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Great Daring Moments From History

Khalid Elhassan September 28, 2020 31 min

Josip Broz Tito - World War II — Yugoslav partisans wading across a river. Wikimedia

22. A Daring Option

The Osirak reactor under construction. Angel Fire

Israeli pilots prepared for the raid by studying the Iraqi nuclear power plant’s plans, paying special attention to the reactor building that housed the nuclear core. The most obvious route would have been a straight line from Israel to Baghdad and the reactor. However, that would have crossed Jordan, whose radar stations would have detected airplanes approaching from the west. Taking a long curved route farther to the south was another possibility, but American AWACS planes operating from Saudi Arabia could have detected unusual aerial activity.

A third and more daring alternative, which was followed, was to fly low, under the radar, while weaving a path between Jordanian and Saudi radar installations. On June 7^th, 1981, a flight of Israeli warplanes, comprised of bomb-carrying F-16s, escorted by F-15s for fighter protection, took off for the Osirak reactor.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.