The capture of an Iraqi Mig-21 by the Israeli Mossad

[S'13]

http://mm.iit.uni-miskolc.hu/Data/Winx/stories/steal21.html

The desertion of the MiG-21

16 August, 1966.

These days the MiG-21 F-13 type fighter was the main opponent of the Israeli fighters in the sky. So it was obvious that they must get a piece of it to study it deeply in order to prepare the Israeli pilots and their aircrafts against it. The Mosad, the Israeli secret agency got the job to find an ignored pilot who has good abilities to do the job. The Mosad choose the Iraqi captain Munir Rodfa who accepted the desertion of his plane if his family could go to Israel with him, as well.

Rodfa was determined but a little bit sad too when he got in the MiG-21 No.534. He knew that it is his last flight with the MiG. The 490 litres auxiliary fuel tank fitted under his plane's fuselage ensured the required fuel for the 900 kilometres flight Mediterranean seashore. The pilot started the engine and climbed to 30000 feet after the take off because it was the optimum fuel consumption height for his aircraft. He left the Iraqi airspace without any trouble but over Jordan a pair of Hawker Hunter fighter of the Royal Jordanian Air Force intercepted the MiG which was not arranged. The fighters tried to make a contact with the Iraqi pilot by radio but getting no answer and seeing the insignia of the friendly country they let Rodfa fly away on his way. They might even though that the pilot has a secret mission against Israel. The Iraqi pilot arranged the exact time and date of his arrival with the Israelies in advance so the Israeli Mirage III fighters have already waited for him over the Israeli border. It was important because at that time Syrian MiG-21 fighters several times broke into Israel and attacked Israeli targets and Israeli fighters even shot down one of them. The two Mirages fly in front of and behind the MiG to show the Iraqi pilot the way and the correct landing direction. After the short press conference being held after landing Munir Rodfa disappeared from the public forever. The testing of the MiG-21 started immediately by the lead of Dani Shapira test pilot. After an intensive ground training helped by the Iraqi pilot the Israeli pilot could eventually experience the feeling of flying a MiG-21 in real. During the training air combat the MiG got the 007 register code, Israeli insignia and red streaks to differ him from the real enemy.

Seeing the successful escape of Rodfa another 3 Iraqi pilot escaped to Jordan with their MiG-21s. Pilots got the political asylum but aircraft were handed back to Iraq.

Up until then no western country had managed to lay its hands on a MiG-21, after Israel had studied the aircraft it was sent together with Dani Shapira to the U.S.

http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/vvs/planes/mig21iraq1.jpg
Iraqi MiG-21s in Yugoslavia

[born_to_kill]

Very good read keep it up

[1Cie GevGn]

The Mossad pulled lots of stuff like this off, I once read they had a couple of MTB's or Gunnery boats or something build in France, French found out they were build for the Israeli's, closed the works down, they snuck them out of the post at night, and couple of day's later they resurfaced in Hiafa :)

Also the blueprints for the Mirage were sheduled for burning, the Mossad staged a massive operation to steal them from the courier, copying the blueprints and sending them to Israel.

They did lots of these operations, impressive stuff!

[S'13]

The Mossad pulled lots of stuff like this off, I once read they had a couple of MTB's or Gunnery boats or something build in France, French found out they were build for the Israeli's, closed the works down, they snuck them out of the post at night, and couple of day's later they resurfaced in Hiafa :)

Yes, I even brought an artical about this:

The Cherbourg Boats
By Doron Geller

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The story of the "stealing" of the five Israeli missile boats - which had already been paid for - from the French shipyard of Cherbourg at the end of 1969 is one of great daring, resourcefulness, drama, and ingenuity. Few condemned Israel in the world arena at that time - the massive condemnation Israel was to endure in the world arena came mainly in the wake of Israel's victory in the 1973 War.

The Cherbourg boats were, in Israeli military thinking, essential for the modernization of her navy and the security of the state. The point was vividly brought home one day in October 1967 - a few months after Israel's lightning victory in June.

It was a Saturday, at 5:20 p.m., and the War of Attrition was already in full gear (although the worst fighting occurred in 1969-70). Israeli Brigadier-General Alex Argov was captain of an Israeli-converted vintage World War II British Destroyer, formerly known by the British as HMS Zealous. During World War II the ship "had accompanied British convoys to Russia bearing vital wartime supplies over one of the stretches of water in the war to assist Russia" to survive their common enemy after June 1941, Hitler's Germany. In the 1940's HMS Zealous was a formidable ship. The Israelis had purchased her and renamed the ship the Eilat.

If the Israeli Navy had been debating whether to upgrade her fleet or not, the events of October 21, 1967 definitely influenced her thinking. On that day, as the Eilat was 14 miles off of Egypt's Port Said, two Russian-built Egyptian missile boats lay in wait armed with Styx missiles. The Egyptians had been tracking the Eilat all day with Russian advisers aboard. Only when the Russians were convinced that they could hit the Eilat did they permit the Egyptian seamen to fire on the Israeli ship.

Brigadier-General Argov had to make a quick decision as "Something in the sky caught his eye and he looked up. Two balls of fire hung momentarily at their zenith high on the horizon before making what appeared to be a slow descent down into the Mediterranean." Captain Argov knew he was looking at incoming missiles and with "a sickening sense of dread pressed the general alarm." There were 191 Israeli officers and men aboard the ship, and they began firing at will. It was useless. The two missiles struck the Eilat and nearly split the ship in two. The men struggled to keep the ship seaworthy for the next two hours, increasingly to little avail. Two hours later another missile hit the ship.

Captain Argov gave the order to abandon ship. A fourth and last missile fired at the ship hit the water, and the underwater shock waves injured many of the survivors.

Somehow, of the 190 sailors aboard the Eilat, 152 survived. Of them, 41 were wounded. Forty-seven Israeli sailors were killed.

The sinking of the Eilat was not highly publicized at the time, for reasons of prestige, but its impact was enormous. It galvanized the Israeli Navy into seeking out more and better naval craft, more suited to the modern conditions of missile combat. The day of the great warship - for the Israelis at least (but not for the Great Powers) - was over. Israel would be looking for small and efficient ships able to patrol her shores and undertake offshore operations at high speed, while at the same time able to evade enemy tracking and missiles as much as possible. The new ships would also have to have more offensive capabilities than they previously had - namely, the new generation of ships would need to be equipped with missiles.

The West had few boats of the kind Israel was looking for, "so the Israelis began designing their own boats. These were to be fast and maneuverable, and packed full of on-board instrumentation." The boats were originally supposed to be built in Germany, and indeed production did begin. The Germans were already building the most advanced missile craft until then, called the Jaguar, and the Israelis thought it could be a good match. Israel was also developing her Gabriel missile, which would be perfect for the fast-moving Jaguar missile boats. "The Gabriel missile had an advantage over its Soviet counterparts in its ability to fly low over the sea after launching, and thus avoid detection by radar."

Accordingly, in late 1962 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sent Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres to Germany, "where he met Chancellor Adenauer. Adenauer had agreed to supply Israel with arms as part of an attempt to make reparations for Germany's crimes against world Jewry, and now he signed an agreement as requested to supply Israel with twelve of the Jaguar vessels." They were to be built in German shipyards but Adenauer asked that the deal remain secret, so as not to incur the wrath of Arab countries should they find out.

By the end of 1964 three of the twelve missile boats had been built and delivered from Germany to Israel. But a German member of the government leaked news of the deal to the New York Times at that time. He apparently still harbored Nazi sympathies and did not wish to help Israel.

When the news appeared the Arabs were enraged, and Germany caved in to Arab threats of economic sanctions, and even a boycott, of German goods.

The Germans, however, agreed that the boats could be constructed elsewhere. The Israelis gave the work to Cherbourg shipyards in the southern coast of France. Thus there was little damage incurred by the German renunciation of their agreement to build the boats, other than a lingering feeling that the Germans should have been more considerate of Israeli sensibilities than Arab ones.

In the mid 1960's the French were supplying Israel with perhaps three quarters of Israel's arms. It made good sense to work with the French, and it also gave a boost to Cherbourg's under-employed work force. For the time being everyone was happy.

The Cherbourg shipyard workers had little experience of building ships of this kind, but with the German designs and the Israelis on hand, they were able to begin construction of the ships. The Gabriel missiles were being built simultaneously in Israel - and they would cost more than the ships themselves.

Within a few months "over 200 Israelis were living and working in the port town of Cherbourg." Many of them were French speakers - often Israelis who were born in and emigrated from the French provinces of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The Israelis, with linguistic and cultural affinity with their French hosts, fitted into their surroundings smoothly.

Brigadier General Mordecai Limon oversaw the Cherbourg Project. Limon had served in the Palmach during World War II, and later served in the British Army, where both Palestinian Jews and the British temporarily found a confluence of interests. After the war ended in 1945, Limon participated in the Haganah's naval group running the British blockade of Palestine. He was involved in many daring and courageous operations, and by 1950, when he was only 26, he was "made commander-in-chief of Israel's…navy." Four years later he left the navy in order to study for a Business Degree at Columbia University in New York. With a business background now under his belt, he "played a vital role in Israel's attempts to modernize its armed forces in the late 50's and early 60's."

The first boat to leave Cherbourg did so in April 1967 (it was the fourth ship overall to arrive in Israel, including the three ships delivered from Germany already), and the second left about a month later.

These boats arrived too late to be armed and of use during the Six-Day War of June 1967. But that was inconsequential. An event was to occur soon after with much greater implications. On June 2, 1967, just a few days before Israel's preemptive strike on Egyptian airfields on June 5, 1967, French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle declared that France would no longer supply weapons of "offensive nature" to the Middle East - which basically meant Israel. On the eve of war, Israel was cut suddenly cut off from her major source of arms.

This event may have hastened Israel's decision to make a preemptive strike, in that a hoped-for quick end to the war would not obviate the need for spare parts and a resupply of weapons from the French - which would not be forthcoming.

Mordecai Limon headed an Israeli delegation to Paris "which argued furiously with the (French) government in an effort to get them to honor their commitments." But the French would not. With the end of the war with Algeria and the French withdrawal from her former Arabic-speaking provinces in North Africa a few short years before the 1967 War, France was interested in rebuilding her relations with Arab states and assuring a free supply of oil and economic concessions in the Middle East. Israel only figured into their calculations negatively.

But no one seemed to have noticed the embargo in Cherbourg. Two more boats sailed for Israel in the Fall of 1967. But things took a turn for the worse. On December 26, 1967, Palestinians attacked an Israeli aircraft at Athens airport. In retaliation, two days later Israeli commandos attacked Beirut airport and blew up 13 Lebanese aircraft on the ground.

French Premier de Gaulle was enraged. He "declared that the French arms embargo would now be total." This meant the Cherbourg boats too.

Mordecai Limon immediately sent Defense Minister Moshe Dayan news of the total embargo. Dayan was one of the many who were deeply disappointed by the change of relations between de Gaulle and Israel. In the 1950's, Dayan had agreed with Ben-Gurion when he called de Gaulle "'a true friend, a true ally.'" De Gaulle "had sent Dayan a personal letter of congratulations on his book The Sinai Campaign 1956."

Now de Gaulle was refusing to remove the embargo from the boats that had already been paid for by Israel.

Three more missile boats were almost complete in Cherbourg Harbor. On January 4, 1969, a week after de Gaulle made news with his announcement of the complete embargo on weapons bound for Israel, small crews made their way onto the boats. The Israeli crews spent three hours getting them ready. When all was set, they "raised the Israeli flag and set off. No one challenged them. They simply sailed into the English Channel and never returned."

The French Minister of Defense demanded to know what had become of the ships. Mordecai Limon responded: "'They were given orders to sail to Haifa. They belong to us.'" Prime Minister de Gaulle was furious. So were others in the French Cabinet. But they got little help from the locals in the French coastal town of Cherbourg. "In Cherbourg, naval authorities and customs men simply shrugged their shoulders. By an extraordinary coincidence, no one seemed to have read a newspaper, watched television or listened to a radio during the preceding days. Said one of the local people: 'We did not know anything of the embargo.'" Israel was lucky to have made some firm friends among the local population.

Officials in Cherbourg "claimed that they first heard of the embargo in a letter of instructions received from Paris on (January) 6th - 2 days after the boats had left. They produced documents and a statement from the post office supporting their claims." They said something must have been wrong with the postal service.

While accusations flew between the government in Paris and the locals in Cherbourg, construction continued on the last five missile boats "as if nothing had happened." Still, French naval and customs authorities were bothered by claims of negligence and kept a sharp eye on the last remaining boats.

In the summer of 1969, Mordecai Limon, still in France, "renounced all further Israeli interest in the boats and opened negotiations with regard to compensation." But the Israelis purposely quibbled over details of the negotiations for months. Meanwhile, construction of the boats continued, and an Israeli team remained in Cherbourg.

The Israelis, of course, had no intention of renouncing their boats, and had every every intention of getting them. The question was how to do so - and legally, because Israel did not want to worsen the already aggravated relations between France and herself over the issue.

On the other hand, the War of Attrition was by then in full swing, and the Egyptians had no difficulty in obtaining advanced armaments from the Russians. Meanwhile, 5 missile boats remained in Cherbourg Harbor, and Israeli pre-paid orders for Mirage aircraft went unfulfilled.

Israel decided to get the boats, but in a way the French would not suspect.

In November 1969 a man named Martin Siem came to visit Felix Amiot, the French supervisor of the missile boats in Cherbourg, and expressed an interest in purchasing the boats. He presented himself as a Norwegian shipping owner, who was involved in oil exploration off the coast of Alaska. He claimed his company was based in Panama.

The two quickly closed the deal, and the French government approved it.

Government officials didn't check the deal as clearly as they might have. The Panamanian-based Norwegian firm had in fact only been created a few weeks before. Martin Siem, who was in truth a very big shipping magnate in Norway, was friends with an Israeli shipping magnate named Mila Brenner. Brenner persuaded Siem to work as a front man on behalf of Israel.

It seems quite likely that the French ministerial committee assigned to examine all French arms exports must have contained at least one, if not several, people who were sympathetic to Israel and were willing to help her get the missile boats. This would seem to be so because the cover story Israel used seemed highly improbable. But "there was nothing the Israelis could think of which would make more sense." As Stewart Steven writes: "These were missile boats, and there was no way that fact could be disguised."

But the French were apparently eager to get rid of these boats and their problems quickly, and at the same time they would be paid enough to cover the costs of repaying Israel. Moreover, there was even a clause in the contract that affirmed that the boats could not be re-exported. From the French point of view, this meant the boats would not find their way into Israeli hands.

Young sailors began arriving in Cherbourg. It was explained to the locals that they were Norwegians, part of the team that had purchased the ships, which also explained why so many were blonde-haired and blue-eyed. The fifty or so young men were in fact Israelis, perhaps with backgrounds in Nordic countries, but Israelis nevertheless.

Meanwhile, about 70 other Israelis remained in Cherbourg. No one seemed to question their presence. They even reserved space at a local restaurant for a festive meal on Christmas Eve - so as to give the impression that they weren't going anywhere.

The Mossad plan was to take the boats on Christmas Eve, when all of France would be celebrating and it seemed very unlikely that many people would be paying attention to the goings-on at Cherbourg Harbor.

Cherbourg residents began to get used to the "Norwegians" and the more veteran Israelis as well. Even so, there was some odd behavior a discerning citizen could recognize. As Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan, and Eli Landau write in The Mossad: Inside Stories, some locals "noticed that some of the 'Norwegians' were such accomplished linguists that they included Hebrew among their repertoire of languages." The 'Norwegians', as we saw, were really Israelis.

Ezra Kedem, a naval officer who had been involved with the taking of three of the Cherbourg boats in January 1969, was there again in December. He scanned the harbor and the sea beyond with high-powered binoculars. He peered at the two channels used by ships coming to or leaving Cherbourg. The more commonly used western channel was 65 feet deep. The eastern channel was used less often, "not only because it was narrower than the other, but because of the unstable submerged rocks which had accumulated in it for years." The Israelis had used this channel when taking out the three boats in January. Radar was unable to detect every nuance of that channel - a fact Ezra Kedem knew from his conversations with the French authorities.

The Israelis would use the same channel again this time.

By late afternoon, about 20 Israeli sailors were aboard each of the five boats. But a storm had arisen and a strong wind was blowing. These were bad conditions for any ship, but even more so for the missile boats, which were not designed for such conditions. But there was no choice. They had to sail that night.

As the engines started up around 9 p.m., seats reserved for 70 Israelis at the local restaurant we mentioned above remained unfilled, and the meals uneaten.

French Intelligence had noticed the many unwarranted coincidences in the previous few weeks, but either they or their superiors decided not to take action against the Israelis. At some point on the night of December 24/25, 1969, the five missile boats engined their way out of the harbor into the English Channel.

Two men came to watch the last boats leave Cherbourg. One was Mordecai Limon. The other was Felix Amiot, the French supervisor of the construction of the ships at Cherbourg. He had concealed it, but he had known about the Israeli operation from the beginning.

Amiot was not the only one who participated in this "conspiracy of silence." In a "dockside cafe, the barman remarked to customers huddled over their glasses of red wine: 'I see the Norwegians have left for Alaska.' His audience roared with laughter."

On December 26 local and then international news picked up wind of the story. The French government soon knew what had happened and were furious again. But with the boats on the high seas already, they recognized there was little they could do. Nevertheless, the French Foreign Minister, Maurice Schumann, did summon two Israeli diplomats to his office in the Quai D'Orsay. He had just returned from a tour of Algeria "where he had promised friendly relations and large supplies of armaments in return for Arab oil." And then the Israelis took the Cherbourg boats. Schumann was sure that the Arabs would see it as French collusion in the matter, and he felt humiliated. He warned the Israeli diplomats that if the boats did show up in Israel, "the consequences will be very grave indeed…"

The Israeli government did not accept direct responsibility at first. The boats did receive attention on the high seas however, as the sailors aboard viewed a myriad of French Mirages flying overhead. Later they encountered American and even Soviet ships. But the boats motored on to Israel unimpeded. As the ships approached the shores of Israel, an escort of Israeli fighter planes accompanied them.

They were safe then, and they were received with public jubilation when they arrived in Israel.

There were repercussions in France. Mordecai Limon, who had lived in France for seven years, was asked to leave. Two French generals were dismissed from their posts for their part in approving the sale of the missile boats to the fictitious Norwegian/Panamanian firm. Felix Amiot was blamed for his part in the affair, but he vigorously defended himself. "'Security is not my problem. My job was to build ships. I got along very well with the Israelis, but as far as I know that is not a crime.'"

The citizens of Cherbourg continued to keep quiet about the whole affair. And their silence - which the French government was well aware of - was a boon to Israel, for without it she may never have gotten the boats of Cherbourg.

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/Cherbourg.html

Also another example of Israel providing the west with Soviet technology is the snatching of the Soviet radar...

December 26th-27th 1969 - Operation "Rooster"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The War of Attrition raged along the Suez canal from the end of the Six Days War in 1967 until a ceasefire agreement in 1970. The Egyptian military effort was supported by Soviet shipments of military equipment which was of great interest to Israeli intelligence. The IDF had used equipment captured during the Six Days War to better deal with enemy threats, using captured radars to learn the weaknesses of the Egyptian air defence and to develop electronic warfare methods. The aqcuired knowledge was of great value and gave the IAF the edge over enemy air defences, yet by 1969 it was becoming apparent that electronic warfare and other methods used to trick Egyptian radars were becoming less effective and that Israeli operations were being hampered by earlier detection of incoming aircraft.

Newer radars had obviously arrived in Egypt and an effort was under way to learn how to deal with this new threat. The break came after an air defence array destroyed during a september 1969 armour raid came back on line in a different configuration, much harder to penetrate. (the armour raid had actually used captured Soviet tanks and armoured personnel carriers to operate an entire day inside Egyptian territory.) Reconaissance missions were quickly launched to photograph the new air defence array and soon enough a new P-12 Sovier radar was located on the beach of Ras-Arab. The immediate response was to destroy the new radar station with an aerial strike, but the attacking aircraft were stopped shortly before takeoff when an idea to capture the entire installation came up.

Nicknamed "Rooster-53", the operation was planned in just a few days, beginning on December 24th. After getting approvement from the IDF chain of command, the details and mechanics of the operation were soon ironed out and the forces involved began their training on radars captured during the Six Days War. The helicopters selected to carry the radar station to Israeli territory were the new Sikorsky CH-53 Yasur which had only arrived in Israel shortly before. These were the only helicopters deemed capable of carrying the entire radar station, estimated at 7 tons.

The operation was finally launched at 21:00 on the eve of December 26th, 1969. A-4 Skyhawks and F-4 Phantoms began attacking Egyptian forces along the western bank of the Suez canal and Red Sea. Hidden by the noise of the attacking jets, three Aerospatiale Super Frelons, carrying Israeli paratroops, made their way west towards their target. Making their approach carefully in order not to be spotted beforehand, the troops surprised the light security contingent at the radar installation and quickly took control of the site. By 02:00, december 27th, when the paratroops had taken apart the radar station and prepared the various parts for the CH-53s, the two Yasurs were called in from across the Red Sea. One CH-53 carried the communications caravan and the radar antenna, while the other took the heavier, 4 ton radar itself. The two helicopters started making their way back across the Red Sea to Israeli controlled territory.

The 4 ton radar caravan was actually heavier than the CH-53 was designed to carry and soon endangered the safe completion of the operation. The cables connecting the radar to the helicopter were streching the ribs of the aircraft which in turn caused a hydrolic pipeline to rupture. Faced with either releasing the radar or loosing control of the aircraft and crashing, the captain of the helicopter managed to cross the water line into Israel. With the last of its Hydrolic pressure, the Helicopter set down the radar and landed besides it. The second CH-53 which had already arrived with its lighter load, was sent back to retrieve the radar from the crash landing site. Once again the heavy load almost caused the helicopter to crash but the radar was finally delivered to the designated point, into the hands of awaiting intelligence specialists.

Although an attempt was made to conceal the mission and its success, the operation was made public a week after it took place following its publication in foreign press. The radar itself was studied thoroughly and provided the IAF with new countermeasures against the Egyptian air defences, removing a threat to Israeli air superiority over the Suez Canal. It was later handed over to the USA, the same as other equipment captured before.

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2848/operate3.htm

[1Cie GevGn]

awesome reads, all of them ty woot

[MolliG]

The MiG...

http://www.iaf.org.il/sip_storage/files/4/17344.jpg

In 1965, in the course of a working meeting between IAF Commander Ezer Weizmann and Mossad chief Meir Amit, Weizmann expressed his interest in seeing a MiG-21 on Israeli soil.

The MiG-21 was, at the time, the most advanced plane in the Arab air forces. It was the pride of the Soviet aircraft industry and, to the West, a mystery. The bits of intelligence that had been received about it were of dubious quality. The IAF wanted to examine the plane from up close and find out what its weaknesses were.

The Mossad began carrying out strenuous intelligence efforts, aimed at finding a pilot who would defect to Israel with a MiG-21. Its agents eventually found Munir Radfa, an Iraqi MiG-21 pilot. Radfa agreed to defect to Israel in return for a sum of money - in the tens of thousands of dollars - as well as the evacuation of his family from Iraq, and its resettlement in Israel.

The Mossad and IAF prepared for the complicated operation under a heavy veil of secrecy. On August 9th 1966, Radfa announced, in a coded message, that he was ready to defect. On the morning of August 16th 1966, Mirage squadron commander Ran Peker and Shmuel Shefer, Deputy Commander of Tel Nof IAFB, were seated in their Mirages, ready for orders to take off. They had not been made privy to the secret operation, but were scrambled to meet Radfa's jet.

In an interview with the IAF Magazine, Ran Peker told the tale thus: "At 20,000 feet I first saw the silver-colored MiG-21 flying at medium speed towards Ashdod-Ashkelon. Me and my number two quickly joined it in a tight formation. We were about 15 meters behind it, flanking it on both sides. I took a closer look at the plane. It had Iraqi Air Force insignia on its fuselage and wings. The pilot wore a white helmet. We could not see his face because of the dark sunshade. He descended slightly, headed towards the IAF base, decelerated, and lowered his landing gear".

It was only after Radfa had landed that the Israeli pilots were told he had been expected. The Mossad decided not to let it be known that the defection had started from an Israeli initiative, and made up a cover story. They faked a letter, supposedly written by Radfa, in which he asked for political asylum in Israel, explaining that he much of his service in the Iraqi Air Force had been spent bombing the Kurdish minority, and that he could no longer stand to carry out this cruel task. The letter explained that he had decided to defect to Israel because he feared that defection to an Arab country would end up in his being returned to Iraq.

Radfa was united with his family, and agreed to go along with the cover story. He repeated the story in a press conference, and the public in Israel and the West believed it.

The IAF began studying the plane. The first to fly it was - who else - Danny Shapira, the IAF's veteran chief test pilot. Radfa told an IAF technical crew what the different Russian markings in the cockpit signified. Most of the systems in the MiG were inside sealed housings, because the Russians had assumed that the plane's active lifespan would be short and its components would never require thorough maintenance.

The systems in the cockpit were bulky and unwieldy. The pilot's view of the outside world was almost completely blocked off, and turning his head sideways was difficult. The Russians believed that the pilot should look forward at all times.

The plane's ejection seat rockets and its oil were changed, the wheels were checked - and it was ready to fly. In the air, Danny Shapira discovered that the MiG-21 was a powerful bird. When taking off simultaneously with a Mirage, the MiG shot ahead and accelerated better, in both subsonic and supersonic speeds. Its drawbacks became apparent at low altitude high speed flight: the high pressure on the rudders limited the plane's maneuverability, which - under those conditions - was not much better than a Piper's.

In the course of the test flights, Shapira gradually discovered the areas in which the MiG-21 could be outperformed by Mirages. He imparted his discoveries to pilots from the different squadrons, advising them to try and engage the MiG-21 in specific altitudes and speeds, which would put the MiG-21 at a disadvantage. In case of a dogfight, he recommended that the pilots try to hit the MiG-21 just behind the cockpit. This was where the self-ignition fuel tank, compressed air and oxygen tanks were located, and a hit from a single shell in that part of the plane would be enough to blow up the plane. The IAF's pilots followed Shapira's recommendations in the course of the Six Day War, and later confirmed that his description of the MiGs' advantages and weaknesses had been accurate.

Shapira also recommended that the captured MiG-21 be painted red and white, so that no IAF pilot would ever mistake it for an enemy MiG-21. The captured plane almost went into combat in the spring of 1967. At the time, a mystery enemy plane, which seemed to be a MiG-21, made occasional appearances on Israeli radar screens. It used to cross the Jordanian-Egyptian border over Eilat, and the IAF Staff was concerned that by the possibility it was taking reconnaissance photographs of the Israeli 7th Regiment, which was arrayed along the border with Egypt. The Mirages that had been scrambled towards had not even been able to make eye contact with it, and Shapira suggested putting the MiG-21 - which had better acceleration than the Mirage - on interception alert. The green light was given. The MiG was equipped with Shafrir air-to-air missiles and shells, and Shapira sat in the cockpit for three days, awaiting the moment in which he would be scrambled to meet the MiG. But the mystery MiG never showed up.

Two years later on, the MiG-21 was turned over to the US Air Force. In 1982, Brig. Gen. Ya'acov Turner, who headed Personnel command and had begun work on creating the IAF Museum, asked the USAF to return the gift. The Americans sent a MiG-21, but it turned out to not to be the original MiG. They were appraised of their mistake, and sent another MiG - but that was not the original one either.

Munir Radfa emigrated to a Western country and died in 1998. The real story behind the defection could then be made public.

www.iaf.org.il

[S'13]

Stealing a Soviet MiG
By Doron Geller

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From 1952-63, Isser Harel directed both the Shin Bet (the Israeli internal security service) and the Mossad (for foreign operations). In early 1963, he was replaced by a newcomer, Meir Amit. At first Amit was not accepted by Mossad operatives loyal to Harel, but after a shaky start, marked by some lack of cooperation and trust, he asserted his leadership over the organization. Even those who had fiercely opposed his entry as the new head of the Mossad in place of Harel grew to respect, admire, and like him. Meir Amit turned out to be a great operations chief. Under him and Military Intelligence (Aman) chief Aharon Yariv in the 1960's, Israeli intelligence turned out some of its most amazing successes. One of these successes had a decisive impact on the outcome of the Six Day War in June 1967 - the stealing of a Soviet MiG-21.

Soon after assuming leadership of the Mossad on March 25, 1963, Meir Amit consulted a great number of military men in order to spell out Mossad objectives, and ask what they felt would be the Mossad's most valuable contribution to Israeli security. General Mordecai (Motti) Hod, commander of the Israeli Air Force in 1963, (and for the following few years), told him to bring a Soviet-made MiG-21 to Israel.

It is difficult to determine if Motti Hod really believed such a feat could be pulled off. Ezer Weizmann, who took over command of the Israeli Air force from Hod, told Amit the same thing shortly before the Six-Day War. If it could be done, the Israelis would then have access to the secrets of the most advanced fighter planes the Arab states possessed at the time - and according to the Russians, the most advanced strike aircraft in the world.

The Russians began introducing the MiG-21 into the Middle East in 1961. By 1963, when Amit took over the Mossad, it was an essential part of the Egyptian, Syrian and Iraqi Air Forces arsenals. The Russians introduced the aircraft under maximum secrecy and security. The Russians "had made it a condition of supplying the aircraft that they should be responsible for security, crew training and maintenance." Few in the West knew much about the MiG-21 - but feared its capabilities.

The Russians, of course, were aware of the risks they were taking by stationing MiG's outside of their own borders in the service of foreign armies. Security was thus extremely tight - and the Russians were often responsible for it. This in turn bred resentment among certain elements of the their Arab beneficiaries, who were sometimes angered by the greater authority the Russians exerted at their own Syrian, Egyptian or Iraqi air bases than they did themselves. Still, appointment to an MiG-21 squadron "was the highest honor that could be granted to a pilot. These were not the kind of men who could be bribed or would talk loosely in public. As a result, neither Mossad nor Military Intelligence had made any progress at all." They had tried a few times before. Through the services of an Egyptian-born Armenian by the name of Jean Thomas, the Israelis had tried to pay an Egyptian Air Force pilot 1 million dollars to defect to Israel with his MiG-21 in the early 1960's. The pilot refused, Jean Thomas and a number of accomplices were caught, and Thomas and two of his accomplices were hanged in December 1962.

Another attempt to convince two Iraqi pilots to defect to Israel didn't work either. But the third attempt did.

"The Israeli military command had always placed a premium on complete familiarity with every weapon their enemies might use against them in combat. One of the first to emphasize this was General Dan Tolkowsky, the commander who built up the Air Force in the early fifties. He said again and again that 'It is a basic principle of warfare that to know the weapons the enemy has is already to beat him.'" Tolkowsky constantly pressed for this kind of information. So, as we saw, would his successors Mordecai Hod and Ezer Weizmann as commanders of the Israeli Air Force.

The Israeli efforts to accumulate information on potential enemy plans and equipment is of course vital for her national defense. But it has, and undoubtedly continues to be, vital for barter with the United States as well. In Israel, the United States has an ally who has often provided Intelligence far more in-depth than their own, especially about soviet penetration of the Middle East in the 1960's and 1970's. In return, the Americans have often been willing to provide Israel with the latest military equipment which under other circumstances they might not have been willing to provide.

It is true that as early as the 1956 Suez War, the Israelis found an abandoned Russian plane abandoned by its Egyptian pilot, as the Egyptians hastily fled before the rapidly advancing Israeli Army.

This was a major coup. But its effects soon wore off as the Russians introduced the more advanced, and unknown, MiG-21 into the Syrian, Egyptian and Iraqi Air Forces.

Israeli Intelligence went through its options; "bribery, intercepting a plane at its unloading point in an Arab country, planting an agent at an airbase…" But the Mossad came to the conclusion that it would be best to try and persuade an Arab pilot to defect to Israel.

In the event, the Israelis got a free tip-off from an unexpected source without initiating a thing; an Iraqi Jew by the name of Joseph indicated that if Israel wanted an MiG-21, he could probably arrange it. This was a strange development. Most Iraqi Jews had been flown to Israel in a massive airlift in the early 1950's. Perhaps 1000 or even less remained of a community which prior to the early 1950's numbered well over 100,000 Jews.

Joseph had grown up as a poor Jew and had been indentured to an Iraqi Maronite Christian family at the age of ten. Although he never attended school or learned to read and write, he, like the biblical Joseph, rose to prominence in this non-Jewish family's household. No decision was taken without him being consulted. He was present at all family meetings, and his was often the last word on any family decision. He had risen to be a central figure in the family's affairs whom they all looked up to, admired, respected, and loved.

When he was almost 60, however, during a quarrel with the real head of the household, Joseph was told that without the family he would have had nothing. Although the Christian Maronite soon apologized, Joseph didn't forget it. He decided then and there to explore his "otherness" - his Jewish identity. This was something he had hardly given thought to before. He began to learn about Judaism and Israel. Although he maintained his loyalty to his adopted family, he also felt equally loyal to his newfound concern for Israel. Late in 1964 he contacted Israeli officials in Tehran (until 1979 Israel had a good relationship with Persian, non-Arab Iran) and Europe. He had something important to tell them.

Israel, as a Jewish state in the Middle East, has always cultivated non-Arab nations on the periphery of the Middle Eastern world - such as the Turks and until 1979, Iran. Israel also actively cultivated minorities within Arab-Moslem nations. Israel has made discreet intelligence contacts over the years with the Druze sect (primarily in Syria and Lebanon), the Kurds in Iraq and elsewhere and the Maronite Christians and other Christian sects throughout the Middle East. In the early 1980's Israel tried to form a full-fledged alliance with the large but minority Christian Maronites in Lebanon.

In early 1964 Israel soon had contact - through Joseph - with a Maronite Christian pilot in the Iraqi Air Force. The family felt disaffected with their lot. The father felt frustrated by the increasing pressures the Iraqi government was imposing on him and other Maronite Christians. Some of his friends had even been imprisoned and he was finding it difficult to manage his business. He mentioned to Joseph that he would like to leave the country.

After Joseph first contacted the Israelis, there were many in Israel who preferred to drop the issue as unrealistic. But not Meir Amit. Even when Joseph began demanding more money and many in Israel pegged him as a con-man, Amit pursued it. He had an ally in Yitzhak Rabin, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Armed Forces on the eve (and during) the Six Day War. They contacted a top agent in Baghdad, an American woman, and either on Israeli orders or on her own initiative (sources conflict) she decided to draw out Munir Redfa - a Christian Iraqi air force pilot and a member of Joseph's adopted family.

The American woman was a Mossad agent (it is not clear if she was Jewish) who was not only lively and intelligent but beautiful as well. She mixed in easily in high social circles wherever she went. According to one source, she initiated the contact with Munir Redfa at a party, where the two immediately hit it off. He told her he was a patriotic Iraqi, but he "found himself in violent disagreement with the current war being waged by his government against the minority Kurdish tribesmen in northern Iraq." In the 1960's as in the 1990's, the Kurds tried to maintain their independence in the Arab (and Turkish) world that did not wish to give it to them. As a minority Christian, Munir Redfa was greatly troubled by the fact that he, as a deputy commander of a MiG-21 squadron, was one of those who was asked to lead bombing missions against the almost defenseless Kurds. According to Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan, and Eli Landau, Redfa "even confessed a 'sneaking admiration' for the Israelis, who were 'so few against so many Moslems.'" There were other things bothering him as well. He had been passed over as commander of his squadron, he was stationed far from his home in Baghdad, and "was allowed to fly only with small fuel tanks, because he was a Christian." The American woman listened. She continued to see him and their intimacy, despite his marriage and several children, grew.

She exploited the connection to suggest a holiday in Europe in July 1966. He agreed. After a few days there, she "suggested that Munir fly to Israel with her. She had friends there who might be of service to him." She pulled out a brand new passport and tickets.

He then knew that this had to have been planned from the start, and she hadn't been attracted to him for who he was. But he also knew that she was making an offer that could be of great benefit to him. Not only would he be through with the bombing missions he so disagreed with - the Israelis would be paying him1 million dollars. It was as attractive as it was dangerous.

Munir wanted to see that not only his wife and children would be taken safely out of Iraq, but his parents and the rest of his extended family as well. Joseph would see to that. Joseph was concerned that of each family member knew that they were going to leave, it was inevitable, due to human nature, that someone would mention the fact to the wrong person, and the whole plan would go awry. Therefore many of the family members were never even told they were going to leave Iraq. As for Munir Redfa himself, not only did the Israelis agree to pay him very well and grant full protection to his family, but they told him that they would provide him "with Israeli citizenship, a home, and a job for life."

Munir Redfa's mind was made up. Mordecai Hod, the commander of the Israeli Air Force, met him and went over the escape plan with him. He would fly a zig-zag route to Israel to avoid Iraqi and Jordanian radar. IAF commander Hod told him: "'You know how dangerous this is going to be. The flight is 900 kilometers. If your own colleagues guess what you're up to they may send planes to blow you out of the skies. If they don't succeed, the Jordanians may try. Your only hope is to remain calm and follow this route. They do not know it, we do.'" Hod continued; "If you lose your nerve you are a dead man. Once you have left your ordinary flight path there is no turning back." Redfa seemed aware of this and responded simply; "'I will bring you the plane.'"

For the remainder of his stay in Israel Munir Redfa and his Israeli handlers went over his planned escape again and again. "He was amazed to see that they knew almost as much about the goings-on at his airbase as he did. They knew the names of all the personnel, both Russian and Iraqi, and the layout of the entire base. They knew minutely the routine of training flights: long flights on certain days, short on others."

He would have to pick a day when he would be permitted to go on a long-range flight.

Redfa and the American woman went back to Europe and from there to Iraq. Soon members of Redfa's family began leaving the country; one as a tourist, another for medical treatment…

Munir Redfa set his date for August 16, 1966. The Israeli Air Force would be expecting him on one of a number of given days in August. He carried on his business as usual as best he could with co-workers he would never see again. He asked the ground crew to fill his tanks to capacity, something the Russian advisors generally had to sign for. But the Iraqis disliked the Russian advisers, who seemed to hold them in contempt. This worked to Redfa's benefit. As a star pilot, they were to happy to obey his orders, rather than those of the Russians.

He took off. After heading out towards Baghdad, he veered off in the direction of Israel. The ground crew radar picked up a blip on the screen heading west and they frantically radioed him to turn around. He didn't. They warned him they would shoot him down.

He turned the radio off.

Hundreds of miles away Israeli radar picked up the blip on the screen. They sent up a squad of IAF Mirages to escort him. He went through his prearranged signals and they flew alongside him to a base deep in the Negev Desert.

That day, "Mossad agents hired two large vans and picked up the remaining members of the pilot's family, who had left Baghdad ostensibly to have a picnic. They were driven to the Iranian border and guided across by anti-Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas. Safely in Iran, a helicopter collected them and flew them to an airfield, from where an airplane took them to Israel."

Newspapers all over the world carried the sensational story of an Iraqi pilot who had defected with his MiG-21 to Israel. "Like all news stories, it stayed in the papers a few days (with constantly shrinking headlines) and was soon forgotten by most people...Among those who did not forget were military leaders of the United States, France, Britain and other powers. They pressed the Israelis for a glimpse of the aircraft, the first to fall into the hands of a nation friendly to their interests..."

The Russians were furious. Their air power secrets were seriously compromised. They threatened the Israelis ferociously and demanded the plane back.

The Israelis, of course, did not return the plane. They did not, however, turn it over to the United States for the time being in order to temper Russian rage.

Moreover, it diminished the KGB's - and of course the Iraqis' - prestige. Redfa was not an unbalanced cadet, as they may have preferred to believe, but "one of the country's best pilots, and he had been very thoroughly screened by Soviet and Iraqi security before rising to his position as an elite air force pilot - even if he did, as a Christian, face certain drawbacks.

The Israelis did not divulge their part in Munir Redfa's defection for quite some time. It took years for the Russians to put together how the theft of the MiG had been arranged. They assumed from the start that the Mossad was behind it. In this they were correct.

A few months later the IAF did loan the MiG to the United States for testing. It was an essential and very important part of American strategic capabilities. They US Air Force used the MiG in simulated dogfights with the intention of gaining as much insight into the Soviet plane's capability that they could.

For the Israelis the benefit of possession of the plane was even more immediate. In an April 7, 1967 dogfight with the Syrians, the IAF shot down six Syrian MiG's to no Israeli planes. In the June 1967 War, the Israeli Air Force commanded overwhelming air superiority over the Syrian and Egyptian MiG's. Not a little had to do with the fact that an MiG had been flown to Israel less than a year earlier with the connivance of Israeli Intelligence.

Munir Redfa came to Israel with his family and was given a new job and a new life. The American woman saw him perhaps once more after he arrived, but she was committed to her work in the Mossad, which was where her ultimate loyalty lay.

The Iraqi Jew Joseph did not come to Israel, preferring to remain a Zionist from afar in his native Iraq. Presumably, he lived satisfied with what he had done both for the family he loved and the country on which he bestowed his new-found concern and affections.

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/migtheft.html

[Falco]

Good read woot