Unwelcome GIFT

Ralf Roggeveen

Ralf Roggeveen

Charter Member
December 28 1968, exactly forty years ago today.

Welcome to...

...Beirut, capital of the Lebanon - deservedly called the "Paris of the Middle East"; another busy day at Beirut International, major hub between Europe and the Orient, headquarters of MEA (Middle East Airways)/Air Liban, the Lebanese national carrier.

14:15 - a BOAC (British Overseas Air Corporation) VC-10 takes off en route for Hong Kong via Tehran, capital of the Shah's Iran, Karachi, Pakistan and Delhi, India.

Pride of the MEA Fleet: four De Havilland Comet 4Cs, callsign: CEDARJET...
 
...classic aircraft are still to be seen in this time and place. Although we are at the tail end of the turboprop era - the Age of the Viscount - DC-3s remain common enough to go unremarked, and even forward-looking MEA has retained antiques like this Avro York - at least for non-passenger cargo.

Perhaps the only aircraft that MEA's pilots take more pride in flying than the Comets is the Vickers VC-10, on loan from Ghana, but wearing full Lebanese livery, her famous Cedar of Lebanon tail emblem clearly lit.

Evening falls...
 
20:37 - Six Super Frelon helicopters, carrying commandos of Recce Company, 35th Brigade, IDF leave Ramat David AFB, Israel.

Their commander, Lt. Col. Eliezer "Cheetah" Cohen travels in a light Bell chopper.

No apologies for these pictures being dark. It seems unlikely that the Israelis were lit up like Christmas trees, or that there was much radio chatter, on this occasion.

It also seems unlikely that the words Welcome to Lebanon, set in friendly greeting upon the Beirut terminal building, applied to these particular visitors when they arrived at 21:15...
 
In reality the smaller, Bell helicopters, of which there were seven, went about dropping smoke grenades and even fired smallarms at one or two Lebanese attempts to approach Israeli units. The large Super Frelons disgorged commandos at three main drop points (map to follow) around the airport.

Aim of the Operation, codename GIFT, was to destroy Lebanese airliners. This was in retaliation for the fact that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) had attacked two El Al aircraft earlier that year. The PFLP headquarters was, at that time, in Beirut and the Israelis were determined to punish the Lebanese government for allowing such an organisation to operate from their country.

An earlier plan had been to fly Lebanese aeroplanes away; but this was, of course, impracticable. The Israelis decided, instead, to blow them up on the ground by placing explosive charges under the nosewheel and under one of the main landing gears of each targeted plane...

...to be continued...
 
This map has been issued by the IDF. As you can see, their units, each of about 20 commandos carried in the Super Frelons, landed in three different places.

UZI Force: NW corner of the airport, to attack aircraft parked along the western perimeter, down to the terminal building.

DIGLI Force: to land in front (south - basically the 'Gate') of the terminal and destroy designated targets located there.

NEGBI Force: landing at northern edge of the east runway, attacking planes parked parallel to that runway, down as far as the terminal.

Each of the dots on the map represents a successfully-destroyed airliner...

In the screenshots you can see Super Frelons in some of those locations, including at the intersection of the two runways, their evacuation point, codename LONDON.
 
To clarify a little: note that the map is not presented on a usual North/South axis, but shows the view from roughly NNW, i.e. from the Mediterranean Sea. Israeli naval forces (torpedo boats) are indicated. They observed, but did not have to take any active part in, the attack.

Four of the screenshots then show a DIGLI Frelon landing approximately at the terminal Gate. Obviously it wouldn't have been so nice and clear in reality! Screenshot #6 is an evacuation chopper at Point LONDON.
 
You might like to see the Israeli hardware in daylight. At that time most of their military aircraft came from France - Mirages and Super Mysteres had been used extremely effectively in The Six Day War of the previous year.

The fs9 Super Frelon SA321 is a very fine detailed model by Benoit Dube/Gmax Academy. It is, however, still only available in various French liveries.

The Bell 206B III Jetranger is a default helicopter in fs9. If you download Owen Hewitt's version you can also download the repaint into Israeli camouflage and markings by Omri Segev.

For possible backup to Operation GIFT the IDF had Sud-Ouest 4050 Vautour IIN bombers on standby. (As the "N" denotes Night capabilities, the reason for using that particular type is obvious.) There is a nice fs9 one by Barneybigard which includes Israeli livery.

They might also have brought in a Nord Noratlas transport for evacuation, though landing it in the dark and confusion of that night would have required an exceptional pilot even by their high standards! There is a superb fs9 version by Benoit Gaurant. You can get a Greek (Hellenic Air Force) repaint, but not (yet) an Israeli one.

I think I got all of them from AvSim, whom I'd also like to thank publicly, a brilliant site.
 
It's amazing to see how little people have learned in the meantime. 40 years later to the day, and the Israeli's are still overreacting to (stupid) provocations, and thus continuing and enlarging the problem.
An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind in the end....
 
jankees said:
It's amazing to see how little people have learned in the meantime. 40 years later to the day, and the Israeli's are still overreacting to (stupid) provocations, and thus continuing and enlarging the problem.
An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind in the end....
Click to expand...


When I planned my raid on Beirut I could not have guessed that Israeli military action would, as you point out, be all over the news once again.

Nobody wants to get involved in a huge, neverending and almost certainly acrimonious political dispute in this friendly website devoted to aviation and flight simulators. My own main interest is classic airliners, so I am genuinely upset at what happened to the MEA fleet; which will be described in due course!

It is, however, interesting to note that both Ahmed Aboul Gheit, Egypt's Foreign Minister, and Mohammed Abbas, Palestinian President (from rival faction Fatah), have pointed out to Hamas and the people of Gaza that they have only themselves to blame for what has happened. The moment the Israelis re-opened the border, they allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza. The moment the ceasefire ended, Hamas resumed rocket attacks against Israel. The Israelis always made it perfectly clear how they would react to such attacks. If you had a home-made rocket, would you provoke someone with F-16s?

It occurs to me that Israel is, in relation to all her Arab neighbours, in exactly the same position as Gaza is to Israel. Yet neither she, nor any other nation state, constantly fires random missiles over her borders for no better 'reason' than racism.

Nor can we expect either Jews or Muslims necessarily to adopt what is essentially a Christian philosophy in settling their differences.
 
Operation GIFT was extremely successful for the Israelis in that fourteen airliners were destroyed that night, viz:

4 Vickers Viscounts
4 Sud Aviation Caravelles
3 De Havilland Comets
2 Boeing 707s
1 Vickers VC-10

A DC-3 was deliberately spared by NEGBI Force, presumably considered a waste of explosives as they were looking for more valuable targets! Lt Col Cohen also refused them permission to blow up the fuel depot. Had they simply gone ahead, or had he allowed it, destruction would no doubt have been far greater. They also prudently left some aircraft alone because their livery couldn't be identified in the dark. One aeroplane, inside a hangar, seems to have survived because the explosive charges failed to detonate.

All those destroyed belonged to MEA or Lebanese International Airways, except for one from Libyan Arab Airlines. This would not be a surprising Israeli target if Colonel Gaddafi were already in charge in Libya; but in fact his coup took place nine months later in September 1969. (Libya was still supposedly ruled by King Idris.) Saddam Hussein had eliminated Ba'ath Party rivals to take over Iraq earlier in '68.

With or without neighbouring Israel, Lebanon already had the ingredients for her 15 year Civil War which lasted from 1975-1990. Lebanon is almost exactly 50% Muslim, 50% Christian. It does, though, seem somewhat unfair that Middle East Airlines is predominantly run by Lebanese Christians who cannot have particularly welcomed the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine into their country!

$44,000,000 (forty-four million) worth of damage was done (add a few 000s to convert to the modern equivalent). Presumably someone at MEA had to put in an insurance claim to Lloyd's of London...

They made a good recovery, however, starting with Convair 990As sold by American Airlines. By the late '70s their entire fleet consisted of Boeings, but they did buy Anglo-French again with Airbus A310s.

The lovely airport was completely smashed up in the Civil War. It was also the scene of the 1983 truck suicide bomb attack (by Hezbollah) on a US Marine peacekeeping force barracks which caused the deaths of 241 US military and naval personnel. The airport has, however, been rebuilt, including a remarkable runway that sticks out into the sea. It is now named Beirut Rafiq Hariri (after the Prime Minister assassinated in 2005).

More to follow...
 
The superb 1959 Beirut International shown is by Wolfgang Gersch and the Early Sixties Scenery team. Most of the AI is from California Classics - basically a bunch of geniuses. If any of those guys read this: Thank you!

(I have successfully used E6S and Cal Classics to construct a whole FS1960 which should be the setting for a Round the World adventure that I'll post here in 2009 if anyone's interested.)

Note that the AI is more realistically 1964, rather than '68 when there would have been less DC-3s and more 707s! Maybe the Frelon would also have had a different shape (less of an electronics-packed nose?), but I'm no helicopter expert. Small quibbles, but some people are BOUND to notice.

If you would like to set up something similar, it's fun to fly low around the historic airport in a chopper seeing which aircraft and airlines you can spot. I did some recces in Brian Gladden's Noorduyn Norseman, which is available in Israeli colour-scheme...

...Once the Norseman was snooping about there and had to wait in the shadows for a lovely Air India Connie to leave.

Other interesting aircraft were the Afghan DC-6 and Ghanaian Stratocruiser. And I noticed a British Caledonian Comet, plus some nice Pan Am airliners only after the pictures were developed!
 
The Libyan airliner destroyed on Dec 28 1968 was probably a Viscount, but you can get a wonderful Caravelle III in their livery by Michael Pearson.

Here's a view of it as it might have appeared to the Israelis...

...also, one of it taking off (at rather a bad angle) from the default fs9 Tripoli International, its home base. This shows the contrast between enhanced and default scenery - and AI for that matter.

I set up its flight from there to Beirut which takes just over 3 hours. Note avoidance of Israeli airspace for fairly obvious reasons, though the Egyptians are quite helpful about waypoints.
 
Finally, it would be pleasant to leave Beirut on a happier note than with soldiers sneaking about in the dark sabotaging lovely classic airliners!

Here's a Lebanese Caravelle III, again a slightly earlier paint-scheme, more appropriate to the early '60s. You need the Allied FS Group Caravelles, then you can put Loiic Devisme's excellent Air Liban scheme in with the Air France textures (same with Michael Pearson's Libyan one above).

Last screenshot is a repeat of David Maltby's MEA Comet 4C OG-ADT, happily, in reality, the only survivor from their four DH106s. Must have been out that night...
 
Ralf a very insightful series, and must have taken a fair amount of time to put together.
Very well done.

It's sent me Googling back 40 years to fill in some of the history of that troubled region.
Many reading this lived through that period, but may have missed the full story because of the restricted reporting available at the time.

The internet has changed all that.
 
Thanks, WZ in NZ, glad it proved informative. Tried to send you a PM, but find you don't receive them - however, a Very Happy New Year and Blessings Be Upon your 2009 to you & all who read this (from a very cold England)!

(I've lost the Smilies, but perhaps it's just as well.) Here's a home-made cat for those who like them: =^-_-^=
 
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