It was a classic setting for international intrigue, a tile-roofed villa secluded among fog-swirled trees, ivy clinging to building wings clustered around a stunted steeple-like tower. The first group of conspirators landed at a French airfield outside Paris and reached the wall-enclosed villa in an unmarked car during the wee hours of October 22, 1956. Later that Monday morning, French Foreign Minister Christian Pineau visited his office in Paris, then was chauffeured home to switch to his personal car. He soon was at the villa shaking hands with Israel's 70-year-old Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, eye-patched Chief of Staff Moshe Dayan and Defense Ministry Director-General Shimon Peres. British Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd, a key member of the third group of plotters, called his office in London to say he was staying home with a cold. He left England shortly after, to arrive at the villa that afternoon.

By the time the tense clandestine discussions–which also included French Premier Guy Mollet and British Prime Minister Anthony Eden–ended two days later in France and England, a secret accord had been reached. Champagne glasses were raised to celebrate a tripartite pledge to pursue what one chronicler called 'the shortest and possibly silliest war in history.' The target was Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt, which had become the symbol of Arab nationalism.

Israel, still territorially insecure after 8 1/2 years of existence among hostile Arab neighbors and cut off from access to the Red Sea by a blockade, had agreed to launch a pre-emptive invasion of Egypt's 24,000-square-mile Sinai Peninsula on October 29. In response to that 'threat' to the strategically important Suez Canal, Britain and France would step in the next day to give the belligerents 12 hours to stop fighting, pull back from the strategic waterway and accept temporary occupation of 'key positions on the Canal' to 'guarantee freedom of passage.' That ultimatum, so obviously favorable to Israel, was designed to be rejected by Nasser. Then, on October 31–following a 'decent interval' for Egypt's rejection of the ultimatum–Britain and France would launch airstrikes against the Egyptians. Invasion forces would then land long enough afterward to lend plausibility to the scenario.

The British had been stunned when Nasser legally nationalized the Suez Canal on July 26, 1956. The takeover gave Egypt oversight of the principal oil flow between Middle Eastern wells and Western Europe, as well as Britain's easy access to its interests east and south of Suez. Outwardly the paragon of unruffled British dignity, handsome Anthony Eden actually was nervous and short-tempered, refusing to accept his country's declining world role. The prime minister also was suffering the chronic aftereffects of less-than-successful bile duct operations, and was taking amphetamines and other drugs that probably affected his judgment. France, which had initiated the secret meetings with Israel in June 1956, was motivated by the belief that Nasser was behind the nationalist-inspired war that was then agitating Algeria, her North African possession. One thing the three conspirator nations had in common was the conviction that Nasser, who was upsetting the Mideast balance of power by accepting Soviet military and economic assistance, had to go.

The trio did not expect the United States, which had clashed politically with Nasser over his recognition of Communist China and acceptance of Soviet Bloc arms, to pose a major problem. Furthermore, 66-year-old President Dwight D. Eisenhower had his hands full with an election campaign sure to be influenced by the strong Jewish vote. The plotter nations ignored the fact that as much as Eisenhower wanted Nasser out, he was dead set against the use of direct force. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was busy putting out fires in its satellite states. Poland had ousted its Soviet defense minister on October 19 and installed its own choice in the premiership. By October 24, Soviet tanks were in Budapest, trying to suppress a Hungarian uprising.

As the three conspiring nations formulated their plot at Sèvres, they also set in motion military preparations. The Anglo-French buildup was a tortoise compared to Israel's hare, which would be able to mobilize 100,000 troops almost overnight and even make a feint eastward toward Jordan. Although Britain had 750,000 men under arms, many were committed to operations in the Far East, Africa and Cyprus. Shipping and aircraft needed for a major operation were in short supply. On August 2, an emergency mobilization proclamation for 25,000 men had been rushed to Queen Elizabeth II at the Goodwood races; wags insisted she signed her approval 'on the rump of a horse.' The French, somewhat more battle-ready after their Indochina war, nevertheless would have to borrow troops from their Algerian force. The nearest post suitable for gathering an invasion force was Valetta, on British-controlled Malta, nearly 1,000 miles northwest of the projected landing beaches.

At first dubbed Hamilcar, the operation was soon renamed Musketeer, presumably in honor of Alexandre Dumas' three musketeers. Although the three-country scenario was essentially a French brainchild, Britain, as the major contributor to the invasion, assumed command of the Anglo-French portion of the military operation. General Sir Charles Keightley was named Musketeer commander, with heavyset French Vice Adm. Pierre Barjot as his deputy. The landing force chief was British General Sir Hugh Stockwell, seconded by French Maj. Gen. André Beaufre, a testy veteran of Indochina and Algeria. Air Marshal Dennis Barnett and Admiral Robin Durnford-Slater were placed in charge of the air and naval units, respectively.

The bipartite air-sea-ground force consisted of approximately 45,000 Britons and 34,000 Frenchmen; 200 British and 30 French warships, including seven aircraft carriers; more than 70 merchant vessels ('It is tragic having to requisition liners at the height of the tourist season,' wrote one British official); hundreds of landing craft; and 12,000 British and 9,000 French vehicles. Counting base and support units as far away as the British Isles, more than 100,000 uniformed Anglo-French personnel were committed to the operation. Musketeer called for landing at Alexandria, in the Nile River delta, and advancing to the capital of Cairo, while Israel took care of Egypt's right flank. In keeping with the ambivalence that clouded the entire operation, the landing site was shifted eastward–to Port Said, the target originally selected during earlier planning. Musketeer now became Musketeer Revise. In the meantime, responding to the military buildup, Nasser moved half of his Sinai forces west of the canal, although he was still unwilling to believe an invasion would ever occur.

Murphy's Law was a constant companion to the scattergun imprecision of the operation. There were postponements, endless meetings, detail changes, logistical and other problems, and both internal and external dissension. For example, it took weeks, using a commercial moving company, to cart 93 tanks to their English Channel embarkation port. There, the materiel most urgently needed upon landing was inconveniently stowed at the bottom of transport holds. An episode during the Franco-Israeli plotting stage before the Sèvres accord graphically illustrated the convoluted conspiracy's shortcomings. In a watch-this-hand-so-you-don't-see-what-the-other's-doing act, Ben-Gurion triggered a large armored foray into neighboring Jordan, the base for many Arab raids into Israel. Jordan invoked its defense treaty with Britain against a full-scale Israeli invasion. The too-clever deception ploy nearly precipitated an implausible, unwelcome war that could have seen Britain fighting against Israel in the east and with Israel in the west. In any case, the Protocol of Sèvres marked the point of no return. Invasion orders flashed to the military chiefs.

Israel went into action at between 2:15 and 2:35 p.m. on October 29, 1956. Two pairs of piston-engine North American F-51 Mustang fighters raced westward over the parched wasteland of the triangular Sinai Peninsula. Swooping to a dozen feet over the desert, the American-built planes used propellers and wingtips to sever overhead telephone lines linking the 30,000 men of the Egyptian 3rd Infantry and Palestinian 8th divisions and their subordinate units. It was the modest beginning of Kadesh, Israel's operation to threaten the Suez Canal, open the Gulf of Aqaba to its shipping into the Red Sea and destroy Egyptian military capabilities in the Sinai.

About an hour later, two battalions of Colonel Ariel Sharon's 202nd Parachute Brigade–roughly 3,000 men riding M3 half-tracks, French-made AMX-13 tanks and 100 trucks received from France only three days earlier–stormed into Egyptian territory. Sixteen low-flying Israeli Douglas C-47 Dakota transports and their escort of 10 British-built Gloster Meteor jets rumbled overhead. Having evaded radar detection, the camouflaged Dakotas rose to 1,500 feet about 18 miles east of the canal. At 4:59 p.m., the first of 395 paratroopers of the 202nd Brigade's 1st Battalion leaped into space to land unopposed just east of the strategic Mitla Pass. The invaders dug in at the granite-flanked eastern entrance to the pass to await the arrival of Sharon's column, churning across more than 105 miles of sun-baked desert toward them. The linkup came at 10:30 p.m. the following day. Behind Sharon's brigade, other Israeli units swung into action. During the ensuing week, they swarmed west and south–along the 134-mile-long Sinai Mediterranean coastline, across the heart of the peninsula, down the eastern side along the Gulf of Aqaba toward the southern tip on the Red Sea, and finally down the western perimeter along the Gulf of Suez. Israel had surprised Egypt and given its co-conspirators their 'justification' for intervention.

Nearly a week before Operation Kadesh was launched in defiance of a no-war appeal from Eisenhower to Ben-Gurion, three squadrons of French aircraft had discreetly landed in Israel. All were marked with the distinctive yellow and black stripes that would identify allied planes during the campaign. One squadron, composed of Dassault Mystère IVA jet fighters, was tasked with preventing air raids on Israeli cities. A second, equipped with American-built Republic F-84F Thunderstreaks, would support the Mystères and provide ground support. The third, made up of twin-boom Nord Aviation Noratlas transports, went into action only four hours after the parachute landing at Mitla Pass. The French aircraft roared overhead to parachute down eight jeeps, weapons and other supplies. To ice the cake, three French destroyers protected the approaches to the Israeli ports of Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Although President Eisenhower later insisted that he first learned of the outbreak of hostilities by 'reading it in the newspapers,' he knew that aircraft of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were taking high-altitude photos of the allied activities. Further information came from human sources in London, Paris and Tel Aviv. U.S. spy chief Allen Dulles later claimed that 'intelligence was well alerted as to what Israel and then Britain and France were likely to do….In fact, United States intelligence had kept the government informed.' At an October 27 State Department meeting, CIA Deputy Director Robert Amory said, 'I'm positive the Israelis will attack shortly after midnight tomorrow….I'm prepared to lay my job on the line that there's a war coming tomorrow or the day after.' It was no accident that a Lockheed U-2 spy plane was 70,000 feet above the Sinai on October 29. Its CIA pilot, Francis Gary Powers of the top secret Detachment 10-10, based in Turkey, 'looked down and spotted something. Black puffs of smoke–that must have been the first shots fired in…the Sinai campaign.' Powers himself would make headlines in 1960, when his U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union.

Late on October 30, the Anglo-French appeal-cum-ultimatum was handed to Egypt and Israel–cease fire and withdraw to positions 10 miles from the Suez Canal. The ultimatum expired at 4:30 a.m. the next day. Israel, still miles from the canal and with no intention of halting its offensive, played out the charade by accepting. As expected, Egypt rejected it. Hours passed as the Israelis, facing reinforced Egyptian resistance, wondered what had happened to the promised British strikes against enemy airfields. A flu-stricken Ben-Gurion, long distrustful of Britain's pro-Arabism, prepared to recall his forces. His allies hadn't told him that they had postponed the air raids until dark for a number of military and political reasons. Far to the west, during the night of October 31-November 1, the Anglo-French invasion armada sailed from Malta and Algeria. A day later, a smaller contingent loaded at closer-by Cyprus.

Even before the 12-hour ultimatum expired, the war at sea began. The Egyptian frigate Ibrahim al-Awal, lobbing 4.5-inch shells at Haifa, was fired upon by a French destroyer and Israeli air and sea units. Captured, the frigate was towed in and later became part of the Israeli navy. The following night, the British cruiser Newfoundland sank the Egyptian corvette Damietta at the southern end of the canal. On November 3, four Israeli jets mistakenly attacked the British frigate Crane in the Gulf of Suez. The damaged warship shot down one attacker. The French cruiser Georges Leygues steamed off the Gaza Strip to bombard Arab positions on the Mediterranean shoreline.

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