Twenty years ago last Tuesday, Ilan Ramon, Israel’s first astronaut, died aboard the space shuttle Columbia. Early in his life, Ramon had served in the Israeli air force, and took part in the daring 1981 raid on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. His friend and former flight instructor, Amos Yadlin—who flew alongside him in the Osirak mission—discusses his recollections of Ramon in an interview with Menachem Butler.
Ilan . . . was the only unmarried pilot [of the eight who flew to Iraq]. He said, “You all have wives and kids. Give me the most dangerous place in the formation.” And that was position number eight. Number one came by surprise; number two was still a surprise. And as eight airplanes dive [on the target], the last one [in the formation] is the one most likely to be shot down. So, Ilan volunteered for the eighth position. . . . He did [so] out of friendship and camaraderie, and because of the amount of training time we had spent together.
If Murphy’s law says anything that can go wrong will go wrong, that night it was the other way around. Everything that could have gone wrong went right. Every surprise was for the good. The airplane’s fuel consumption was better than we thought it would be. The [Iraqi] MiGs did not take off to engage us. The air defenses were pointed to the east, and they did not pick us up until very late. Basically, all the airplanes were faithful airplanes. None of them had a malfunction. So we thought maybe we got some help from the Almighty that this important historic mission went on without malfunctions.
Yadlin also recalls a conversation he had with Ramon in Texas in 2001 or 2002, when he was preparing for spaceflight with the rest of the Columbia crew. At the time Yadlin was a senior air-force officer, and he had come to tell Ramon that the IDF had run out of the funds to sponsor his participation in the space mission:
I told Ilan we would have to recall him. His answer was very interesting and touching to me. He said “Amos, we are good friends. Yes, the air force has sent me here, but I’m no longer only an air-force representative. I represent, here, the state of Israel and the Jewish people. You cannot recall me.” And then he invited me to meet the whole team. And I had a very touching, emotional conversation with them. They all spoke highly of Ilan, and the need to keep him on the team. I came back to Israel and we found the budget for the continuation of his training in the U.S. Yes, sometimes I’m sorry that we found the budget, but this is how it is.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/interview-amos-yadlin-ilan-ramon