Although perhaps no longer a household name, a hero died last week. His name was Michel Bacos. He was an Air France pilot.
Bacos was captain of Air France 139 on June 27, 1976, heading from Tel Aviv to Paris. The flight had stopped in Athens to pick up more passengers. Just eight minutes after takeoff from Athens the flight was hijacked and with a gun pointed to his head, Bacos was ordered to fly to Benghazi, Libya.
After refueling there, the flight continued to Entebbe, Uganda, then ruled by Idi Amin. The hijackers demanded the release of Palestinian militants in Israel plus $5MN in cash or else they would start to kill the Jewish hostages.
Jews and non-Jews were separated. Those passengers who were not Jewish were freed. Bacos and his crew were invited to leave as well.
But Bacos refused to leave.
I told my crew that we must stay until the end, because that was our tradition, so we cannot accept being freed. All my crew agreed without exception.
So the crew stayed behind with their Jewish passengers. Days later on July 4, 1976, the Israelis launched Operation Entebbe. 102 of the 106 hostages were rescued.
As a sign of respect, Captain Bacos was placed in the cockpit by Israeli commandos on the flight back to Tel Aviv.
CONCLUSION
I happened to hear this story while listening to Scott Simon’s weekly “Simon Says” commentary on NPR’s Weekend Edition. What a touching testament to Bacos’ character. Born in Egypt (his father was working on the Suez Canal project), he fought for the Free French Forces in World War II and later flew for Air France. He died on March 26, 2019 but will be properly remembered as a hero.
image: Michel Gilliand / Wikimedia Commons
You might want to watch 7 Days in Entebbe. A pretty decent (and relatively recent) retelling of the story.
It would need to be a whole lot better than the original propaganda piece, Raid on Entebbe, made about a year after the event. Great cast, including Peter Finch , in his last role, Sylvia Sidney , Charles Bronson, Eddie Constantine as Capt Bacos. Dreadful film ( made entirely at Stockton Airport).
This event was terrible and was the last straw for Israel, as it resulted in the introduction of real security measure at airports ( happening not long after the Lod Airport attack by the Japanese Red Army).
Bacos was a real hero. RIP.
Air France hijacked and freed by Israeli commandos? What happened to GIGN? Why the plane flew back to Israel?
Oh wait… Jewish… The choosen one. Takes priority over anything else…
I honestly don’t see how that’s relevant to anything, this post in memory of the pilot.
Oh and the reason Israeli commandos had to free the passengers was because the terrorists threatened only the Jews on board who were in fact Israeli citizens.
He should have walked away when he had the chance. If Israel wants to mistreat Palestinians, they should be prepared to suffer consequences. People need to stop coddling the jews and hold them accountable for their actions.
Oh, wow, racist much?
That’s called Operation Thunderbolt
And the only Israeli Command to killed was Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu. He was the leader of the raid and older brother of Bibi.
Which is why his victimhood syndrome is on steroids.
Also how did they know who read Jewish. Check everyone’s peepee?
Some of these despicable and biased responses, sound as if they were written by the contributors to the Daily Stormer, or Der Stuermer. The fact of the matter was that a civilian airliner, was hijacked by Arab terrorists. The passengers consisted of many different nationalities, both Jews and non-Jews. The terrorists deliberately selected and separated the Jews from the non-Jews. Although the vast majority of the Jews were Israeli citizens, there were also American Jews (with American passports) who were held, as well as Jews from other countries. The non-Jewish passengers were freed, and the Jews were held, and continuously threatened, and mistreated. One in particular, was viciously beaten by the terrorists. Captain Bacos and his crew (to their credit), chose to stay with the remaining passengers. Incidentally, I saw the movie “Seven Days in Entebbe”; it was boring, and it tried to make the terrorists appear as someone that you would have a beer with. It should be noted that the German woman terrorist, was even more brutal than her male counterparts; the latter fact was attested to by all of the passengers. The brutality of the female hijacker was not at all shown in that movie. In 1976, the first movie regarding the Entebbe skyjacking was “Victory at Entebbe”; that movie, along with “Raid on Entebbe” were excellent”. There was another movie called “Operation Thunderbolt”, which wasn’t bad, but the first two were better. In the Fall of 1977, a German commando squad (who learned from the commando procedures of the Israeli special forces), made a daring successful rescue, of a Lufthansa passenger plane, which had been hijacked to Africa. Before the rescue, the Arab terrorists made the German Captain of the Lufthansa plane kneel on the cabin floor of the jet, in front of the passengers and shot him dead. When the German commandos stormed on board, they killed all of the terrorists. In addition to the German rescue of the Lufthansa plane, and the Israeli rescue at Entebbe, there was one other incident, whereby a Captain of an El Al plane foiled a hijacking attempt. It occurred in 1970, when two terrorists out of Amsterdam, managed to board an El Al plane with guns and grenades. During their attempted hijacking, Israeli security forces on the plane shot it out with the terrorists, and killed one of them. The other one, Leila Khaled was arrested, when the plane landed at Heathrow in London. She was later freed, when her brethren hijacked a number of other civilian airlines, and brought them to Jordan, where they were blown up. There were quite a few Americans who were held during by the hijackers during that time. It wasn’t until President Nixon threatened them, that he was going to send in the 82nd Airborne Division, that they were freed. In closing, I’d like to correct Paolo. The attack by the Japanese terrorists at Lod Airport, occurred in June, 1972, or four years before Entebbe. It was only because of the lax security measures (or none at all), that the terrorists managed to board that Air France flight at Athens, with weapons. The laxity at airports and security personnel around the world, followed for many more years, until well after 9/11/01.
@ Nate
You are correct in claiming that lax security continued at airports well after this event. In particular Athens continued to be notoriously lax. But that is not true for Israel and El Al. Real security was put in place as a consequence of these events, beginning with Lod and with Entebbe as the final straw, because of the perceived (and real) inability of foreign governments to protect passengers. That is precisely why El Al became the safest airline, from a security perspective, including the deployment of marshals and security personnel at foreign ports.
Paolo, thank you for your follow-up comment, which is appreciated; actually, El Al began placing much stricter security on its planes, well before the 1972 Lod Airport massacre, The increased security started after the 1968 hijacking of an El Al flight, which was taken to Algiers. Hence, by 1970, when Leila Khaled, and her companion tried to hijack another El Al flight, they were immediately stopped. If the American airliners had employed the same security which El Al has employed since 1968, 9/11/01 would never have occurred.