• AFP PHOTO/Getty Images
    6 of 10

    THE ENTEBBE RAID / OPERATION THUNDERBOLT

    The diplomatic and strategic details surrounding the hijacking of an Air France jet out of Tel Aviv are too intricate to get into, but suffice it to say that the Palestinian Liberation Organization was pissed off at Israel enough to grab a planeload of Israeli and/or Jewish passengers and eventually lock them down at Uganda’s Entebbe Airport.

    The IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal commando unit was tasked with the safe extraction of the passengers, a mission it accomplished by flying three heavily loaded C-130 transports in under radar and surprising the combined Ugandan and PLO forces with a lightning-fast mobile assault.

    The only friendly casualty was Sayeret Matkal’s current commander Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, a name you may be familiar with as his pudgy little brother subsequently decided to enter politics.