9. Hocus-Pocus

As the countdown quickened, Moshe Tabak was keeping a close watch on the heavens. The sun and moon would be in their monthly alignment on December 16, which meant a tide three feet higher than usual. It was only when the sea was at this height that the shipyard could launch its boats. If the date was missed, it would be another month before Number Twelve could be floated. Tabak had been pressing the shipyard to launch by the 16th but as the date approached the foremen insisted that they needed another few days to work out problems with one of the engines. It was only Amiot’s personal intervention that got the boat launched on time. The final touches were put on the engine after the boat was in the water, a procedure that struck the yard workers as lunatic. With the memory still fresh of his voyage a year before in untested Number Seven, Tabak pushed Number Twelve through stiff paces and discovered a crack in one of the fuel tanks, which was quickly repaired.

In the four and a half years since the Israeli naval mission had been established in Cherbourg, there had been no mention in the press of its existence. The two local newspapers had honored Amiot’s request not to publish anything about the boats or the embargo and the French government had never made public mention of the subject. Local reporters attended the launchings of each vedette and talked at the receptions with the Israeli naval personnel but wrote nothing. Outside of Cherbourg, the French public — indeed, the Israeli public — was ignorant of their existence. The secrecy would be undone one week before the planned breakout by a British reporter.

French Defense Minister Debre had arrived in Cherbourg December 12 with a large entourage to participate in the launching of France’s second nuclear submarine, the Terrible. Following a press conference in the naval arsenal, Mayor Hebert took advantage of the minister’s presence to repeat his objection to the embargo of the Israeli boats and to point out the danger of a Palestinian raid on their anchorage. Was there any solution in the offing? he asked. To the surprise of local reporters who had lingered to hear the conversation, Debre replied that there was, one that would be satisfactory to all parties. He was referring to the Starboat sale but did not elaborate.

The veteran British correspondent Anthony Mann of the Daily Telegraph did not attend the submarine launching but he telephoned afterward to a stringer in Cherbourg — a local newsman working as a part-time correspondent for out-of-town newspapers. In passing, the stringer mentioned the colony of Israelis living in Cherbourg, a reference apparently inspired by the Debre-Hebert exchange. Mann perked up at the mention of Israelis and asked what they were doing in Cherbourg. To his astonishment he learned that they had been there for years to oversee construction of a series of gunboats and that these boats had been embargoed by de Gaulle. The apparently secret Israeli presence was intriguing, and so was the embargo, but the story still lacked the timely peg that would make it news.

This came a few days later when Mann’s Cherbourg stringer called to inform him of the launching of the last Israeli boat. Mann’s story appeared in the Telegraph the next day, headlined “France Holds On to Gunboats for Israel.” Although buried on page 17, it was enough to cause despair among the Israelis involved in the affair. The story even reported that “it is understood that some Israeli naval personnel will return home on Christmas Day.” The statement was innocent enough. The stringer had heard that some of the Israeli families in town had declined invitations to holiday parties because they would be returning to Israel. There was a periodic turnover of Israeli personnel in Cherbourg and Mann was not hinting at any imminent breakout of the embargoed boats. Nevertheless, his report stunned Limon and his colleagues. They feared that the article would focus so much attention on them that the entire operation would have to be aborted. But the follow-up did not come — not in the French press or anywhere else. The Mann article had in fact not been the first public mention of the boats. Two weeks before, an annual publication put out by the French navy, Combat Fleets, had reported that five high-speed, missile-firing Israeli patrol boats were under arms embargo in France. That article did not mention Cherbourg or the presence of Israeli crew. Although it was summed up in a brief wire-service dispatch it received scant notice.

Meanwhile, preparations for the breakout continued. It was not a simple matter to undertake in secrecy a quasi-military operation when the boats were in plain view in the center of a busy civilian port, with ferryboats docking alongside and apartments overlooking the quay. The boats would have to leave fully loaded with fuel for the first stage of their journey, but filling their tanks with fifty tons of oil would make the vessel sink perceptibly in the water. This could alert the French to the possibility that the Israelis were planning to embark on a long voyage. The solution arrived at was to take the boats out every day for “testing” and idle beyond the horizon for several hours. Upon returning they would take on the amount of fuel that would normally have been expended in high-speed runs. The boats thus sank lower in the water each day, but at an imperceptible rate.

An unexpected problem manifested itself one morning early in December when a gendarme presented himself on the quay and asked to speak to the officer in charge. Residents of the nearby apartment buildings, he said, were complaining that they had been disturbed the previous night by the sound of engines. The Israeli officer explained that a generator had been started up to provide heating for crewmen aboard. The gendarme accepted the explanation, which happened to be true, but the incident troubled the Israelis. If a single generator had caused a stir, what would happen on Christmas Eve when each of the five boats ignited four powerful engines? Would this not waken the neighborhood and lead to immediate calls to the police and the French naval authorities? The Israelis decided on a Pavlovian approach. Generators were started up each of the nights that followed, first one, then two, then more. They were positioned with their exhausts facing the town. For the first few days the police came to pass on complaints but then they stopped coming. Either the neighbors had learned to live with the noise or the police had learned to live with the complaints. As one of the gendarmes said, “As long as the windows are closed in winter it can’t be too bad.”

Parallel to the field preparations, the cover operation was weaving its complex cloak of legal obfuscation. At the request of the French authorities, Limon sent a letter to Amiot on December 8 formally waiving Israel’s claims to the boats. Siemm came to Paris to sign an agreement with Amiot whereby Starboat would refund the money to Israel directly rather than pay Amiot and have the latter return the money to Israel. This would spare Amiot the threat of subsequent prosecution for illegally transferring money abroad if the fictitious nature of the deal were uncovered and an angry government was looking for revenge. Siemm sent Amiot a letter on December 17 asking him to inquire of the Israelis if they would be willing to have their crews sail the five boats to their first destination, since there was little time to train Norwegian crews in the operation of the high-powered craft. This letter — which, like all the others, was drafted by Limon himself — provided an explanation, if one was demanded, of why Israeli crews were still aboard the boats after the transfer of ownership. The formal sale did not take place until December 22, with the participation of Siemm, Amiot, and Limon. Two contracts were signed in Amiot’s office in Paris — one formally canceling the original contract by which Israel had purchased the boats and another by which Starboat purchased them from Amiot at the same price.

The coup came the next day, when the parties met again to put their signatures to a series of secret documents that undid everything they had signed the day before. This time Siemm signed a contract with his old friend Mordecai Friedman as head of the Netivai Neft oil-exploration company, in which Starboat agreed to lease to Netivai Neft five boats that would assist in the search for oil in Israel’s offshore waters. The lease was for three years, with an option to renew for three years. Somewhere in the fine print was a sentence giving Netivai Neft the option to purchase the above-mentioned boats within three months of delivery. In other words, the boats whose sale to Israel had been banned by the French government and whose sale to Norway had been approved were now being leased by the Norwegian purchaser to an Israeli company that would shortly have the right to purchase them outright. Unlike the contracts signed the day before, this agreement would of course not be shown to the French government — not unless the boats’ arrival in the eastern Mediterranean became an issue requiring legal explanation.

Limon signed a letter to Siemm nullifying the contract of December 22 in which Siemm had undertaken to pay Israel for the boats. “We disengage you,” said the letter, “from all contractual responsibility.” Amiot and Limon jointly signed a document stating that the contract nullification signed by Limon on behalf of the Israel Defense Ministry’s purchasing mission on December 22, wherein Israel waived its rights to the boats, was itself nullified and that the original contract for the boats signed by Limon and Amiot in 1965 was still in effect. Siemm signed a letter to Netivai Neft notifying it that the leasing deal was nullified because the boats were the property of the Israeli government. These internal documents were designed as reassurances among the parties that none would ever attempt to make claims against the others on the basis of the fictitious dealings.

Thus, in a dazzling display of legal hocus-pocus, Limon had effectively brought the boats through the French embargo; on paper at least he had done it “not illegally.”

The boats now had to be gotten away before the French started reading between the lines.

The Israeli destroyer Eilat, first victim of the naval missile age. Bamahane

Admiral Mordecai Limon upon his appointment as navy commander. Israel Government Press Office

Hadar Kimche, after his promotion to admiral. Bamahane

Felix Amiot, flanked by wives of Israeli naval officers, addresses the Israeli naval contingent at a festive dinner at his estate following the launching of one of the twelve Israeli boats built in his shipyard. Moshe Tabak

Limon (in dark glasses) with French and Israeli naval officers and wives of French officials at a launching ceremony at Amiot shipyards. Haim Shachak

A newly launched boat, festooned with flags, starts engines as it floats free of the cradle, not visible below the surface. Moshe Tabak

The crew of one of the missile boats standing in formation prior to a launching. At high tide the vessel would be pushed stern-first on a wooden cradle along tracks running out into the harbor, until it floated free. Moshe Tabak

Four of the five last boats tied up in Cherbourg after the launching of the fourth, still flag-bedecked, in October 1969. The last boat would be launched two months later. Haim Shachak

Commander Moshe Tabak, who supervised the sea testing of most of the boats, unveils the plaque for the last one, the Hetz, launched December 16, 1969, nine days before the flight of boats from Cherbourg. Because of the desire to maintain a low profile as the breakout neared, the Israeli contingent dispensed with the usual ceremony involving invited guests. The unveiling was left to Tabak, the longest-serving officer in Cherbourg, in an informal setting. Moshe Tabak

The request for an export license for the five last Cherbourg boats gives their destination as the Starboat Company in Oslo. The entry under “Nature” cites their intended use as servicing offshore oil installations. The departure date is given as “before January 31, 1970.” The customs official who signed the document, J. Marti, surmised that the boats were destined for Israel, not Norway.

Certificat de Visite. The certificate granted by a Cherbourg customs agent on December 24, 1969, a few hours before the boats stole away. The agent’s verification that all the material imported to France for the boats’ construction was installed in the vessels was the last document needed to make the departure “not illegal.”

A confidential French police memo five days before the boats’ secret departure notes that the last of the five embargoed boats has been launched. “According to the information we have received, these vessels will soon depart from Cherbourg in a ‘legal fashion.’ They are the object of a fictitious sale to a Northern European country and will subsequently reach Israel.” This report, however, apparently did not reach Paris before officials left on their Christmas holiday.

A secret police report by the Renseignements Generaux to the French Cabinet which met on December 31, 1969, to discuss the flight of the Cherbourg boats. It quotes an eyewitness as saying that the boats left with all lights on, as when departing on routine test runs. The report cites “the ironic manner” in which Dr. Hebert, the mayor of Cherbourg who opposed the embargo, referred to the episode in interviews with the media. It notes that the editor of La Presse de la Manche, the Cherbourg newspaper that had refrained from mentioning the boats’ existence, was personally connected to the shipyard owner.

The report by the Cherbourg police chief to the sub-prefect of Cherbourg after the government launched an inquiry into the boats’ escape. He notes that police patrols made routine checks of the pier at which the Israeli boats were tied. On the nights before their flight, four checks were made, including at 3:30 and 5:30 a.m. On Christmas Eve, the report says, the latter two checks were not made because of problems at two night spots in town. The boats left at 2:30 a.m.

A sailor aboard the first of five boats arriving from Cherbourg prepares to throw a line as the boat docks at Haifa. Israel Government Press Office

The commander in civilian dress on the bridge of Starboat Two gives docking orders as his vessel moors in Haifa. Israel Government Press Office

Floodlights illuminate the Saars upon their arrival from Cherbourg on New Year’s Eve, 1970. Israel Government Press Office

Captain Ezra Karshinsky (Karish) faces the press in Haifa upon his arrival with the Cherbourg boats. Reporters were led to believe that he was the commander of the operation. The true commander, Captain Hadar Kimche, remained incognito for security reasons. Israel Government Press Office