Operation Mole Cricket 19 (Hebrew: מבצע ערצב-19, Mivtza Artzav Tsha-Esreh) was a suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD) campaign launched by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) against Syrian targets on June 9, 1982, at the outset of the 1982 Lebanon War. The operation was the first time in history that a Western air force successfully destroyed a Soviet-built surface-to-air missile (SAM) network. It also became one of the biggest air battles since World War II, and the biggest since the Korean War. The result was a decisive Israeli victory, leading to the colloquial name the Bekaa Valley Turkey Shoot.
The IAF began working on a SAM suppression operation since the end of the Yom Kippur War. Rising tensions between Israel and Syria over Lebanon escalated in the early 1980s and culminated in Syria deploying the SAM batteries in the Beqaa Valley. On June 6, 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon, and on the third day of the war, with clashes going on between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Syrian Army, Israel decided to launch the operation.
The battle lasted about two hours, and involved innovative tactics and technology. By the end of the day, the IAF had destroyed seventeen of the nineteen SAM batteries deployed in the Beqaa Valley and shot down 90 enemy aircraft, without losses. The battle led the United States to impose a ceasefire on Israel and Syria.
Read more about Operation Mole Cricket 19: Prelude, Battle, Aftermath
Famous quotes containing the words operation, mole and/or cricket:
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“On her left breast
A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops
I’ th’ bottom of a cowslip.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)