Snap Shot [antikvár]

PrologueAt 16.40 hours on Sunday, 7th June, 1981, fourteen aircraft took off from the IsraeH Air Force base at Etzion in the Sinai desert. All were advance fighter aircraft: eight F16's and six F15's. But for this mission the F16's had been stripped of their cannon and air-to-air missiles and armed instead with 2000 lb bombs and long range fuel tanks. The F15's were to act as cover and so retained their conventional weapons, although they too carried long range tanks.The aircraft passed low over the Gulf of Aqaba, the F15's flying slightly higher and bracketing the F16's.Six minutes after take off the formation crossed the Saudi Arabian coastline and followed a course which paralleled the Jordanian border.At 16.52 hours a Jordanian Air Force sergeant technician at the Ma'an base abruptly straightened in his seat as fourteen blips eased onto the radar screen in front of him. Thirty seconds later the Ma'an control tower was asking the aircraft to identify themselves. Their leader did so in fluent Arabic, explaining that they were a Saudi Arabian squadron on exercises from the base at Tabuk. He exchanged the appropriate code words and some pleasantries with the Ma'an control and they proceeded eastward. Three minutes later the fourteen blips slid off the radar screen.There is no integrated military air control system between Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Consequently Ma'an control did not report the flight either to Tabuk or any other Arab air base.At 17.00 hours the squadron banked onto a new course taking them East-North-East in a direct line to the Iraqi border.Approximately 500 miles East-South-East of their position, an American operated A.W.A.C. surveillance plane was flying at 30,000 feet. It was on loan to the Saudi Arabian Government, nervous in the aftermath of the conflict between Iran and Iraq. Its sophisticated antennae were aimed eastwards over the Persian