Ilan Ramon, Uncamouflaged; Others might have downplayed their identity. That was not his way.

HOW WAS IT THAT, ON June 7,1981 - When eight F-16 Fighting Falcons, escorted by six F-15 Eagles, set off from Israel on a darling and audacious mission to drop one-ton bombs on Iraq's Osiraq nuclear reactor - how was it that these jet fighters went undetected as they flew over Jordanian and Saudi Arabian air space?

King Hussein of Jordan actually sighted the fighters from his yacht in the Gulf of Eilat. He was, however, apparently unable to interpret their significance.

Surveillance planes in Saudi Arabia - four AWACS (Airborne Warning and control System) aircraft - could have detected and monitored the path of the Israeli jets, and warned of the direction of their flight path. But the attention of the AWACS was directed to the Iraq-Iran war to the west, and they had no inkling of the bombshell attack.

Moreover, the Saudis noted that Israel had disguised its jets and identified them as Jordanian, an explanation supported by U.S. officials.

While there is a factual basis to the first two explanations, the truth is that the third one was "a fabrication from beginning to end".

As Shlomo Nakdimon wrote in First Strike (1987), "the uncamouflaged planes clearly displayed their Israeli insignia."

As is NOW WELL-KNOWN, ILAN RAMON, the Israeli astronaut who died this month on board the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia, piloted one of those F - 16s. He helped to insure the success of the raid by monitoring the planes' fuel supplies, Col. Ze'ev Raz, the overall flight commander, said this month.

The glory of Col. Ramon's life, as an Israeli and as a Jew, was that it was uncamouflaged.

When, as a 27-year-old navigational pilot, he risked his life on a dangerous mission for the future well-being of others, he pierced the skies as a soldier of Israel. Uncamouflaged.

When - as a family man on a mission which most did not recognize as of equal danger - he explored the heavens to fulfill a human impulse, he circled the globe as a proud representative of his people: Israeli and Jew, religious and secular, past and present.

Others might have downplayed that identity, or hidden it. Not Ilan Ramon.

Though his life was tragically cut short, and we are bereft of his beautifully modest example, we can inscribe it on our hearts: Ilan Ramon, an Israeli and a Jew. Uncamouflaged.