🚨When four transport planes flew at 100 feet over the Red Sea to pull off history's most audacious hostage rescue🚨
On June 27, 1976, Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked following an intermediate stopover in Athens.
Four hijackers, two from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP-EO) and two from the German Revolutionary Cells (RZ), redirected the Airbus A300 first to Benghazi, Libya, and ultimately to Entebbe International Airport in Uganda.
There, the hijackers received full logistical support and heavy perimeter protection from Uganda’s dictator, Field Marshal Idi Amin.
Inside the old terminal building, the hijackers carried out a chilling process:
They segregated the passengers, separating Israeli and Jewish travelers from non-Jewish hostages.
Over the next two days, 148 non-Jewish passengers were released and flown to Paris.
The Air France crew, led by Captain Michel Bacos, refused to abandon their passengers and voluntarily chose to stay behind alongside 102 Israeli and Jewish hostages.
The hijackers issued an ultimatum: release 53 convicted militants imprisoned across Israel, West Germany, and three other countries, or executions would begin on July 1.
Thousands of miles away, the Israeli government and the IDF realized negotiations were a stalling tactic. They initiated a daring rescue plan: Operation Thunderbolt (later renamed Operation Yonatan).
The logistical hurdles appeared insurmountable:
The Blueprints: Israeli construction firm Solel Boneh had built the Entebbe terminal years earlier, providing Mossad with exact floor plans and structural dimensions.
The Intelligence Debrief: Mossad agents in Paris debriefed the released non-Jewish hostages, mapping the precise location of sentries, explosive devices, and the daily movements of Idi Amin.
The Trojan Horse: The assault team, led by Sayeret Matkal commander Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan "Yoni" Netanyahu, sourced a black Mercedes-Benz identical to Idi Amin's personal state vehicle, accompanied by Land Rovers, designed to trick Ugandan perimeter guards into thinking the dictator was arriving on a late-night inspection.
On July 3, four Israeli Air Force C-130 Hercules transports took off in secret:
They flew for eight hours along the Red Sea, skimming barely 100 feet above the waves through turbulent weather to slip underneath Egyptian, Sudanese, and Saudi radar networks.
At 11:01 PM local time, the first Hercules landed silently on the unlit runway at Entebbe with its reverse thrusters muffled.
The rear cargo ramp dropped, and the black Mercedes rolled out onto the tarmac:
When two Ugandan sentries raised their rifles, commandos engaged with suppressed handguns. The ruse was exposed, prompting commandos to sprint the remaining yards directly toward the terminal building.
Bursting through the hall doors with megaphones shouting in Hebrew and English: "Stay down! IDF is here!", the assault team engaged the hijackers in an intense room-to-room shootout.
Within three minutes of breaching, all seven hijackers inside the terminal were dead.
While Sayeret Matkal secured the hostages, paratroopers and Golani Brigade infantry engaged Ugandan garrison troops in the surrounding hangars.
To ensure the Israeli transport planes could not be pursued across African airspace, commandos blew up eight Ugandan MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighter jets parked on the apron with anti-tank rockets.
Out of 106 hostages held in the terminal, 102 were safely evacuated onto the waiting Hercules transports.
Three hostages were killed in the initial crossfire, and one elderly hostage, Dora Bloch, who had been transferred to a Kampala hospital earlier due to illness, was murdered by Ugandan state police the following day in retaliation.
ground commander Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of future Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was struck by sniper fire from the control tower while directing the evacuation.