Loud and Clear

by Iftach Spector

  Shortly before the opening of our course, Ran had shot down a Jordanian British-made Hawker Hunter in a dogfight that, befittingly, had to have been the hardest and most dangerous in the whole history of the air force. Under his command, the Bats shone. His subordinates admired him. Other squadron commanders couldn’t hide a bit of jealousy.

  This was the man on whose office door we knocked.

  A MAN SAT BEHIND A TABLE leafing through papers. His hair was dark blond, and on the white wall behind him hung a piece of art: a rusty triangular piece of iron, a broken blade of an Arab plow made into a Mirage silhouette.

  Ran looked at us. His sharp, piercing stare was immediately replaced by a big smile, and he jumped from his seat and rounded the table to shake our eight hands. He overpowered us with captivating, physical warmth. He was not a particularly tall or large man, but on every occasion all eyes swung to him, and every ear listened to his hoarse, ringing voice. For me, this was the second time I met this rare human phenomenon of vibrant leadership, and at such volume. The first time was with my classmate at Givat-Brenner Daniel Vardon, the boy who could animate hundreds of schoolchildren and their teachers. Vardon owned this magic until, on June 8, 1967, he lost his life in the Six-Day War.

  Ran also had plenty of this charisma. And right away, as we followed him to the briefing room to start the course, I noticed that all of us were imitating his sturdy, rocking gait, pushing our chests out like him. Even our voices sounded flattened, and we languished in his rolling, choking laughter.

  HE PRESENTED US WITH an astounding agenda. We were going to visit all the important, secret installations and meet the key figures and leaders. We would visit and explore in detail the country and its borders. Divided into small teams, we would research and devise new combat techniques, and then fly and test them in the air. Our flights in the context of the course would not be confined to the regular air force limits. Suddenly we felt special, important.

  And so it turned out. For the next couple of months Ran devoted himself and all his time and resources to our course. He opened his squadron to us as a guinea pig and research subject. In fact, he put the Bats at our disposal. And he kept his word—in the following weeks we lived in the eye of the storm, one event following another.

  We were fascinated. When we went back to our homes on weekends, I went down to my own squadron, the Fighting First, and compared it to its younger sister, the Bats. True, my Fighting First also lacked nothing, but for some reason it looked faded and dusty. Sadly, I had to admit that though every category was okay—command, aircraft, technical support—and though one-on-one our pilots were no worse than the Bats’, the final product was somehow less convincing. Ran’s personality extracted from everybody living in his halo something extra, so that the whole was made greater than the sum of its parts. He set people in motion, he guided them, he criticized, he sometimes frightened them—he was always there. Even when he was not around, the Bats were his personification, vibrant and full of energy.

  The studies were great, too. There I was exposed, for the first time, to serious discussions—led by excellent teachers—of how to run a military unit, command in battle, and lead warplanes to their targets. Colonel Motta Gur, a distinguished paratrooper who later became the IDF’s chief of staff, astonished us, urging us to stand behind our opinions and not give in, even within the chain of command, even when those ideas were rejected by our leaders.

  Professors of psychology engaged us on the phenomenon of fear and discussed ways to deal with it. Senior civilian managers came to talk to us about their experience in personnel management.

  Ran went nonstop. He strove to put us through every possible experience in the short time he had. Some days we flew or went traveling along the borders on foot and in jeeps. In the evenings we didn’t go home: he dragged us out (“You can sleep on Saturday,” he would say with a snarl) to join police patrols in the underworld of Jaffa, for a bowling lesson in Haifa, to take a sauna in Beer-Sheva, or for a fancy dinner on a ship in Haifa Harbor. Or he would send us to drag our wives out of the house and head together to the Singing Bamboo nightclub for an evening of dancing. Everything, everywhere, was free of charge. Everybody knew Ran and was glad to serve him, and we just blossomed in his shade. Only after midnight did we arrive home with ringing ears to read the stuff for tomorrow, prepare a project, write, or rehearse. Ran cast a spell on us all, and we all loved it.

  In addition, there was the flying. Here also, promises were kept to the letter. We took off in twos and fours and went out to check the ideas and methods we invented. All the shooting ranges and training facilities were at our disposal, all the flight areas evacuated for our course. Scarce munitions were given freely to us. And in any formation where Ran flew, usually manning the rear aircraft, you could expect surprises.

  “Idle your engine!” he would suddenly order, and the designated pilot had to pull up and look for a place for a forced landing, and always find one far away that could be reached only by planning and finesse. When Ran was around, the air hummed with energy. He was a dangerous and surprising guy, and we were constantly on guard. He kept teaching us his motto that the only proof of a fighter is his results. In his words, “The courage and integrity of a warrior are measured by the number of holes in the target.”

  ON JANUARY 31, 1967, we went down to the squadron for some night flying. This was to be one of the special flights of the BBN course. The plan was to take off from Tel Nof in pairs and navigate south to the southernmost city of Eilat, and from there at low level over the Red Sea to the limit of the Mirage’s range. The mission was to do a sea search in the dark, locate and record all ships.

  This mission had immediate relevance: just two weeks before, Ran and I—we were together in the ready room of the Bats—were scrambled down to the Red Sea to attack a Saudi vessel that had opened fire on a Israeli ship some fifty kilometers south of Eilat. We reached the place at dusk and found a small black boat chugging after a fat, white whale of a ship. The plump lady was by far faster, and fled leaving a long white wake behind her in the dark sea. Our flight ended when we buzzed the black leech a few times and finally convinced it to give up the chase and point its bow back toward the Saudi coast.

  Then an operational question was asked: how to defend Israeli shipping in our southern port at night? How do you find vessels in the dark? The BBN course was certainly the right laboratory, and this was going to be the first test. The night that was selected for it was during a full moon. But the choice of this night was not lucky. Deep winter lay over the country; strong winds blew, rain fell, and all the roads were awash, and all the time lightning flared and thunder boomed.

  During the preflight briefing we looked at each other skeptically. The IAF of the 1960s didn’t fly in such conditions, especially not at night. We thought, when the briefing was over, that we would get a night off.

  Then Ran took the floor. “What if it were wartime?” he asked us.

  I LED THE FIRST PAIR. We took off in close formation, and after wheels up Yoeli, my wingman, stuck close by, our aircraft just a few meters apart. Together we burrowed into the clouds. Inside, the air was dark, turbulent, and unstable, and my Mirage pitched and yawed. In the mirror above my head I could see the dim lights of Yoeli’s ship dancing close on my left wing, blurring and brightening at times together with the thickness of the black fog. We passed through spurts of rain and hail, and I increased the intensity of my running lights to the maximum, to help Yoeli see me. Then I focused on my flight instruments.

  I knew that Yoeli could not take his eyes off me for a split second, lest he lose me in the dark. He had put his trust in me. I had to get him through this soup. I was his compass, his artificial horizon, and his aerial speedometer. Wherever I went, he went, too. As we climbed, conditions worsened. Our two Mirages bumped along and made noise. We were going through a storm, and my hands on the controls were aching from excessive pressure. Yet I felt a mix of anxiety and pride in myself and in Yoeli, who held
on and kept tight with me all the way up. I knew well that he also—just like me—was pushing out of his mind any thought of Khativa. In the group picture at the flying school, air cadet Khativa stood between Yoeli and myself.

  At last, at thirty thousand feet the world cleared and we broke out into a clear, bright night. A lonely, cold moon bathed us in white light. We breathed deeply, postponing for now the question of the return to base. Yoeli slipped away from my wing into a looser formation, and we both gazed across the expanse that spread beneath us to the horizon. The cloud tops were like white and fantastic mountain ranges washed by moonlight. From time to time bubbles of yellow electric light inflated inside their huge masses in crazy spasms, vibrated for some moments, and were gone.

  I checked my chronometer, got out a map and set up to continue the mission. First I had to find the Red Sea. Just as I was getting ready I heard nervous, rapid chatter on the radio. I froze to listen.

  Somebody asked, “What’s that?”

  Another voice broke in, “Horizon! Watch your artificial horizon!”

  The first voice returned—now I recognized it as ZBB—and in complete tranquillity he said, “It’s all right now.”

  We waited in silence, and I do not know whether the short flash we both saw to the north was a flash of lightning that lit the clouds from inside, or ZBB’s Mirage as it hit the ground under them. The lights of Eilat flickered beneath us through a hole in the clouds. The second voice was now on the air, shocked. It couldn’t stop talking.

  I pulled Yoeli back on my wing, and we turned for home.

  FOR US FROM THE THIRTY-FIRST CLASS, ZBB was the fourth casualty from the fifteen young men who had stood at attention to get their wings (two more were devoured earlier by the Harvard trainer), and the wars hadn’t even begun yet. This was a high price to pay, but by no means unusual.

  Training accidents and losses were viewed at the time as a necessary evil, just a part of becoming a fighter pilot, and not as a plague that must be eradicated. And though accidents might occur—friends auger in, collide in the air, spin out from vertigo—this was their contribution to the defense of Israel. This way I accepted, like all my friends, the disappearance of Khativa in the Mediterranean, Yakir’s crash in the Sea of Galilee right under my nose, and today, the loss of Zur Ben Barak in the clouds behind me. That’s life. What can be done about it? Hope for the best.

  Believing this, I was stunned to meet somebody who thought otherwise and who was not scared of saying it loud and clear to his commander’s face and the whole world. This happened early on, while we were still juniors in the Scorpions, flying Super Mysteres. Umsh passed through a flock of birds, and his engine choked. He punched out and parachuted to earth. As he was brought safe and sound back to the squadron, we all crowded around him to hear what happened. Then we were happy to see our squadron commander write in the accident report as expected: “Accident caused by force of nature.”

  Captain Yozef Salant raised his hand and remarked, “It’s the pilot’s fault.”

  We all were stunned. Birds—what can you do about that?

  “What, my fault?” asked Umsh. “How’s that? We flew in high speed, in formation, and how on Earth could I see those goddamn small chicks?” All looked at Yozef in dismay. He wasn’t a guy who entered a quarrel lightly.

  Salant asked, “Umshweiff, is the aircraft guilty?”

  “No.”

  “Are the birds?”

  “Of course not, but—”

  “So who’s left?”

  Umsh spat out angrily, “Some people here are assholes. What should I do when the exercise requires high-speed flying where there are birds?”

  “Who told you to fly at high speed with birds around?”

  “The commander said—”

  “Then the commander is guilty,” said Salant in the voice of a teacher who had just written the solution on the blackboard. We looked at him, but it took all of us a long time to get the message.

  Zur Ben Barak was buried with us standing at attention among the cypress trees at the cemetery of Hanita, his kibbutz. We listened to the singing of the shovels and spades and the lumps of dirt falling upon his coffin, each of us thinking thoughts like well, now we’ve buried ZBB, too. Yael, his young wife, wept, holding their baby girl. Itamar, his father, stood bent over the grave of his first son. The grave was filled, and each of us stole a look at the others: Who’s next?

  What could we do, anyway? Vertigo had beaten Zur, nobody was guilty but he himself, right? So that night we celebrated on the deck of a ship in Haifa Harbor. The next morning we got up and returned to Tel Nof, to continue our training.

  FOR THE END OF THE BBN COURSE—one of the best experiences I ever had as a pilot—Ran saved the best for last. We went through a series of discussions and workshops on battle command and leadership.

  The climax came when the old American movie Twelve O’Clock High was screened for us. This film tells the story of an American bomber squadron in World War II, stationed in England and flying missions over Germany. The squadron is crumbling from the pressure of long flights over enemy territory, through punishing ack-ack and relentless Messerschmitts. One bomber after another is shot down; in each of them a crew of ten die or become prisoners of war.

  The squadron sinks into self-pity and accusations against a high command that continues to order more “suicide missions.” The commander finally breaks down, and is unable to continue sending his men into battle. Just then, when the squadron is on the verge of ceasing to be a fighting unit, Gregory Peck appears. The tall, dark, handsome hero takes over and saves the day. His name in the film is appropriately Frank Savage.

  Savage volunteers to replace the ailing commander. But first he shakes up his men, putting them through training until under his stinging whip they get back the right order of things, forget the whining and remember the mission, the bombsight, and their profession. As Savage promised them on his arrival, they begin to fear him more than the Messerschmitts. And then Savage goes again into the heart of Germany, leading his men into the lethal ack-ack and Nazi fighters. His personal example and leadership have raised the squadron from the dead and put it back on its feet.

  RAN’S EYES SHONE WHEN HE TAUGHT us this subject. From this film he singled out for us all the components of battle: the situation factor and the team factor. He pointed out for us the signs of fear and disintegration, and showed us the tools in the quiver of the good commander to remedy them. And he underlined the key role of the commander’s personality: the leadership factor. Ran Pecker was wonderful and convincing. We gazed starry-eyed into the complicated world he opened for us. Each of us admitted after this lesson that it had been Frank Savage himself talking to us at Tel Nof.

  After this lesson I, too, for the first time, wanted to command people and be a leader.

  Chapter

  8

  Operation Focus

  SUNDAY, JUNE 4, 1967. Tomorrow, the six most fateful days of our lives begin.

  All through the weeks before, the sword of Damocles hung over us. On the fourth of June, the sword swayed and jangled in the wind and we covered our heads. To the ground and air skirmishes that had occurred along the Syrian border, a Soviet provocation was added: for their own reasons, the Soviets put it about that Israel was preparing to go to war with Syria. The Syrians became frightened, the Egyptians vowed to defend their Arab brothers, and the whole thing started rolling downhill.

  On May 17, while I was on a regular training flight, the controller suddenly called for an immediate return to base. The air force’s readiness was raised. Back at the squadron we were told that a large Egyptian force had just moved into the Sinai Peninsula—an area that had been demilitarized since we evacuated it in 1956—and was advancing toward our southwestern border. Soon Jordan joined the Syrian and Egyptian military alliance, and the three were preparing their armies for a coordinated attack on us, from three sides.

  Jordan posed the most immediate danger. The Jordanian army thr
eatened to descend from Judea and Samaria, which protruded like a wedge into Israel’s narrow waist, and by advancing to the sea, cut the country in two. The Jordanian Arab Legion was parked just a few kilometers from the sea. And in the North the Syrians also mobilized in their fortifications. They waited in the mountains overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

  But the largest and strongest enemy, the engine of the Arab juggernaut, was Egypt. It was a big country and especially important in the Middle East. Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser called back his armed forces from Yemen, where they had been conducting their own colonial war, to take part in the war against Israel. These forces brought back with them their Russian jet bombers. These were not tactical aircraft; they carried heavy bomb loads, and their targets couldn’t be anything but cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. We knew that these bombers had already dropped poison gas on civilian populations. And on the ground, Gen. Saad Shazli’s elite Egyptian division entered the Sinai and plunked itself down on our border.

  The secretary of the UN, U Thant, acceded to Nasser’s demands and timidly withdrew his team of observers, which until that time had supervised the partition lines between Egypt and Israel since the 1956 cease-fire. This action removed the last obstacle to an Egyptian attack on Israel. With success, Nasser got even more belligerent and blocked the Strait of Tiran—an international waterway—to Israeli shipping. When Israel turned to the UN and the United States of America and asked them to open the strait in a lawful, peaceful way, it was fobbed off with promises in spite of explicit treaty obligations made after the 1956 war. Our ambassador, Minister of Exterior Abba Eban, ran around begging, but no country was ready to take any form of action on our behalf. The French declared an embargo on arms to the Middle East that actually was against us.