had the attack failed, it wouldn’t have helped him get reelected. In my opinion, Begin felt a genuine responsibility to the nation. He feared the next government might be too late to catch the window, before the reactor became hot. And the decision was hard. The intelligence organs opposed the attack; they argued that the Iraqis would only build another reactor within three to five years. Some thought the American reaction would be harsh. We had to prepare for a possible Iraqi military reaction as well.