The Boats of Cherbourg: The Navy That Stole Its Own Boats and Revolutionized Naval Warfare

REVISED EDITION 2019On Christmas eve 1969, five small boats slipped out of Cherbourg harbor after midnight into the teeth of a Force Nine gale that sent freighters scurrying for cover. The boats, ordered by Israel from a local shipyard, had been embargoed for more than a year for political reasons by France. In a brazen caper, the Israelis were now running off with them. The vessels would be refueled at sea by Israeli merchant ships spaced along the 3,000-mile escape route. As the boats raced for home and Paris fumed, the world media chortled at Israel's hutspa. But the story was far bigger than they knew.Eight years before, the commander of the Israeli navy had assembled senior officers for a brainstorming session. Israel's aging fleet faced downgrading to a coast guard unless it was capable of guarding Israel's sea lanes. Given the navy's minimal budget, what were the options? A desperate proposal emerged from the two-day meeting. Israel's fledgling military industries had developed a crude missile which had been rejected by both the army and air force. The navy would now try adapting it. Guided missiles with large warheads, it was hoped, could give small, inexpensive, boats the punch of heavy cruisers. No such vessel existed in the West. A dozen innocuous-looking "patrol boats" were ordered in Cherbourg to serve as platforms for the complex new weapon system taking shape in the minds of the navy command. Seven boats sailed for Israel before the embargo was clamped down. The navy was determined to retrieve the remaining five. Eighty sailors in civilian clothing were flown to Paris just before Christmas and dispatched by train in small groups to Cherbourg where they were hidden below decks until departure.In Israel, meanwhile, a team from the navy and military industries was working virtually round-the-clock on the missile-boat project. Engineers, naval architects and others found themselves at the cutting edge of naval technology as they forged solution after innovative solution for the new system, a precursor of Israel's emergence as the "startup nation". Midway, it was learned that the Soviet Union had developed missile boats and was supplying them to its clients, Egypt and Syria. The accuracy of the Soviet Styx missile was demonstrated when an Egyptian missile boat, barely visible on the horizon, sank the Israeli flagship, the destroyer Eilat, with four missiles, each hitting the target. The Israeli navy's chief electronics officer, guessing at th