No. 1 Operation Entebbe (1976)
More than 30 years later, Operation Entebbe (originally named Operation Thunderbolt and later renamed Operation Yonatan) is still considered the gold standard of hostage rescue missions. No operation of this scale, carried out entirely on hostile territory, has been successfully executed since. On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Athens to Paris was hijacked by terrorists from the Palenstinian organization Popular Front. The plane carried a large number of Israelis as it originated from Tel Aviv. The eight hijackers commandeered the plane, first to refuel in Benghazi, Libya, then onto Entebbe, Uganda, where they were enthusiatically welcomed by the brutal dictator Idi Amin. As negotiations went on over the next week, the Israeli government signed off on a daring rescue mission, to be carried out by the elite special forces Sayeret Matkal. They were to land four large C-130 cargo planes at Entebbe Airport, and under the cover of darkness, spring a surprise assualt on the hijackers, who were holding the hostages in an old terminal. Part of the mission was also to eliminate any Ugandan resistence, as over 100 troops and fighter jets were stationed at the airport. On the night of July 4, 1976, the assualt team carried out its daring mission, rescuing 256 hostages and killing all eight hijackers. The Israelis ushered the hostages onto their planes while blowing up Ugandan jets parked near the runway. In all, three hostages were killed by the crossfire and one Israeli commando died and four were wounded during the mission. The operation was posthumously named after the commander of the operation, Yonatan Netanyahu, older brother of current Israeli prime minister Benjamin, himself also a former member of the Sayeret Matkal. One hostage, Dora Bloch, who was receiving treatment at a hospital in Kampala, was murdered on the orders of Amin after the rescue operation. Amin's power and prestige ebbed after the daring assault - within two years his regime was overthrown and he died in exile in Saudi Arabia. One of the wounded commandos was in fact German Oberstleutnant Ulrich Wegener, who a year later would lead the GSG 9 in its own successful Operation Magic Fire. Finally, the death of Yoni Netanyahu was also a topic of considerable debate, which in later years caused a certain amount of rift within the ranks of the close-knit Sayeret Matkal.
