Operation Drugstore: The 1982 Air Battles Over the Bekaa Valley

In 1976, the Lebanese Civil War had been raging for a year when the Syrian military poured across the border into the region to ostensibly stabilize the situation. Securing the Bekaa Valley and the main Beirut-Damascus highway that crossed the central part of the country with massive numbers of troops and armor, soon the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and its Muslim allies in Lebanon were receiving support from the Syrians. To cover the Syrian left flank facing Israel, the Syrian 10th Armored Divsion was arrayed across the Bekaa Valley with three brigades of surface-to-air missile units to protect them from an Israeli attack. A total of 19 batteries covered the valley consisting of two SA-2 batteries, two SA-3 batteries, and fifteen new SA-6 batteries. During the next several years the Israelis provided support to the Christian factions in the civil war while maintaining a close eye on the strengthening Syrian integrated air defense system (IADS) that stretched across the Bekaa Valley. Overflights to pinpoint the SAM sites required use of Firebee recon drones due to the dense air defense network that the Syrians had established. In the late May to early June of 1982, the PLO conducted a 12-day artillery and rocket attack on northern Israel that resulted in 60 civilian casualties. The last straw for the Israelis came on 3 June when the PLO attempted to assassinate in London the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom.

On 6 June, seven Israeli mechanized divisions with 60,000 troops and 500 tanks crossed into southern Lebanon in three prongs- one up the coastal plain, one through the central mountains, and a third push into the Bekaa Valley to keep the Syrian 10th Armored Division from intervening against the Israeli right flank. On the first three days of the ground invasion, seven Syrian MiG fighters were shot down. By 8 June Israeli forward elements were at the entrance to the Bekaa Valley but weren't able to push any further north as the Syrian forces held steady under the protective umbrella of their IADS, denying close air support to the Israeli ground forces. For several weeks prior to the invasion, though, the IDF/AF had been planning to deal with the Syrian IADS umbrella over the Bekaa Valley. Years of meticulous reconnaissance and eavesdropping gave the IDF/AF the locations, operating frequencies and modes of the SAM batteries in the valley. Operation Drugstore was their plan for not just the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) but what was being called "DEAD"- destruction of enemy air defenses. This is what made Operation Drugstore a landmark operation in air combat- prior to 1982, suppression was the name of the game as it had been practiced in Vietnam by the United States- keep the enemy's heads down while strike packages went in and hit targets. For Israel, nothing less than the complete elimination of the Syrian IADS was acceptable- air superiority against the Syrian fighters was meaningless if the IADS prevented close air support from assisting the ground forces' objectives. 

The opening phase of Operation Drugstore saw large numbers of Delilah ground-launched drones being launched towards the Bekaa Valley, giving the impression of a large Israeli strike force. As the SAM batteries went active to engage what they thought were Israeli aircraft, battlefield surface-to-surface missiles were fired at each SAM battery. One of the missiles used was the Keres, which was an Israeli modification of the AGM-78 Standard anti-radiation missile used by Wild Weasel aircraft. The mobile launcher fired three Keres missiles and even a local modification of the smaller AGM-45 Shrike was used that added a second stage booster to allow a ground launch. In the first ten minutes of the operation, ten of the 19 batteries had been knocked out either due to missile hits or because they had run out of missiles engaging the Delilah drones. Four minutes later, the first wave of ground attack aircraft swept into the Bekaa Valley- 26 McDonnell Douglas F-4E Phantoms and a similar number of IAI Kfir C2s, with the Phantoms using AGM-65 Maverick missiles as well as Shrike and Standard ARMs to hit the remaining SAM sites while the Kfirs targeted the control vans and storage areas of the missile sites. With no losses, a second wave of over forty A-4 Skyhawks and IAI Kfir C2s swept in attacking the SAM sites with cluster bombs while the F-4Es returned using laser-guided bombs against any surviving control vans. In just two hours, 17 of the 19 Syrian SAM sites had been destroyed. 

The next phase of Operation Drugstore saw Israeli strike aircraft next hit the Syrian mobile GCI (ground-controlled intercept) sites that provided directions to the Syrian MiG force. With the destruction of the GCI sites and their radars, the Syrian IADS was now blinded as F-15 Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons established combat air patrols over the Bekaa Valley. The timing was perfect- as the Syrian commanders realized that their IADS umbrella was being systematically demolished, three squadrons of MiG-21s and MiG-23s were scrambled from their Syrian bases- it's estimated that up to sixty Syrian fighters raced to the Bekaa Valley where the F-15s and F-16s were waiting. They were tasked to hit the Israeli strike forces that were attacking the components of their IADS, but instead found that Israeli Grumman E-2 Hawkeyes orbiting over southern Lebanon had given the combat air patrols ample warning of the inbound MiGs. Because the Syrians relied on GCI controllers to provide them with vectors and targeting information, the loss of the GCI sites meant they were flying into the Bekaa Valley blind while the F-15s and F-16s' longer ranged radars already had them targeted. With communcations and radars being jammed, most of the Syrian MiGs never saw what hit them- ten MiG-21s fell within minutes. At the end of the day, only one F-15 had been hit, and the pilot managed to recover his Eagle safely to Ramat David AB in northern Israel. 

The following morning the last two Syrian SAM batteries were destroyed while the Syrians scrambled more MiG-21s and MiG-23s to make up for the previous day's losses. Since the MiG-23 Floggers were the most capable of the Syrian fighters, the F-15s were tasked with eliminating them and six were shot down in short order. As Israeli armored units engaged Syrian armor in the valley, two waves of Syrian Sukhoi Su-22 fighter bombers were sent into to attack the Israeli units, escorted by a squadron of MiG-21s. It was a turkey shoot as over 20 Syrian aircraft were shot down by the Israeli fighters patrolling the skies of the Bekaa Valley. The Syrians then tried to send in anti-tank Gazelle helicopters to go after the Israeli armor and those were shot down as well. 

11 June was the last day of continuous fighting as a cease fire was to go into effect later than day. Hoping to stave off defeat and entering the ceasefire at a disadvantage, the Syrians poured their MiG-23 Floggers into the battle against the F-15s and F-16s, leaving the MiG-21s to escort the strike version of the Flogger, the MiG-23BN. Several Syrian MiG-25 Foxbats made high altitude runs over the Bekaa Valley, hoping to distract the Israeli fighters into looking "upward", distracted from the inbound MiG-23s. At lower altitudes, two waves of Syrian MiG-23BNs would attempt to hit the Israeli armored units once again where the Sukhois had failed the previous day. The Syrian fighter sweep failed as their presence was once again known thanks to the E-2 Hawkeyes. Six Floggers were shot down in their first pass over the valley. Another six MiG-21s were shot down as well and the MiG-23BN attacks had little effect on the Israeli positions. 

By the time of the ceasefire took effect, the Syrians lost 30% of their air force in just one week of fighting for a total of 88 aircraft shot down. Of those 88 kills, 44 belonged to F-15 Eagles and 33 belonged to F-16s. Israeli losses have never been fully admitted, but it's believed to include one F-16, one F-4E, one Kfir C2, two A-4s and several helicopters. Following the battle in the skies over the Bekaa Valley, the Israeli Defense Forces Air Force (IDF/AF) was secretly debriefed by US military experts from the US Air Force and other branches of the military. The lessons gleaned from Operation Drugstore would strongly influence Coalition tactics on the opening night of Operation Desert Storm. In what was called "Poobah's Party" (from the callsign of Brigadier General Larry Henry, a leading USAF tactician and expert on air defenses), approximately one-hundred drones were fired from ground sites in Saudi Arabia to trigger the Iraqi IADS into action to they could be targeted for destruction by Coalition air assets. With the stealthy Lockheed F-117A Nighthawks going "downtown" to Baghdad to take out the command and control centers of the IADS, individual radar and SAM sites then were left on their own to find their own targets in the midst of some intense jamming. Iraqi radar sites could burn through the jamming, and when they did, they detected the drones of Poobah's Party. Sites that hadn't expended their missiles on the drones found themselves targeted by F-4G Wild Weasels. 

Source: F-15 Eagle Engaged: The World's Most Successful Fighter by Steve Davies and Doug Dildy. Osprey, 2007, p146-147. Photos: Wikipedia, USAF Featured Art Gallery

Baptism of Fire; The North Vietnamese Air Force in 1965

Following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 that resulted in the partition of Vietnam in to the North and South, the Ministry of Defense for the Communist north embarked on an upgrade of the country's military infrastructure which included laying the foundation for a modern jet-equipped air force. All the former French and Japanese airfields were modernized to handle jet fighters and by the summer of 1955, nine bases had been made operational. In March 1956 the first group of 110 North Vietnamese flight students were sent abroad for flight training- most went to China, some went to the Soviet Union. One-third of the students were earmarked for fighter aircraft, another third for transport aircraft, and the last third directed into helicopter training. At the end of the year, the Chinese military assisted in setting up local flight training programs at the air bases of Cat Bai and Gia Lam, with MiG-15UTI two-seat trainers soon to follow. By 1958, the Vietnamese People's Air Force (VPAF) had 44 operational airfields capable of operating the more capable Mikoyan MiG-17 "Fresco". Just a year later all primary flight instruction took place in North Vietnam, but advanced jet conversion to the MiG-17 still had to take place in the Soviet Union, the first group of VPAF pilots making the conversion to the Fresco in 1960. A few months later, the North Vietnamese had arranged for a second operational conversion site in China to accelerate the build up of jet fighter pilots. By 1962 the nascent VPAF had 36 MiG-17s as its front-line jet fighter along with a small number of MiG-15UTI trainers. On 3 February 1964 the VPAF established the 921st Fighter Regiment at Noi Bai AB as the first operationally-trained Vietnamese fighter pilots returned from the Soviet Union. It would be quite an accomplishment in just 10 years for a nation as limited in resources as North Vietnam. 

Following the Gulf of Tonkin incident on 2 August 1964, President Lyndon Johnson ordered Operation Pierce Arrow which saw Navy aircraft from the carriers Ticonderoga and Constellation hit targets in North Vietnam, opening the first US air combat missions of the Vietnam War.  The VPAF at the time was still not at an operational state to defend against these initial strikes but the perceived American aggression intensified Soviet and Chinese logistical support to bring the VPAF up the strength. VPAF commanders feared the USAF and US Navy would use their numerical advantage and tactical experience to vary their attack patterns, but to their surprise, US forces adhered to very routine and obvious patterns that made planning interception missions easy. Even worse, the Vietnamese could determine the possible target area as US reconnaissance aircraft would make repeated runs against certain areas the day prior to an attack. Continued escalation on both sides resulted in Operation Flaming Dart in March 1965 which then transitioned to the 44-month long Operation Rolling Thunder that would finally introduced air combat over the skies of Vietnam.

The first strikes of Operation Rolling Thunder took place on 2 March 1965 when a USAF strike force of Republic F-105D Thunderchiefs and North American F-100 Super Sabres hit an ammunition dump near Vinh in the far southern part of North Vietnam and out of range of the VPAF's small MiG force. As the air strikes of Rolling Thunder moved northward over the course of the month, the VPAF prepared for action. On 3 April 1965 the 921st Fighter Regiment went on alert and six MiG-17swere armed and prepared for takeoff. Observing the US reconnaissance flight patterns led the VPAF to conclude the rail bridges at Ham Rong were the target and ground radars were already tracking the inbound US Navy strike force. With pilots already sitting in their cockpits, the order was given at 0940 to scramble to intercept the strike force on the VPAF's first operational combat mission. Four of the MiGs were the "intercept flight", responsible for attacking the Navy strike force. Two more MiGs formed the "covering flight" to follow the intercept group and defend against any attacks. Flying in a "finger four" formation, Pham Ngoc Lan was the flight leader, with Phan Van Tuc as his wingman on the left, Ho Van Quy as #3 on the right, and Tran Minh Phuong in the #4 position. The group raced southward at low level to avoid getting targeted by an over-enthusiastic SAM units and it also masked the group from airborne radar. 

Arriving in the vicinity of the bridge, the four VPAF pilots could see a mixed force of Vought F-8 Crusaders and Douglas A-4 Skyhawks attacking the bridge. The four accelerated and then pulled up to gain an altitude advantage against the strikers which had not seen their approach. Pham Ngoc Lan and his wingman zeroed in on a pair of unsuspecting Crusaders. His wingman, Phan Van Tuc, fired his MiG's cannon first before Pham Ngoc Lan had to cut across him to narrow the distance and fired on one of the Crusaders at only 400 yards, scoring hits and an explosion. Believing that another pair of Navy aircraft were closing in on them from below and to the right, Pham Ngoc Lan had his wingman take the lead and Phan Van Tuc fired again, scoring hits on a second aircraft that crashed. It would later turn out after the war that the Crusader Pham Ngoc Lan thought he had shot down was severely damaged, but its pilot, Lt. Commander Spence Thomas of VF-211 from the USS Intrepid, managed to nurse his stricken Crusader to an emergency landing at Da Nang where it had to be written off due to battle damage. Phan Van Tuc's kill was most likely the A-4C Skyhawk that was listed by the US Navy has having been downed by AAA fire. 

The MiG force was then ordered to return to base before running out of fuel (the MiG-17s were short-legged, particularly as it took a lot of afterburner use in dogfights to maintain speed), but the flight leader, Pham Ngoc Lan, got separated from his men and his compass failed. Having trained in the area during his basic flight instruction, he had a rough idea where he was and with his fuel supply dwindling, he set up to make a crash landing on the banks of the Duong River south of Hanoi. Ignoring his ground controller's order to bail out, Pham Ngoc Lan wanted to try and save the MiG knowing that there were only a small number operational with the VPAF. Missing a sampan by only a few feet, his aircraft skipped along the water and knocked him unconscious before coming to rest on a mud flat. When he came to, he found himself surrounded by a local Vietnamese militia pointing their guns at him, thinking he was a downed American pilot. Despite showing them his identity papers, it took a local village elder to defuse the situation. Given that Pham Ngoc Lan was born and raised originally in the South, his accent made him sound like he was from South Vietnam which complicated matters. Before long a helicopter from his base arrived to retrieve him and the MiG was also recovered and put back into service, a testament to the toughness of the design. Returning his base, he found out that the other men of his flight had managed to land safely. 

The aggressive performance of the VPAF that day surprised the Americans as they weren't expecting any significant aerial opposition. However, while the VPAF managed to learn and adapt into facing a numerically and technologically superior adversary in their subsonic MiGs, rigid doctrines and political interference would continue to handicap the US war effort for years to come.  Pham Ngoc Lan would finish out the war with three kills and his wingman, Phan Van Tuc, would finish out the war as an ace with six kills.

Since that day in 1965, the Vietnamese government made the third of April a public holiday called "Air Force Day".

Source: MiGs Over North Vietnam: The Vietnam People's Air Force in Combat, 1965-1975 by Roger Boniface. Stackpole Books, 2010, p1-9.

Selling the Skyhawk to Israel and a Watershed Change in American Foreign Policy

For a better part of the 1950s and 1960s Israel relied on France as its main combat aircraft supplier with the IDF/AF having flown the Dassault Ouragan, Mystere, Super Mystere and Mirage III as well as the Sud-Aviation Vautour in the strike role. But reliance on a single nation for arms worried Israel's government and by the late-1950s increasingly advanced Soviet designs were being purchased by Arab client states and the general perception in the world market was that French designs were falling behind the designs coming from the Americans and Russians. American concerns about growing Soviet influence in the Middle East created an opportunity for Israel to finally get access to American combat aircraft that had previous proven elusive due to diplomatic concerns.

In 1965 Jordan began to finalize purchase of MiG-21s from the Soviet Union, and as a moderate Arab state that had enjoyed decent relations with the United States, found that the Royal Jordanian Air Force would have access to US fighters in an effort to swing Jordan out of the Soviet sphere of influence. The United States offered to sell Jordan the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson asked the Israelis to not oppose the sale. Israel, sensing a chance to modernize the IDF/AF, stipulated that it would not oppose the sale as long as a similar class of aircraft were sold to Israel.

Throughout the spring of 1965 diplomats from both the United States and Israel met to negotiate a formula that would allow the sale of American arms to Israel provided that the Jordanian deal be allowed to proceed without objections. President Johnson, however, attached the condition that American aircraft would only be sold if comparable types were not available from European nations. The Israelis touched upon their operational requirements during negotiations and insisted upon 75 aircraft as part of the US commitment. Initially the Douglas B-66 Destroyer was offered, but it was quickly agreed to let the IDF/AF experts handle the specifics. Israel's military requirement was for two classes of aircraft, one in the heavy attack class to replace the Vautour and Super Mystere and a light attack class for a replacement of the Mystere and Ouragan. The French duly offered a proposed new version of the Vautour called the Super Vautour and the proposed Mirage F2, but both would not be available by 1970 at the earliest which wasn't acceptable to the IDF/AF. The Dassault Mirage IV was also mooted for an associated reconnaissance requirement, but it didn't fit the scope of the Israeli need. That left primarily American designs in the running.

At the 1965 Paris Air Show, the IDF/AF Chief of Staff, Ezer Weizman, and Yossi Sarig, a former Vautour squadron commander and head of the IDF/AF's operational planning, visited the Dassault chalet for a presentation on the Jaguar as a possible candidate for the light attack requirement. Halfway in the presentation, Sarig whispered to Weizman that the Jaguar would not meet the baseline mission profiles the IDF requested, so Weizman ended the presentation prematurely and walked out with the Dassault delegation angry. He went straight to the chalet of Douglas Aircraft and made arrangements for presentation later that day on the A-4 Skyhawk.

The IDF/AF (Heyl Ha'Avir) called its procurement program Plan Samuel, which called for 30 heavy attack aircraft and 120 light attack aircraft. The aforementioned Douglas B-66 Destroyer was rejected for the heavy attack requirement and the McDonnell F-4 Phantom II, Grumman A-6 Intruder and Vought A-7 Corsair were settled upon as the candidates. The light attack candidates were the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, the Northrop F-5 Freedom Fighter, and the North American F-100 Super Sabre. Plan Samuel was presented to a joint State Department and Defense Department group in Washington in October 1965 and the reaction by the Americans was quite negative. Too many aircraft were being asked for and it was felt that the Israelis hadn't exhausted their European options yet. Believing that the American option was out, Israel nonetheless found itself engaged in backroom diplomacy as President Johnson wished to honor its commitment to supply Israel with arms given that they had not blocked the F-104 sale to Jordan.

As a result in February 1966 US officials gave Israel their best possible offer which was for 48 aircraft that had to be the least capable of the types that had been short-listed for Plan Samuel. The contracts for the purchase of the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk was signed on 18 March 1966 but was kept secret with the code name Operation Rugby in order to allow arms sales to both Jordan and Saudi Arabia to proceed. Israel had stipulated its own modifications for the A-4 Skyhawk while the United States insisted upon the deletion of specific advanced features like the bombing computers, radar warning systems and AGM-45 Shrike anti-radar missile launch capability. The combination of Israeli requirements and American conditions for a downgraded Skyhawk resulted in a new variant, the A-4H Skyhawk, the last of which was delivered in late 1968.

The purchase of the A-4 Skyhawk represented not just a fundamental change in Israeli defense policy, but it also represented a significant change US defense and foreign policy in the Middle East which up to that point had been one of primarily non-engagement. Spurred on by Soviet inroads and the creation of client states in Syria, Egypt, and Iraq, American foreign policy forever changed in the Mideast with the sale of those Skyhawks to the IDF/AF in the late 1960s.


Source: Israeil A-4 Skyhawk Units in Combat (Combat Aircraft series, No. 81) by Shlomo Aloni. Osprey Publishing, 2009, p-6-16.

After a series of accidents and maintenance problems with their McDonnell Douglas F-4J Phantoms in the 1973 air show season, the Blue Angels canceled the rest of the season and stood down for an overview of the program by the Secretary of the Navy, John Warner (who would later serve six terms in the US Senate representing the state of Virginia). Warner appointed a panel of six senior flag officers to review the Blue Angels program and they unanimously recommended its continuation as "prime recruiting asset" and the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, wanted a reorganization of the Blue Angels and instituted a review for an aircraft type to replace the F-4s.

Former Blue Angels team leader Captain Ken Wallace, who at the time was in charge of tactical air planning in the CNO's office, was appointed to make recommendations on a new aircraft type for the demonstration team. He preferred the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, which was the Navy's prime fighter aircraft, but the cost of the keeping the aircraft ready for flight demonstrations and maintaining the costly AWG-9 radar and Phoenix missile weapons system flight ready were daunting. At that time the flight control system was also undergoing refinement as well as the fighter was being introduced into service.

The next choice in Wallace's evaluation was the Vought A-7 Corsair II, then the Navy's newest front-line attack aircraft, but they couldn't be spared as they were needed in Southeast Asia even as US involvement in Vietnam was winding down as units replaced older Corsairs and combat losses. This finally led to the selection of the McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, specifically the A-4F variant. Approximately 150 A-4Fs were built to stand-in for the A-7 Corsair II in some of the Navy's attack squadrons as there were operational problems in getting the A-7 ready several years earlier. Now that the A-7 was a mature system, the A-4F was in plentiful supply and particularly appealing to the Blue Angels were the 100 F-models that were re-engined with a more powerful version of the J52 engine that boasted 11,200 lbs of thrust compared to 9,300 lbs of the older version of the J52 that most Skyhawks used- this gave the "Super Fox" as the re-engined A-4Fs were called, a near 1:1 thrust to weight ratio, something the Blues never had in a display aircraft.

The Blue Angels' new A-4F mounts had several modifications for air show display:

1. Wing slats were locked into place to prevent asymmetrical slat deployment which would have been disastrous in close formation.
2. Smoke oil tanks added.
3. Modification of internal fuel plumbing to allow an additional 30 seconds of inverted flight time.
4. Horizontal stabilizer altered to allow 3 degrees more of down trim.
5. Modulated stick forces in the pitch axis- one setting for displays and the other for cross-country flying.
6. Stowable crew ladder in what was the left hand gun bay.
7. Removal of the dorsal avionics pod and some of the weapons delivery avionics.
8. A drag chute for use at smaller airports.

The final change was the raise the status of the Blue Angels to that of a full Navy squadron, giving the team leader the same powers and position as a squadron CO. This now meant that the flight surgeon, supply and administrative officers and the public affairs and maintenance teams were no longer loaned to the team.

The Skyhawks debuted in the 1974 show season and flew for the Blue Angels until 1987 when they were replaced by the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet.

Source: Wings of Fame, Volume 8. Aerospace Publishing, 1997. "Blue Angels" by Harry S. Gann, p14-18.