Mossad deployed a team of female agents to recruit several Iraqi pilots who had been sent to Randolph Air Force Base in the United States for a staff course, but they were unsuccessful
The MiG-21 is among the most well-known jet fighters in the world. After it made its maiden flight in 1955, Western forces dubbed this Soviet-built aircraft the MiG-21 “Fishbed”. Some of these aircraft have continued to fly well into the twenty-first century.
More than 10,000 MiG-21s were produced by the USSR before manufacturing was stopped in 1985. The Fishbed has been utilized in various forms by more than 50 air forces. Among them was the Iraqi Air Force (IrAF).
If any story from the 1960s has ever made the Israel Air Force (IrAF) “famous” in the West and tarnished its reputation ever since, it is the one about the alleged “defection” of one of its MiG-21 pilots to Israel on August 12, 1966. The Israeli version of the story, which has been widely reported ever since, centers on a “mistreated Christian pilot,” who was “ignored by superiors and never promoted,” who was “disgruntled with his participation in the bombing of the Kurds,” who made his own decision to flee, and who later donated his aircraft to the US for study at a time when the US Air Force (USAF) most needed it—during the height of the Vietnam War. It would be an understatement to describe all of these reports as anything else than propaganda.
Since the late 1950s, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, Mossad, sometimes known as “the Institute,” has failed to persuade any of the Egyptian pilots to defect to Israel with one of their “MiGs.” A new chance presented itself in 1965 when a group of Iraqi pilots was sent to Randolph Air Force Base (AFB) in the United States for a staff course, as reported by Milos Sipos and Tom Cooper in their book Wings of Iraq Volume 1: The Iraqi Air Force, 1931-1970.
Mossad deployed a group of female agents and made unsuccessful attempts to recruit many of them: It was Lieutenant Hamid Dhahee who declined the Israeli offer first. On June 15, 1965, he was killed at a bar in Lackland, Texas. Then, IrAF Commander Brigadier-General Arif Abd ar-Razzaq called his students back to Iraq out of real worry for their safety while they were in the US.
Nevertheless, a number of the Iraqi pilots returned home, followed by alluring “lovers” who were Mossad agents. The “girlfriend” of Captain Shaker Mahmoud Yusuf met him in Baghdad in July 1965; he was also killed when he turned down the Israeli invitation to defect. Captain Mohammad Raglob didn’t live for very long after he “fell out” of a high-speed trail on February 11, 1966, while traveling to Germany.
After a while, the Israelis got in touch with Captain Munir Habib Jamil Redfa, also known as “Ruefa,” who was reassigned as the deputy commander of the No. 11 Squadron. Redfa chose survival when presented with the same “silver or lead” option as his colleagues before him. On August 12, 1966, he took off from Taqqaddum AB and flew a MiG-21F-13 to Israel after the Mossad transported 17 of his family members to Iran.
A few years later, Israel donated that MiG to the United States, although this had very little effect on American knowledge of the aircraft. Ultimately, on their 1965 trip to Randolph AFB, the Iraqis also brought all of the technical and training manuals for the type; before the end of the year, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) translated them into English.
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