National Experiences - British Commission for Military History

th e AIr Ar m d u r I n g t h e le b A n o n wA r 1982 173
As already mentioned, in parallel to air combat the attack continued on the surface-to-air
missiles with very good results. I could follow this by reading the Syrian
side and from intelligence reports. I was also briefed by the command cell. Along
this time, Chief of Staff Eitan sat as a scout in the command cell next to me. I glanced
at him from time to time and saw how much he was impressed and, happy to hear the
reports about Syrian aircraft being downed. He was full of admiration.
Aviem Sela came up to our floor and whispered to me that 13 batteries were totally
destroyed, each received a double verification, and the remaining 6 are paralyzed
with one verification of destruction each. According to intelligence, there is no life in
the formation, meaning there is no electromagnetic radiation of radar, so the surfaceto-air
missiles were in fact destroyed. We still have armed aircraft patrolling ready to
attack because we wanted to verify “the mother of destruction”. The understanding
between me and Sela developed amazingly in the last year, so even before he spoke
I understood that he thought there was no point to continue and endanger more airplanes.
I immediately instructed to stop the attack and divert all aircraft to assist our
land forces in Lebanon’s other fronts. Till this day, Sela reminds me that I instructed
to stop the attack without consulting with the Chief of Staff, but I sensed that we are
close to a dangerous situation that could lead to a mistake and risk shooting down our
own aircraft. On the other hand, we destroyed the surface-to-air missiles and downed
26 aircraft without losing a single aircraft, so it would be better to end the attack at
this point, a fast and right decision without any time to consult because each second
could be critical for one of the airplanes.
The decision involved the fact that some of the airplanes in the waiting circle
did not have targets, and they were forced to dump their loads into the sea in order
to avoid landing fully loaded. They were very frustrated to have missed out on the
celebration of surrounding and destroying the surface-to-air missiles. During the first
evening, I could still hear criticizing remarks about stopping the attack, a decision
that was later understood and received full backing from all levels of command and
operation.
The attack on the surface-to-air missiles was planned with high factors in order
to assure destruction. Each battery required two verifications for destruction in order
to prevent a situation in which smoke or different angles could mislead us, finding
ourselves with a partly destroyed formation.
In all fields of activity, in EW, we doubled the power and number of jammings.
The amount of chaff dispersed was double than required by operations research. This
helped us create a friendly environment for our aircraft, and almost total blindness
to the Syrian air defense. We wanted to pass this test after the trauma of Yom Kippur
with the highest score.
We deliberately published the success of the Hawk Eye E2C aircraft as a cover
story for other air activity we performed. The publication was absorbed and some
countries considered it to be the main reason for the success of the operation in