mushroomman:
Can you remember Brian a story that was going around the Mocamp in the early eighties about a nuclear power station that the French were building for Saddam Hussain somewhere in Iraq. After years of building it, it was just about to be commissioned when The Israeli Airforce attacked it and raised it to the ground.
The Iraqis allegedly launched a retaliatory attack on Israel with a number of their aircraft being shot down but one aircraft managed to get through destroying a Coca Cola plant.
This the Iraqis proclaimed as a great victory.
I remember it well Steve even though I wasn’t there at the time. It was I think 81 or possibly 82. The nuclear power station was about 16km from Baghdad and set in the south east quadrant of the city. As the reactor was nearing completion the Israeli’s knew it was ‘now or never’ to put the plant out of commission. It was a successful raid of course with casualties kept to a minimum. I understand one Frenchman died and a small number of Iraqi’s. It was a huge feather in the cap of the Israel air force being so far from their bases. I heard that Sadaam had many of the top men in charge of the anti aircraft screen to the west of Iraq executed which seems a bit harsh seeing that the Israelis flew down over Saudi and the came up from the south to hit the power station.
Another little snippet of useless information was that six years previously the Iranians had also attacked the power station but only using two Phantom fighter bombers. They had not tried to hit the reactor only the peripheral buildings around it.