Etranges Affaires : l’Affaire des vedettes de Cherbourg

About - Etranges Affaires : l’Affaire des vedettes de Cherbourg

First installment of the series "Strange Affairs"

In 1965, France signed a contract with the State of Israel for the sale of 12 missile-launching boats. A shipyard in Cherbourg, Constructions Mécaniques de Normandie (CMN), was responsible for executing the order. But after the Six-Day War, General de Gaulle declared an embargo on the sale of weapons to Israel.

Five of these boats were delivered before the embargo, two "disappeared at sea" the day before the embargo and the other five were kept in the commercial port of Cherbourg.
A ruse was then devised: a Norwegian company, the Starboat and Oil Drilling Company, created for the occasion, asked France and Israel to recover the patrol boats because these ships, without weapons, were of interest to it, supposedly to carry out oil research in the North Sea. The Hebrew State accepted all the more easily since it was at the origin of the maneuver through its secret services. It even provided the crews.

On the night of December 24 to 25, around 2 a.m., the patrol boats set sail.

They arrived in Haifa on New Year's Day.

Olivier L. Brunet

After a career in the technical industries of cinema (laboratories, post-production, special effects), Olivier L. Brunet co-founded the Arane-Gulliver laboratory (Clichy) in 2000, then devoted himself entirely to directing from 2001.
He was President of the Chambre Syndicale des trucages et effets spéciales of FICAM (1996-98) and juror of the 20th Caméra d’Or at the 50th Cannes International Film Festival 1997 (President of the Jury: Françoise Arnoult – Winner: Naomi Kawase for “Moe no Susaku”, mention to “La vie de Jésus” by Bruno Dumont)
He was also a professor (2000-2008) and head of the “cinema” department (2008-2009) at Cours Florent.