The MiG That Flew Itself Home

In the mid-1960s, the MiG-21 was the most feared fighter in the sky — the Soviet Union's newest interceptor, and the backbone of the Egyptian, Syrian, and Iraqi air forces. Israel's air force commander, Ezer Weizman, understood that the next war would be decided in the air, and he lacked one crucial thing: hard knowledge of the enemy's plane. Mossad chief Meir Amit made acquiring a flyable MiG-21 a top intelligence priority.

The first attempts were disasters. In Egypt, a Mossad agent named Jean Thomas tried to bribe a pilot with a million dollars; the pilot went to the authorities, and Thomas was hanged in Cairo in December 1962. A second attempt ended with agents assaulting two uncooperative Iraqi pilots to buy silence. Then, in 1964, the opening came from an unlikely direction: a Jewish Iraqi named Yusuf, working in Tehran, knew a Maronite Christian family whose circle included an Iraqi Air Force pilot — Captain Munir Redfa.

Redfa was one of the few pilots trusted to fly Iraq's MiG-21s. He was also a man with grievances. A Chaldean Catholic of Assyrian descent, he felt his Christian roots were blocking his promotion. He had been ordered to bomb Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, an assignment that reportedly disgusted him. The Mossad cultivated him for more than a year — secret meetings, a covert visit to Israel where he even flew with Weizman himself — until Redfa agreed. In exchange: the safe extraction of his entire family, a large payment, a job for life, and Israeli citizenship.

On the morning of August 16, 1966, Redfa took off from Al-Rashid Air Base near Baghdad on what his squadron believed was a routine training sortie, flying a MiG-21F-13 with full fuel tanks. He turned west, crossed Jordanian airspace at low altitude, and entered Israeli skies, where two Mirage III fighters escorted him in. He landed at Hatzor Air Base, nearly out of fuel. His family, meanwhile, was smuggled out of Iraq by Mossad operatives. For the first time, the West had a Soviet MiG-21 intact.

Israeli test pilot Danny Shapira flew it extensively over the Negev, pushing it through dogfights against Israeli Mirages, with Redfa assisting in translating the cockpit labels. They learned its secrets: it could out-accelerate the Mirage and climb faster, but it bled speed in tight turns, had poor visibility, and its radar was weak. Israel later loaned the aircraft to the United States, where it was evaluated under the classified "Have Doughnut" program at Groom Lake, Nevada — the same facility known as Area 51. The MiG-21 now rests at the Israeli Air Force Museum in Hatzerim.

Ten months after the defection, the Six-Day War broke out. Israeli pilots flew into combat knowing exactly how their opponents' fighters handled — an edge no amount of courage could buy. Operation Diamond, three years in the making, had delivered the enemy's best weapon to its enemies, gift-wrapped.