Yadlin spotted the ancient Euphrates River up ahead. He was stunned. He had never seen such a huge river in his life. It stretched on and on between its shallow muddy banks, flowing lazily past mudflats and sandpits seemingly for miles. No wonder it had figured so prominently in the early history of mankind. Something on the ground up ahead caught Yadlin’s attention. Bizarrely, Iraqi infantrymen on the far bank were waving enthusiastically at the Israelis as they zoomed by overhead, obviously mistaking the planes for their own. What next? He checked to make sure his nose camera was on.
“Now we enter the territory of the bandits,” Yadlin said out loud.
The mission planners had calculated that if the F-16s remained below one hundred feet, Iraqi search radar on the ground could not pick them up any earlier than twelve miles out. But after the F-16s crossed the Euphrates, they would be within easy range of Al Habbaniyah and Al Taqqaddum air bases thirty-five miles north. Yadlin anxiously searched the skies to his right and left. They were empty. But for how long?
Katz, too, was anxious now that they were in the populated areas of the Euphrates. They were flying above a rich agricultural region, with neatly plowed fields, electricity lines, roads, and tiny villages, the lights beginning to go on inside homes and stores in the gathering dusk. The Euphrates River looked low inside its banks. The Syrians must be pumping all the water out, Katz thought.
The F-15s that had shadowed the strike force all the way in from Israel began to disperse to their defensive positions. The two F-15s to the north hit afterburners and quickly climbed to twenty thousand feet to form a barcap, the patrol halo, between Raz’s squadron and the Iraqi airfields to the north. At the same time the two F-15s to the south burned to twenty-five thousand feet, circling on a patrol barrier between the Israelis and the huge Ubaydah Bin al Jarrah air base in the south. Both patrols turned on their powerful Doppler search radars. With lack of ground “noise” (transmission clutter from both military and civilian communications), spotting the radar bloom of MiGs going wheels-up would be easy for the F-15 navigators. As the two wing groups climbed to high altitude, the F-15 chase planes some ten miles behind Raz’s squadron also pulled up to twenty-thousand feet to form a protective umbrella above the Israelis in case Iraq scrambled MiGs from the three airports around Baghdad, including Rasheed and Saddam International. At barcap, the F-15s switched on jamming devices to defeat any SAM radar in the area.
After crossing the Euphrates, Raz pushed back in the cockpit chair to get his butt and back square against the 30-degree slant of the ejection seat. The movement relieved some of the stiffness and got his blood flowing. He also wanted to make sure he was aligned properly in the seat if his plane were crippled by AAA fire. No use surviving if he had his spine snapped in two as his ejection seat shot out of the plane. He swiveled right and left and checked six behind. Everyone was lined up where he was supposed to be. He flipped the switch to arm his bombs and turned on the threat receivers, then activated the VTC video in the nose. His sky was still clear of bandits. Raz was surprised: Operations had predicted that by the time they crossed the Euphrates, Iraqi radar would have picked them up and scrambled MiGs.
He did a quick mental check of the plane: fuel—more than half gone—engine temperature and RPMs—both normal. Electrical systems were positive. He programmed his chaff and flare systems now. During release, as he executed a 7-G turn and climbed at the speed of sound in order to defeat any SAMs chasing his tail, Raz would release his flares and chaff. The flares exploded like gigantic flashbulbs, burning brighter and hotter than the aircraft’s exhaust and, hopefully, confusing any heatseeking SAM-6s. The chaff, thousands of strips of confettilike tinfoil, would also draw off radar-guided missiles fooled by the masking of the plane’s metal signature.
Raz released the throttle with his left hand, then awkwardly stretched that hand across his chest and used it to grab the control stick on the right side of the cockpit. That allowed the right-handed pilot to use his more dexterous right hand to operate the chaff and flare switches behind him. As he strained backward, keeping his eyes forward, Raz concentrated on the control stick. One slip of his “spastic” left hand and he could nose the plane into the ground.
Dammit, Raz thought, fumbling for the switches behind his seat, it would have been nice if they had designed the cockpit so you didn’t have to twist around like a yogi to reach the controls. He had twenty bundles of chaff. He set a computerized program that would eject two bundles of chaff every two seconds during the ten seconds of pop-up, in case a SAM or AAA radar locked onto him during the climb. He programmed the last ten bundles to eject automatically from the tail after he had released his bombs and was thrusting up and away from the target. He turned his attention back to flying. Up ahead he could see lights from a small town.