New Heavens (18 page)

The three South African Fairchilds were flown from South Africa by volunteer pilots I had recruited and were escorted by a professional airline pilot and radio operator in the Rapide. They departed Johannesburg and made their way up the African continent in open formation, arriving in Cairo after two weeks. After leaving Cairo, they discovered they were being escorted by Egyptian Air Force Spitfires and had to change their routing. Instead of following the original plan of disappearing to Palestine after filing a
flight plan for Benghazi in Libya, they had to fly to Italy. They eventually made it to Palestine. Though I had sent them off two weeks before I began my flight, they arrived a week after me. A second Rapide purchased in South Africa made its way two weeks after the first one, and on its arrival in Cairo, the Egyptians became suspicious, guessing that its destination was not London as declared. It was impounded. This same aircraft eventually arrived in Israel in 1951 when it was intercepted by Israel Air Force fighters over the Negev and forced to land at Beersheba—a somewhat roundabout journey from Johannesburg to Tel Aviv.

The first of the three Fairchilds to arrive was flown by a pilot who was unsure of the situation in Palestine and did not know what airfields were in our hands. Uncertain, he had arrived in the Jewish-held part; he was fortunate to have chosen Sde Dov. However, no sooner had he touched down than he heard shouts to take cover, and seconds later, there was a raid by Egyptian Air Force Spitfires. He was luckier than a group of American pilots shortly after who were ferrying two Norsemen planes from Europe and unwittingly landed in Egyptian-held El Arish, presenting them with one aircraft and four pilots, whom the Egyptians imprisoned.

While I was away in South Africa, heavy fighting began in Jerusalem. When it seemed the Old City would be unable to hold out against the attacks by the Arab Legion, the Harel
brigade of the Palmach was transferred to Jerusalem. They penetrated the Jewish Quarter of the Old City through the Zion Gate in an attempt to save the city. But the situation was hopeless, and shortly afterward the people of the Old City were evacuated. While the fighting raged, a few hundred trucks managed to get through to Jerusalem from the coast. After the British left Palestine, the Arab Legion entered the fighting in earnest in the Old City and moved on to cut the road between Jerusalem and the coast at Bab el Wad (a steep pass with the mountains on both sides, the peaks held by the Arabs).

All road transport to Jerusalem must pass this defile. When the first convoy of the Haganah approached, the vehicles were fired on and stone barriers were laid on the road to block the passage of the convoys. The Haganah's armored cars led the attempts to go through the pass. The “armored cars” of the Haganah were homemade in various kibbutzim. Their armor was made of wooden boards sandwiched between steel sheets and afforded only minimal protection.

Located high above the road, the Arabs poured withering fire into the convoy causing heavy losses. Beit Mahsir was the largest Arab village on the heights and was the source of most of the continual shelling of the vehicles trying to maintain the precarious supply link between the coastal belt and Jerusalem.

The heavy fighting between Arab forces and the Harel Brigade concentrated mainly along Bab el Wad. The brigade made several attempts to capture the village but was repulsed time after time with heavy casualties. On 8 May, the
commander of the brigade, Yitzhak Rabin, was ordered to capture Beit Mahsir at all cost. Mindful of the heavy casualties he had already suffered, he called for air support.

I had arrived just in time to offer help. At the time I landed in the Bonanza from South Africa, the desperate shortage of aircraft and pilots made it impossible for me to check out anyone else on the Bonanza, so I had to fly urgent missions to Bab el Wad day and night. My precious Bonanza, still with the African dust on its undercarriage, entered the fray the day I arrived in Israel. We put up a small tent near the runway in Sde Dov where, utterly exhausted, I rested between the night flights.

I logged sixty night hours in the blackout with minimal instruments in ten days. My job in the Bonanza, apart from the occasional bomb thrown out through the luggage door, was to carry an army signaler with a large World War II walkie-talkie between his legs with the antenna protruding through the hole in the perspex canopy. His duty was to communicate with the ground troops.

On one occasion when I was flying low over the Arab positions in Beit Mahsir, a bullet passed through the belly of the Bonanza and smashed the plastic tail trim wheel between my knees. I had to land without a trim wheel.

A former Russian Air Force technician fitted my Bonanza with electrically operated bomb racks under the wings. This made for better accuracy for dive-bombing. I made sure to seek him out and congratulate him on his achievement. However, my trust in his technical abilities did not extend to allowing him to install a synchronized machine gun that
could fire through the propeller, which he begged me to let him do.

After bombing the village a number of times with the Bonanza using 50-kilo Double Pushkins, I saw that, apart from keeping the enemy's heads down during the bombing and having some effect on their morale, we were not accomplishing much. I suggested to headquarters that something be done to drop heavier bombs, especially just before our ground forces attacked. The losses our Palmach troops had suffered were unsustainable, and the impossibility of keeping Jerusalem supplied while the Arab forces in Beit Mahsir held on to their positions overlooking the pass made it imperative to somehow give better support from the air.

One of our two Norduyn Norsemen was pressed into service. By then, we had some experience in making bombs and we filled a 200-liter drum with dynamite with a fuse on the lid. The fuse had to be lit before throwing it out of the aircraft. Our expert in bomb-making was a former RAF engineer, and he planned and supervised the making of our bombs at that time. When I suggested he accompany me on flights to test his bombs, he refused and that should have kindled my suspicion. On 10 May 1948 a large new drum bomb was lifted into a Norseman and a crew of four in addition to the two pilots climbed into the machine. They made several attempts to reach Beit Mahsir but without success because of low cloud cover and returned to base. In the meantime, I managed to keep up my bombing missions in the Bonanza.

Later that morning while I was in the air on the same mission for the second time, the Norseman again took off
with a crew of six. The pilot in command was Yariv Sheinbaum, the flying controller who received me at the steps of the aircraft on my first arrival in Palestine some months before. They climbed to 6,000 feet in the direction of the Jerusalem hills toward Beit Mahsir and reported that they were diving toward the target. I was already struggling with the bad visibility, but I found a hole in the cloud and dived through to drop my bombs on Beit Mahsir. The Norseman failed to return, and after some days we heard that witnesses had seen the Norseman diving through the cloud into a hill with a tremendous explosion.

There have been various theories about what happened, including an army report, which maintained they were shot down by an RAF Spitfire. My own theory is that when they moved the heavy barrel-bomb to the back of the aircraft ready for pushing out through the rear door, they upset the aircraft's center of gravity and went into an uncontrollable spin. There were reports that a British Spitfire was seen in the area at the time they crashed, but quite probably, the observers confused my Bonanza, which was new and unknown to anyone at the time, with a Spitfire.

Our reporting system was bad, and evidently no one told Yariv's young wife because no one knew for some time about the eyewitness reports confirming the crash. For some days after his disappearance, his wife Aya appeared every lunch time at Café Kassit, where the aircrews gathered asking if anyone knew where Yariv was. Each one of us left hurriedly when we saw her approaching.

Though of vital importance, strategically Jerusalem was no less important from an emotional standpoint, having
been the focus of all Jewish hopes and dreams since the conquest and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans 2,000 years before. It had no airfield, and our forces cleared a short strip some 500 meters long in the Valley of the Cross, so called because tradition has it that a small forest was there and the cross on which Jesus was crucified was cut from it.

At the end of the strip was a fortress-like monastery built in the Middle Ages. It was a stone building with a high defensive wall surrounding it erected for protection against intruders or invading troops. This made it necessary for me to open to full throttle while keeping my feet on the brakes, and then releasing them immediately before takeoff to get over the wall. It was essential to gather maximum speed on the short takeoff run and to pull the stick back just before reaching the wall almost at stalling speed. After accomplishing that part of the flight, further speed was gained by flying down a conveniently located wadi. Only then could one gain sufficient height to climb over the mountains between Jerusalem and the coast.

This was hard enough in one of the smaller aircraft, but I tried to land a much larger aircraft, the twin-engine Aerovan capable of carrying nine passengers. With its two Gipsy Major engines, it was underpowered, and taking it into Jerusalem was a risky affair. The only approach to the field meant flying a tight circuit over the western edge of the city and then diving steeply to the landing. This did not always prevent us from being shot at by the Arab forces in East Jerusalem during the landing approach. This large airplane had not been seen before in Jerusalem, and when I first
landed, crowds of Jerusalemites came to the strip to look at it.

Jerusalem was now under siege, cut off from the rest of the country with only an occasional convoy managing to get through. To this day wrecked armored cars can be seen as memorials on the sides of the main road near Bab el Wad.

The shortage of food and other commodities in Jerusalem was serious and could be seen in the pale wan faces of the crowd at the airstrip. Often, people appeared at Sde Dov airfield before I took off for Jerusalem with homemade cakes and biscuits, begging me to take them to their loved ones in the besieged city.

On my second flight to Jerusalem in the Aerovan to evacuate women and children, there were two incidents, one nearly fatal. Just before taking off from Jerusalem, and purely by chance, I discovered two air mechanics from a base near Tel Aviv stowed away in the space behind the rear seat. Had I not discovered them, we would certainly not have made it, for we were loaded to the hilt without them and with their additional weight would have crashed into the monastery. They were not prosecuted or court-martialed as laws and regulations were not enforced efficiently in Israel at that time.

After taking off and passing over the Trappist monastery at Latrun, which lies between the mountains of Jerusalem and the coast, my port engine failed. I feathered the propeller and, though losing height, reached the field at Sde Dov on one engine. The same Aerovan came to a tragic end three months later while on a flight back from the Dead Sea
with men and women who were being evacuated. It made a forced landing on the beach twenty-five kilometers south of Tel Aviv and was surrounded by Arab guerrillas, who butchered the occupants. Three survived. One of them played dead and two went for help. The fourth occupant was killed.

Sdom was a strategically important location for us at the southern tip of the Dead Sea. It was cut off from the rest of Israel soon after hostilities began. As we couldn't fly there during daylight because of the danger of being shot down by enemy fighters, we had to fly there only by night. In the blackout that was no easy task, for the Dead Sea is more than a thousand feet below sea level. There were no navigational aids so we had to use the minimal instruments of the aircraft as well as fly by the seat of our pants. It meant reaching Beersheba, which was identified by the few roads converging on the darkened city. From there we had to turn left to the southeast and search for the glimmer of the Dead Sea.

We kept a close watch on the altimeter, for it was an uneasy experience to be letting down in the darkness without navigational aids. The mountains in nearby Hebron are more than a thousand feet above sea level, and with Sdom a thousand feet below, it was eerie to continue descending after the altimeter needle hit the bottom of the scale. With no lights we felt as if we were descending into the bowels of the earth.

At last we would see the runway flares being lighted. With no radio contact, the only way for them to know when we were arriving was by the sound of our engines, after which they hurriedly kindled the paraffin landing flares. Besides the disorientation caused by descending well below sea level without being able to know the height from the altimeter, the mountains to the east and west of Sdom presented a further hazard in the darkness. The only safe approach and departure from the strip was from over the water or down the Arava Valley.

Many of the missions were to evacuate seriously wounded kibbutzniks and servicemen, and these flights in particular gave me satisfaction. I remember well one such flight. One afternoon in May 1948, I was in my office in the long wooden hut at Sde Dov awaiting nightfall. The pilots not on duty were making their way to lodgings in Tel Aviv, and paraffin gooseneck flares were being laid out for night flights. The telephone rang; GHQ was on the line. A young kibbutznik in the children's settlement of Ben Shemen was seriously wounded during an attack by Arab irregular forces. The only way to save his life would be to get him quickly to a hospital. Ben Shemen is a kibbutz that housed mainly children who had escaped from the areas under Hitler and was famous for its excellence in education. It was cut off in the early stages of the war by the Arab guerrillas from Ramleh and Lydda.

Not overjoyed at the prospect of flying in and out of an unlighted, hardly marked strip at dusk under fire, I took off from Sde Dov in the waning light. Ben Shemen is near the Arab town of Hadita and a very tight circuit was called for.
This time the Arab forces were waiting with heavy small-arms fire. After I landed, a barely conscious boy was laid in the back of the Bonanza on the floor. During the short flight back to Tel Aviv, I tried to comfort him but he died during the flight. I was alone in the night with the dead boy. I landed at Sde Dov and the body was removed. A harrowing experience.