If there was ever a story making the Iraqi Air Force of the 1960s ‘famous’ in the West and tarnishing its image ever since, then it is the one of a—supposed—‘defection’ by one of its MiG-21 pilots to Israel on Aug. 12, 1966.
If there was ever a story that made the Iraqi Air Force (IrAF) of the 1960s well-known in Western circles and has since damaged its reputation, it is the tale of a supposed ‘defection’ by one of its MiG-21 pilots to Israel on August 12, 1966. This story, widely circulated over the years, highlights the Israeli perspective of a ‘mistreated Christian pilot’, who was ‘overlooked by his superiors and never promoted’, and felt ‘disgruntled with his role in the bombing of the Kurds’, which led him to decide to flee, followed by the aircraft being donated to the US for analysis when the US Air Force (USAF) required it most — during the peak of the Vietnam War. To label all such accounts anything other than propaganda would be an understatement.
Dating back to the late 1950s, Mossad (‘the Institute’), the Israeli foreign intelligence service, had been making efforts to convince various Egyptian pilots to defect to Israel with one of their MiGs—all of which had failed. According to Milos Sipos and Tom Cooper in their book Wings of Iraq Volume 1: The Iraqi Air Force, 1931-1970, a new opportunity presented itself in 1965, when a group of Iraqi pilots was sent for a staff course at Randolph Air Force Base (AFB) in the US. Deploying a group of female agents, Mossad attempted to recruit several of them—all without success: Lieutenant Hamid Dhahee was the first to turn down the Israeli offer. He was murdered in a bar in Lackland, Texas, on Jun. 15, 1965. Seriously concerned about the safety of his students in the US, the IrAF Commander, Brigadier-General Arif Abd ar-Razzaq, then recalled them to Iraq.
However, several of the Iraqi pilots returned home, followed by attractive ‘lovers’, all of whom were Mossad agents. Captain Shaker Mahmoud Yusuf’s ‘girlfriend’ met him in Baghdad in July 1965; when he refused the Israeli offer to defect, he was also murdered. Captain Mohammad Raglob survived only a while longer: he ‘fell out’ of a high-speed train during a trip to Germany on Feb. 11, 1966. Eventually, the Israelis contacted Captain Munir Habib Jamil Redfa (or ‘Ruefa’), now the deputy commander of the re-established No. 11 Squadron. Given the same ‘silver or lead’ offer as his colleagues before him, Redfa opted for survival. After Mossad evacuated 17 of his family members to Iran, he took off from Taqqaddum AB on Aug. 12, 1966, and flew a MiG-21F-13 to Israel.
The Israeli donation of that MiG to the USA a few years later contributed relatively little to American knowledge about the type. After all, it was during their travel to Randolph AFB in 1965 that the Iraqis had also delivered all the technical and training manuals for the type: an English translation, prepared by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA), became available before the end of the same year.
Wings of Iraq Volume 1: The Iraqi Air Force, 1931-1970 is published by Helion & Publishing and is available to order here.
Photo by Oren Rozen, Own work, via Wikipedia
