Raid on the Sun

by Rodger W. Claire

  CHAPTER 4

  THE WAITING

  No plan, no matter how perfect,

  survives first contact with the enemy.

  —UNITED STATES ARMY MAXIM

  For months, Operations’ engineers and experts labored intensely over their computers in Tel Aviv trying to solve the mission’s biggest obstacle—physics. Ivry and his staff had long ago rejected in-flight refueling as far too risky to attempt over enemy desert terrain. Besides, it had become a moot point because the Iranian-ordered F-16s had been designed to U.S. Navy specifications, which meant that the refueling baskets were on the bottom of the planes. Israeli tanker planes only refueled to the top of the aircraft, the same as the U.S. Air Force. The F-16s would have to get to Baghdad and back on one tank, so to speak.

  General Dynamics test pilots, flying at fuel-conserving high altitudes and carrying no ordnance, had been able to extend the flight of the F-16s to two hours, fifteen minutes. The operational team, running numerous performance models based on planes flying low-level navigation and carrying two two-thousand-pound bombs one way, then flying high altitude with no ordnance on return, estimated flight time at three hours, ten minutes. The engineers and performance experts had to find another hour of flying time and fuel.

  The physics of fuel consumption during flight are fairly basic: Discounting the vagaries of engine efficiency and pilot performance, fuel consumption is determined by two factors: weight and drag—that is, the physical resistance, or friction, to an object moving through air molecules. The more weight and bulk, the more drag and, thus, the more energy needed to propel the object.

  For months the operational team worked up various performance drafts and modelings. With each new modeling, Raz’s pilots would test the calculations in real time. The engineering team would then debrief the pilots, compare the real-time results with the computer modelings, and make the necessary adjustments. It was a long, stressful, sometimes dangerous process. And there were plenty of factors to account for. They tested fuel range with and without external wing tanks, with two or four A-As (air-to-air) missiles, and with four-plane, eight-plane, and twelve-plane formations. Flying in squadron formation increased fuel consumption because pilots were forced to maneuver in a group, varying their speed and vectors in order to maintain a constant distance between one another. Low-level flying consumed more fuel since air close to the ground is heavier than the thin air at high altitudes and requires more fuel to overcome the increased drag. Critical ECS, or electronic jamming systems, that allowed pilots to evade SAM radar and air-to-air missile tracking had to be jettisoned because the mechanism hung below the fuselage, creating more weight and drag. In addition, the jamming mechanism took the place of an external centerline fuel tank that could carry an extra 2,000 pounds of fuel, or 370 gallons. Something had to give—invariably it was pilot safety.

  The long-distance flying posed practical problems for Israel as well. The country was only 210 miles long and 45 miles wide at its narrowest. That meant the pilots could not complete their long-range training flights within the nation’s secure borders. Instead, Raz and his men had to begin their runs above the Mediterranean island of Cyprus and then follow the coast of Israel south, past the Gaza Strip and the Sinai to Sharm al-Sheikh at the southern tip of the peninsula, and then fly back the same way to Ramat David. The training flights to expand the long-range capabilities of the F-16s began at shorter distances and grew longer until matching the mission profile of 1,200 miles. Sometimes the flights were only an hour; other days they extended to three or four hours.

  As far as the pilots were concerned, the majority of work was training their bodies. They were not prepared for the unexpected difficulties of long-distance flying. In the Mideast, enemy borders were dozens of miles away, not the hundreds or even thousands of miles distant they were for U.S. or British pilots. Damascus was only sixty-eight miles from Ramat David. In combat situations Israeli pilots had their weapons systems activated as soon as they were wheels-up. At the time the long-distance record was held by the IAF squadrons that had bombed the Suez Canal in ’67. Most of Raz’s pilots had never flown longer than an hour. Much of the initial training entailed building endurance, getting used to the bodily stress caused by extreme-range flying.

  One of the pilots, Rani Falk, had just returned from Hill. An F-4 instructor at Hatzerim, Falk, along with Ilan Ramon and Relik Shafir, was among the youngest of the pilots. He had grown up in a farm village in the Jezreel Valley, not far from Raz’s kibbutz, and like Zeev had spent days watching the planes soaring overhead to the nearby air force base. He was tall, broad-shouldered, open, and easygoing with a quick grin. He and Raz became close, perhaps because both men came from the same small village life and retained the same simple, straightforward values—honesty, hard work, and above all loyalty. Like Yaffe, Falk was a born pilot who had an instinctual ability to feel out his aircraft, to anticipate its response. But even for Falk, the long-distance flying could be brutal. He would return from his flights exhausted, grimy, clammy, and cranky, then have to attend debriefings to go over problems and mistakes. Sometimes the debriefing took longer than the mission.

  Falk’s first long-distance flight was a shock. When he reached Sharm al-Sheikh after what seemed an eternity, he was amazed to look up and see his INS (inertial navigation system) read just six hundred miles—only half the flight distance. After being cooped up in a cramped cockpit for hours—flying low-level, keeping eyes fixed on the wing leader, watching out for a sudden ridge or hill while continually checking instruments, maintaining distance and altitude, and flicking back and forth to the glass HUD as he also thought about fuel, risk, and the target—Falk’s body felt as though he’d been beat up. Later the pilots learned that they burned so many calories, they lost from one to four pounds per flight.

  Yaffe and Shafir quickly discovered another worrisome drawback. Flying in the 30-degree-tilted cockpit with knees pressed nearly to head level made trying to answer the call of nature impossible. For one thing, gravity worked against them. The urgency was made all the more pressing because the pilots were required to drink a great deal of water to stay hydrated. Since the fly-by-wire control stick was on the right side of the cockpit instead of in the middle, Shafir discovered that he was forced to try and open his pants zipper, already encumbered by a flight suit, with his left hand—a challenge he found impossible. Eventually he surrendered to the inevitable and urinated in his pants. As if that were not bad enough, the air-conditioning vent was exactly at crotch level, quickly chilling Shafir’s wet lower parts to an excruciating degree.

  At the end of one run, after he had touched down, Nachumi watched with alarm as Shafir came in fast at an unusually steep angle, hit the runway hard, threw on the afterburners, and jammed on the brakes, trailing a blue cloud of smoking rubber. He popped the cockpit, jumped down, and ran to the side of the runway. Nachumi, thinking the plane was on fire, radioed for an emergency vehicle and quickly climbed out of his plane. Bounding down the runway, he arrived to find Shafir stooped down in the weeds, surrounded by the emergency crew.

  “Sorry,” Shafir said, looking embarrassed but relieved. “I had stomach problems.”

  Hagai Katz, ever thorough and organized, took the time to assemble a homemade instruction manual for the pilots. Included were checklists of everything the pilots might need during flight—how to adjust the weapons systems, the radar functions, the navigation instruments. He made photocopies of the lists, then inserted each list into its own plastic sleeve and gathered them all in a notebook, like a photo album. He gave one of these notebooks to each pilot to use as a quick reference guide in flight.

  One of the pilots was Amos Yadlin, an F-4 major who had recently returned from Hill with Falk and the third group. Tall, thin, with a full head of Kennedy-like brown hair, Yadlin appeared almost professorial, a look that complemented his quick, perceptive mind. He was also a seasoned combat veteran, seeing plenty of action in the Yom Kippur War. In some ways Yadlin was an
easiergoing version of Raz. But Yadlin had a devilish side as well. One day when the teams were returning from another trek down to Sharm al-Sheikh, he jogged up to Katz standing on the tarmac, yelling, “You saved my life! Your checklist saved my life.”

  “How?” Katz asked, gratified and, to be honest, a little surprised his notebook had come in handy so quickly. “I just made it.”

  “Well, I had to pee,” Yadlin replied. “I couldn’t think of what to do. And then I remembered your checklists. I opened up one sleeve at a time and peed into them like a cup.”

  Yadlin grinned as Katz looked at him in horror.

  “They held the entire load!” Yadlin added proudly.

  The squadron pilots overhearing the conversation broke into howls of laughter. Chagrined, Katz marched back down the tarmac to the briefing room alone.

  Months into training it had become obvious the F-16s would have to carry two external fuel tanks, one under each wing. Designed by GD, each tank added an additional 3,000 pounds, or 450 gallons, of fuel. But carrying the two detachable tanks and two 2,000-pound slick bombs, the fighters had room for only two Sidewinders, one at the end of each wing, instead of the usual four. And, as already decided, there would be no jamming devices. The pilots would be at an even worse disadvantage.

  The fuel problem was still not solved, however. During training flights Raz’s pilots were consistently running short of fuel, even with the wing tanks. The only thing that could help was to carry an optional centerline fuel tank, which held another 2,000 pounds, or 300 gallons, of fuel. But there was a problem: Israel had no centerline tanks. The U.S. Defense Department had excluded centerline tanks from the trade agreement. Since the planes had been sold to Israel on the strict condition that they be used for defensive purposes only, there was no reason, in the opinion of the U.S. Defense Department, that the IAF would need such tanks for long-range flying. Ivry immediately put in a plea for twelve centerline tanks. The Israeli Defense Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, and the ambassador to the U.S. all went to work intensely lobbying the U.S. to sell Israel the centerline tanks. In the meantime all Ivry could do was wait . . . and sweat.

  The northern commander at Tel-Nof Air Force Base near Galilee, Gen. Avihu Ben-Nun, saw a new opening for his F-15s. The IAF had finally convinced the United States to sell Israel the F-15 conformal fuel tanks. Fastened to the fuselage at the base of the wings, the tanks would give the F-15s the range to reach Baghdad and back. Once again Ivry was forced to fend off another challenge to the F-16s as Ben-Nun argued to Eitan and high command that his F-15 squadron should be given the mission. Ivry countered that they had already progressed far into mission training at Ramat David. Ben Nun took Ivry’s refusal to make a switch as a personal rebuff. Meanwhile, word leaked down the chain of command, and Raz’s squadron grew anxious that the mission—whatever it was—was going to be pulled out from under them.

  And then things got complicated.

  Ever since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had landed in Tehran in February 1979, Saddam had kept a jaundiced eye to his east. Socialist and secular, Hussein distrusted the bearded, fanatically religious Shi’ite Muslims who ruled Iran and made up the majority of the population in the southern half of his own country.

  “This place hardly seems like part of Iraq,” Khidhir Hamza recalled Hussein grousing one day as a mob of Iraqi Shi’ite demonstrators chanted Khomeini’s name in the streets. “They don’t even speak Arabic.”

  On September 17, 1980, Hussein, convinced that Iran was plotting his assassination with Iraqi Shi’ites, canceled a 1975 peace treaty with Iran and invaded the disputed Shatt al Arab estuary in the north of the Persian Gulf that formed the border between the two countries. Hostilities quickly escalated, and by September 22 the nations were in a state of all-out war, conducting air and large-scale ground assaults.

  The evening of September 30, Ivry was still at work at Tel Aviv headquarters when he was informed that at least two Iranian F-4 Phantoms had just bombed al-Tuwaitha. Intelligence was still trying to get details, but initial reports indicated that the bombs had missed the reactor and damaged some laboratories and support facilities. The most serious blow was to Osirak’s water-cooling system and plumbing, which took a direct hit. In the end the damage was minor. Begin was furious, cursing the incompetent Iranians who could not “finish the job.” Ivry was also disturbed, but for a more practical reason. In response, Iraq put all its antiaircraft defenses on “alert time,” meaning the readiness time of al-Tuwaitha’s AAA batteries was significantly heightened. And, as an extra protection, Iraq launched a ring of tethered balloons twenty feet high around the Nuclear Center’s walls to interfere with low-flying bombers. Ivry’s already impossible attack plan was, if possible, now even more difficult. What could go wrong next? he wondered.

  Fearing more strikes, the following week France and Italy ordered the two hundred techs and engineers employed at al-Tuwaitha to evacuate immediately. Mossad reported that the workers, who lived with their families at a separate compound away from the center, were packing up and heading for home. By November, Mossad was reporting that work at Osirak had come to a complete halt. Khidhir Hamza and his administrative colleagues continued to come to work at al-Tuwaitha, but the constant activity around the reactor, the buzz and comings and goings of the construction crews and the nuclear techs, had all but disappeared.

  With the immediate threat of enriched uranium production over—at least for the time being—Begin, under pressure by Saguy and Hofi, called off the mission.

  Raz and the F-16 pilots continued training, however. None of the pilots knew what the mission was, let alone Begin’s decision to postpone it. But details were beginning to be revealed. For the first time, Raz informed the pilots of the kind of ordnance they would be carrying: two 2,000-pound dumb bombs. Because of the sensitive placement of the target, he told them, carpet-bombing was out.

  “It will be a visual drop. You will need perfect accuracy,” Raz said. “The target is heavily defended by multiple AAA emplacements and SAM-6s.”

  The men would have to perform pinpoint targeting while avoiding withering AAA fire.

  Flying over the desolate Negev, Raz’s squadron practiced individually at first, diving at between 35 and 40 degrees. The pilots used BDUs, thirty-three-pound dummy bombs that exploded with white phosphorous smoke so pilots and ground personnel could mark the accuracy of the drops. For targets the IAF used painted circles on the ground and, later, old Sherman tanks. To approximate the huge dome of Osirak, Ivry’s command later had the F-16s practice diving at a huge, secret IAF radar dome located in the Negev, though the pilots were not told why they were practicing bombing an Israeli radar dish. The squadron also made several flights dropping live MK-84s on desert targets so they could experience the shock waves and the extent of the frag pattern.

  Targeting demanded absolute concentration. The pilot had to fly dangerously low to the ground, constantly looking for unmapped peaks and outcroppings, or even telephone wires, next pop up to ten thousand feet, nearing the speed of sound, and then dive on the target, switching on the weapons system, all the while checking the overhead HUD and being careful to line up the bombsight with the target. After release, turning radically, the pilot would blast off into the ether like a bat out of hell, breaking the sound barrier and streaking to the safety of high altitude, praying that a SAM was not behind him, trailing the heat of the afterburners to soar literally straight up his tailpipe.

  Falk thought of it as the “moment of truth.” The flying, the flesh-flattening Gs of right-angle turns, the diving, evading—all the air acrobatics—came to him naturally, as smoothly and easily as an opening aria came in the silence to the mind of a Mozart. But bombing was something else. It was the payoff, the entire point of the mission. To miss, to fail in front of your fellow pilots, your peers, was devastating. You failed yourself, your team.

  Early on in training, Falk missed a target during a practice run. He felt so bad, he did not even want to land.
He wished he could keep on flying . . . just disappear. Instead, he had to land, trudge to the briefing room, and explain why he had missed.

  To make the training as close to real time as possible, the mission team conducted combat games, with the F-16 squadron the Blue Team and a wing of F-15s, standing in for Iraqi MiGs, the Red Team. During the bombing runs the Red Team would try to intercept members of the Blue Team, forcing them to evade and then begin targeting. In real life, over Osirak, the pilots would not have enough fuel to engage in a dogfight and then expect to make the return trip home. A quick evasion was their only hope of completing the mission and returning to base.

  While the pilots practiced targeting, the operational team worked out the details of the bombing run. Precision bombing, or pinpoint targeting, was a fairly sophisticated technical undertaking, necessitating exact mathematical calculations and modelings. The two crucial elements were the IP, or initial point, and pop-up. The IP was the exact agreed-upon location, usually some three or four miles from the target, at which the aircraft would begin its climb. The climb was called pop-up. Bombing from a flat approach was out of the question; a bomb released at almost the horizon line would ricochet off the concrete dome. Instead, the pilots would pop up—that is, pull the nose of the plane up, hit the afterburners, and climb to an altitude of between 8,000 and 10,000 feet in order to begin an angled dive at about 30 degrees.

  The bombing run consisted essentially of seven elements, or timings. After pop-up, the second element was the pull-down altitude, the preset altitude at which the pilot pushed the nose down and began the dive toward the target. It was imperative that this elevation be as low as possible without endangering the accuracy of the dive because a shorter dive distance lessened the pilot’s exposure to AAA and SAM fire. The third point was the apex altitude. This was the altitude the plane climbed to during the fraction of a second it took the electrical impulse from the control stick to reach the plane’s mechanics controlling the wing flaps. At six hundred miles an hour, the F-16 could cover a considerable distance in a split second. The apex altitude was the exact point at which the dive would start and, like the pull-down point, it had to be as low as possible. The fourth element of the bombing run, called tracking on final, was the actual dive itself, measured from the apex altitude to the release point, the fifth element of the bomb run and the altitude at which the ordnance was dropped. The pilot kept his bombsight lined up on the target until the pipper, or “death dot,” covered the target completely. At that moment he squeezed the red button on the control stick and the bombs were released, or “pickled,” off the wings. The time of tracking on final, from high to low as pilots referred to it, had to be between three and five seconds.