It can be called a very classic textbook-level war example in the history of world anti-terrorism operations.
1On June 27th, 976, an Air France passenger plane was hijacked by four Palestinians and two West Germans in Athens to Entebbe airport in Uganda. Of the 242 passengers on board, 105 were Israelis, who were put under house arrest as hostages in the airport terminal. The hijackers demanded that Israel send 53 Palestinian prisoners to Uganda for exchange within a specified time limit, or the hostages would be executed.
In order to rescue the hostages, Israel set up an operation headquarters headed by Prime Minister Rabin and Defense Minister Perez, and the commanders of infantry and paratroopers drew up a military rescue plan code-named "Operation Lightning". In less than a day, Israel found a passenger plane of the same model and fully simulated the restoration of Entebbe airport. The special forces conducted a surprise exercise.
After the operation started. Four "C- 130 Hercules" transport planes of the Israeli Air Force secretly took off from Israel, forming a dense formation, and quietly landed at Entebbe International Airport one hour before midnight. Subsequently, the Israelis got off the transport plane with a black Mercedes and several jeeps of the escort and headed straight for the old terminal. Ugandans think this is the motorcade of Edie Amin or other senior Ugandan officials. The three groups of commandos rushed to their respective targets according to the predetermined plan, and the whole operation was as smooth as the rehearsal in advance. The captain shouted in Israeli: get down! Except for the enemy, all the hostages got down and fired intensively. It takes 10 minutes to capture the terminal building, 20 minutes to rescue the hostages, 10 minutes to check and 12 minutes to return to the plane.
It took only 53 minutes for the special forces to land from 1 Israeli plane to leave the last 1 Israeli plane! Six hijackers were killed. Another hostage was mistaken for a terrorist and killed. Three of the total *** 103 hostages died. During the raid, Ugandan troops at the airport also opened fire on Israeli special forces, and killed Colonel yonatan netanyahu, the ground commander of the Israeli forces, who was also the only Israeli army killed in this operation (it is worth mentioning that yonatan netanyahu is the brother of Jonathan Netanyahu, a famous Israeli politician, who served as the Israeli Prime Minister from 1996 to 1999).
As a reward to Kenya, the sworn enemy of Uganda's regime (it is believed that this operation was strongly supported by Kenya), and for its own safety, the 1 1 Ugandan fighter planes at the airport were also completely destroyed (these planes are basically the main force of Uganda's air force).