Israel received the first delivery of warplanes from the United States since the lifting of the embargo last week by President Reagan, a military spokesman said today.
The three F-15 jet fighters, two of which were part of the embargoed planes and one which was originally scheduled to arrive today, arrived after a 10-hour direct flight from Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire. The planes refueled several times in mid-air.
The Reagan Administration held up delivery of the 14 F-16s and two F-15s following the Israeli raids on Iraq’s nuclear facility in June and terrorist headquarters in Beirut in July.
However, there was still no date for when the F-16s would arrive in Israel, the spokesman said. The Administration grounded all F-16s in the U.S. following the crash of one of the planes in Utah earlier this month in which a pilot was killed. There is reportedly a problem with the planes’ flight control computers.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
