Air Raid on Kadhafi
14-15 APRIL 1986
AIR RAID ON KADHAFI
Before Saddam and bin Laden there was Muammar Kadhafi, and this Lidyan dictator’s continuing support of terrorism in the mid-1980s prompted ADM William J. Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to draft a strike plan called “Attain Document.” An escalating series of wake-up calls were slated for Kadhafi. The first step, Operation “Prairie Fire,” called for the destruction of Kadhafi’s anti-aircraft missile defenses. The second step involved the destruction of military installations ringing the Gulf of Sidra, and the final step would destroy key pumping stations along Libyan oil pipelines.
Kadhafi’s reaction after “Prairie Fire” in March of 1986 was to agitate even harder. In April he openly praised the PLO terrorist who bombed TWA flight 840 as it landed in Athens. Indeed, British intelligence decoded a message from the Libyan embassy in East Berlin alerting Kadhafi of the bombing before the fact. Then at 0149 on the Saturday morning of April 5th, a terrorist bomb exploded in La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin, a favorite hot-spot for American GIs. Two US Army sergeants were killed and others wounded. “Conclusive evidence” linked Kadhafi with the bombing, and President Ronald Reagan gave the green light for phase two of “Attain Document,” Operation “El Dorado Canyon.”
In the early evening of April 14th, the carriers AMERICA (CV-66) and CORAL SEA (CV-43) launched seventy A-6s, A-7s, F-14s, and F-18s. At 1900 these linked up with Air Force EF-111A electronic jammers and commenced the operation. Navy warplanes appeared over Benina Airport in Benghazi, where F-18s covered the attack with HARM and Shrike missiles. Intruders pitted the runway, bombed a barracks and a MiG assembly hangar and destroyed a few Soviet-built Il-76 transports on the ground. Simultaneously F-111Fs from Lakenheath, England, (after being forced to fly 1500 miles around France) linked up with Navy aircraft and an EA-2 Hawkeye for the main attack on Tripoli. After A-7s and A-6s disabled the Libyan defensive radars, the F-111s hit Tripoli Airport and a nearby base used to train Libyan frogmen. The primary thrust of this attack was the Bab al Azizia military barracks, the site of Kadhafi’s headquarters and residence. Unfortunately, only three of nine F-111s found this target–one errant plane dropped his GBU-10 laser guided bombs on the Bin Ghashir residential area. The French embassy was inadvertently damaged in this latter miss, an event that turned nary a head in Washington.
Malicious rhetoric stormed from Tripoli, though in the coming months Kadhafi cooled his sponsorship of worldwide terrorism. The third step in “Attain Document” was canceled.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 23 APR 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
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F-111 “Aardvark”