It
was 12:30 am on June 27, 1976. A plane of the Air France airline was in flight
between Tel Aviv and Paris. It had 248 passengers on board. Many of the
passengers were Israelis or Jews from other countries who had gone on a visit
to Jerusalem.
The plane, an Airbus A300 with twelve crew members, had just taken off from
Athens airport where it had made an intermediate stop. Four terrorists, two
Palestinian members of the FLP and the two German of Revolutionare Zellen,
which were on board confusion among passengers, hijacked the flight. Two of
them entered in the cockpit and ordered the pilot to sail to Benghazi in Libya.
After a stop in Benghazi during which the plane is refueled and where
terrorists freed a female passenger, the aircraft resumed the flight heading
for the Uganda of the dictator Idi Amin Dada.
Idi Amin Dada had been in previous years a friend of the West from whom he had
received aid and weapons, consolidating his dictatorship in the African country.
Following the refusal of the United States and European countries to provide
more sophisticated weapons, including modern combat aircraft, to support his
war against Tanzania, he turned his policy toward the Soviet Union and Libya of
Gaddafi.
The Air France A300 landed at Entebbe International Airport at 3 am on June
28th. The hijack of the plane and the kidnapping of the passengers, who
evidently had been arranged with the help of Amin Dada and the complacent
collaboration of the Libyan dictator, was completed with the arrival in Entebbe
of four accomplices of the hijackers.
The terrorists asked the Israeli government to release 40 Palestinian prisoners
in Israeli prisons and other 13 detained in prisons in various European
countries, and also $ 5 million in exchange for the release of the hostages.
Meanwhile other 140 hostages were freed by terrorists.
105 people from Israeli nationality or otherwise of the Jewish religion
remained in the hands of the terrorist group led by German Wilfred Bose. The aircraft
commander and his crew refused to leave with the plane that had collected the
freed passengers since, said the commander, he had no intention of abandoning
the other detained passengers.
Israel began the negotiations for the release of the hostages. Meanwhile
started the preparation of a blitz of the armed forces, in the case had
presented a favorable occasion. The negotiations stagnated, even the
intervention of the PLO, which it did his utmost to encourage the release of
the hostages, was useless because its mediator was unable to contact the leader
of the terrorists. Amin Dada apparently served as a mediator with the Israelis,
while his role was full support for the terrorist group.
The Israelis managed to get an extension of
ultimatum of three days, after which the terrorists threatened to kill the
hostages who were held in Entebbe airport terminal. The extension was the
favorable opportunity that the Israelis were waiting to activate the armed
intervention.
Meanwhile the army of Israel prepared the raid to free the hostages. They came
into possession of all of the buildings and maps of the slopes, taking
advantage that the Entebbe airport had been built by an Israeli firm. They also
could count on the testimony of freed hostages, who collaborated with the
envoys of the Mossad in Paris. They were able to provide information on the
number and positions of the terrorists, their weapons, and on the support of
the Ugandan military stationed at the airport, who were deployed in defense of
the Palestinian FLP groups and RZ of German terrorists.
The military command organized a group made up of about 200 men to carry to
Entebbe with three C-130 Hercules.
These soldiers made a quick training in a military camp where the terminal, in
which the hostages were being held prisoners, had been rebuilt exactly. Israel
asked and obtained the secret collaboration of the Government of Kenya who made
available the Nairobi airport for the supply of C-130, for the medical basis
and for the operation command basis that would be transported on two air force
planes adapted for this purpose.
The operation seemed crazy, so it seemed hard to the success of the same.
Unfortunately, the Israeli fighter jets could not provide cover to transport
planes, given the long distance between Uganda and Israel. A couple of Ugandan
fighter, as technologically backward, would have sufficed to break down the
C-130 defenseless.
The head of the Israeli government gave its consent to the raid, called
“Operation Lightning” later known as “Operation Yonatan”,
at 6:30 pm on July 3. The news was communicated to the Council of Ministers
only when the planes were already half way.
The command was given to Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of Benjamin
Netanyahu, the current prime minister. 100 men of the Sayeret Matkan, a group
of the army trained in special op, were transported on the three C-130. The
first plane boarded a Mercedes similar to that used by Idi Amim Dada in his
travels, two Land Rover, and the soldiers intended to eliminate the terrorists
and free the hostages, the second C-130 was on board the group that had the
task of knocking out the Ugandan soldiers at the airport. The third plane
carrying the men who were to destroy all military aircraft present in Entebbe,
to prevent a pursuit by Ugandan fighters. The planes carried even some armored
vehicles.
The C-130 had the light of the Israeli fighters for
a third of the way, then the Jets with the Star of David had to return for
their limited range. C-130 Hercules aircraft were able to fly at very low
altitude to avoid detection by radar, and to land in very short runway, even
outside of paved airstrips. The air force was completed by two other planes.
The first landed in Nairobi with inside emergency medical unit, to provide
first aid to any injured. The second jet was the control unit that remained in
flight during the whole operation.
To 11 pm the three C-130 arrived on the Entebbe airport, whose runways were
lit. They dropped on the runway with the rear ramp already open and the lights
off. The landing of the three planes was almost contemporary, and the race on
the runway was as short as possible, the planes were spotted a short walk from
the terminal where the hostages were prisoners.
It was made immediately off the black Mercedes, similar to the Mercedes of Amin
Dada, and the two Land Rover. The three cars, followed by the army men
protected by the darkness, pretended a sudden visit of Idi Amin Dada. Two
Ugandan soldiers, guards at the terminal gate, realized the danger, since a few
days before Amin had replaced the black Mercedes with a white car. The Israeli
soldiers were forced to shoot, killing the two Ugandans.
Despite the shooting, the surprise had succeeded fully. The Israeli military
burst into the terminal yelling in Hebrew to the hostages to lie down. They
killed three terrorists who were guarding . A hostage, that perhaps not
understood the warning in Hebrew, got closer to the military. He was mistaken
for a hijacker and was killed. The military verified the terminal killing other
terrorists who were in a near room.
During the boarding of the hostages on planes, Ugandan soldiers, guarding the
airport, began firing on them and on the military command. They were
immediately neutralized by Israeli fire.
There were three casualties among the hostages during the operation: one killed
by friendly fire and two by the fire of the Ugandan soldiers. In addition, the
commander of the expedition Yonatan Netanyahu was seriously wounded by a
gunshot during boarding. There were also five wounded Israeli soldiers. They
were calculated between 15 and 45 deaths among the Ugandan military, in
addition to the six terrorists.
The third group of Israeli special forces took care to knock out military
aircraft in the airport to prevent any reaction. The C-130, being transport
aircraft, were more slow of Ugandan Mig 17 fighters, ready to take off. The
fighters would have achieved in a short time the Hercules in the case of
pursuit.
The three C-130 took off from Entebbe 53 minutes after landing, with 7 minutes ahead of schedule. The aircraft made a stop in Nairobi, where the commander col. Netanyahu arrived already dead without that he could receive medical aid from the medical unit at the airport.
The aircraft took off after refueling in the direction of Tel Aviv where they arrived the next morning. The hostages and the soldiers were greeted triumphantly in the enthusiasm of all Israelis.
75 years old Mrs. Dora Bloch, a hostage with dual British and Israeli citizenship was taken ill in the days before the blitz, she was hospitalized in the hospital of the Ugandan capital Kinshasa. She was never heard from again. Years later some Ugandan officers revealed that Dora Bloch was taken from the hospital by Amin’s men after the blitz and was killed.
The commander of airplane, Frenchman Michel Bacos, was punished by his airline for disobeying the order to leave, on the contrary, the French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing awarded him the Legion of Honor for heroic conduct at the hijacking.
Israelis preferred to give prominence to their special operations forces, rather than enter into negotiations for the release of hostages, on the occasion of terrorist incidents in which its citizens were involved, following the success of this operation that had an word echo.
(Photo at the top: Air France Airbus A300B2 1974 Steve Fitzgerald GFDL 1.2)
