🧵✈️ On 6 September 1970, Captain Uri Bar-Lev, a seasoned Israeli pilot with combat experience from the 1948 War of Independence and the 1956 Sinai Campaign, prepared to command El Al Flight 219, a Boeing 707 carrying 138 passengers and 10 crew members from Amsterdam to New York. This was the second leg of a journey that had originated in Tel Aviv, amid a tense era when aeroplane hijackings by ‘palestinian’ terrorists were alarmingly common. Just before takeoff from Schiphol Airport, a security officer alerted Bar-Lev to four suspicious passengers who had booked last-minute tickets. Two held Senegalese passports with consecutive numbers, while the other pair carried Honduran documents. Acting cautiously, Bar-Lev barred the Senegalese pair from boarding and requested a thorough check on the Hondurans, though, unbeknownst to him, this inspection was never properly conducted. Assuming they had been cleared, he allowed them aboard but, mindful of recent hijackings, including an El Al flight diverted to Algeria in 1968 that prompted the airline to station armed security officers on all planes, he relocated one such officer, Avihu Kol, to the cockpit instead of first class. As the aircraft climbed to 29,000 feet over the North Sea, roughly 20 minutes after departure, the cockpit’s emergency light flashed on. Bar-Lev instantly suspected a hijacking, and his fears were confirmed when a flight attendant’s voice crackled over the intercom: two armed individuals, wielding guns and grenades, demanded entry to the cockpit or they would kill everyone aboard. Peering through the peephole, flight engineer Uri Zach saw one hijacker pressing a pistol to a stewardess’s head. The assailants were Leila Khaled, a Palestinian operative from the Popular Front for the Liberation of ‘palestine’ (PFLP) who had already hijacked a TWA flight in 1969, and Patrick Argüello, a Nicaraguan-American Sandinista supporter aligned with the group. Khaled, who had undergone plastic surgery to disguise her identity, banged on the door, shouting, “I will count, and if you don’t open I will blow up the plane.” El Al’s protocol was clear: pilots should comply with hijackers’ demands to avoid heroism that might endanger lives. A crew member even urged Bar-Lev to unlock the door. But the captain, drawing on his military instincts, refused. “𝑆𝑖𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑤𝑛, 𝑤𝑒 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 ℎ𝑖𝑗𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑒𝑑! 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑛𝑜𝑡 ℎ𝑖𝑗𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑚𝑦 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑒.” In a split-second decision, Bar-Lev, assisted by Oz, executed a daring nosedive reminiscent of the World War II “Split S” combat manoeuvre, plunging the plane 10,000 feet in just one minute. This created negative G-forces that hurled the unbuckled hijackers to the floor, while strapped-in passengers remained secure. The lower altitude also minimised risks from potential explosions or gunfire. Chaos erupted in the cabin. Argüello fired shots, gravely wounding chief steward Shlomo Vider, who had bravely tried to intervene. As Bar-Lev levelled out, Kol burst from the cockpit and fatally shot Argüello. Khaled pulled the pins on her grenades and rolled one down the aisle, but it failed to detonate; she was subdued by passengers and crew, possibly passing out from the pressure change. The entire ordeal unfolded in a mere two and a half minutes. With Vider bleeding profusely and in critical condition, a doctor on board warned he might not survive without immediate care. 1/2