The Most Daring Hostage Rescue Ever - Assault And Rescue: Operation Thunderball - Crime Documentary

hundreds of hostages a continent away they told us it was an impossible mission it's good for james bond 48 hours to strategize we didn't have any option 60 minutes to make it happen this open will never take off go go go and ten men reveal for the first time the secrets behind the greatest hostage rescue in history [Music] israel june 27 1976 as the country starts its day information about a developing crisis reaches its special ops team in tel aviv [Music] it was sunday morning and i was at my office and they said that aircraft with many israelis was hijacked i got a call from barack who asked me to come to his office in the idf headquarters when i arrived there were four other intelligence and air force officers there okay let's get to work an air france flight originating in tel aviv and bound for paris has been hijacked by four terrorists we learned there is about 250 passengers and many of them are israelis the hijackers identified themselves as two members of the german urban terrorist organization the bada meinhof gang and two from the popular front for the liberation of palestine the muslims they had guns hand grenades and possibly bombs they meant business at this point the whereabouts of the plane is not known so the first day and the first night was just trying to practice aircraft then early next morning they get word about the missing aircraft they found the plane ethel and tebbe and tevin my first reaction was where the hell is antebe i don't know somewhere in africa i didn't know where is that baby but i knew where in teb it was it was in uganda i was there in the early 70s training their paratroopers so i sent an officer when the shops opened and we found some old maps of uganda today you get it from internet but in that time it was published and we measured the distance and it was so far from israel it was about five thousand kilometers at three thousand miles how would we even get in there this was a unique situation because it was so far away nobody took into account that one day we shall have to fly to uganda we don't have a plan to go to uganda or to the north pole okay it's ten times further than we've gone before suppose we have to find a way to get there how do we do it but before the team can respond they're interrupted by breaking news uganda's dictator idi amin has arrived at the entebbe airport idiom hasn't changed a bit lady amin appeared escorted by a lot of media people still playing the big shot every time he was by a camera we knew about edmund he was a media [ __ ] he loved being in the public eye with an ego as big as his body idi amin is suddenly in the center of world attention a position he has never sought to avoid [Music] and so it made sense to us that he would spontaneously let the plane land in entebbe the crisis gave him a forum he wanted to be the one who solved the standoff as i watched him addressing the hostages i realized they'd been moved from the plane oh see that that's the building i recognize that please been there hundreds of times i identified that they were in the old terminal [Music] over the next night the team picks betzer's brain i knew the basics of the structure and the area around it so when was that five ten years ago um more like six seven have you been back have you seen it since the military took it over no do you think they've changed it i have no idea what we needed was up-to-date intelligence in a world without google earth and easy access to information the israelis are forced to improvise israel is very small and uh we're surrounded by enemies we have to think originally we have to innovate to stay alive do we have any friends in uganda none we can trust anyway um but i have an idea betzer now contacts a pilot who's also an agent from mossad the israeli secret service and without hesitation he said yes he went to nairobi and rented a small plane the agent files a flight plan to tour the area and heads west towards lake victoria the operation was so secret that i only got permission last year from assad to talk about it then over three days into the crisis the hijackers break their silence terrorists holding the crew and passengers of an air france plane in entebbe airport have announced their demands they wanted israel to release 52 palestinian prisoners they also demanded the release of 13 other prisoners held in jails around the world and finally they're demanding five million dollars in cash because these demands were clearly very extreme and they wanted the met in two days two days when they start killing hostages that's insane from a logistical standpoint these demands are impossible so we had to do something you cannot wait until you have all the information you need you have to act the general feeling was that we don't have an option so we moved from negotiations to a military operation with a military operation now imminent their mossad pilot makes landfall directly over in tubby airport he told the tower he had a malfunction and wanted to circle the airport and try to land all the while he's getting us critical intelligence we see everything including all the runways the terminal uganda's migs eventually the agent told them the problem had resolved itself and he returned to his mother airport that's how we got the pictures it's at headquarters we gave the intelligence to everybody and said okay come with whatever you have what if you rent a boat in kenya and sell a small group of commandos across lake victoria into ontabe i skip the boat they start planning for a small force to eliminate the terrorists and release the hostages why don't we just drop paratroopers into the waters around the airport and then make an assault on the terminal the only problem with that was lake victoria was filled with crocodiles when you have a brainstorm you put everything into the basket but then 80 hours into the crisis they get news from paris french authorities have revealed that terrorists holding the hostages from the air france hijacking have released all the non-jewish hostages we learned that the terrorists did a selection and separated the israelis and jews and released the other passengers news of this selection outrages jews around the world but for the israeli forces it discloses something completely unexpected the hostages reveal they're up against a far more dangerous enemy the four terrorists are not acting alone guns are pointed at us it told us that actually idia means force guys soldiers are completely cooperating with the terrorists we learned that everything idiamin had been telling the world was a lie he was in league with the terrorists it's different story to come with a small group of experienced commando and kill four or five terrorists and release the hostages then to come and find against the ugandan army the non-jewish hostages from the entempi hijacking arrive in paris we were surrounded continuously by heavily armed guards both the plo and the ugandan troops leaving the remaining 102 jewish hostages in the hands of the terrorists and ugandan dictator idi amin so now we have two enemies we have the terrorists and we have the ugandan soldiers we have to overcome both the last thing the israelis want is to find themselves thousands of miles from home fighting an entire army uganda but they quickly discover that the disturbing events of the last 12 hours have a silver lining the terrorists did a big mistake we started to get information from the hostages so what we know at this point that instead of four we have ten that are regarding the hostages now we have a picture of what's happening inside the terminal how many terrorists are there how many ugandan military people are around we have approximately 80 to 120 ugandan soldiers around the building the team now scrambles to adapt to this completely different reality which means we need to bring larger force their first step is to find the commander of a new and little-known squadron in the israeli air force i was in a wedding in haifa i got the call the chief of the air force i still don't understand how he found me and it's very unusual that the chief of the air force is calling a squadron commander directly but you gotta understand the situation the israeli air force was fighter pilots all of them and i was the only commander with the knowledge of how to fly our new c-130 hercules they carry a hundred so they said can you get them how much cargo 200 no problem they can also carry armored vehicles we knew that the only airplane that could do a tactical mission like this was the c-130 i love this plant it has the fuel and range to bring forces that can be load quick and unload quick so now they have the planes they'll need to carry this larger forest from israel down the red sea then inland to entebbe but how do they fly there without being detected the basic for every operation is surprise and concealment now we're talking about 76 and we didn't have peace with egypt and definitely not peace with saudi arabia so we knew we had to avoid the detection of the radar along the red sea from the egyptian side and from the southern arabia side so we decided that we have to fly so very very extremely low we know that the range of the radar in low level would not reach the middle of the red sea but avoiding enemy radar means nothing if they can't see the entebbe runway so they target their landing for just after the last scheduled flight to parks when the runway lights should still be on we knew that the airport would be still operational but not busy so this gets them to and tubby but how will they land without attracting the suspicion of the control tower i lived in an air force base and i must tell you that an aircraft can land at night without immediately being attacked even if the tower see him on the radar for instance he can pick up the telephone and say to the gundam authorities listen somebody is landing at the airport and they will pick their telephone and then they will pick their telephone and call the terrorist it will take maybe 10 minutes and we need that 10 minutes for the operation but once an airplane is on the ground it's like a sitting duck so the problem now is how to get as quickly as possible from the plane to the old terminal two kilometers away and how can we approach the terminal without triggering a massacre vanish this problem got me thinking about when i was in uganda and i'd see how their soldiers would automatically salute any passing limo because they know whoever was in it must be a high-ranking officer or even idiom men it's at this moment that mookie betzer has a brain wave [Music] is it fun yes it's gonna have to do my idea was to use a mercedes and some land rovers to disguise ourselves as a military motorcade and drive from the plane to the old terminal now if you're able to land that plane quietly without being recognized then the enemy will think that it's i mean himself who's coming to visit them so we'll be able to get right up to the terminal entrance and surprise them the whole idea behind it is to keep the surprise and that was a very good idea i'll take it to ravine so we have to sink out of the box we have to dare we have to be able to defend ourselves actually it's as good of a plan as it gets but there's a problem we can't send our troops on a one-way ticket the hercules c-130 can only carry enough fuel to get them there we have to find a way to bring them and the hostages back home it's a big problem because we had to refuel the the plan in some place around uganda and most of the countries there are enemies to israel so the idea was that while we are storming the building some of the air force team will steal fuel from the ugandans i looked at the intelligence pictures and i thought where you can refuel your aircraft but i was still really worried about it it looked very risky so risky that the israeli sent a hood barack on a top-secret backup mission to try and secure fuel in nairobi but even with the pieces of the plan now coming together the idf top brass still has one big worry what if the runway lights are off if you reach there and the runway is dark what would you do go back so we had to find a way to land without using the lights which is a big big problem we didn't have the night vision capability and we didn't have all the instruments that they have now so we were unplugged as we say since they don't have the technology they need they literally invent it so we build in 24 hours the system that we hope will tell the pilot the distance from the runway and the level of the aircraft the idea behind this system is that radar waves bounce back more slowly from the water and sand than they do from the hard surface of the runway you can detect by radar where is ground where is runway and where is water so this way you can navigate and you can plan your approach but the question is how accurate will their makeshift system be that was a crazy system it was very very very risky the leadership of the air force and the idf the israeli defense forces did not think that we are able to land in the dark they wanted a demo so what i did was i picked up the big bosses to show them at night once the navigator sees the runway on the radar he finds the angle of a normal approach so he gave me the direction i was under tremendous pressure that i will fail to convince them that because of me the israeli government cannot do anything except surrender to the terrorists and then we have the generals breathing on my neck almost touching me two degrees i turn on the landing lights just in case [Music] hang on as pilot joshua shatty attempts to land his hercules c-130 on a darkened runway hang on he discovers he's got a big problem i was about to land on the fence i guess the radar picked up stronger than the runway i just told them let me try it once more they said yes [Music] copy that it was an important test because the generals went back to the government the minister of defense the cabinet and recommended we have a military option [Music] but the politicians still don't give them final approval which creates an even more critical issue the team now can't reach the hostages before the terrorists deadline we have to gain time to get better prepared for operation we made it appear that we were negotiating with the terrorists in good faith and they assumed we weren't going to launch an assault so we used negotiations to delay the deadline to the 4th of july with this new deadline now just 24 hours away the base floods with elite specialists and commandos when i arrived in the morning i saw people running from one place to another and there was a feeling of a war starting at that point the leader of our commando group yoni netanyahu returned from a mission in sinai to take charge of the operation as his deputy i brought him up to speed on all the intelligence we had so far the released hostages told us having assembled his team jani netanyahu orders the base locked down they disconnected all the telephones in the bay so nobody can talk the secrecy of the mission was a key to success remember surprise surprise surprise even our wives and family weren't allowed to know but in spite of the lockdown pilot nathan de vere gets approval to make a quick trip off base my wife was giving this so i went to the hospital and i could not tell my wife about the operation i just tell her that i do not have time she had to finish giving birth very fast which she did i saw my daughter and i went back to the squadron maybe not for 60 hours straight it's coming together running back on the base the team is struggling with contradictory intelligence reports the big issue is how many ways there are into the terminal how many knows there is to the big hole unfortunately at this point we don't have any confirmation some others say it's three some of them say two but there are also some people that say that there are only one though that's time for three if we're wrong we'll just use whatever doors we find on friday night we organized and checked each other's equipment we made sure everything was okay we also did something which was a huge secret they swear a local seamstress to secrecy and put her to work creating ugandan uniforms but they risk paying the ultimate price if you are arrested in the uniform of the local army you are considered the spy and you are executed on the spot well you guys better not get caught linchpin of the operation is the fake ugandan motorcade but the mercedes is proving to be a problem hey marcia the car wasn't in good condition it was an old vehicle we needed to go two kilometers even though we only needed it to drive from the plane to the terminal if it stalls we're dead to be like a guardian car we put a license plate with ugandan number we put a gun flag on the car [Music] we were really fatigued and tired we worked more than 60 hours without even thinking to sleep at this point yoni went over the final plan how the operation should be done and what every team in the staff should do we will arrive on the first plane disguised as ugandans we are the key of the operation we have to storm the building with the hostages and seven minutes later there will be a reinforcement of light armored vehicles in the other hercules planes once the terrorists have been taken down and the immediate area around the old terminal is safe we will load the hostages and fly home right the troops are now committed to the mission but the politicians working behind closed doors in jerusalem are still afraid to greenlight something so risky if it will be approved it will be either the biggest failure of the idf or the biggest success in spite of not having approval the commanders realize if they don't take off by 4 pm they won't be able to arrive before the terrorists deadline if you wait until they take decision it's impossible to do it so you have to start on saturday a force of four hercules c-130s prepares to take off from charmel shake the southernmost point of land under israeli control we got the go-ahead but without the final approval them we were facing an eight-hour flight from charmel shake we needed all the fuel we could carry temperature is just awful around 40 centigrade [Music] they face two huge problems the hot desert air provides dangerously little lift and the aircraft is 40 000 pounds overweight we never operate like this now when you combine this weight to temperature 40 degrees it's like you lose an inch this airplane will never take off and just imagine avoiding a takeoff like this in that stage this would be a national disaster and shame for me for the rest of my life i prayed i said let's see what happened joshua shaney lead pilot in a top-secret mission to rescue jewish hostages desperately struggles to get airborne i stayed in the ground effect in the cushion of air that you're flying over okay [Music] and the whole crew were looking at the speed he said oh you were getting one knot one knot good another daughter it was like a celebration to get five knots at the very end of the runway we just got to the take off speed there's no spare we are very very heavy on the second hercules they're having the same problem the one stage of the takeoff i thought are we going to fly to entebbe or are we going to texas because we never lift off but then we finally took off and the performance is limited it's very hard in low speed to turn north because you have to take off against the wind it's very difficult to fly so low we flew by the radio altimeter because you cannot trust the normal altimeter and so level and it was like 30 feet 10 meters above the sea i trust the notified model trust in my hands remember the movement of two millimeters will hit the water [Music] yes guys were everywhere on hoods and even in the trunks of vehicles anywhere where there was space the flat was a terrible one terrible it was the worst in my life i felt that i'm going to die after three hours the plane turns inland over eritrea where israeli intelligence confirms there's no radar and climbs to twenty thousand feet during the whole flight i didn't sleep even a second i was very nervous but on the other hand you don't really expect something will happen to you when you're young you don't think about it you know your mission you know there was a hostages there you don't speak too much time is passing by and suddenly you're looking on your watch and you understand that there is no way back anymore because there's not enough fuel with only one hour before landing they finally get official approval for the mission i didn't listen to it i didn't care about it i was pressing on all the soldiers woke up and prepared for the operation [Music] the visibility was reasonably good and we saw the runway at a very early stage [Music] getting closer the navigator still initiates the radar vector approach in case the ugandans turn off their runway lights at the last second there's big risks because we didn't know if they are waiting for us on the ground or not [Music] we are coming to the most important point probably in our life maybe in the history of the new country israel the fear was to fail [Music] just touch down at the beginning of the runway at that moment i understood that that's it it's not a game anymore it's going to happen [Music] i sense that it is okay no shooting no noise but you don't know at that final moment i remembered a terrible hostage tragedy two years earlier because we lost the element of surprise the terrorists opened fire on the hostages and they killed many people mostly children this was my greatest fear i stopped the airplane in the middle of the runway and then a few soldiers jumped from the doors with portable runway lights to mark a short runway in case somebody will switch off that okay let's go immediately i felt a terrible loneliness three vehicles in the middle of africa and i i remember feeling that within five minutes some of us will be dead as we were approaching the terminal from a distance i'm scanning everywhere looking for the ugandan soldiers we knew there could be as many as 180 of them where are they [Music] suddenly as we approach the terminal an armed ugandan soldier appeared and blocked our way nobody shoots until we give the word steady he raised his weapon but i knew that if we just kept going he'd think we were a motorcade and wave us through don't do anything that's what they're here to do i told yoni leave it he won't stop us suddenly the only given order shoot them at the very very same moment mookie said don't do it don't do it the ugandan immediately tried to get up and returned fire another of our soldiers from the land rover behind us took him out we lost the perfect surprise that we want to achieve immediately mercedes at the front we accelerated and we followed him we only get the order to jump out when we start to run to the main hall the commando teams raced towards their assigned entrance points at that moment i looked that i couldn't see my commander i just thought that he is already ahead of me so i decided to run as fast as i could from out of the darkness the ugandan soldiers opened fire on us that time there was terrorists shooting us there was exchange of fire i took one out with a chest shot it took only seconds then moki stopped for a while to exchange a magazine meanwhile joshua shani taxis toward the underground fuel tanks to hook up his plane and then i turned to the direction of the old terminal so i was watching the scene there was tons of bullets in the air i could see my door wasn't there this was a serious problem we had to find another way in never even at the same time amir affair does see a way inside i saw that amir had found a door and could see a terrorist inside taking aim at him ak-47 shooting at me i saw the whole glass shattering i was right behind him and without even thinking i shot him three or four times [Applause] suddenly on my left i saw two terrorists running at us and only then i understood that i'm in a very great danger [Music] the hostages told us there were other terrorists on the second floor i seem to throw grenade to the room and got some fire and we shoot into the [Music] corridor [Music] [Music] terrorists i wouldn't like to be in this room again these people were short from very close distance and not the nicest things to see with the inside of the terminal now secure the team prepares to move the hostages out to the plane johnny we are ready to evac but yani netanyahu and his team are still in a fire fight meanwhile natan natandevir brings in the second hercules loaded with armored cars and reinforcements it is exactly seven minutes since the first plane landed and i enter final approach that's a good sign and i saw the runway was still in light in the beginning of my landing everything went dark i just saw the flashlight that's number one left for me i was on the ground i was safe we started to refuel but my fear is that i will lose an airplane johnny i need a seat trap yoni do you copy johnny we are ready to evac but yoni doesn't answer okay hit where how bad get them ready but don't move them until you got the order understood aside there was a lot of fire we are shooting with the rpg rocket i leave the terminal and i see yoni taking casualties bullets were flying we still had to get the hostages to the plane i hear from the radio the idiom mean soldiers are approaching the airport i really wanted to get the hell out of there for the israeli forces in entebbe getting the hostages out to the plane is now the number one focus okay everybody up it's then they get worried that a hood barack's secret mission has secured fuel for them in nairobi so my decision together with the ground commander was to stop the refueling and to fly before we lose an airplane hi everyone we are flying this is the news they've been waiting for it's a hundred people and we need to move them very fast it's now or never they have no choice one of the french flight coup i was wounded so i took this young lady in underwear i think they were red and i put her on my shoulder and i said to myself this situation of the brave soldier the half-naked beauty and running between the bullets i think it repeated in hundreds of world films that i'm the only one in the idf who had the opportunity to carry such a beauty half naked on my back 103 hostages are hustled out to the plane they stand because i tell my men use maximum firepower i think that you are in the second world war but actually the the reason for it was that we had to clear the whole environment there was a lot of people inside this airplane so one uganda soldier just can destroy this operation our men shoot with heavy weapons rpgs chicken and it becomes silent it was quite completely there was no fire anymore we knew we had to get out of there as fast as possible so the airplane was a hostage left they were safe when i saw the silhouette of the airplane with the hostages taking off to nairobi i said mission accomplished [Music] the runway was completely dark at that time and we do go with all but one of the hercs heading to nairobi for refueling the israelis have a final piece of business then we had to destroy the line of mig-21s and mig-17 so that there is no counter-attack from uganda forces amateur cavery is the last man to leave [Music] i wasn't going to leave the mercedes there we said forget it the projected operation time was 60 minutes the mission was accomplished in 59. as we started to taxi into the runway i saw a glow of light behind me coming from the explosion of the mix we were elated the operation was a success and all this happiness shut down like it was cut with an axe on one hand we lost our commander who was really an amazing person on the other hand we understood that we did something exceptional after refueling in nairobi the team heads home to israel and on the way back home the news explode first was a bbc so i put the radio on the loudspeaker it hostages were is with only two casualties now when we hit israel we already knew that every single person in the country knows hercules are coming so we took advantage of it we went a little bit low level we waived we did things that we're not supposed to do so we had some fun we enjoyed it on the way back [Music] as the world greets the released hostages the heroes of the operation return under a cloak of secrecy the whole country was exploding with joy but at that time it was a huge secret i mean nobody knew how we did it and it was absolutely forbidden to identify us but over the years this incredible operation became a defining moment in israeli history and sent a message to the world to show the international community that there is a way to fight terrorism it was important as a deterrent to other terrorist organizations and actually after 76 we didn't have i believe even one hijacking over an airplane going to ontabe was important because it was a milestone for the soul of the nation and when i got home my father was there sitting in the middle of the room and my father lost his family in the holocaust and i looked at him although i was exhausted and tired i looked at him i said we are now involved in saving jews which nobody did when he needed it made him so excited and so happy and so proud that i say to myself you did right shiki [Music] you

Channel: I Love Docs

Views: 105,612

Rating: 4.7788944 out of 5

Keywords: operation thunderball, assault and rescue, operation thunderbolt, full movie, Air France flight 139, Tel Aviv to Paris, amazing hostage rescue operation, hostage rescue, rescue operation, German terrorists, historic hostage rescue, hijacked plane, air france, air france hijacking 1976, air france hijacking entebbe, air france hijacking marseille, flight 139

Id: 5yflPMV1ppg

Length: 45min 13sec (2713 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021