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 pronounce 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.