WW-JanFeb 2022 issue.qxp_Pages-12-40-JanFeb WPD 06/01/2022 12:19 Page 40
HISTORY
Patrick Boniface
OPERATION NOA
I
n 1967 the Middle East was a cauldron of hate, mistrust and politics and it was about to boil over into the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt. But even after the war ended simmering tensions remained and Israel, always on the defensive, established their famed intelligence organisation Mossad, one of the world’s most feared yet almost paradoxically admired secret service agencies. In December 1969 Mossad was responsible for one of the most audacious missions of the 1960s - Operation Noa, named after the daughter of Captain Binyamin “Bini” Telem.
Five of the patrol boats had already been handed over and a sixth slipped out of Cherbourg as soon as the embargo had been announced, with the seventh successfully sailing from France three days after the sixth. Five unfinished patrol boats were left locked inside the shipyard, and following the embarrassment of the sixth and seventh vessels departure an armed guard was placed on them. President de Gaulle, in one of his usual vitriol filled speeches, declared that under no circumstances were the five boats ever to reach Israel.
In the 1960s the Israeli Navy was comparatively weak when positioned against the likes of Jordan and Egypt. Measures had been taken to build up the naval strength including placing orders with French shipbuilders CMN for the construction of Sa’ar 3-class patrol boats. Work on the vessels progressed speedily and it was anticipated that their handing over to the Israeli Navy would be a formality. That was until 1968 when Israel launched a reprisal attack on Beirut Airport after PLO terrorist attacks in Israel. This move by Israel angered French President Charles de Gaulle who subsequently imposed a complete ban on all military sales to Israel.
De Gaulle had not counted on the skill and guile of General Yariv, the head of Military Intelligence, and Admiral Mordechai Limon, who headed the Israeli purchasing mission in France. These two men started work on what would become ‘Operation Noah’s Ark’, the extraction and delivery to Israel of the five remaining boats held at Cherbourg. The five vessels INS Sufa (Storm), INS Ga’ash (Volcano), INS Herev (Sword), INS Hanit (Spear), INS Hetz (Arrow) languished at the shipyard for several months, and this time-frame coincided with President Charles de Gaulle leaving office to be replaced by his successor Georges Pompidou.
40 Warship World January/February 2022
Any hopes that the Israeli’s had that a new President would view the arms embargo in a different light were soon dashed. They devised a plot whereby the French authorities were to be lulled into believing that the Israeli’s had accepted that the five patrol boats were out of reach and that the Israeli government instead demanded compensation for their cost. At the same time, they secretly arranged for the five boats to be sold to a Panama registered purportedly Norwegian company called Starboat that was, in fact, a front for Mossad. Starboat signalled to the French authorities that the five Israeli boats, suitably modified, would be ideal for the companies oil exploration work. The terms of the deal were that the five vessels were to be transferred to the ownership of ‘Starboat’ but would be crewed by personnel from the Israeli Navy experienced in their operation for their transfer journey to an unspecified Norwegian port for refitting. French Defence Minister Michel Debré approved the scheme, probably feeling content that he had settled the matter of the five incomplete vessels. While the front was wafer thin and would scarcely stand up to scrutiny, it proved sufficient for the French authorities to allow the boats to sail to their new ‘Norwegian’ owners. However, the boats lacked certain items off equipment that was needed for the safe 3,000 mile passage to Israel, so the two Israeli men scoured Europe in search of the missing pieces of kit.
