The new commander of the IAF as of April 1966, Major General
Mordechai Hod, met Redfa himself to plan the MiG flight together.
According to the plan, Redfa was to fly a zigzag course to Israel to
escape Iraqi and Jordanian radar. It was explained to Redfa how dan-
gerous the project was going to be. In a 550-mile (900-kilometer)
flight, his own colleagues, on realizing what he had done, might send
aircraft to shoot him down. Hod suggested to him that he remain calm
and follow the plan. All that remained for Redfa was to fix the date
for his flight, which he set for 16 August 1966.
Soon members of Redfa’s family began leaving the country; one as
a tourist, another for medical treatment. Israeli aircraft would be ready
to escort him on the appointed date. On that day in August, Redfa
went about his business in Iraq as usual, as best he could with cowork-
ers he would never see again. He asked the ground crew to fill his
tanks to capacity, an order the Russian advisers generally had to coun-
tersign. But the Iraqis disliked the Russian advisers, who seemed to
hold them in contempt. This worked to Redfa’s benefit. As a star pi-
lot, they were happy to obey his orders, rather than those of the Rus-
sians. After taking off, he headed out toward Baghdad, then veered off
in the direction of Israel. The ground crew radar picked up a blip on
the screen heading west and they frantically radioed him to turn
around. He didn’t. They warned him they would shoot him down.
Hundreds of miles away Israeli radar picked up the blip on the screen.
They sent up a squad of IAF Mirages to escort him. He went through
his prearranged signals and they flew alongside him to a base deep in
the Negev Desert.
On the same day, 16 August, Mossad agents in Iraq hired two large
vans and picked up the remaining members of the pilot’s family, who
had left Baghdad ostensibly for a picnic. They were driven to the
Iranian border and guided across by anti-Iraqi Kurdish guerrillas.
Safely in Iran, a helicopter collected them and flew them to an air-
field, from where an airplane took them to Israel. Newspapers all
over the world carried the sensational story of an Iraqi pilot who had
defected with his MiG-21 to Israel.
The Soviet Union demanded the return of the aircraft, but Israel
has never returned it. However, so as not to infuriate the Soviets too
much, Israel did not share any information on the MiG-21 with the
United States for a long time. The whole story was not revealed by
Israel for quite a while, beyond the fact that an Iraqi pilot had de-278 • STEALING THE MIG-2106-102 (04) Q-Z.qxd 3/24/06 8:39 AM Page 278