30 years ago today

30 years ago today Israel carried out Operation Opera. The Israeli Air Force launched a strike on the Iraqi nuclear facility at Osirak destroying the reactor and with it much of Iraq's nuclear programme. Eight F-16 multi-role fighters carried out the bombing accompanied by six F-15s escorts. The planes flew 680 miles across Jordan, Saudi Arabia and into Iraq to bomb the target. All the planes returned safely to Israel. It is claimed that the Israeli planes evaded detection by flying close together so that instead of appearing as a squadron of small fighters on radar, they appeared as a single large jet, and so not much attention was paid to them by Iraqi defences. It is supposed that Jordan and Saudi Arabia gave tacit support to the attcak.

Interestingly, one of the Israeli pilots on the Osirak mission was Ilan Ramon, who would later become Israel's first astronaut and died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003.