Raid on the Sun

by Rodger W. Claire

  Second team leader Nachumi had gone ahead of the others to start his plane’s engine and begin checkoff procedures with his maintenance chief. He was running over the switches, checking navigation, weapons, electrical. He looked up to see his chief standing in front of the plane gesturing to him. He was slashing one finger across his throat. Nachumi could not believe his eyes. That was a kill gesture.

  “What?” he yelled into his helmet microphone over the deafening whine of the Pratt & Whitney.

  He was wound up like a spring.

  “It’s a ‘No go,’ ” came the crew chief’s response.

  “Shit!” Nachumi exclaimed.

  The pilots were given the news: The prime minister himself had cancelled the mission. It took a moment for what had been said to sink in. They were stricken. Yadlin was pumped with adrenaline, his mind and body intensely focused, coiled—as though he were in another dimension. Now suddenly the air was let out. He felt as though he had been stabbed. Spector, who’d had missions scrubbed before, immediately worried that this was it—the raid might be called off for good.

  The hundreds of troops stood down, the F-15 pilots were recalled to base, the helicopters sent home. Hundreds and hundreds of man-hours, hundreds of thousands of dollars, wasted. What the hell had happened? Ivry wondered.

  Several hours earlier that Sunday morning, Begin had been interrupted at his home by a special courier carrying an urgent letter from Shimon Peres, the former defense minister and the Labor Party’s candidate for prime minister. Peres had learned the date of the attack the previous evening, May 9.

  Begin read the note.

  May 10

  PERSONAL—TOP SECRET

  Mr. Prime Minister:

  At the end of December 1980 you called me into your office in Jerusalem and told me about a certain extremely serious matter. You did not solicit my response and I myself (despite my instinctive feeling) did not respond in the circumstances that then existed.

  I feel this morning that it is my supreme civic duty to advise you, after serious consideration and in weighing the national interest, to desist from this thing. I speak as a man of experience. The deadlines reported by us (and I well understand our people’s anxiety) are not the realistic deadlines. Materials can be changed for materials. And what is intended to prevent can become a catalyst.

  On the other hand Israel would be like a tree in the desert—and we also have that to be concerned about.

  I add my voice—and it is not mine alone—and certainly not at the present time in the present circumstances.

  Respectfully,

  Shimon Peres

  The letter, stiff and awkwardly worded, was purposefully oblique in case it fell into the wrong hands—especially the Israeli press. “Material” that could be changed referred to the so-called caramelized uranium. “What is intended to prevent can become a catalyst” reiterated Peres’s fears that bombing Osirak would only intensify Arab efforts to achieve a nuclear bomb. “Present time” and “present circumstances” referred to Peres’s conviction that the French elections, being held that very week, would sweep his close friend, socialist François Mitterrand, into the presidency. Mitterrand, far ahead in the polls, had openly opposed Chirac and Giscard d’Estaing’s decision to supply Iraq with uranium.

  Peres pleaded for Begin to delay the raid. In truth, his letter had already accomplished that purpose. Top-secret plans had been leaked, the attack compromised. Deputy Prime Minister Yadin, convinced Baghdad would sniff out their plans, had earlier warned the cabinet: “They’re ready for us.” That prediction could be all too true now. Begin had been convinced all along that Labor would find some way to sabotage any raid on Osirak. Peres’s claim that his objection was only to the “timing” was a red herring.

  “Mark my words,” Begin had told Sharon after the March cabinet meeting. “They would never accept such a decision. All the responsibility of doing this will be ours.”

  Begin was furious. Who had leaked? And how many others knew? He called Eitan, Sharon, and Shamir. All agreed: the mission had to be scrubbed. Begin called Ivry at IAF command at Etzion and ordered the pilots to stand down.

  He would bitterly resent Peres’s May Revolt for the rest of his life. He set about immediately to discover the source of the leak, the “betrayer.” Though it could not be proved, Begin and his supporters were convinced that former defense minister Ezer Weizman had tipped Peres and Labor leader Mordechai Gur the day before. Weizman, in on the planning from the earliest days, had bitterly opposed the attack. He had many friends within the military and in Begin’s government. Learning details of the attack would have been easy for the politician.

  Begin vowed not to make the same mistake twice. From that day on, he announced, any decision on an attack on Osirak would be made by just three men: himself, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and Agriculture Minister Ari Sharon.

  The following week the French duly elected François Mitterrand their president, and he indeed responded to Israel’s objection to France’s nuclear treaty with Iraq. France would no longer engage in the sale of nuclear technology to Iraq, Mitterrand declared. But, regrettably, the country was bound to honor its present agreements with Saddam Hussein. Iraq would receive full delivery of all seventy-two kilos of enriched weapons-grade uranium.

  According to Mossad, it already had.

  A week later Begin met secretly with Sharon and Shamir. Eitan and Ivry were informed that the attack was set for Sunday, June 7, 1981. Ivry felt a great weight taken off his chest. For months, week after week, he had been edgy, ping-ponging mentally: Was the attack on or off? Would this be the Sunday?

  The friction between the two team leaders, Raz and Nachumi, rubbed even rawer under the stress of waiting. Indeed, Raz had begun picking up strange signals from Nachumi. Two days after the mission had been canceled, back at Ramat David, he had been called to Spector’s headquarters. Raz walked across the base and quickly mounted the few steps into the long barrackslike structure housing the command and administrative offices. He passed various open doors and entered the outer vestibule of Spector’s headquarters. A frequent visitor, the squadron leader did not bother to wait for a formal announcement of his arrival. Instead, nodding to the secretarial staff and assistants manning the desks, most of whom were young college-bound kids doing their mandated military service, Raz strode directly into Spector’s inner office and was surprised to discover he already had a visitor. Nachumi stood beside Spector’s desk, leaning in toward the commander. The two of them had been talking softly, careful that their voices did not carry. As Raz entered the room, Spector and Nachumi looked up surprised—and, Raz realized—embarrassed. Neither man had expected to see Raz, that was clear. Raz knew immediately he had interrupted a very delicate conversation. He knew also, with a certainty he might not have been able to readily explain, that the two pilots had been talking about him. An awkward silence hung in the room for an uncomfortably long time.

  Raz said nothing.

  Colonel Spector recovered first.

  “Well,” he said, continuing in a conversational tone as though Raz had been in on their chat all along, “Raz has been squadron leader the whole mission, so he will stay leader.”

  Nachumi nodded, glanced awkwardly at Raz, and left the room.

  Raz stood rooted where he was. What the hell was Spector talking about? Of course he was squadron leader. When was the notion that he would continue as squadron leader ever in doubt? Spector spoke as if it had been somehow debatable—and out in the open! Raz opted against pressing the matter and let the incident pass as some kind of mixup. But privately he was enraged. He could not believe the treachery he had just witnessed. Nachumi, at the last minute and behind his back, had seemingly been lobbying Spector, his mentor, to promote him to mission leader over Raz. Forget the question of insubordination, or that it was General Ivry’s call to decide who was in command, on strictly professional grounds, who would risk the cohesiveness and camaraderie of a combat team facing
a formidable assignment on the eve of the mission—for personal advancement? Indeed, Raz perceived, Nachumi considered Raz and himself co-leaders—it was simply a matter of timing that Raz was first team leader. As he had said, missions in IAF were assigned to squadrons, not a single man. Raz could not believe the gall.

  But Raz put it away in the box. He would not tell anyone on the team what he had witnessed—it would risk the same damage and resentment throughout the entire squadron that he alone was feeling now.

  On Wednesday, June 3, four days before the attack, Yoram Eitan took off in an Israeli-made Kfir fighter for a training exercise in air-to-air combat in the skies above Etzion. Doobi Yaffe had been Yoram’s instructor when he was still a “nugget.” Yoram was not a natural pilot, but he was determined, full of energy, and fearless. And a bit headstrong. During the mock dogfight, Yoram made a radical maneuver to evade his “attacker,” pulling the plane’s nose up to escape the enemy on his tail. The engines did not “flame out,” but the Kfir began stalling, losing airspeed quickly. Suddenly the plane rolled over and began a flat spin, gyrating violently, turning round and round, corkscrewing toward the desert floor. Yoram worked desperately to regain control of his aircraft, fighting the G forces that pinned him to his seat and made the simplest of movements extremely difficult.

  “Neutralize the stick!” the OT instructor radioed Yoram.

  “I’m, ah . . . ah . . . trying,” Yoram gasped, fighting the spin and the dizziness.

  With each revolution his plane lost a thousand feet.

  “Come on, Yoram. Get it stopped!” the instructor yelled through his oxygen mask.

  “I can’t . . . ah . . . I . . . it won’t stop . . . ah . . . spinning . . .”

  “Get out! Yoram!” the instructor pleaded desperately. “You’re getting low. Eject!”

  “Wait, I think . . . I think . . . I . . .”

  “Eject. Eject now!”

  Yoram’s Kfir continued to corkscrew horribly toward earth. Inside the aircraft he was disoriented, fighting unconsciousness, struggling hopelessly with instruments that would not respond.

  Then, no more radio contact. Just a terrible silence. And the telltale black plume of smoke rising from the pale desert floor below.

  As Eitan sat in the meeting at IAF headquarters, a pale, grim-faced aide entered and crossed the room to tell the general the news, his voice little more than a whisper: his son, Yoram, had just been killed in a training accident over Etzion. Eitan swallowed the news, saying little. He left the briefing room and drove straight home to his wife, where the two parents began sitting shivah for their lost pilot.

  Word quickly spread throughout the military. Every pilot at Ramat David was shaken. Yet another reminder that death could come for anyone at any time. But mostly they ached for Eitan, who had always been more like a beloved uncle than their commander and chief. No one said a word, but everyone had the same thought: How bizarre was it that the death of their commander’s son should take place at the very base they were to take off from on the most desperate mission of their lives? What did it mean?

  Ivry grieved for his friend. But he had another problem as well. He had been invited by the United States Navy to attend a gala celebration in Naples, Italy, the weekend of the 7th to mark the change of command of the Mediterranean’s 6th Fleet. The U.S. Navy would fly Ivry into Naples Thursday night, fete him at Friday’s reception and black-tie dinner, then fly him home Saturday morning. The invitation could not have come at a worse time. The outgoing admiral was a longtime friend of Ivry’s, so to beg off would be personally offensive. But, more seriously, considering what was going to happen Sunday, a no-show at the function, in hindsight, would look almost like a betrayal to the Americans. On the other hand, to show up, knowing all along that his own air force was about to violate an arms treaty between the two countries, and to eat, drink, and chitchat at his allies’ expense on the eve of his “perfidy,” as he was sure some would see it, might look like he was rubbing it in. And, of course, while trying to be diplomatic and charming, his mind would be elsewhere, worrying about details of the mission. The flight to Italy was torture as all these thoughts and more ran through Ivry’s head.

  Eitan was supposed to get a final go-ahead from the prime minister on Friday, June 5. Ivry ordered his aide to call him in Naples as soon as he received word: if the raid was still a go, he was to use the code word Opera. Sure enough, late in the afternoon at the gala, as Ivry made small talk, chatting up the navy brass and nibbling without appetite the appetizers served in a grand ballroom overlooking the most beautiful harbor in the world, the IAF general was called away to the telephone.

  “Yes?” Ivry said into the phone, his muscles tensing unconsciously.

  “Your tickets for the Opera have been confirmed for Sunday,” he heard a familiar voice say from Tel Aviv.

  “Thank you,” the general replied, and hung up.

  Ivry didn’t know whether to feel relieved or anxious. He still didn’t know how to feel Saturday morning, when he arrived back home to discover that his wife was having guests in for dinner that night.

  The question of whether or not to tell their wives about the mission weighed heavily on all the men—with the exception of bachelor Ramon. He had been dating a pretty aide in military intelligence named Ophir, and she knew all about the raid. Most of the other pilots decided not to tell. First of all, they had all signed a paper swearing not to reveal details of the mission to anyone. Second, and most important, the pilots did not want to put their wives through the torture of waiting and worrying. What would be, would be. Worrying them to death was not going to change anything. It was especially tough on Raz, whose wife had just given birth to his son.

  Doobi Yaffe’s mother, Mitka, not only knew about the mission, but had known about it long before her son had heard of Osirak. She knew everyone who was anyone because her husband and Doobi’s father had been a famed IAF commander, but also because she had served as personal stenographer to every prime minister of Israel dating back to David Ben-Gurion. She was now Prime Minister Begin’s right hand and had been at every cabinet meeting, taking notes on every detail of every briefing. Mitka would be with Prime Minister Begin on Sunday, awaiting word of the attack. Two days before the mission, on her way to see Raful Eitan in Tel Aviv, Mitka stopped by to visit her son and his wife, Michal. Michal was the daughter of Ezer Weizman, who was not only the former defense minister, but had had a famous falling-out with Doobi’s own father, Avraham Yaffe. The two celebrated military heroes had been best friends—that is, until 1968 when Weizman, then commander of the IAF, refused to recommend Avraham to succeed him, launching a feud between the two well-known Israeli figures that lasted a decade, during which neither would speak to the other. As a result, Doobi and Michal’s unlikely courtship and marriage was something akin to the one between the Capulets and Montagues.

  Yaffe had told his wife about the mission. Mitka Yaffe could see it at once in Michal’s pale expression. The two women never exchanged a word about the impending raid or hinted that they were aware of it. But as she was leaving, Mitka hesitated at the doorway and locked eyes with her daughter-in-law, holding her there.

  “When he is back safely,” she said deliberately, “I will call you and tell you to have a glass of cognac. And you will know . . .”

  Hagai Katz had made up his mind not to tell his wife, Ora. But earlier that first week in June, just nights before he was to fly to Etzion, Ora informed Hagai that they were invited to a family gathering that weekend with her parents.

  “I can’t,” Katz said. “I have an important mission this weekend.”

  “You have to come,” Ora flashed.

  “I cannot,” Katz repeated. “It’s very important.”

  “Oh, sure,” Ora replied sarcastically, convinced Hagai was trying to wriggle out of the dinner with her in-laws. “What are you going to do, bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor or something?”

  Katz nearly fell backward. He stared at his wife, spee
chless. But thankfully, she was much too annoyed to notice.

  Amos Yadlin trusted his wife Karen more than he trusted himself. The two shared everything, even more so after she gave birth to their first daughter in February. So one night before the mission, as the team tied up loose ends at Ramat David, preparing to fly the F-16s south to Etzion on the fifth, Yadlin sat Karen down and told her about the mission he was to undertake on Sunday. He did not need to tell her how dangerous it was.

  When he finished, Karen stared at him, her eyes shiny, filling. But she was not going to cry. She took his hand in hers and squeezed it.

  “Try to survive,” she said quietly. And that was that.

  The Friday before the mission, the pilots flew their F-16s down the Sinai to Etzion one at a time, staggering their flights throughout the day in order not to attract attention. Raz took off from Ramat David in his fighter, No. 107, in the early afternoon for the one-hour flight to Etzion. The centerline tank and the two wing tanks were empty, but he carried two Sidewinders. As he flew above the country, he watched the land below change from verdant towns and kibbutzes to the brilliant colors of the Negev. But what should have been an easy flight was becoming surprisingly laborious. Raz felt that his INS, the inertial navigation system that automatically computed and adjusted the preflight navigation headings, factoring in air-speed and mileage as well as wind and weather, was not accurate. “Washy” was how he thought of it. When he landed, he complained to his wingman, Amos Yadlin.

  “It’s not good,” Raz said. “As the leader, I need a better airplane.”

  “Take mine then,” Yadlin said.

  In truth, Yadlin thought Raz’s complaint was somewhat odd. Training and flying in the same plane for months, a pilot became attached to his aircraft as though it somehow had its own personality, its own “soul.” Indeed, like high-performance automobiles, each plane handled a little differently, had its own quirks and mechanical signatures a pilot grew used to. To simply switch to a new aircraft voluntarily, especially at such a late date, was almost unheard-of. But Yadlin knew the squadron leader was under a great deal of pressure. Yadlin liked his plane, No. 129, but he wasn’t overly superstitious about it, as some pilots were. He was too practical for that. If it would make Raz feel better, then he was willing to switch. It was decided: Raz would fly 129, Amos 107.