Raid on the Sun

by Rodger W. Claire

  As soon as the pilot released ordnance, he initiated the sixth element, recovery, or escape, firing afterburners and trailing thruster flames, climbing to high altitude. As the pilot began his escape and climb, there was another split second between the time he pulled back on the fly-by-wire control and the actual response of the aircraft mechanics. During this fraction of a second the plane would “settle,” or sink, to a lower elevation. Predetermining this lowest point of the dive, called the recovery altitude, was absolutely essential, since the pilot had to avoid the frag pattern, the bloom of shrapnel and debris following detonation, which, in the case of the MK-84, rose 2,400 feet in nine seconds. The pilot, if not careful, could easily blow up himself and any fellow pilots following too closely. The final element of the bombing run was the escape maneuver, during which the pilot could hit a body-crushing eight Gs while negotiating radical 90-degree turns and climbing to 30,000 feet to defeat SAMs.

  To compute the precise distance from the target to initiate pop-up, what angle to start tracking on final, the exact altitude of apex, and all the rest, Avi Sella’s team thumbed through engineering books thick as IRS tax rolls, poring over computer graphs and charts and physics tables to check and recheck their figures. The concept was basically computing backward: first determine the altitude of the frag envelope, then add the recovery time, the pull back, then tracking on final, and so on. Once these figures were computed and added together, the sum determined the exact altitude to the meter at which the squadron commander would begin his dive. Each pilot would then, in turn, follow precisely.

  Operations initially determined that pull down should start at around 8,000 feet. The U.S. Air Force routinely added a cushion of 500 feet when computing their recovery altitude. But the Israelis, fearful about the heavy AAA defenses, were determined to squeeze every fraction of a second out of the tracking time. Sella’s team figured that because the bombs would pierce the reactor cupola and fall through before exploding inside, the dome itself would function as a shield, cutting the frag pattern in half. The decision was made to press the attack to the absolute minimum distance, with no safety net. To add a degree of security and ensure that follow-on pilots would continue to have an unobstructed view of the target, the bombs of lead pilots Raz and Yadlin would be rigged with delayed fuses.

  Behind every maneuver was the element of speed, sometimes suicidal speed. After weeks of test dives and modeling and more test dives, Raz and his team were able to cut the apex altitude to only 5,000 feet, shaving off valuable seconds in both pop-up and tracking. Every second bought them more time to drop their bombs before Iraqi AAA gunners could fire up their radars and get their weapons systems operational. One day in late December, Raz briefed the team that they would be targeting white bull’s-eye circles on the ground, diving in five teams of two. Shafir was paired with Yadlin. The attack profile called for Shafir to follow Yadlin at a one-second interval—or, at 360 knots, about 200 meters. The pilots fired up their engines, ran through the computerized checkoff, then lifted from the Ramat David tarmac and soared southward toward the Negev. Yadlin popped up and began his dive with Shafir just behind him and to the side. But as Yadlin reached recovery and began pulling out, Shafir was too close and the two planes headed for collision. Shafir careened radically to port, the G forces pinning him against his seat. The two F-16s streaked by each other, the air crackling in thunder. Once back at the base, Raz and Sella’s team reran the computations and quickly adjusted the profile, extending the follow-on and adding a margin of safety.

  What was the point of avoiding AAA if all the pilots accomplished was taking one another out?

  In January 1981, in a somewhat unusual move, Ivry visited Raz and Nachumi at Ramat David.

  “I know you have wondered where you are going,” Ivry said. “Now I will tell you: Your target is the Osirak nuclear reactor at al-Tuwaitha near Baghdad.”

  Neither pilot said a word. Both acted as though they had known it all along. But inside, Raz felt his stomach flip. He was sure no one had ever bombed a nuclear reactor before. He knew immediately that the mission would be historic, something schoolchildren, their children, might read about someday. What were the chances of success? Pretty good, he decided. They had trained for this for six months already. It was just a job. Before he left the briefing room, Raz had already filed it into his mental box and put it away. Worrying was not going to change anything.

  Several weeks later, on a gray winter afternoon, Yadlin’s wife, Karen, spotted two grim-faced IAF colonels pull to the curb in front of her home and start up the sidewalk. Like all pilots’ wives, it was the moment she lived in constant dread of. She knew their appearance could mean only one thing: Amos had been killed in the line of duty. She was wrong. The messengers of death veered up the sidewalk and knocked on her neighbor’s door, the home of Udi Ben-Amitay, a member of the second team and one of the initial twelve F-16 pilots. He was also one of her husband’s closest friends. Yadlin and his wife would get together often for dinner or Sabbath with the Amitays. Udi had been scheduled to participate in a training dogfight. In this instance, the Red Team, the enemy, comprised two F-4 Phantoms opposing the Blue Team, made up of the leader Ben-Amitay and a second F-16. Tragically, the F-4 leader and Amitay maneuvered too close and collided in midair. Both men were killed instantly. Amitay was the new squadron’s first fatality. There would be an empty desk in the briefing room. Yadlin and the rest of the squadron were devastated when Colonel Spector broke the news to them. The wives, who shared a world much closer than neighbors, gathered to comfort Amitay’s wife, taking turns cooking meals and watching the kids. The entire squadron attended Amitay’s funeral. His death had created a hole in the unit, but Israel was losing many pilots at the time, both to war and to training accidents, as the IAF struggled to find tactics to overcome the technical advantage of Syria’s new SAMs.

  Commander Spector was both a symbol and a source of strength for many of the pilots at Ramat David. In a nation of military heroes, Iftach Spector was renowned above all in the IAF. At just forty-one, he had chalked up more combat kills than any pilot in history, having served in the ’67 war, the ’73 war, and the War of Attrition. During the Yom Kippur War alone, Spector had single-handedly shot down fifteen MiGs—an almost incomprehensible number in a profession in which veteran pilots the world over sported medals for shooting down maybe two or three enemy planes in a lifetime.

  He was also no stranger to controversy. On the fourth day of the 1967 war, Israel dispatched a squadron of Mirage fighters off the shores of Gaza, allegedly to confirm reports of an Egyptian gunboat. Instead, the Mirages spotted the USS Liberty, a high-tech, audio-surveillance ship some miles off the coast. Despite the fact that the Liberty was clearly flying U.S. colors and had a score of U.S. Navy sailors on its topdeck, the Israeli squadron leader identified the ship as a “hunt class destroyer” with “no markings” and ordered an attack. The Israelis strafed the cruiser three times, killing eight men and wounding twenty, including the ship’s captain, shot in both legs. In the storm of protest that followed, Israel apologized profusely, insisting it was a mistake. Ultimately the government paid $12 million to the victim’s families. Many in the Pentagon, however, remained unconvinced. They suspected Israel did not want the United States picking up information about its operations in the Suez. Relations between the two militaries remained at an all-time low for years. The Mirage commander who had led the attack on the Liberty was none other than Iftach Spector.

  Surprisingly soft-spoken but with quick, penetrating dark eyes, he was a collection of contradictions. Named “Iftach” after the tragic judge of the Old Testament, the misbegotten son of a harlot forced to sacrifice his daughter as the price for a desperate victory to save the Hebrews, Spector seemed to have inherited the tragic smile and sad eyes of the doomed prelate along with his name. As though acknowledging as much, he would occasionally turn his sad eyes mischievously on his interlocutor, a hint of an ironic grin crinkling at the corners, and p
ronounce innocently, “I don’t know why they called me that.” At the same time he was well aware of his near-mythic standing in the air force. He carefully nurtured the image, carrying himself with regal bearing. The effect made him a figure of strength but also of openness to the men who served under him. Indeed, to Nachumi, Katz, Yadlin, and the younger pilots, Spector was like a god. He could do no wrong.

  As base commander, Spector was responsible for everything on the air force base, not only the planes, personnel, pilots, and squadron commands but niggling nuts-and-bolts details from mess supplies to infrastructure maintenance, all the while remaining an active fighter pilot and squadron commander involved in tactics and mission planning. When the new F-16 Fighting Falcon squadron was constituted at Ramat David, Spector became commander of that unit as well. It was an all-consuming responsibility.

  Nevertheless, Spector made himself the squadron’s first pupil. As the commanding officer, he felt it a weakness to have men under his command who were expert in areas he knew nothing about—especially men he had mentored. As base commander he was one of the few allowed to know about the secret Osirak mission. A week after the first four F-16s were delivered to Ramat David, he began training in the Falcon. He worked up his own solo modelings, practiced simulated attacks, flew low-level, long-range navigations south along the Mediterranean coast and down the Sinai Peninsula. He said nothing to the men about this. But Raz was a little annoyed. What was Spector doing flying the F-16?

  As Raz suspected, Spector had a plan. He knew the historic importance of the mission. A man used to the spotlight, he knew the notoriety it would bring. How could he, the nation’s most renowned fighter pilot, the commander of these men, stay behind while they flew into certain danger—and perhaps immortality? It would look like he was shirking.

  “I want to join the Osirak mission,” Spector told Ivry in his office.

  Ivry was stunned.

  “I am their commander,” Spector said. “It is my duty to take my place with the men in this mission.”

  “But you have not had the conversion training of the other men in the F-16,” Ivry replied.

  “I have trained myself. I am as ready as anyone,” he argued. “I command many missions. Why would I not be part of this? It would be inappropriate for me, as their commanding officer, to remain at base while the men under me risk their lives on this mission.”

  Ivry had long respected Spector as one of the IAF’s greatest pilots. But his gut told him Spector was not prepared. The mission pilots had all been carefully selected by him personally. They had trained hard for nearly a year, had logged hundreds of hours, had come together as a team. Spector would be in over his head in the new plane. And adding Spector to the mission would mean that one of the other pilots would be shoved out, pulled at the last second because an air force bigwig suddenly decided he wanted a piece of the action. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t good generaling.

  “No,” Ivry said. “I’m sorry. I have to deny your request.”

  Spector was stunned. He couldn’t believe it. He flew back to Ramat David chewing over what he should do. Could he just walk away? How would it look? No, he thought he had to be on the team leading his men. He decided he would have to go over Ivry’s head and make his request directly to the chief of staff, Raful Eitan. It was a fateful decision that would ultimately affect many people—but no one more than Spector.

  Spector made an impassioned plea to Eitan to intervene. The chief of staff was in an impossible position. He had known Spector for twenty years and respected him immensely, both as a pilot and friend. How could he possibly humiliate him, Israel’s most celebrated fighter pilot? On the other hand, Eitan held Ivry in no less regard. And how could he undermine a commanding general by overturning his decision, completely violating the Israeli military’s sacrosanct chain of command? More critical, inserting Spector into the mission at such a late date could be dangerously disruptive. It was a lose-lose proposition however he cut it.

  From the beginning the F-16 squadron had been under the command of Zeev Raz. As originally envisioned, the Ramat David F-16 wing would initially be broken into two squadrons, the 117 under Raz and the 110 under Nachumi, as more F-16s arrived from the United States and more pilots were trained. The mission team, on the other hand, consisted of eight pilots and two backup pilots, made up from the first three conversion teams sent to Hill. After Ben-Amitay’s death, the initial squadron consisted of Raz, Amos Yadlin, Doobi Yaffe, Hagai Katz, Amir Nachumi, Relik Shafir, Ilan Ramon, and Rani Falk. As within any group of very competitive men, there had been some jockeying for position and leadership. By late 1980, Nachumi had been chosen by Ivry to head the second F-16 squadron, the 110.

  Since first conceived, the mission profile had gone through several modelings. At one point, when Begin pressed for an early mission in November 1980, Operations thought they could go with only four aircraft. When word of this came down the line, Nachumi grew agitated, fearing that he and his group would be bumped off the mission. He lobbied Spector hard, then began flying regularly to Tel Aviv and haranguing Ivry and IAF command to include his team in the raid. Day after day Nachumi appeared at Kirya, arguing his case, asking if they had made a decision yet.

  Finally, Ivry, annoyed, snapped at him. “Okay, okay, you’re in. Now go away!”

  Nachumi pointed out that early on, IAF had planned that the mission would be made up of two formations of four planes, one drawn from each squadron, Raz’s 117 and Nachumi’s 110. Nachumi argued that missions were assigned to squadrons, not men, so he and Raz were equal. Raz—and the majority of the pilots—considered himself the mission leader and Nachumi the leader of the second team. This rivalry caused some friction between the pilots. Some on Raz’s team considered themselves one eight-man attack squadron working together. Why split it up? The men found themselves constantly gravitating between Nachumi and Raz. Both were terrific pilots and both had very strong egos. But there was a distinct personality difference between the two. Each had followed a different career path to arrive at command. Nachumi came from Spector’s crack Phantom group in Beersheba in the south. Raz had moved up through northern command fighting in Syria and the Golan Heights and was close to Ivry. Raz was detail-oriented, no-funny-business, acutely sensitive to any challenge to his authority. Nachumi was more outgoing and not at all reticent about his accomplishments and his talents. This unspoken rivalry brought a sharper edge to the inevitable competition between two strong, ambitious leaders and, in turn, their two competing squadrons. It fell to Iftach Spector to play the diplomat, smoothing things over, controlling a rivalry that could actually be healthy by keeping the men focused and finely tuned.

  Spector’s move to force himself into the mission, and going over Ivry’s head to do it, tipped this delicate balance and brought some of those vague, lingering feelings below boiling to the surface. Ivry, understandably, was annoyed. He could not believe that Spector would have the “bad form” to go over his head. It was disrespectful. Raz and Falk were furious. It was likely that Falk, who had rotated into a secured slot when Amitay had died, would be bumped to backup status if Spector were assigned to the mission. He couldn’t help resenting it. The men had spent nearly a year training for the mission together. Now at the last minute the base commander wanted to walk in and grab a spot. Falk thought to himself, “Hey, come on, you had your time. Give it to the kids.”

  As for Raz, he had never held Spector in any particular awe. If anything, Raz was probably a little contemptuous of Nachumi and the others’ reverence for the commander. He respected Spector’s combat record and career as much as the next man, but who was he to think he had the right to simply walk onto Raz’s squadron? He never even approached Raz, the group leader. To add insult to injury, Spector would knock his friend Rani out of the mission.

  Even the men who had more or less been Spector’s disciples—Yaffe, Katz, and Yadlin—felt that adding the commander to the mission at such a late date was not a good idea. Despite his pe
erless abilities as a combat pilot, the fact was, Spector did not have the expertise in the sophisticated F-16 that the other pilots did. And it was not fair to bump one of the men who had trained so long and so hard. As a group, the pilots met with General Ivry and informed him of their opinion.

  Despite the opposition, General Eitan could not bring himself to disappoint his most heralded commander. He called Ivry and, as much friend as superior, asked the IAF head to make room in the mission for Spector. After all, he was already the men’s commander. Ivry relented. But, he insisted, Raz stayed mission leader.

  Ivry informed the squadron leaders in person. Iftach Spector was a member of the Osirak mission.

  “I won’t have him in my squad,” Raz bridled.

  An awkward silence fell among the airmen.

  “He can be my wingman,” Nachumi said.

  Spector was assigned as second-in-command of the second team and as sixth pilot in the bombing run, following second team leader Nachumi. As the senior officer, it was a bit awkward and certainly unconventional for the commander to be under the command of junior officers, but Spector was not going to complain.