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The first aircraft off the ground Monday, at 12:13 p.m. EST, were 28 tankers from Royal Air Force bases in Fairford and Mildenhall. Minutes later a squadron of 24 two-seater khaki-and-brown F-111 attack bombers began streaking off runways at Lakenheath and were joined by five EF-111 electronic jamming planes whose mission was to disable Libyan radar capabilities. Flying at 30,000 ft., the force rendezvoused over southern England and refueled four times during its seven-hour flight through darkened skies. After the first refueling, seven planes, brought along as a reserve in case of airborne malfunctions in the others, broke out of formation and returned to base.
Meanwhile, the carriers Coral Sea and America, stationed in the midMediterranean, were steaming toward the coast of Libya. Between 5:20 and 6:20 p.m., close to 100 aircraft catapulted off their decks--18 A-6 and A-7 strike and strike-support craft, six F/A-18 fighters, 14 EA-6B electronic jamming planes and a variety of support craft. As the Air Force's F-111 squadron rounded the tip of Tunisia, it was skillfully integrated into the Navy's airborne armada by a single Air Force officer providing coordination from an airborne tanker.
With one squadron heading for Tripoli and the other for Benghazi, pilots dropped to altitudes under 500 ft. to avoid radar detection. This strict insistence on low-level approaches is a fairly recent development for the U.S. military. "Every pilot loves to do yanks and banks and dive and drive, but this is dangerous until you have attrited the threat," Navy Secretary John Lehman said last week in an interview with TIME. "You have to hit with antiradar devices. This results in an emphasis on night, low-level attack, which can beat any defense if you do it right."
Aircraft carrying such radar-jamming devices, as well as HARM missiles to take out radar sites, were the first to reach the target cities, approaching at 6:54 p.m. Precisely at 7 p.m., the squadron of A-6 fighters roared over Benghazi from the Gulf of Sidra and began bombing the airfield. In Tripoli, part of the F-111 squadron had circled around inland and approached from the south. The city was ablaze with light, and not a single air-raid alarm sounded. "We were able to see the hits," recalled one Navy airman, who had spent many hours studying photos of his target. "They looked just where they should have been."
The U.S. was able to achieve total surprise in part by giving the Soviets the slip. The carrier task force managed to lose the Soviet warships that usually shadow the fleet. If the Soviets did spot the planes, at any rate, they evidently did not tip off their friends in Libya.
In Tripoli, the thunderous whine of the jet engines was followed by sudden concussive crescendos, as 500-lb. gravity bombs and 2,000-lb. Paveway II laser-guided bombs started to explode. The massive blasts shook windows throughout the city, jolting sleeping residents awake--and sometimes more than that. "When the firing woke me up, I immediately thought of throwing myself on the floor," recalled an Italian resident. "Then a big explosion did it for me."