The first authorized inside account of one of the mostdaring—and successful—military operations in recent history
From the earliest days of his dictatorship, Saddam Hussein hadvowed to destroy Israel. So when France sold Iraq a top-of-the-linenuclear reactor in 1975, the Israelis were justifiablyconcerned—especially when they discovered that Iraqi scientists hadalready formulated a secret program to extract weapons-gradeplutonium from the reactor, a first critical step in creating anatomic bomb. The reactor formed the heart of a huge nuclear plantsituated twelve miles from Baghdad, 1,100 kilometers from Tel Aviv.By 1981, the reactor was on the verge of becoming “hot,” andIsraeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin knew he would have toconfront its deadly potential. He turned to Israeli Air Forcecommander General David Ivry to secretly plan a daring surgicalstrike on the reactor—a never-before-contemplated mission thatwould prove to be one of the most remarkable military operations ofall time.
Written with the full and exclusive cooperation of the Israeli AirForce high command, General Ivry (ret.), and all of the eightmission pilots (including Ilan Ramon, who become Israel’s firstastronaut and perished tragically in the shuttle Columbiadisaster), Raid on the Sun tells the extraordinary story ofhow Israel plotted the unthinkable: defying its U.S. and Europeanallies to eliminate Iraq’s nuclear threat. In the tradition ofBlack Hawk Down, journalist Rodger Claire re-creates agripping tale of personal sacrifice and survival, of young pilotswho trained in the United States on the then-new, radicallysophisticated F-16 fighter bombers, then faced a nearlyinsurmountable challenge: how to fly the 1,000-plus-kilometermission to Baghdad and back on one tank of fuel. He recountsIsraeli intelligence’s incredible “black ops” to sabotageconstruction on the French reactor and eliminate Iraqi nuclearscientists, and he gives the reader a pilot’s-eye view of theaction on June 7, 1981, when the planes roared off a runway on theSinai Peninsula for the first successful destruction of a nuclearreactor in history.