Raid on the Sun(66)

Nachumi’s group began its final run, he and Spector in the lead. Nachumi had navigated perfectly—the two lead fighters were exactly thirty seconds behind the number three and four bombers, Yaffe and Katz. The sky above al-Tuwaitha was filled with streaking tracers and gray clouds of exploded AAA. An air-to-air fighter pilot, Nachumi was familiar with one-on-one encounters. But this was more antiaircraft fire than he had ever seen in his life. Ten years later he would be reminded of the scene again while watching CNN’s images of the skies above Baghdad during the Persian Gulf War. The F-16’s threat system still showed no SAM batteries lighted up. But it was literally raining AAA. And it was scary as hell.

Worried about Shafir and Ramon, who would be even more exposed, the second team leader closed the distance between Yaffe and Katz and his plane. Spector, in weld-wing formation, closed along with him. Such in-flight proximity was highly dangerous, but Nachumi decided protecting his seven and eight bombers was worth the risk. “Well, what are you going to do?” Nachumi mumbled to himself.

He looked out the canopy and saw Spector just off his left wing, exactly in position. His eyes switched from the HUD to the dome and back again. He had seen Yaffe and Katz drop their ordnance, but still there was no dust, no smoke. Had they hit the dome wrong? he thought anxiously. Then he remembered that the dome would contain much of the force of the initial explosions. And, of course, the first bombs were on a delayed fuse. Nachumi drove them down, past 3,500 feet. He wanted to be absolutely sure to hit the target. At 3,400 feet he pickled off his bombs, then angled ninety degrees left and began his climb. As his afterburner kicked in, he felt the plane being buffeted about. What the heck? he thought. Was it a SAM? He scanned his instruments. Nothing.

“Let’s get out of here!” he yelled into his radio mouthpiece, not intending the message for anyone in particular.

Spector began his final approach just seconds behind Nachumi. He had been fighting the flu and fever the entire flight. He willed himself to ignore it, but the fever was sapping his strength nonetheless. Spector initiated pop-up, shooting to five thousand feet in seconds. The blood seemed to drain from his head. As he nosed down he felt dizzy, light-headed—and then for a brief moment, he lost track of where he was. He shook it off. Had he blacked out? He wasn’t sure. The colonel continued his dive, struggling to keep his focus on the pipper and the bomb-fall line while at the same time keeping a wary eye out for MiGs. He realized that his lack of training time in the F-16 was a handicap at the moment. The altimeter whirled before him. He followed Nachumi down. But something was wrong. He was not where he was supposed to be. The pipper was not dead on the target and he was at 3,500. At 3,400 feet he pickled off the bombs. As the MK-84s disappeared beneath him, Spector hit the afterburner and shot skyward. Behind him, Osirak quickly fell away, shrinking into a tiny square on the earth below. But it was no good. Spector was far too professional, far too good a combat pilot not to know. He had missed. His bombs had not hit the target. He had failed. The realization came to him like a knife to the gut.

Shafir and Ramon, the final pair, followed immediately behind Spector. They did not see that their commander had missed the target. The sky was too thick with AAA and the unmistakable contrails of shoulder-mounted, Soviet-made SA-7 missiles. Smaller than the radar-controlled SAM-6s, the sleek, heatseeking SA-7s were every bit as deadly. Shafir breathed hard through clenched teeth, the threat receiver a background of dissonant noise. Deadly puffs of clouds continued to mushroom all around him. Ramon spotted an SA-7 streaking by on the right not more than twenty meters from his wing. The sight of the deadly contrail made him uncomfortable, but he was not surprised. All their briefings had told them to expect as much.

Shafir and Ramon continued their approach on final. And then suddenly, the dome beneath them exploded outward in a mammoth cloud of black, acrid smoke followed by spectacular flames leaping hundreds of feet into the air. The delayed fuses dropped by Raz and Yadlin had detonated. Shafir and Ramon were now forced to release blindly into the smoke, hopefully avoiding the shrapnel and debris of the immense conflagration below. Well, Shafir told himself, the number seven and eight spots are always the riskiest; it was the lot they had drawn.

At 3,400 feet Shafir pulled up, followed in sync by Ramon on his right wing. The two pilots released their bombs into the crumbling dome, then rocketed up and away to the running rendezvous with the rest of the squadron at 30,000 feet. As Ramon climbed, the last pilot out, the dome of Osirak erupted below in one final thunderous fireball. Seen in the videotape later, the exploding dome would look very much like a special-effects scene. For the first time in history, a nuclear reactor had been bombed and obliterated.