New Heavens (19 page)

Ben Shemen was the scene of a heroic action by one of the young Palmach pilots, Zvi Ziebel, known to all of us as “Chibbie.” On one flight to Ben Shemen, there was heavy firing from nearby Hadita. The firing was so intense that the aircraft was in danger even while on the ground. Chibbie got hold of a tractor, and after loading it with sacks of sand, placed it between the Auster and the direction from which the firing came. When he was ready for takeoff, he taxied the Auster slowly to the upwind end of the strip with a kibbutznik keeping the tractor between himself and the firing and took off without being hit. Chibbie survived for most of the war but was eventually shot down in his defenseless Auster by a flight of four Egyptian Spitfires.

When a committee was set up toward the end of the war to decide on the award of the first medals to be granted to our troops, I was appointed as the air force representative. In recognition of the bravery of the young Sabra pilots, I recommended that the coveted Medal of Valor be granted posthumously to Chibbie, and he became the only member of the air force to be awarded this highest decoration. In retrospect I believe it was a mistake not to have recommended an award to at least one of the non-Israeli volunteer pilots, the Mahalniks, who did the bulk of the fighting
in the air. [MAHAL was an acronym from the Hebrew
Mitnadvey huts la'aretz,
meaning “volunteers from outside the country.”—ed.]

After the end of the mandate in May 1948, we gradually moved from a purely defensive role to one of active support in bombing, and our function became critically important. Army headquarters began to call urgently for our help.

The attacks by Arabs increased daily, and Haganah headquarters sought ways to get intelligence data not only about forthcoming attacks but also about the masses of neighboring Arabs pouring into Palestine from all sides to assist their brethren in the war. The nascent Air Service carried out many flights for reconnaissance and photography. We flew lower than ten or twenty feet above the ground carrying Leica cameras held in our hands while flying the aircraft. We often ran into heavy small-arms fire and were such easy targets it is miraculous no one was brought down.

The shortage of equipment and trained personnel was so critical that preventable accidents occurred. An example was the case of what happened to one of the South African Mahalniks. One morning early in June in my sleep, I heard a huge explosion from the direction of Sde Dov. I rushed down to the field and saw a column of smoke rising from a taxi track near the runway. One of our Fairchilds was burning near a large hole in the tarmac.

Evidently, a sleepy corpsman had walked into the spinning propeller carrying a 50-kilo bomb, which exploded. There was nothing left of him apart from burned pieces of flesh scattered around the tarmac. The South African volunteer pilot, Lionel Kaplan (Kappy) was sitting in the cockpit
and saw what was going to happen. He tried to get out in time. Kappy was injured by the explosion; the next time I saw him was in a hospital bed with one eye missing and many shrapnel wounds in his face. When he recovered he tried to continue flying with his glass eye and made a few flights before he was permanently grounded.

In many cases we were unable to fly the missions GHQ called for, desperate to help hard-pressed forces in the isolated settlements. They had no experience in the handling of an air arm and had little idea of what was and was not possible with an airplane. Moreover, I am certain that no air force has ever had to fly the missions we carried out with the inadequate equipment and inexperienced pilots at our disposal.

There is no doubt that in the War of Independence, especially during the first half of 1948, the aircraft that arrived from South Africa played a crucial role in the survival of Israel. The thirteen aircraft purchased and flown from Johannesburg to Palestine with their volunteer crews more than tripled the strength of the Air Service at that critical time. Later, the stream of airplanes and crews from the United States and Europe provided more suitable and more effective tools necessary to fight and finish Israel's first and most crucial war.

FINAL STEPS

ON 15 May 1948, the unofficial war became a full-fledged open conflict. The tension reached breaking point as the Yishuv feverishly prepared to face the onslaught of the invading Arab armies. The scale of the simultaneous attack by the invading forces of six nations on five fronts is not generally appreciated. They looked as though they would quickly overwhelm Israel. It should be of some interest to students of military history to determine how it was that Israel not only survived the onslaught, but within a year was victorious. If the populations of the attacking countries are brought into the equation, the figures are astonishing. Ranged against the half a million Jewish residents of the Yishuv were more than 40 million Arabs, supported by Muslim communities throughout the world.

If the coming generations in Israel have any doubt of the heroism of their forebears, let them learn the details of Israel's history of 1948 and 1949, of Kfar Etzion, Kfar Darom,
Zemach, and other settlements that stood against impossible odds. They will then be encouraged in times of adversity.

At the beginning of May 1948, the military chiefs of the Arab League met in Damascus to plan the invasion and subsequent division of Palestine into areas to be occupied by their respective countries. The war plans of the Arab countries were comprehensive, a full-scale invasion supported by air and naval forces.

In the north, the Lebanese were to advance along the coast north of Haifa to Nahariya. In the east, the Syrians would head for Galilee in a two-pronged attack on the northern end of the Sea of Galilee and on the southern end. The Iraqis planned to attack from the east to Natanya on the coast in an attempt to cut Israel into two at its narrow waistline. In the east, a brigade of the Arab Legion would advance on Tel Aviv. On 19 May, Azzam Pasha of the Arab League said each invading force would establish its own administration in the area it would shortly be conquering.

A few days before the final evacuation of the British, Golda Meir, a minister in the Israeli government, disguised herself as an Arab and secretly met King Abdullah of Transjordan to try to dissuade him from taking part in the invasion of Palestine. Her mission failed. The British-officered Arab Legion invaded Palestine together with the other Arab armies.

In the south, the Egyptians planned to advance in two columns with the main attack coming from El Arish and advancing along the coast via Gaza to Tel Aviv. A second force would head for the southern flank of Jerusalem
through Beersheba and Hebron to link up with the Arab Legion forces of Transjordan. Arab irregular forces of the Moslem Brotherhood inside Palestine were to support the invading armies.

Facing these assaults were the irregular troops of the former Israeli underground fighters who had for years had difficulties in illegally stockpiling their light weapons in bunkers. They had to conceal them from the British forces of the mandatory regime. In the air, Israel had only the few light aircraft acquired in circumstances already described.

After the invasion began, the flight of a major part of the Arab population from Palestine in 1948 gave birth to a human tragedy that remains with us to this day. The reasons for the wholesale exodus are complex but must in no small measure be attributed to the propaganda beamed to them from the neighboring Arab countries. They urged the refugees to leave for what was to be a temporary absence until the “Jews had been driven into the sea by the invading Arab armies,” to quote the Mufti of Jerusalem. They were told to vacate the battle zones so as not to impede the free movement of the invading troops. The deceptive horror stories about what the Jews would do to them was also a major factor. The wealthier families led the exodus to neighboring countries.

There were many cases of Jewish institutions in Israel appealing on the radio and in the press to the Arab residents not to leave. The advice was ignored and a mass exodus ensued. It is on record, for example, that the British superintendent of police in Haifa reported, “The Jews were making every effort to persuade the Arab populace to stay.”

Though I was unaware of the details of the Arab preparations for war, I knew 15 May was to be a fateful day for us. I flew out to make a reconnaissance on the afternoon of 14 May. I flew along the proposed borders of the new State of Israel as defined by the United Nations partition plan of December 1947. It was a time of much disorder; the flight was initiated by neither the air force headquarters nor general headquarters. That is not surprising because there were no established chains of command at that time.

I took off for the reconnaissance in the Bonanza with a crew of two to take photographs and note what we saw on the ground. We made for the Bnot Ya'acov Bridge over the river Jordan, the main approach from Syria to Palestine. Reaching the bridge, I was shocked to see a line of military vehicles stretching as far as the eye could see from deep in Syria over the Jordan River and into eastern Palestine.

We counted large numbers of army vehicles, all painted in dark green camouflage and heading in convoy into Palestine. There were more than 2,000 trucks, armored cars with ambulances, tanks, and artillery transporters. A similar picture repeated itself when we flew to the Allenby Bridge, the main approach over the Jordan River from Transjordan to Jerusalem.

Knowing the rag-tail units of our citizen army using lorries, vans, and buses collected from commercial businesses often with the advertisements still on their sides, we were distraught to see below us large, organized army formations advancing in military order into Palestine. For the first and perhaps only time since arriving in the country, I began to fear for the coming day. Many of these foreign army units
were well inside the Palestine borders before the British pulled out.

During the flight we passed near the RAF base of Mafrak in Transjordan. It was not far from the border, and as we flew near on our reconnaissance, I saw a fighter taking off. Fearing that it was an RAF Spitfire I turned west toward home. Fortunately, we were not of enough interest to warrant examination by the British fighter.

Immediately after landing at Sde Dov, I reported to deputy chief of staff Yigael Yadin at GHQ. When I blurted out what I thought was my bombshell, he laconically replied, “Yes, we know all about it,” showing no emotion.

Yadin's opinions carried much weight for he was a fine soldier, had held highly responsible positions in the unofficial military hierarchy, and I had complete confidence in him. In civilian life he was a highly respected archaeologist. He was actively involved in the defense sector from early 1947 after being appointed chief of operations of the Haganah. In the War of Independence, he acted as deputy chief of staff under General Dori and later after the end of the war in 1949 was appointed chief of staff of the Israel Defense Force. In May 1977 he became deputy prime minister to Menachem Begin.

Despite my confidence in him and expecting a land and air attack any moment, I was not reassured by his reaction to my news. I insisted that we disperse our aircraft from Sde Dov to the three satellite strips we had prepared in Herzlia, Even Yehuda, and Kibbutz Shfayim. All three strips were a short distance from Tel Aviv and could have been operational
in a matter of days. Reluctantly, I accepted Yadin's order that the aircraft stay at Sde Dov.

My relations with Yadin were cordial, and I had been able to advise him regarding air operations for a considerable time. Most regretfully on this occasion, he did not accept my advice and the damage caused to our small fleet by the Egyptian air raids the following morning seriously affected our strength in the air. Yadin's attitude reflected the prevailing ignorance of air force matters on the part of the Palmach and the Haganah. This view lasted for many months until the air force got its rightful priorities from the government in late 1948.

The Iraqi Air Force had a number of modern British fighter aircraft, but the Egyptian Air Force was equipped with large numbers of modern fighters and bombers and was the major threat to Israel. Admittedly, its aircrews didn't have anything like the battle experience of our volunteer fighter pilots who were to arrive before long, but they were an infinitely superior force compared to the few weekend pilots and toy planes of the Israel Air Force at that time. The British army general staff headed by Field Marshal Montgomery reported to the British government, “When Britain evacuates Palestine, the Jews will immediately be overcome.”

The inevitability of war cast a pall on the elation of the Jews waiting eagerly for the founding of the infant state at midnight on 14 May 1948. In the early evening of 14 May, Ben Gurion as prime minister designate speaking in the name of the National Council of the Yishuv, extended a hand of peace to the Arabs of Palestine and to the neighboring
countries, and invited them to cooperate with the independent Jewish nation for the good of all. These overtures were ignored, and the fully equipped regular armed forces of Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, with units of the Saudi Arabian army in support, invaded Palestine the next day. Ben Gurion announced that the name of the new nation state would be Israel and that it would immediately be open for unrestricted Jewish immigration, for the “ingathering of the exiles.”