“Menachem Begin,” said Ivry, “took full responsibility on himself.”
IF BEGIN TOOK ON NATIONAL responsibility, it was David Ivry who had to take on operational responsibility. Our F-16 aircraft were new in the air, with no combat record. They hadn’t even concluded their ordnance testing. The flight profiles of F-16s with two one-ton bombs—the only bombs we had that could penetrate the structure of the reactor—were not verified yet. Anyway, we began training with these bombs hanging on our wings.
One day Ami Rabin, the base’s maintenance officer, entered my office, closed the door behind him, and said: “Iftach, I don’t know what you plan to do with these Mark 84 bombs you keep training with, but if you ever intend to jettison external fuel tanks while those bombs are hanging near them, you better think twice; this configuration has not been tested yet. This can lead to serious trouble.”
We definitely intended to jettison our external tanks on the way to the target after emptying them—this was mandatory to get to Baghdad—and the bombs would be still on the wings. So what? I didn’t understand what was bothering Ami. In Phantoms and Mirages this was standard operating procedure. But Ami was an experienced aeronautical engineer, with a background in munitions, and he taught me that jettisoning empty tanks in unfit conditions might end with the tank hitting the fuselage of the aircraft and even lead to its breakup in the air. Such things had happened before. A warning light flashed in my mind and I shuddered—just imagine our eight-ship formation in a snafu like that on its way to Baghdad.
The air force didn’t have an instrumented F-16 for this kind of testing, so we had to do it “by the seat of our pants.” Within a few days the squadrons themselves conducted an experiment in a rather amateurish way. They found a set of flight conditions in which it was safe to jettison the tanks. This was one example of the uncertainties that came with the new aircraft, and luckily it was exposed in time. It was just luck that we had Ami Rabin with us—he definitely wasn’t the usual maintenance officer. Still, we didn’t know what else we don’t know. We were vulnerable to error.
AND THERE WAS THE ISSUE of the aircraft’s vulnerability to hostile ground fire. The antiaircraft defense around Tammuz was considerable. The reactor and nearby Baghdad were circled with rings of SAM batteries and antiaircraft—not to speak of MiGs from nearby airfields. The radar coverage was perhaps only equaled around Moscow. The chances of some of us getting hit were well above zero, and the F-16 carried with it many unknown factors. It was a new aircraft with a single engine, and nobody knew how durable it was under fire and for how long it would stay airborne and get its pilot out once it took a hit.
Some protested against the use of F-16s on this dangerous and uncertain mission, and suggested sending the double-engine F-15s instead. The large F-15 seemed so much more massive and robust. A heated debate broke out in the air force commander’s office; everybody wanted the mission for himself. But Ivry knew he had bought jet fighters, not toys, and to become the backbone of our attack force they must prove themselves under fire. Ivry knew it and I knew it, and in the last discussion in his office—the two chiefs of the opposing tribes, and a few technical people participated—we both were on the same side. Ivry concluded, “This is what we bought the F-16s for. They can do it, and they will,” and I came out holding the bag.
To the delicate question the government asked him, how many of the attackers were likely not to make it back, Ivry came up with a percent “casualty estimate.” He calculated the number from past missions with limited similarities, according to the methodology of operational research. Then the term “casualty estimate” began to make the rounds, and the thinking regarding this nasty subject got to Ramat-David and the few pilots who were preparing the operation, drawing maps, calculating fuel quantities and experimenting with long-distance flight and attack profiles. These pilots began to wonder how many of them would end up staying in Iraq. Somebody estimated that we would lose just one; others put it at two. Later, the ugly question of who among the chosen eight had the best chance to be hit came up, too. Everybody thought he might be the one. There were even secret betting pools.
And all this time, above us, decisions were being made, then canceled. A few times the government decided to go for it. On one occasion we had even started our engines, and the mission was aborted.
“You don’t have the slightest idea,” Ivry told us, “of how many times we kept all that shit from falling on your heads. You had F-16 squadrons to build, and had we driven you crazy the way they drove us… ”
As an example, he presented a handwritten note sent to him by the IDF’s chief of staff, Raful, from one of the cabinet meetings.
“I told them,” wrote Lieutenant General Raful to Ivry, “it’s either-or. Either you decide to do it, or stop driving us crazy.” Raful, who sat next to me with his sturdy arms folded on his considerable belly, grunted, “Had I known you kept all my notes, Ivry, I would have written twice as much.”
Laughter filled the room.
AND THERE WAS ALSO a personal secret. Ofra, Ivry’s wife, told us that on the day before the attack she and Ivry had visited Tel Nof.
“On the way back home, right near Mughar Hill, David stopped the car.”
Mughar Hill is a high, barren, red clay hill, and everybody who grew up in the area knows it. David Ivry was a native of the nearby township of Gedera, and so was Ofra. Surely as kids they picked anemones on the hill in the winter, just the way Ali and I did. Kibbutz Givat-Brenner is on the other side.
“And standing there, David told me,” Ofra continued, “that tomorrow the atomic reactor at Baghdad would be hit.”
Ofra is a delicate woman, and excitement showed on her face. Silence fell over the big room. This operation had been absolutely top secret. Nobody was supposed to say a word about it. David brought his head closer to Ofra’s in an affectionate way and she continued, as if apologizing, “I didn’t believe it. This was the one and only time during our whole life together that David had told me about a mission. And how had it suddenly come to be the reactor? All Israel was talking about Lebanon then.”
When they went to bed, David fell sound asleep, but Ofra didn’t shut her eyes the whole night.
Nobody told Anat Shafir, Relik’s wife, about the forthcoming operation, “and just for this reason our marriage stayed intact.”
Anat is a sculptor who works in iron. The story of the attack on Tammuz, when she finally learned about it, she imagined as “a very precise and sturdy structure of iron pieces, welded into one by a superb artist.” For a moment she caused all of us to see this operation through different eyes, those of an artist. She read her comments from her notes.
“The full story got to me years later, and suddenly I realized what a risk we took there. Only then did I grasp that we all were living on borrowed time,” and here she paused, struggling with feelings brought on by her memories.
Relik, her husband, Nahumi’s deputy, took over and told his own story: “At the end of the last briefing, Major General Raful got up and said to us, ‘The fate of the Jewish nation is in your hands.’ Then I remembered my grandfather.”
“My name is Israel,” explained Relik. “My parents named me after my grandfather. My first daughter’s name is Rachel, after my father’s sister. Both Israel and Rachel died in Stutthof, a Nazi concentration camp in northern Germany. They were taken there from the Vilna Ghetto, in Lithuania.”
I thought, Good God, where are they going with this?
True, I was expecting some odd stuff to come out here, but nothing like this. I had never imagined that a tall, bright guy such as Relik might think when hearing Raful loading on him the fate of the whole Jewish nation such grandiose things as I might not return from this mission, but at least I won’t die the way my relatives did.
But he went on. “This was the first time in my life,” Relik revealed, “that my dead relatives came to me before a mission.” And then, a split second before the atmosphere turned morbid, he added mockingly,
“After that, I didn’t worry anymore about fuel consumption. All I needed was to get there; no need for fuel to return.”
Laughter broke out and filled the room, breaking the tense silence that had reigned until then. Fighter pilots usually don’t talk like that. But although I didn’t have any such thoughts, I still keep to this very day a handwritten note another high-ranking officer sent me: “You won’t need fuel to get back.”
EVENING CAME, AND THE LIGHT coming through the large windows faded. Ali got up and switched on our many lamps, and the atmosphere in the room brightened considerably. Now it was my turn to tell my story. And first I had to explain for the thousandth time why I, the base commander, went on the mission to Tammuz. In most military organizations, colonels and general officers do not go on such missions. Colonels and generals are supposed to manage things from the rear, to sit in front of screens and give orders, not to pick up rifles and go with the enlisted men to the battlefield.
Why, indeed, had I gone?
I admit there was my fighter pilot nemesis—that “black demon” that Ali always accused me of having. It was there as always, urging me to go, see, and do. But this time that demon was not the whole story. There was an angel of my better nature. I was moved by a feeling of responsibility.
David Ivry thought otherwise. He ordered me not to fly the mission, but then the chief of staff, Raful, gave me a hearing. We were sitting in his car. It was very early in the morning, and we were waiting for the pouring rain to slacken so I could allow the amateur pilot general to take off in his plane to Tel Aviv. Those 1981 winter days made it a regular ceremony between us. I would get up very early and go out to see if the weather would be a problem for his level of experience, and at times I halted his takeoff right on the runway. He complained but always complied, and I believed he relished the drama. This time the rain was really heavy, so I got in his car and we had few minutes of privacy till a hole opened in the overcast.
We talked about the forthcoming operation. When I told Raful that Ivry wouldn’t let me go to Baghdad and requested his help, he cut me off rudely.
“Spector, you’re trying to become General Popsky again? Forget it. This is not your own private mission.”
I pointed to his left hand, where he was missing two fingers. I said, “Everything is personal, Raful.”
He was stunned, then got it.
“Hah!”
I HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT. In this conversation I relied on something that had happened a few years before, when I was chief of operations of the air force. The deputy chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, Raful, asked me to his office. When I entered he was sitting there alone, writing. When he noticed me at the door he looked up and demanded without any preamble, “Give me a proposal on what to do about the plague of accidents in the IDF.”
This is how Raful was, right at you straight and simple.
“Right now?”
“Right now.” Raful didn’t like to wait for reports.
Well, prevention of training accidents was an issue I was interested in. I was very proud of the fact that after four years of commanding fighter squadrons, in two wars, I had lost not a single man. I began elaborating on this, but Raful waved me off. He was a peasant, an artisan. He did carpentry at home, and on weekends he sawed planks and made furniture. He needed something physical.
On his desk among the papers lay a fancy dagger. I bent forward, took the dagger, and stuck it forcefully into the top of the desk. Raful looked at me and then at his wounded desk, and then at me again, his black carpenter’s brows rising in amazement.
“If you really want to stop accidents right away,” I told him, “whenever you are told about an accident, stab your hand or thigh with this dagger. You’ll see that this will get the desired effect very quickly.” I got up to leave.
I stopped in the doorway. He was looking at me. I added, “Accidents continue to happen because the commanders see them as fender benders. Nothing will change until they hurt you personally.”
He grinned at me and waved his hand in dismissal.
Not long after, I heard that Raful had injured himself in his carpentry shop. I came to his office to see. Again the deputy chief of the IDF sat alone in his room, writing, his bandaged left hand resting on the paper as a weight. He gave me a look that said, “Well?”
I pointed at the bandage and he said, “I got careless with the big saw and cut off two fingers. An accident. It happens.”
“And what happened afterward?” I asked.
“Ah, nothing.” He grinned. “I threw the fingers to the dog.” Raful was not very softhearted, even with himself.
I couldn’t keep from laughing. He already wanted to get back to his papers.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“Quite a bit,” he admitted. “From now on I’ll be more careful.”
“As I said, it is all personal.”
AS I HAD EXPECTED, RAFUL approved my request to fly the Tammuz mission.
To nail it down, so he wouldn’t backtrack when Ivry complained, I equipped him with a parable. “When you are the division commander and two of your regiments go to fight,” I asked him, “where should you be?” Raful was a real fighter and excellent field commander.
“What a question!” he barked at me. There was no way he could answer differently. The rain was letting up, and he was getting restless. Getting out of his car, he summed up. “Well,” he said, “so you’ll be flight leader.”
“No.”
“What?” he almost roared at me. “Now, Spector, I really don’t know what you want!”
I had no intention of taking command of the operation, although Raful was amazed at and perhaps disappointed by my decision. I explained that I wanted to fly the tail of the formation. I chose to fly as number six or seven of the eight.
“But why?”
I told him. I knew that my strength was not in flying the F-16, for as a base commander I couldn’t train enough in it. For sure my two squadron commanders, Raz and Nahumi, were better in the F-16 than I was. The meaning of my flying had nothing to do with leading the mission. Deep in my heart I was expecting the unforeseen, and believed that maturity and plenty of experience were called for. I could imagine so many uncertainties, bad weather on the way in or over the target. MiGs might suddenly show up. One of us might fall by the wayside for technical or other reasons. I was sure hard decisions were in the offing. There were many possible things that could happen to eight fighters a thousand kilometers away from home, crossing three enemy countries.
I was sure something unexpected would happen, and there and then, Raz would need someone like me at his side. Just a word, even a nod might suffice. Oh, how I had needed such a person once above the clouds over Damascus.
Ironically, the attack on Tammuz went like silk, nothing went wrong, and nothing was needed from me.
AND NOW THE TIME HAS COME for me to reveal my own secret, one I have kept inside for exactly twenty years.
“As everybody here knows,” I said, “I missed the target. I was the only one of us whose bombs didn’t hit Tammuz. I was very disappointed that I missed, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that I avoided telling the truth about the reason for that miss. Now you shall be the first to hear it.” I saw them perk up, and everyone was watching me.
“On the pull-up for the attack,” I told them, “I was blind—blacked out.
“I was not at the peak of health then. A few months before, I had begun having asthmatic symptoms. I was in denial, didn’t believe the doctors, and convinced myself this was just a ‘passing something.’ I was taking pills to ease my breathing at night, and only later learned they thinned the blood and lowered my resistance to g-force.”
“Until this flight to Tammuz, I had done my flight training with no physical difficulty, so I didn’t expect what was coming. Then, on the night before the mission, I had breathing difficulties and couldn’t fall asleep. After takeoff the next day I felt very tired, and throughout the fli
ght to Iraq I kept nodding off.”
I remember this long flight as an unending nightmare. It dragged on for more than ninety minutes, eight aircraft wobbling slowly along at low altitude, saving every liter of fuel. First I felt okay, but after ten minutes, when we crossed the spectacular Edom Mountain ridge close to Eilat, the view turned flat and monotonous and I began to feel tired. Gray, barren expanses crawled along, cut at times by wide, dry wadis, and it went on seemingly forever. My aircraft crept along on its own. Lying on my back, strapped in the comfortable armchair of the F-16, I caught myself time and again dozing off. It was awful. I tried slapping myself the way I did that night in 1973 over the Red Sea, but I couldn’t overcome it. Simply, there wasn’t any danger in the air, all around was just nothing, and we were gliding through a gray, hazy, totally empty nowhere. I didn’t even need to navigate to stay awake; the goddamn F-16 did everything on its own. I knew it was bad. I took off my gloves and pinched my thighs with my fingernails. I tried to move around in the seat, to inhale deeply, and still my head fell, rose, and fell again. From that whole trip I can visually recall only some low, hilly crests that appeared from nowhere and passed slowly beneath me, then were lost forever into another nowhere.
At last, when we had crossed into Iraq, jettisoned our external fuel tanks, and turned onto the last leg approaching the target, I woke up. When we accelerated over the fields of the delta of the Euphrates, I was again alive and alert, but an ugly flaw lay curled inside me. When the time to pull up came, I pulled up, and to my surprise found myself totally blind. I didn’t lose consciousness, my brain continued working all right, but I was climbing fast and all I could see before my eyes was darkness.
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