Raid on the Sun

Inside Israel's Secret Campaign that Denied Saddam the Bomb

By: Rodger W. Claire

Narrated by: Adam Grupper

Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

From the earliest days of his dictatorship, Saddam Hussein had vowed to destroy Israel. So, when France sold Iraq a top-of-the-line nuclear reactor in 1975, the Israelis were justifiably concerned. The reactor formed the heart of a huge nuclear plant situated twelve miles from Baghdad, 1,100 kilometers from Tel Aviv. By 1981, the reactor was on the verge of becoming "hot," and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin knew he would have to confront its deadly potential. He turned to Israeli Air Force commander General David Ivry to secretly plan a daring surgical air strike on the reactor, a never-before contemplated mission that would prove to be one of the most remarkable military operations of all time.

Written with the full and exclusive cooperation of the Israeli Air Force high command, General Ivry (ret.), and all of the eight mission pilots (including Ilan Ramon, who became Israel's first astronaut and tragically perished in the shuttle Columbia disaster), Raid On the Sun tells the extraordinary story of how Israel plotted the unthinkable: defying its U.S. and European allies to eliminate Iraq's nuclear threat. In the tradition of Black Hawk Down, journalist Rodger Claire re-creates a gripping tale of personal sacrifice and survival, of young pilots who trained in America on the then-new, radically sophisticated F-16 fighter-bombers, then faced a nearly insurmountable challenge: how to fly the 1,000-plus-kilometer mission to Baghdad and back on one tank of fuel; he recounts Israeli intelligence's incredible "black ops" to sabotage construction on the French reactor and eliminate Iraqi nuclear scientists; and he gives readers a pilot's-eye view of the action on June 7, 1981, when the planes roared off a runway on the Sinai Peninsula for the first successful destruction of a nuclear reactor in history.

©2004 Rodger W. Claire (P)2004 Simon & Schuster, Inc. AUDIOWORKS is an imprint of Simon & Schuster Audio Division, Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Critic reviews

"A stunning eye-opener, shocking you with the realization of the enormous service the Israeli Air Force rendered the free world with its 1981 attack on Saddam Hussein's nuclear facility. Claire went right to the source, the Israeli pilots who flew the mission, to tell in colorful detail the full story of this historic strike. (Walter Boyne, author of Operation Iraqi Freedom: What Went Right, What Went Wrong and Why)

Great bit of history

This is a part of history that is covered thoroughly and objectively in this book. Occasionally I found the blow by blow descriptions of events a bit tedious, but overall, it was good. The author places the incident well in the historical context, plus it connects to events in the news today. The narrator mispronounces some words, hence the lower rating. I hadn't realized it was an abridgement until the end, but it does explain that some sentences seemed awkward. It's not written extremely well, but it gets the information across if you pay attention.

Fascinating Account Of Major Historical Event 40 Years Ago

Riveting account of a very important event! The narrator did a good job of being conversational & the author obviously conducted scores of interviews in researching the book.

I didn’t realize until the end credits that this version was abridged? While I enjoyed the book very much I normally will not buy an abridged book so that was a disappointment & I honestly felt deceived.