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Several minutes into the attack, two things went tragically wrong, possibly in connection with each other. One of the F-111s dropped its bombs in a residential area a mile south of the harbor, killing several civilians, destroying homes and damaging other buildings, including the French embassy and the Swiss Ambassador's residence. It seems highly coincidental, to say the least, that the bomb exploded only a few blocks from Libya's internal- security headquarters, reputedly a onetime haunt of the notorious terrorist Abu Nidal. U.S. officials insist, however, that the security facility was not a U.S. target.
Some Pentagon officials theorize that the bomb may have been dropped by an attacker that was out of control. Three Navy pilots reported seeing one aircraft turn into a "fireball" and disappear into the ocean about ten miles offshore. The missing crewmen, who were presumed dead after a search yielded no signs of life, were Captain Fernando L. Ribas-Dominicci, 33, of Puerto Rico and Captain Paul F. Lorence, 31, of San Francisco.
Over their targets, U.S. pilots were confronted with an astonishing barrage of Libyan defensive fire. The night sky over Tripoli was stitched with orange streaks as tracers and missiles arced up toward the attackers. "They fired everything they had," said a senior Pentagon official, including Soviet-built SAM-2, -3, -6 and -8 missiles and ZSU-23-4 antiaircraft guns. Said Vice Admiral Frank Kelso, commander of the Sixth Fleet, who was in overall command of El Dorado Canyon: "I don't think anybody has ever flown a mission in any more dense SAM environment than they were in today."
What prevented the Libyan missiles from inflicting real damage was the fact that most of them were fired without radar guidance. "We forced the Libyans to turn off their radar," says Lehman. "If they turned them on to guide their missiles, they would get a HARM down the throat." Nor was any defense mounted by the Libyan air force, whose pilots are notoriously poor night flyers. Military intelligence intercepted a radio transmission of air force headquarters in Tripoli pleading with a base commander in Benghazi shortly before the attack to get his craft in the air. The commander's reply: immediate takeoff was impossible.
But the performance of U.S. equipment was flawed. In an effort to prevent any bombing that might be deemed indiscriminate, U.S. airmen were under orders to abort their missions if on-board equipment showed the slightest glitch. Five of the 18 F-111 craft developed such malfunctions, probably in their radar targeting equipment, as did two of the carrier-based A-6 craft. Pentagon officials rightly maintain that the rules of engagement in wartime would not be as stringent as those for the Libyan mission, but the high rate of even minor malfunctions is hardly encouraging.
The bomb run completed, U.S. craft lifted quickly out of the Libyan light show and headed north. For the airmen flying the F-111s, that prospect included an additional eight hours' flying time and two more midair refueling operations. One last snafu occurred when one of the F-111s overheated and was diverted to a U.S. naval station near the Spanish town of Rota. When the rest of the crews returned to Britain after spending 15 hours strapped into the F- 111s' tight quarters, some men had to be lifted out of their seats.