Raid on the Sun (21 page)

“Here,” he said, offering the official fruit of Iraq to the troops. “Have some of these. You’ll have to get used to them where you’re going.”

The men, including the assembled generals, broke into laughter as each pushed forward to grab a date and share in this final “toast.”

As the men began to gather their kneeboards and file toward the doorway, Ivry called out.

“God be with you.”

The pilots suited up back in the barracks. Each man wore a lot of gear. First the flight suit, then the G-suit, the torso harness, survival gear, and finally, once in the cockpit, the helmet. For a normal flight the special suits were not a problem, but the pilots would be strapped into these uncomfortable combat clothes for nearly four hours. Sleeves that pinched under the arms or a collar that chafed at the neck could be painful and distracting after hours cooped up in a stuffy cockpit. Then each man grabbed two PRCs, emergency radios about the size of a Walkman that sent out a homing signal to the rescue choppers in case they were shot down. Normally a pilot took only one along. But there was nothing normal about this mission. No one wanted to take a chance of being stranded in the Iraqi desert with a dead PRC. The men clipped the radios to their torso harnesses and headed out to the four vans waiting to take them to the hangar.

Outside, the desert air was volcanic hot, the sun an angry white ball burning high above, bleaching the sky a desiccated blue. Raz stared down the runway to the hangar. Sheets of heat waves shimmered off the baking tarmac. The pilots carried their gear into the maintenance center, where crew chiefs and mechanics stole glances at them. Everyone knew that something big was going on, though no one knew what. The pilots signed for their planes and checked the maintenance reports. The F-15 pilots broke off, heading for the camouflaged hangar at the head of the runway that housed their aircraft. The conformal fuel tanks had been bolted onto the fuselages, and each plane was armed with four heat-seeking Sidewinders and four radar-controlled Sparrows as well as some five hundred rounds of 20mm cannon fire.

Raz’s group passed the open-ended green hangar where the four backup F-16s were parked and headed to the eight armed and waiting planes each man had been flying for the last six months—with the exception of Raz and Yadlin, who had swapped. The aircraft had been moved out of the underground hangar and into the hot sun—exposed to the prying eyes of American and Soviet spy satellites orbiting high above the earth’s atmosphere—to avoid any maneuvering and sharp turns around corners. The planes were thousands of pounds overweight and Operations feared the extra pressure could collapse the landing gears.

The pilots climbed out of the vans and walked around their planes checking for hydraulic or fuel leaks, the bomb attachments, tire pressure, and any nicks or dents that might have gone unnoticed. At the tips of each wing were affixed the lethal heatseeking Sidewinder-9L air-to-air missiles, the most up-to-date models that tracked not only the heat from the exhaust systems but the heat caused by the friction of the aircraft flying through air. The pilots couldn’t help but notice that their aircraft looked, somehow, well,
fat.
Indeed, sitting on the hot taxiways, the F-16s looked like overloaded beasts of burden sagging under their lots. Katz worried: Could they really get them off the ground?

Finally, one by one the pilots climbed the metal ladders into the cockpits. Raz’s plane was in the lead. His initial business was to settle in, try to get comfortable. He attached the parachute risers from his ejection seat to his body harness. Next, he plugged his G-suit ring into the cockpit air pump to blow up the protective bladders, which functioned somewhat like automobile airbags. He then snapped on the survival kit, complete with 9mm handgun, first aid, extra water, food packets, bandages, pain pills, even shark repellent—a holdover from standard World War II British protocol. He buckled his seat belt and switched the IFF (identification friend-or-foe) to standby mode, so the radio would not emit any electronic signal and give him away. Then he looked up. The crew chief straddling the ladder handed him his helmet.

“I don’t know where you’re going, sir. But good luck,” he said, slapping Raz on top of the helmet and closing the canopy.

Lined up behind Raz and Yadlin, Doobi Yaffe cranked his air-conditioning all the way up. Sitting in the sun under the glass canopy was like being in a greenhouse. The air-conditioning struggled to defeat the rising temperature inside. Behind Yaffe, Katz pulled on his fireproof gloves. He had cut the tip off the index finger of the left glove so he could see his fingernail. That way he could double-check his oxygen system. If he began suffering hypoxia, or lack of oxygen to the brain, a subtle condition that creeps up on a pilot gradually, making him drowsy and interfering with his reasoning abilities before causing unconsciousness, his fingernail would turn purple.

This was nervous time. Once airborne, instinct and training would take over, forcing out any doubts. Each man had his own way of dealing with it. Spector spent the time looking over his maps, going over the mission in his mind. He thought of it as similar to being an actor on Broadway waiting behind the curtain for his cue. When the curtain went up, there he was: ready to take the stage. As he waited, Shafir considered for a moment his only real fear: not letting the team down, not making the big mistake. As for being killed? Well, that was out of his control.

Like the other pilots, Amir Nachumi was busy running through his checkoff procedures with his crew chief. When he hit the switch to check the electrical system, there was no response. He couldn’t believe it. He flipped the switch again. And again, nothing. He began flipping more switches, rechecking gauges. The plane’s electronics system had failed, including the INS navigation and threat warning. Nachumi called his maintenance chief.

“I’m going to kill you,” he snapped, completely frustrated.

“What’s wrong?”

“I got a no-go on the electronics,” Nachumi said. He was angry.

“Try it again,” the chief said.

“No go.”

He had no choice: he would have to change planes. Unlike Raz, who had so cavalierly switched planes with Amos Yadlin, Nachumi was far more traditional in his attachment to his aircraft. After spending hours and hours in the fighter, depending on it literally with his life, he had begun to think of it as alive. Now the plane he had trained in for months and learned to depend on had failed. What did that mean? Nachumi worried. Was this a good sign or a bad sign?

Nachumi, like so many fighter pilots, was superstitious. Indeed, Spector and Katz had at first balked at taking part in a preflight group photo, thinking it might be bad luck to tempt fate. Nachumi’s mind raced. Ten minutes before takeoff, he would have to get used to an entirely unfamiliar airplane. The bomb-sighting would be slightly different, the plane would handle differently in the air. Shit, he thought. He unbuckled and popped the cockpit, a furnace blast of Negev air pummeling him. He shimmied down the ladder and ran to the Quonset hangar to requisition a backup plane and begin preflight checkoff all over again.

Roaring down the runway, the F-15s began taking off in pairs, the deafening roar of their engines thundering across the tarmac, shaking the ground beneath the maintenance crews. Raz watched Nachumi taxi the new plane onto the runway. He was not happy about the mechanical glitch, but what were you going to do? Things happen. Hopefully, this would be the worst. Once Nachumi was back in rotation, Raz taxied the F-16s to the beginning of the runway, then halted the squadron. The aircraft formed two staggered, diagonal lines. Four tanker trucks pulled up to the planes from the shoulder of the runways, careful to avoid the exhaust of the thrusters. Using hand signals and wearing protective earmuffs, the fuel crews climbed up the wings, dragging the hoses with them. As the planes idled, the crews began the “hot refueling,” topping off the fighters, which had already burned up some four hundred pounds of jet fuel during checkoff and taxiing. A precious eight minutes of flying time.

The crewman outside Yaffe’s plane was having a hard time. For some reason the fuel was not transferring from the tanker hose into the tank of the F-16. The crew chief signaled some mechanical glitch. Yaffe grew anxious. The extra fuel could mean the difference between landing safely back at Etzion or flaming out somewhere over the Saudi desert. I didn’t train an entire year to turn back now, he thought. The hell with it. He waved off the ground crew. Raz looked behind him through the glass cockpit. Yaffe gave him a thumbs-up along with the rest of the pilots.

Raz checked his watch: 1557. He pointed his forefinger down the runway. The ordnance crews pulled the safety pins on the MK-84s, the ground crews, hunched over and holding on to their caps, circled beneath the planes for one final inspection, then Raz and Yadlin began taxiing slowly to takeoff, being careful not to put needless stress on their landing gears. Any sharp dip or angle and the landing struts could simply crumple. The rest of the group followed the two lead planes.

Raz pushed the throttle forward all the way, the asphalt beneath him becoming a blur as the fighter picked up speed down the runway. He shoved the stick into afterburner, heard the engine whine and roar, a plume of exhaust shooting behind him. He passed the 1,000-meter marker. His airspeed was 90 knots. The 2,000-meter mark flashed by. He was at 124 knots. On a routine mission he would be lifting off now. But the landing gear hugged the ground.

I’m too slow, he thought.

He needed to make 180 knots in order to get airborne.

Then 3,000 meters; 4,000 meters. He was still at only 145 knots. Raz’s stomach tightened. He could see the 5,000-meter marker racing toward him. He was running out of runway. He cursed the extra weight. It would have been better to skip the extra fuel and risk flameout and ejecting over the desert than wind up a pile of charred, twisted metal at the end of the runway. He eased the nose back a bit. The plane seemed to slow for a nanosecond, then it thundered forward, finally lifting off at 5,200 meters. His airspeed indicator read 180 knots as the fighter climbed into the blue sky, already leaving the ground shrinking behind him.

Raz untensed. He looked to his side. Yadlin was there, just off his wing. He began a long, slow, banking turn southeast, leveling off for the “running rendezvous,” the rest of the planes already dropping into group formation behind him. They were in a spread formation abreast, boxed in pairs: Raz and Yadlin, Yaffe and Katz, Nachumi and Spector, Shafir and Ramon. The eight fighters screamed east toward Aqaba, tickling the tops of electrical poles, one hundred feet above the ground, heading toward Baghdad and destiny.

Major Rani Falk watched the last of the eight attack planes go wheels-up through the glass cockpit of his F-16, idling at the head of the runway, ready for takeoff had he been called. He had watched the six F-15s flying support and two two-seater F-15s flying Com disappear into the southern skies an hour earlier. In all, sixteen aircraft. It was a bittersweet moment for Falk as he watched the fighters bank south, following in the direction of the F-15s. He felt happy that the mission was finally under way after years of training and preparation, and relieved that his squadron mates had successfully lifted off while flying dangerously overweight. But at the same time, Falk found himself fighting an undeniable disappointment, a longing to be with the fellow pilots he had trained with day in, day out, month after month, for two years.

It was only the luck of the draw—and perhaps some late-in-the-game political maneuvering—that had knocked him out of the first eight. Now, instead of soaring toward Baghdad, he taxied his plane back down into the underground hangar, firing down the Pratt & Whitney engine and popping the canopy. He shimmied down the metal ladder, nodded to the crew techs, and, alone with his thoughts, strode toward the stairway that led up to Operations, where, along with the comm techs, commanders, and generals, he would wait and pray for the return of the pilots. It was the hardest duty he could have drawn.

SUNDAY, JUNE 7, 1981
1644 HOURS (1744 LOCAL BAGHDAD TIME)
AL-TUWAITHA, IRAQ

One hour, three seconds into the mission, the darkening sky lighted up before Ilan Ramon in a phantasmagoria of bright flashes, streaking contrails, and gray puffs of smoke. The skies above the target were pumped full of AAA fire and red tracers streaming in a rising phosphorescent spray from nearly every corner of the shadowland beneath his plane. He had never seen anything like it outside a movie theater. The thin, white contrails, he knew, were probably from SA-7s, shoulder-mounted heatseeking missiles. The larger and deadlier SAM-6s left a wider trail. That was small comfort at the moment. A solid hit in the exhaust from an SA-7 would be every bit as fatal as from a 6. The Iraqi batteries had obviously had enough time to recover from the surprise of Raz and Yadlin’s opening assault and warmed up their antiaircraft radars. Triple-A fire now was more directed and intense, a curtain of showering destruction. More SAMs would follow soon. Ramon quickly checked his targeting display, then pushed the nose of the fighter straight down and into the seemingly impenetrable net of 23mm fire crosshatching beneath.