CovertCouncil

Operations

OPERATION FILE · 1963 – 16 August 1966

Operation Diamond

In August 1966 an Iraqi Air Force captain recruited by the Mossad flew his MiG-21, the Soviet Union's newest fighter, to Israel. Israel tested it and in 1968 lent it to the United States, which flew it at Area 51.

Declassified 2022

3 min read · 5 sources, 1 primary

Operation Diamond
A MiG-21F-13 at the Israeli Air Force Museum, Hatzerim; Operation Diamond brought Israel its first MiG-21. Bukvoed. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.5.

In the early 1960s the Soviet Union began supplying Egypt, Syria and Iraq with the MiG-21, a Mach 2 interceptor whose real performance was unknown to Israel and to NATO. Israel's air force wanted one to fly. The Mossad was asked to get it4,5.

Finding a pilot

The answer was a person, not a theft. Munir Redfa was a captain in the Iraqi Air Force and one of a small number of pilots trusted to fly its MiG-21s. He was a Christian, an Assyrian by background, and had been passed over for promotion; American and Israeli accounts both say he was frustrated and drawn to life in the West1,3,5.

Israeli accounts say the approach came through an Iraqi Jew in contact with Israelis in Tehran, and that a woman working for the Mossad got to know Redfa before he was persuaded to travel to Europe to meet Israeli officers. According to the National Archives' summary, he was offered $1 million, Israeli citizenship and employment, and he insisted that his family be smuggled out of Iraq first, which Israel agreed to do1,5.

Redfa was also brought secretly to Israel to see the airfield where he would land. A later Israeli account says the go signal was the broadcast of an agreed song on Israel Radio's Arabic service4,5.

The flight

On the morning of 16 August 1966 Redfa took off with a 108-gallon auxiliary fuel tank, enough for the 560-mile flight. He climbed to 30,000 feet and headed west. Over Jordan two Royal Jordanian Air Force Hawker Hunters intercepted him and tried to raise him on the radio; he did not answer, and they let him go, apparently because of his Iraqi markings. Jordan checked with Syria and was told the aircraft was Syrian, on a training flight1,3.

At the Israeli border two Mirage IIIs met him and escorted him to Hatzor Air Base, where he landed at about 8 a.m. At a press conference he said he had arrived on "the last drop of fuel." His wife, children and other relatives had already been moved out of Iraq, the last of them through Kurdish areas into Iran1,3,4,5.

Israel's evaluation

Israeli test pilots flew the aircraft repeatedly and flew it against Israeli fighters to work out tactics. On 7 April 1967, in air battles over the Golan Heights, Israeli Mirages shot down six Syrian MiG-21s without loss. The next month Richard Helms, director of the CIA, began arguing that since Israel had made such good use of the aircraft, the United States should evaluate it too1,5.

HAVE DOUGHNUT

Israel lent the MiG to the US Air Force from 23 January to 8 April 1968. Redesignated YF-110 and based at Groom Lake, Nevada, better known as Area 51, it was flown against American fighters under the program HAVE DOUGHNUT, run by the Air Force Foreign Technology Division for the Defense Intelligence Agency2,1.

The US Air Force and Navy pilots flew about 100 sorties over some 90 days. The declassified briefing film at the National Archives describes the MiG as rugged, small, highly maneuverable and reliable, able to out-turn the F-4 Phantom in tight turns, while the F-4 had the better acceleration. The cockpit was cramped and the view poor, and the engine was slow to reach full power1. A 310-page tactical report, dated 1 August 1969, set out the results for aircrews then meeting MiG-21s over North Vietnam2,3.

The loan also eased an American decision that Israel had long sought: the sale of F-4 Phantoms1,5.

Checking the record

Dates and outcome compared in two independent sources: they agree.

National Archives
Defection flight on 16 August 1966; aircraft lent to the United States in January 1968. Iraqi Capt. Munir Radfa defected with his MiG-21 after Mossad recruitment; Israel evaluated it and lent it to the US, which tested it at Groom Lake (Area 51).
Wikipedia
Operation from mid-1963 to 16 August 1966; aircraft lent to the US in January 1968. Redfa landed at Hatzor; Israel and the United States studied the aircraft under the HAVE DOUGHNUT program.

Dates and outcome agree. The National Archives text spells the pilot's name Radfa; this page uses Redfa, the more common form. The loan period of 23 January to 8 April 1968 comes from the National Security Archive's summary of the declassified records.

Sources

  1. National Archives Throw a Nickel on the Grass and Have a Doughnut, National Archives, The Unwritten Record blog (2022-10-18).
  2. National Security Archive Area 51, Secret Aircraft and Soviet MiGs (Electronic Briefing Book No. 443), National Security Archive (2013-10).
  3. Other Have Doughnut, Air & Space Forces Magazine.
  4. Other How Mossad stole the world's most advanced fighter jet, Ynetnews.
  5. Wikipedia Operation Diamond, Wikipedia.
  6. Wikipedia English Wikipedia article (used for cross-checking).

Elsewhere in the files

Read next

Israel · 1949 Mossad Israel's foreign intelligence and covert action service, founded in 1949 and answerable only to the prime minister. Its early record runs from the capture of Eichmann to the Lillehammer killing of an innocent man. 29 August 1959 – 21 June 1968 Project Oxcart The CIA's Mach 3 titanium spy plane, the Lockheed A-12, was built to replace the U-2 over the Soviet Union. It never flew there; its only operation, BLACK SHIELD, covered Vietnam and North Korea in 1967–68. 1924–1965 Eli Cohen Egyptian-born Israeli agent who lived in Damascus from 1962 as a returning émigré businessman, cultivated Syria's Ba'athist elite, and was caught at his transmitter in January 1965 and publicly hanged. September 1957 – 22 May 1960 The capture of Adolf Eichmann In May 1960 a Mossad team led by Isser Harel seized Adolf Eichmann on a Buenos Aires street, held him for nine days and flew him to Israel, where he was tried and hanged for his part in the Holocaust.