Operation Entebee (part I)....

4th of July is a day globally remembered as the Independence day of USA; 4th of July was also the day when the world learnt one of its best lessons ever from the land of Israel. A day prior, late night 3rd July 1976, Israeli commandos flew over 4000 kms into Africa to execute one of the best hostage rescue missions ever - Operation Entebee (also known as Operation Thunderbolt or retroactively as Operation Jonathan in the memory of KIA that night - the older brother of current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu,  Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu who was also the commander of the ground troups). That was the day when Israel reminded the world that it will not take any aggression upon its freedom lying down. It will strike back and it will also strike first if need be. The raid speaks volumes of what a nation possessed can do. I heard this daring raid as part of Shri. Avinash Dharmadhikari's lecture series on eprasaran.com. It touched a core part within me and I thought it would be a great way to terminate my 52 day hiatus from Livin' Free - a celebration of sort for the end of one of the most difficult academic phases of my life. It brought back the bitter memories when we kneeled before terrorism in a similar scenario - IC 814, Kandahar 1999/2000. I draw inspiration from the dagger like nation of Israel (both literally and figuratively) and in a hope that it does the same to my countrymen, to my readers - I present what I gained from Shri. Avinash Dharmadhikari.

I'l mention the scenario in a nutshell before moving on to the "real deal" - On 27th June 1976, an Air France flight carrying 248 passengers and 12 crew members originating from Tel Aviv, Israel and heading towards Paris, France was hijacked by PLFP-EO members and 2 German nationals. The flight was diverted to Benghazi, Libya (under the then dictator Muammar Al Gaddafi) for refueling and release of non-Jewish hostages. The hijacked flight was later to reach its destination - Entebee Airport near Kampala, Uganda. The terrorists demanded the release of 53 of their comrades. (40 in Israel and others skewed across a few nations) Failing to comply, the terrorists had set a deadline of 1st July 1976 midnight after which they would start killing hostages (96 Israelis and 12 crew) every 5 mins. (deadline was later extended till 3rd midnight)

When the plane was hijacked, an Israeli student on board gathered as to what was happening and started taking short notes providing detailed time and actions on board the aircraft. Another Jew lady carrying a British passport was released at Entebee since the hijackers mistook her for a non-Jewish. Upon her release and reaching to a safe location, she alerted the Israeli government to all what was known to her; and this was suo-moto. (I will refer to these 2 instances later again in an attempt to highlight one of my observations) With diplomatic talks seeming to fail and the threat of the murder of Israeli citizens seeming a reality, Israel decided to carry out a rescue operation. Right since the day of hijacking, the then PM Golda Meir had asked the IDF and Mossad to start chalking out a rescue plan and gather requisite intel would there a need arise to switch to a military option if diplomatic channels were to fail. Brig. Gen. Dan Shomron was placed in-charge of the mission. The decision to carry out the operation was yet to be arrived at by the Israeli cabinet as late as 3.30 pm on 3rd July 1976 (Israel Std. Time - IST & the deadline too) which was the latest time till when the rescue squadron could delay their take-off as planned. Nevertheless, Brig Gen Shomron took it upon himself to clear the flights for take-off maintaining that the rescue teams should return if the Israeli cabinet cancels the mission but critical time must not be lost. The cabinet did give the green signal by 4 pm IST by which time the teams were already over the Red Sea. (It is important to note here that the teams could not fly across other nations' air space and had to chart out a longer route; Some Israelis in Kenya had used their influence over the Kenyan Govt to get them to agree to refuel the rescue squadron in Nairobi; Kenya was the enemy of Uganda back then) 4 American made Hercules C130s and 2 Boeing 707s were part of the squadron. The Boeings carried the lead Sayaret Matkal commando assault teams; the first C130 had a black mercedes - a replica of Ugandan President Idi Amin's along with an Israeli woman who was masqueraded as Idi Amin to use such a tactic (as Idi Amin was believed not be in Uganda then but was later learnt to have returned and hence was aborted mid-flight) and a set of primary assault vehicles; the second C130 was an aerial hospital; another 2 carried a) ground forces which would secure the airfield against enemy reinforcements (Ugandan Military) and assault teams to destroy any fighter aircrafts and gather on-field intel and b) empty - to transport rescued hostages. The entire mission time was optimized to a max 55 mins beyond which it was determined that the IDF wont be able to sustain further Ugandan Military waves. The following image is a schematic of the operation. The architectural design of the airfield was done by an Israeli firm which helped the attack teams to strategize and narrow down on the old terminal as the only place where hostages would be imprisoned.

At 2300 hours IST, the aircrafts landed one after the other in 30 sec intervals on the far side of the the old runway. To their surprise, they found that the runway was well lit, maybe in the preparation by the terrorists to start the execution of the hostages on live air. The armoured car battalion alighted from the first C130 and proceeded towards the old terminal behind whom on foot followed the Israeli commandos (camouflaged by the cover of the cars). The first enemy guards at the gates assumed the battalion to be Idi Amin's (yes, they were among the few who were unaware of Idi Amin's return!) and even saluted the first 2 cars ! Till the time they realized their folly upon sight of Israeli soldiers, it was too late and they were gunned down. At this time, the attack squads dispersed towards their pre-determined targets and the elite Sayaret Matkal stormed the old terminal where the hostages were kept. The commandos started crying out "shaw-kab" which means "lie down" in Hebrew as they drew near to the main hall and upon entrance launched a carpet attack from their hip-level across the hall killing all the terrorists present there. (an Israeli youth who panicked was also killed and his father who tried to pull him down was injured in the gunfire) The balance terrorists who were in the inner chamber ran out upon hearing the gunfire but were killed immediately. Thus the primary target was neutralized. In the meantime, the secondary and tertiary assault squads had destroyed the aircrafts in the hangar and negated most of the Ugandan Military present on the airfield. The hostages were then boarded on to one of the C130s. During the rescue, one of the Ugandan guards in the control tower had escaped death; he could gather from Lt. Col. Netanyahu's body language that he was the leader and taking aim sniped fatally at the Israeli Commander. The sniper was neutralized immediately but had unfortunately accounted for one of Israel's most heroic soldiers. Undeterred with this loss, the mission was moving on schedule and the trick now was to take off (all the aircrafts, mind you!) in the dark sky from a short runway facing a huge water-body (Lake Victoria) To execute this take-off, the pilots used a technique which most of us are vaguely aware of. Those of us who have learnt geared vehicles would know how the vehicle jerks ahead upon sudden clutch engagement at throttle. Similarly, the rescue airplanes revved up their engines to full throttle to avoid loss of covering distance at taxi-ing speeds while holding down upon the brakes. One after the other, the airplanes took off into the night sky having rescued a majority of the hostages (4 were eventually killed barring Lt. Col. Netanyahu). The entire operation lasted 53 mins - 2 less than scheduled. The approaching Ugandan Military re-inforcements could just watch hopelessly as the Israeli planes flew beyond the range of their guns.

This was part 1 of 2 blogs on Operation Entebee. To summarize, I have explained the entire operation as it happened presenting tactical decisions as well in the process to try and understand chain of events and their cause-effect dynamics. In the next part (to be posted on the coming 26th April), I will share my learnings from this vital chapter in history; I will present my views and deductions based on a) the operation b) responses of Israeli citizens, relatives of hostages, Government, Opposition and other nations before and after the mission and c) our take-away from it.

Jai Hind!