Word: cherbourg
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Bismarck has there been such a sea hunt. In the teeth of a gale that whipped the azure Mediterranean into an ash-gray cauldron of 20-foot waves, five Israeli-manned gunboats scooted to Haifa last week on a 3,000-mile dash from the northern French port of Cherbourg. At various points, they were tracked by French reconnaissance planes, an R.A.F. Canberra from Malta, Soviet tankers, the radar forests of the U.S. Sixth Fleet, television cameramen and even Italian fishermen. From a distance, the world watched with emotions ranging from amusement to outrage. In a twist on old-fashioned...
...uproar began when Paris discovered that the gunboats and their Israeli crews had taken French leave of their fitting-out berths in Cherbourg. The 240-ton, 148-ft. boats had been ordered by the Israelis before Charles de Gaulle, seeking to enhance French influence among the Arab states, tightened his arms embargo on Israel in January 1969. Once the gunboats were completed, the French allowed Israeli sailors to take them out of port, but only on familiarization runs and with limited fuel...
...ships' sirens split the air. Prayers of thanksgiving were recited in synagogues. Diners toasted the crewmen and exchanged gunboat jokes, some of them wordplays on the name of General Mordechai ("Moka") Limon, Israel's chief of arms purchasing in Europe and the man in charge of the Cherbourg escape. One joke had France's President Georges Pompidou walking into a French cafe and gloomily telling a waiter: "I'll have coffee without moka and my wife will have tea without limon...
Five of the first seven boats had sailed from Cherbourg before De Gaulle's embargo was totally invoked following Israel's commando raid on the Beirut airport. The Israelis, who are familiar with such situations (see box following page), had no trouble getting the other two. They sailed the pair out of Cherbourg on a trial run, as they had done in the past, carrying a limited fuel supply. Just beyond the territorial limit. Israeli planes appeared overhead and parachuted enough additional fuel for the long run to Haifa...
...Siem, 53, much-respected president of Norway's largest shipbuilding firm, the Aker Group. The operating heads of Starboat, however, turned out to be Israelis who had ordered several commercial ships from Siem and had persuaded him to help them. The tall blond officers who showed up in Cherbourg to take over the boats-and who were mistaken by some Frenchmen for Norwegians-were also Israelis. The Oslo address was just that-a post-office box and nothing more. Said Panama's consul general in France, Jorge Royo: "It was a beautiful piece of corporate legerdemain...