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In 1968, Israeli paratroopers conducted a raid on Beirut Airport in Lebanon as part of a larger campaign to incapacitate Palestinian militias. French president Charles de Gaulle, angered by Israel's actions and hoping to maintain healthy relations with a former French colony, issued a full arms embargo on Israel in 1969. This embargo ensured that any military procurement agreements between Israel and France could not be fulfilled. Five Sa'ar-class missile boats had been ordered from France and paid for by the Israeli Navy. These boats, now officially the property of Israel, were being withheld as part of the embargo. With ongoing conflicts with its neighbors, the Israeli Navy was very keen to take delivery of these valuable naval assets to conduct patrols in the Mediterranean. On the 24th of December 1969, members of the Israeli Navy would carry out an outrageous operation of deceit to extract the missile boats from the French port of Cherbourg on the English Channel.
During the first months of the embargo, several high-ranking French officials assured the Israeli Ministry of Defense that the embargo was a temporary measure. With de Gaulle's retirement and the appointment of Georges Pompidou as his replacement, hope for the embargo's lifting was renewed. However, as time passed, the embargo continued to remain in place with no meaningful political deliberation for its removal. Losing hope in a diplomatic solution, Israeli naval officers now began to discuss ways around the embargo, including selling the boats to another state for them to be repurchased from them. Although plausible, Israel sought not to damage Franco-Israeli relations any further. Nonetheless, France had violated its binding contracts in keeping these boats in Cherbourg with Israel footing the bill. In the so-called War of Attrition, the potential for a more conventional conflict grew, increasing Israel's need for the boats. In Cherbourg, the boats were left unmonitored and unguarded. With this knowledge, retired Rear Admiral Limon, head of Israel's defense mission in Paris, began to devise a commando operation to steal their own boats and sail them away using crews flown from Israel. However, the illegal nature of this operation forced then Prime Minister Golda Meir to withhold consent, affirming that no illegal activity was to take place. Limon, unfazed, famously said that the distinction between legal and illegal "may be no wider than a lawyer's comma. In the right circumstances, it may be wide enough to drive a missile boat squadron through."
Interestingly, Limon was approached by a journalist who passed on a secret message from Alexandre Sanguinetti, chairman of the National Defense Committee of the French Assembly, asking why the Israelis don't just get their boats and go. This inspired Limon to push onwards, knowing that divisions existed within the French government and that they could be exploited. In Cherbourg, three of the five boats were now completed and in the water, with the remaining two due soon. Any operation would have to take place after the final boat had been put to sea. This abundance of time allowed Limon to focus his concerns more on the getaway than the plan to grab the boats itself. The journey from Cherbourg to Haifa was over 3,000 miles, meaning the vessels would require two refuels, one near Gibraltar and another near Malta. Navy Commander Moshe Tabak, one of the several Israeli officers stationed in Cherbourg to oversee the construction of the boats, floated the idea of loading and carrying large inflatable rubber fuel tanks to extend the small vessels' range. This idea would be rejected out of fears that these rubber tanks would turn the boats into powder kegs at the risk of exploding.
With an apparent lack of options, Limon now explored the option of selling the boats once more, this time to a civilian entity, one which would then ferry the vessels to Israel and then sell them back to them. This plan had two issues: Limon would have to find a willing company and a suitable civilian reason for said company to purchase the boats, as all defense-related sales required approval from the French authorities. Fortunately for Limon, with the aid of an old friend, Mila Brenner, a retired Navy commander and now owner of the Israeli-based Maritime Fruit Carriers company, he quickly found both. Brenner's acquaintance, the director of Norwegian boatbuilder Akers mekaniske verksted, was a man named Martin Sam. He would create a front company, Starboat, which was publicly claimed to be a new company delivering supplies and personnel to and from North Sea oil rigs. He would be in on the plan. For Sam, the excitement of secretive deception took him back to the days of fighting the German occupation in Norway with the Norwegian resistance. On the 30th of October, Limon informed his superiors in Tel Aviv of his broad idea, notifying them that the opportune moment for any potential plan was Christmas Eve, to reduce the likelihood of discovery and to ensure that, if they weren't discovered, large portions of the French bureaucracy were away from work celebrating Christmas. The answer from Tel Aviv remained no, but Limon continued to develop his idea anyway. Realistically, for any plan to work, he knew that he needed the support of Félix Amiot, director of the boats' manufacturer, Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie. Luckily for Limon, having long established a relationship with Amiot, he knew that he was eager to fulfill his contractual obligations and see the ships transported to their rightful owners, simply as a matter of honor.
With this, Limon drafted a letter to be sent by Martin Sam, the director of the new Starboat company, to Félix Amiot. The letter explains that Sam, having created a front company, Starboat, would purchase the boats from Amiot and then sail them to Israel. Sam, like Amiot, was enthusiastic to support this plan. With his idea coming together with more detail, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan offered his support. All that remained was the permission of Prime Minister Golda Meir. Back in France, Amiot contacted the director of international affairs for the ministerial delegation of armament, General Louis Bonte. He informed General Bonte of Starboat's offer to purchase the boats for civilian purposes. In turn, General Bonte passed the offer of purchase onto Limon, blissfully unaware that Limon was the mastermind of the entire deceit. General Bonte informed Limon that France was willing to consider the offer, pending Israel waiving its rights to the boats and accepting a refund in return. Limon responded defensively: "These boats are ours. We've paid for them and we need them." This emphasized the importance, and thus the unwillingness, of Israel to give up these boats. Despite being the engineer of the offer, any eagerness on his part to accept would potentially raise suspicion of Israeli involvement in the deal. Here, Limon successfully convinced General Bonte, and by extension the French authorities, to press for this deal rather than Israel, as it absolved the French of a lengthy legal headache.
On the 18th of November, the matter was raised before the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Arms Exports, chaired by General Bernard Cazeneuve. Here, advocates for the deal inferred that the Norwegian Navy was covertly procuring the boats via Starboat, as France and Norway were NATO allies. This was accepted, and the deal passed with ease, even with one late addition, a non-re-exportation clause. Despite this deal appearing questionable to many, none bothered to investigate Starboat or question why warships would be required for the prescribed tasks. Yet, to little surprise, many French officials simply turned a blind eye, winked, or saw it as an opportunity to spite Defense Minister Michel Debré for his advocacy of the largely disliked embargo. This is perfectly exemplified during a meeting between Amiot's lawyers and Jacques Marty, head of the customs division responsible for boat exports. Marty approved the deal once Amiot's lawyers willingly revealed its true nature. During the meeting, Marty asked, "Those boats are heading for Israel, aren't they?" "Yes," Amiot's lawyers replied. "In that case, I'll sign," continued Marty. Marty passed the deal as, like many of his countrymen, he disapproved of the arms embargo placed on Israel.
Back in Israel, with the aid of Zim Integrated Shipping Services Limited, a publicly held Israeli cargo shipping company, two merchant ships were ready to allow for the simultaneous refueling of five boats at two locations during their journey, Malta and Gibraltar. Meanwhile, members of the Israeli Navy were flown to France, where they were to be embedded amongst Israeli families or stationed below decks on the boats themselves, ready for the operation to come. One such group of Israelis landed in Paris and were stopped by a customs officer who questioned their backgrounds. "What kind of group are you?" the officer asked. "Students," a sailor replied. In a quick rebuttal, the officer asked in Hebrew, "Come off it, are you military?" Another sailor replied, "No." "Why do you ask?" "Because the passports are numbered consecutively, you've all got fresh haircuts, and you're all wearing the same kind of jackets. A mistake Mossad would not have made where it's involved." At first, the group thought they had been compromised, only for the customs officer to say, "Take it easy, you've done nothing illegal." With that, the sailors were allowed to go.
By the 16th of December, all five boats were afloat, fully laden with fuel. With this came the risk of alerting French authorities, as the waterline was perceptibly high on the hulls due to the additional fuel. Remedying this, the boats were taken for supposed sea testing every day to justify the need for extra fuel. Several days passed, and another problem manifested: noise complaints flooded the local constabulary because of the dockside generators. If one generator were to cause disruption, then the roar of five boats simultaneously sailing on Christmas Eve certainly would. On the 22nd of December, Limon, Sam, and Amiot signed a series of agreements which would complete the deceit of the French government. The first agreement formally canceled the original contract with which Israel had initially purchased the boats. The second agreement formally confirmed the sale of the boats from the boatbuilder, Amiot, to Sam, Starboat, at the very same price. Similar agreements outlined that, due to time restrictions, Norwegian crews could not be trained in time, so their Israeli counterparts would deliver the boats to Norway. A further agreement stipulated that Starboat would refund the costs of the boats to Israel directly, removing Amiot from the equation and providing him with protection from potential prosecution for illegally transferring money abroad if the fictitious nature of the deal were uncovered.
Martin Sam, under the direction of Limon, now signed a contract with a longtime friend, Mordecai Friedman, the head of NatiV Neft, an Israeli oil exploration company secretly under instruction by the Israeli government. This contract stipulated that Starboat would immediately lease the boats to NatiV Neft for three years, with the option to purchase the boats outright within the first three months. These publicly disclosed contracts stated that the boats would be sold to a Norwegian firm named Starboat, where they would then be leased onto a civilian oil exploration company, with the option for that company to purchase the boats outright. It was this version of events that had been approved by the French government. However, Limon now created a new round of contracts, which were to remain private and undisclosed publicly but superseded the publicly disclosed contracts the French government had approved. Firstly, Limon freed Sam and Starboat of all contractual obligations to buy the boats. He then nullified the agreement with Amiot to cancel the order. The nullification of the agreements allowed Israel to retain ownership of the boats. Also covertly, Sam notified NatiV Neft that the boats were now property of Israel, not Starboat, and therefore the contracts to lease them from Starboat were now void. The result was that the publicly disclosed contracts, as approved by the French government, showed that the boats would soon leave Cherbourg having been sold to Starboat for leasing on to Nativ Neft. Privately, however, Limon had canceled all of these contracts, keeping the boats' ownership with Israel, allowing them to sail out of Cherbourg on Christmas Eve and, unbeknownst to France, sail to Israel, not Norway.
With approval for the deception now granted by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, the operation was a go on the 24th of December. As they prepared to launch, an early evening weather forecast revealed a Force 9 gale destined to scuff a passage through the Channel. Throughout the night, Israeli officers listened attentively to weather reports, hoping for a window. At 2 a.m., they found one, and in the early morning darkness, the boats sailed out of Cherbourg Harbor into dangerous seas, moving down the English Channel into the Bay of Biscay. Here, conditions worsened. The boats continued southwest around Cape St. Vincent on the southwest tip of Portugal, where they reached their first refueling stop. At around the same time, French news agencies had become aware that the boats had left Cherbourg. A news helicopter was flown out into the North Sea to locate the boats, as they should be en route to Norway, but the boats were nowhere to be seen. With this, official phones rang wildly as journalists scurried to gather the details of what was transpiring. French authorities either ignored these calls or gave them the official line, affirming that the boats were on route to a Norwegian firm as part of a routine commercial transaction. This wouldn't last for long. The boats were still refueling off the Portuguese coast when the Norwegian ambassador to Paris issued a statement that Starboat was an improperly registered company and did not appear on the standard registries of Norwegian firms. An hour later, the Norwegian government confirmed that the boats themselves had not been registered in Norway.
In the late afternoon on the 27th of December, as the force began to transit the Strait of Gibraltar, they received a signal light from a British monitoring installation atop the Rock of Gibraltar, flashing a routine query: "What ship?" The Israelis did not reply. A Royal Navy helicopter circled overhead before briefly moving onward, likely identifying the force of Israeli boats and relaying this back. After 15 minutes, another signal arrived, this time reading in French: "Bon voyage," a tip of the cap from a British commander who had figured out what was going on. The Israeli commander would later write, "When the British admiral was informed that five boats were passing without offering identification, he must have known it was us. It took him 15 minutes to get his staff together to raise a toast to us for screwing the French." Shortly after, the BBC reported that a Greek vessel transiting the Straits had reported the five unidentified vessels. In France, Defense Minister Michel Debré, furious at the Israelis' deceit and the presentation of the French government as a laughingstock, sought to intercept and sink the boats by air and sea. This, however, was rejected by the French prime minister. After many further arduous hours in the small vessels sailing through the Mediterranean east of Crete, they were joined by a formation of Israeli Phantoms. They were now on the home stretch, at great speed and low altitude. The aircraft flew over the boats, wings wagging in greeting. Finally, after several days sailing in the small vessels, the boats from Cherbourg arrived at the Israeli port of Haifa to great cheers and press coverage.
The French reaction was minimal, great enough to appease the Arab world, against whom these boats could now be used, but small enough to save face internationally. The French population would not share the outrage of their government. Some three-quarters would support the Israeli getaway, not only because of their support for Israel but also because it showed the French government to be criminally inept. Regardless, the operation itself proved to the world that Israel, in pursuit of national defense, was willing to do what it must, regardless of whether its methods were dubious or not. The boats themselves would prove to revolutionize naval warfare, playing a crucial role in the Yom Kippur War, specifically at the Battle of Latakia, where they would wreak havoc on the Syrian Navy.