New Heavens (20 page)

The rejoicing of the Jews at their new statehood, which they regained after 2,000 years, was tempered by the difficulties resulting mainly from the plight of the kibbutz settlements. The British controlled all transport arteries, ports, and airports. The borders with Transjordan and Egypt were policed largely by Arab troops and served as convenient channels for the passage into Palestine of Arab forces and arms. Apart from the few large population centers of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, the kibbutzim were spread mainly in the Plain of Jezreel and on the coastal plain bordering the Mediterranean. Some settlements, particularly those in the Negev in the south of the country, were particularly vulnerable.

Communication between the kibbutzim and the rest of Israel was a major problem. Well aware of this the Arabs concentrated their attacks initially on these soft targets. The Air Service was to play a vital role in providing supplies to the settlements surrounded and cut off from the main body of the Yishuv.

For months before the UN resolution on partition in November 1947, the Palestinian Jews had begun to organize
themselves into military formations. They had the Haganah with its Palmach shock troops approximately 3,000 strong and the very much smaller urban forces of the Irgun based mainly in the cities and opposing the British military forces in Palestine and abroad. There was little military equipment, and what they did possess had been collected from the world's scrap heaps usually lacking spare parts and manuals of operation. Language was also a problem, for there must have been a dozen languages spoken in the Yishuv (Jewish-settled areas of the country), including Hebrew and English. In the air force, most of the flying personnel knew only English, whereas the support people, such as tower operators, spoke Hebrew exclusively.

The Jews, however, had a powerful weapon—what is known in Hebrew as
Ain brera
, meaning “no alternative.” In other words, the Jews were fighting for their survival with their backs to the wall, or rather the sea. Losing the war would have meant in the best case losing their homeland, and in the worst case their lives. For many it meant a return to persecution. Each and every battle was fought on a background of desperation knowing the fate that faced them if a single battle was lost. The memory of the Holocaust just three years before cast an ever-present shadow on the Jewish fighters and accounts, in part, for the desperate heroism shown by the fighting men and women of Israel.

On 14 May the British flag was lowered for the last time in Palestine. That was the signal for the mass invasion by the Arabs. The Egyptian forces split into two formations, one of which began its advance on Tel Aviv via the coastal road while the other captured Auja on the Egyptian-Palestine
border near Kibbutz Revivim. They then headed toward Beersheba and Hebron with the intention of linking up with the Transjordanian forces to the south of Jerusalem. In the meantime, the Transjordanians had crossed the Jordan River at the Allenby Bridge and made for Latrun in the coastal plain, some thirty kilometers from Tel Aviv. They reached Latrun two days after the State of Israel was declared.

While I was in the air on the reconnaissance flight around the northern and eastern borders of Palestine, a crucial drama was being enacted below us. Even before the formal ending of the mandate, Arab troops were advancing into the country. On the final day of the British mandate, units of the Arab Legion tried capturing the strategic police post at Gesher. After failing to overcome the resistance of the settlers, they diverted their forces and occupied the hydroelectric power station at Naharayim on the Jordan River.

The Iraqi army tried to cross the Jordan River at Gesher, but when they encountered ferocious resistance from the settlers of the Golani Brigade, they abandoned the crossing. In the meantime, the Syrian army began heavy artillery bombardments on the kibbutzim south of the Sea of Galilee and, in particular, on Kibbutz Ein Gev on the eastern shore of the lake. Again, a single battalion of the Golani Brigade was left on its own to defend the entire area against invasion by the armies of two sovereign states.

Israeli soldiers, who were holding positions in the Arab town of Zemach, couldn't withstand the attacks of the armored cars and tanks of the Syrians. On 18 May the kibbutz fell to the invaders after trying to defend themselves with two 20mm anti-aircraft guns. By 20 May, the defenders had been wiped out almost to a man, and the way was open for the Syrian armor to advance to the settlement of Degania. More fierce battles ensued with the outnumbered and poorly armed settlers fighting for their lives and families. Eventually it ended in defeat for the Syrian forces, which withdrew from the area and diverted their attacks to the north near Mishmar Hayarden. The successful defense against the superior forces at Degania, known in Israel as “the Mother of the Settlements,” gave a huge boost to morale in Israel at a time when it was battling for its very existence.

The Lebanese army invaded Galilee from the north and overcame the settlements of Kadesh and Naftali. Within a day, however, the Israeli settlers recaptured them from the Lebanese together with a large number of weapons. On the central front, the Iraqi army transferred the brunt of its attack to the south of the Sea of Galilee, and by 25 May had reached the Arab town of Nablus not far from the Mediterranean coast. The advance of their forward units was stopped only ten kilometers from the city of Natanya thereby preventing the threat to cut Israel into two.

In the Jordan Valley, the Arab Legion entered the kibbutz of Beit Ha'arava at the northern end of the Dead Sea after the kibbutzniks evacuated the settlement and escaped to Sdom in the south in boats. After capturing the settlements to the north of Jerusalem, the legion advanced to the outskirts of the capital city. Heavy artillery shelling preceded the attacks on the Old City and the new Jewish city, but the defenders put up a fierce resistance. After the legion had
suffered heavy losses, their British commander, Glubb Pasha, called off the attack. This was fortunate for the legion was by then only a few hundred meters from the center of the Jewish-held part of the city. The legion attacks were not limited to the northern sector of the city, and in the south battles led to the fall and subsequent recapture of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel where the Transjordanians were supported by the armed forces of their Egyptian allies. The battle was then concentrated on the Old City, and despite furious fighting by the Palmach units, the Old City fell to the legion.

The war in the air had begun inauspiciously for us in the air force. On the morning of 15 May 1948, the day the British mandate ended and the State of Israel was born, I was asleep in the Yarden Hotel in Tel Aviv after the long reconnaissance along the borders the day before. At 0525 that morning, I awoke to sounds I knew well, the unmistakable roar of Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, the sound of bomb blasts, and the rat-tat-tat of machine guns. I rushed downstairs and saw pilots bursting into the foyer, some of them with their wives in nightdresses, distraught and bewildered.

There was a jeep outside the hotel, and I jumped into it and drove furiously to Sde Dov. The scene shook me. Two waves of Egyptian Spitfires had already plastered the field, badly damaging our fleet of aircraft. Against my advice, headquarters had arranged the entire fleet in neatly parked rows on either side of the runway.

The Bonanza, which had cost me so much effort to fly from Africa only ten days before, was parked on the north side of the runway severely damaged by a bomb. I was livid at GHQ's stupidity in leaving the aircraft on the field despite my pleas. A number of other aircraft were badly damaged by the attacking Spitfires.

There was a large gaping hole in the wall of our only hangar, and an angry fire raged in the green hut that housed the armory. Near it stood one of the ground crew wailing uncontrollably that his friend, one of the corpsmen, was trapped inside the hut.

Because of the embargo imposed by the United States and Britain on weapons and planes, Israel's purchasing efforts had been badly hindered. We were virtually without aircraft to face the Arab fighters and bombers, who had been buying freely whatever they wanted for years before the war. After the bombing we were left with virtually no serviceable aircraft.

At the start of the War of Independence on 15 May 1948, the small group of exhausted pilots with their battered airplanes was on the verge of collapse. A statement made on 12 May by Yigael Yadin to the Provisional Council of the Government testified to the gravity of the situation at that time. “We have no air force. Our planes operate contrary to all the rules of aerial tactics. We have already had grievous losses. No other pilots would dare to take off in planes like ours. … The Arab air forces are a hundred and fifty times the size of ours. It would be best not to take into account the planes we have as a military factor.”

While I was observing the sorry scene at Sde Dov, we
heard the whine of the Merlins again and ran to take cover in a nearby field. We had made no preparations in case of a bombing, neither shelters nor foxholes. The field was the site of a small cement factory and the piles of blocks drying in the sun gave us cover from the strafing fighters. I glanced around me and saw someone lying nearby dressed in a tweed jacket, khaki shorts, and long socks like a British soldier or policeman. It was Chief of Staff Yigael Yadin.

As the whine of the Spitfires faded away, a large black car drove gingerly over the wooden bridge at the edge of the airfield and out stepped Prime Minister Ben Gurion. He carried a pair of large black binoculars, which he promptly trained on the scene. I was enraged at the equanimity with which my warning had been received and with the outcome plainly to be seen in front of us. Without realizing what I was doing, I started shouting at Ben Gurion, cursing the GHQ and roaring, “I warned them and now look at this. What idiocy!” Ben Gurion looked at me in surprise and without saying a word got into his car and disappeared over the bridge just in time to miss the third wave of Spitfires. In a mindless rage, I pulled out my revolver and though the attacking Spitfires could see me clearly in front and below their noses during the dive, futilely shot at the fighters as they roared past at the bottom of their dives.

In charge of the few anti-aircraft guns was a man slightly older than us, whom I had not seen before at the field. When the raid started, he began to scream orders to his men in a hysterical tone of voice. I went up to him and silenced him, because I could see that his behavior was affecting everyone around him. He drew himself up in a show
of exaggerated importance and said to me, “Do you know who I am?”

I replied, “I don't know and I don't care, but do you know who I am? I am the commander of this base, and I tell you to shut up. You are causing panic.”

A fourth raid that morning followed shortly with more damage to our fleet. During the raid I saw a telltale stream of Glycol coolant pouring from one of the attacking Spitfires, a clear sign it had been hit and would have to crash-land. It had been hit by one of the 20mm anti-aircraft guns placed at three points around the airfield. I watched the Egyptian aircraft lose height as it headed away from the field to the north.

After checking that more Egyptian fighters were not about to appear, I took off hurriedly in the remaining Bonanza in the direction of the Spit. It had force-landed on Herzlia beach fifteen kilometers north of Sde Dov. Apart from one wing, which had been torn off during the landing, it looked as though the pilot should have gotten out all right. After circling it once, I landed on a satellite strip on what is now Rehov Shalvah in the suburb of Herzlia Pituah, drew my pistol, and ran toward the beach. On the way I was stopped by a soldier in a command car, who told me the pilot was in our hands. He drove me to where he was being held.

In an abandoned factory near the seafront, I found the Egyptian pilot nursing a wound on the back of his head, obviously in a state of shock and fear. Realizing his mental state, I somewhat pompously said to him in English, “You have no need to fear. You will be treated according to the
Geneva Convention,” though I had no idea of the exact provisions of the convention. I asked him how he got the wound on the back of his head, for when crashing an aircraft one gets hurt in the front of the head. He replied, “I landed all right, but when I tried to get out of the aircraft, a soldier came up and hit me on the back of my head with a Sten gun.”

After making sure that he was not badly injured, I blindfolded him and flew him to Sde Dov, from which I took him to Tel Aviv for interrogation. The commander of the air force, Aharon Remez, and Dan Tolkowski, chief of operations, joined me in the interrogation. The Egyptian was Flight Lieutenant Baraka. He was forthcoming in his replies to our questions, maintaining that the Egyptian air force had sixty Spitfires, of which, about forty were serviceable. Aware of our total lack of any military aircraft, this information shocked us.

Baraka kept muttering, “You Israelis have very good wireless,” which I eventually understood to mean that we had good intelligence services. Throughout the interrogation he was unusually nervous and depressed. He asked me for permission to go to the toilet. I took him to the bathroom, asking a guard with a Sten gun to accompany us. When Baraka saw the guard, he became very agitated and said, “Please sir do not kill me now.” I calmed him down, and after that, he continued to answer our questions.