Thirty-year-old Israeli missile boat captain Lt. With France reneging on the deal, Israeli forces hatched a plan to spirit the boats away from Cherbourg and sail them to Israel. But France prohibited release of the remaining five, even though Israel had already paid for them. The October 1967 sinking of the Israeli destroyer INS Eilat by an Egyptian missile boat only confirmed Israel’s need for similar fast-attack craft.īy 1968 contractors had completed and delivered seven of the Cherbourg boats. The fast and agile vessels were the Israeli navy’s first purpose-built vessels until then it had made do with a motley fleet. Following a December 1968 Israeli strike on aircraft at Beirut International Airport, in retaliation for a Palestinian terror attack, France tightened its embargo.Īmong the most important weapon systems affected by the restrictions were the last five of a dozen Saar 3–class missile boats under construction at the Cherbourg naval shipyard in northwest France. France had been Israel’s primary source of arms since the mid-1950s, supplying the Jewish state with fighter and transport aircraft, tanks and other crucial war materiel. When France imposed an arms embargo on Israel on the eve of the June 1967 Six-Day War, it marked an end to the Franco-Israeli romance that had begun the prior decade. How Israel’s cool-hand naval commandos stole five missile boats from a French shipyard-on Christmas Eve.