Ivry meanwhile had anticipated all along that his pilots would be doing their own calculations, trying to guess the target. Though it seemed like overkill to worry so intensely about secrecy, surprise was the single most critical element of the raid—without it the chances of success were very slim. To throw the pilots off, during a briefing Ivry let slip a reference to “Habbaniyah,” an Iraqi airfield west of Baghdad that was home base to Saddam’s squadron of Soviet-made Tupolev fighters that had the range to reach Tel Aviv. He hoped that this red herring would misdirect the pilots. After all, Habbaniyah was a credible threat. But the pilots were already way ahead of him, and by the end of 1980 most of them had quietly decided that the target was somewhere deep inside Iraq—and, God help them, probably nuclear.
SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 1981
1510 HOURS: T-MINUS 00:51
ETZION AIR FORCE BASE, OCCUPIED SINAI PENINSULA
The controller’s voice crackled in his headphones.
“1–3–3 Squadron cleared for takeoff.”
“Roger,” the pilot, a lieutenant colonel stationed out of Tel-Nof AFB in the north, replied.
Six F-15s had taxied out of their camouflaged hangars at the end of the runway and were holding on the tarmac, open to any intelligence satellites from the United States or the Soviet union that might be orbiting overhead. The squadron leader barely gave it a thought. Like his superiors, he knew it was too late for any prying eyes to figure out what they were up to. The pilot returned to his preflight checkoff. The F-15 pilots did not have the luxury of the main attack squadron’s F-16s and their computerized BITS, which automatically isolated and assessed each of the aircraft’s weapons, navigation, electrical, mechanical, and communications systems. Instead, they had to manually check off each system one at a time, flipping switches and waiting for the green lights to blink back, a time-consuming process. As one of the support fighters that would shadow the attack group all the way to target, he was among the few who knew the mission destination. He had never flown into Iraqi territory. Not that it mattered.
His team was ready for takeoff now, an hour ahead of the mission squadron. They would circle west of Aqaba and wait for the eight F-16s to re-form, then follow them into Iraq. His job was to jam Iraqi radar over al-Tuwaitha with the F-15s’ powerful ECMs and engage any MiGs that challenged the attack. Besides four Sidewinder air-to-air and four radar-guided Sparrow missiles, his plane carted 500 rounds of 20mm cannon fire that could be dispensed at the rate of 6,000 rounds a minute in short bursts. Enough to shred a MiG in seconds. At last the squadron leader gave the Go signal. He pulled back on his joystick, hearing the plane’s twin engines rev and feeling the plane vibrate with the power as the first two hunter jets in front of him shot into the air and soared eastward. Following, he hit the afterburners and was pinned to his seat, his plane hurtling heavenward, for now blue, calm, and cloudless.
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.