Egypt had special influence and importance, and now its threats stoked the Arab world into orgasmic enthusiasm. Arab radio stations screamed hysterically for the annihilation of Israel. Newspapers showed pictures of columns of tanks rolling down Cairo streets on their way to battle, and battalions of paratroopers marched by on their way to Tel Aviv. The Arabs were aroused; their time to avenge their defeats in 1948 and 1956 had come! Finish off the Jewish state!
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CONFRONTED WITH ALL THIS, the government of Israel sputtered and stammered. We seemed to have no answers to the dramatic developments. We, the Israeli people, listened with growing alarm.
In the first days of June, Israel was terrified, trenches were dug everywhere, and it became clear to us in the air force that war was coming. When and how it would start—those were the questions.
We sat for long hours in our cockpits, and occasionally were scrambled against Egyptian MiGs that crossed our southern border at high altitude. We achieved no results. Evenings, we stayed at the squadron until late and went over mission plans, especially for an operation named Focus. We studied intelligence data and maps over and over. I was just a Mirage pilot, captain, leader of a four-ship division, and third in command of the Fighting First, Lt. Col. Amos Lapidot commanding. I was just a junior actor watching uneasily the rapid unfolding of events around me, and sometimes feeling that my government was botching the defense of my country.
PRESIDENT NASSER OF EGYPT appeared before the media on a visit to the military airfield Bir Gafgafa in the Sinai. From there, laughing, he threw down the gauntlet. “If Israel wants war, Ahlen weShalen [welcome].”
I remember that famous photograph of Nasser’s visit to Bir-Gafgafa. In the center Nasser and his chief of staff, General Ammer, were sitting wearing well-decorated military uniforms. Their mouths were open in roaring, exultant laughter. Their pilots surrounded them, squeezing to get close to their leaders. In the center of the picture, close to the generals, a young and very handsome man stood. He was a pilot in a full pressure suit, not just a flight suit. His hands were folded over his rugged chest. His dark face was square and intelligent, his hair short and thick. He smiled slightly at the camera.
When this picture was published in the newspapers, I studied it for long time and tried to imagine the hopes and dreams that hid behind that broad brow. I couldn’t avoid seeing in my mind’s eye my own home and family, and the kibbutzim I grew up in. I gave this man a name: Hassan.
Many times since then I have imagined Hassan’s face in the cockpits of the MiGs that fought against me.
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ON THE NIGHT OF THE FOURTH OF JUNE our squadron commander, Amos Lapidot, called me to his office. Outside on the balcony there was no light. The darkness of the moonless night was total. We checked again all the maps and plans. On Amos’s order, I opened a sealed envelope and handed the technical chief the Focus specifications for arming our aircraft. Soon lights lit up in all the underground hangars, and the mechanics, who had lived, eaten, and slept there all the past week, began loading the Mirages with bombs. At midnight, when nothing was left for me to do at the squadron, I returned home. In base housing they already sensed that something was cooking. All the houses shed thin lines of light from the blacked-out windows, doors opened and slammed, women ran across lawns to each other’s homes.
I found Ali and our three-year-old packed and ready for evacuation. Ali didn’t say anything to me, but I could see in her eyes the certainty of war. I couldn’t help her with any added information. I took a shower, scrubbing myself several times with hot water, soaping two or three times. I shaved in both directions and put on aftershave lotion. I changed underwear and prepared a clean flight suit and new socks. I even sat down to shine my flying boots.
We went to bed. Ali didn’t sleep, passing the time biting her nails. And inside me, anxiety grew. Something roiled my stomach constantly, like convulsions. Suddenly, like a fool, I scolded Ali to stop fussing and let me sleep. She froze.
I had a few short bouts of dreamless dozing. Finally I got up. I brushed my teeth once and again, anointed my toes with antifungus cream, and scattered talcum on them. When I came out of the bathroom, nobody was moving in the silent house; only my son breathed quietly in his bed. I went out on tiptoes and closed the door silently behind me.
In the fresh air outside I heard the deep sound of truck engines. Vehicles were parking near the movie theater. I was sure that very soon the families would be awakened and evacuated somewhere. This day, June 5, 1967, I didn’t think of Ali and Etay anymore.
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IT WAS FIVE O’CLOCK in the morning, and the headquarters of the Fighting First was dark. We all gathered in the briefing room, and this time the base commander, Col. Benny Peled, also was in the room. The morning flight program was written in chalk on the blackboard, business as usual, but it had over it a big headline in capital letters: “Operation Focus. Zero hour—0745.”
All the targets were airfields in Egypt. The fog of the last weeks lifted. Now everything was clear.
I peered around and saw that some of my friends were still uncertain. Slapak sent an uncertain smile in my direction: Wasn’t this just another drill? Would we be stopped before we get on the runway and sent back to the hangars? I shook my head. I had just returned from the hangars for a last check. All our aircraft were armed and fully fueled, and most significantly, the operational fuses had been taken out of their boxes and screwed into the bombs’ bodies and noses. There was no going back now. This time there would be a fight. At long last our government had gotten it together and decided. From now on it was all in our hands.
Amos concluded his short briefing with “good luck.” Benny Peled also said a few words. We all left. On the walk to the hangars, bellies grumbled. Fighter pilots waited in a long line, safety gear on their shoulders, for a visit to the bathroom.
The sun was up. Dozens of fighter aircraft—arrow-nosed Mirages, chubby Super Mysteres, barrel-bodied Ouragans—were parked around the runway, engines whining. Everybody was waiting for his own time and the green light to climb in and take off. At 0700 the first afterburner was lit: Sever took off first, collected his division of four, and faded into the distance going south. They opened the attack. We would pass over them, striking deeper into Egypt. Now everybody was thinking, “What is waiting for us on the way? How will we break through to the target?”
But most of all, “How will I behave at the moment of truth?”
DESK FLIGHT WAS CALLED. We were a three-ship division—not enough aircraft to make four, but never mind. We lined up on the runway. Fortunately, the pain in my gut had passed. This was an encouraging sign, and now I was sure I would be okay. Throttles forward, racing down the runway, wheels up, and we joined up and crossed the coast, going west, out to sea, flying low and practically parting the waves along the lengthy leg westward. Once “feet wet,” each of us flicked on the armament switches in his own time. There were neither orders nor reminders on the communications channel; all was silent. Our radio sets were switched off to prevent any possibility of noise that might warn the enemy of our approach. Now we could not be stopped by anyone.
After some long minutes at sea we turned left and crossed a foreign beach. We flew very fast and low, forming a triangle: Maj. Oded Marom in the front and Yair Neumann and I spread behind at the other two points, guarding our six o’clock, our backs. At first we passed over sand and salt flats, and here and there shallow marshes. Waterfowl fled before us on pink wings. To the right, a white tower stuck up over the dunes. The map said this should be Port Said, the northern entrance of the Suez Canal. We looked forward, and suddenly white cones jumped out from the sands, white sails. A second of wonder, and then the Suez Canal passed under us: a thin line of water, many boats, a big ship trailing smoke, the iron grating of a bridge.
Marom corrected our direction, and we accelerated to even higher speed. Now we were flush over the delta of the Nile. Green and brown fields seeded with people and bea
sts, groups of palms, water tunnels. Villages, mud huts standing on barren circles of land like ant mounds. Minarets, checkered black or red stone. In the squares, people crowded, their faces turned up: our predecessors had awakened them. In the sky above us remnants of morning clouds shed a mix of light and shade on them and on us. We raced on, now at full throttle.
I looked backward: Neumann was in place. No MiGs; our six was clean. So—here we go. Just a few more minutes to the target.
The last, short leg. The target was very near. Full power, maximum speed now. We streaked among the sand hills of the Western Desert. Beyond the hills in front of us a large black pillar of smoke was rising. This was it, the target! Our predecessors had left their mark. They had just finished, and left the area free for us. Another look backward: nothing. A flutter of disbelief. Where is the enemy?
Top! Target in sight.
We pulled up, and instantly the large military airfield of Cairo West spread under us. The concrete and asphalt runways were flat on the sand, like in a painting. On the field’s circumference fiery stakes burned, throwing up dirty flames and enormous pillars of black smoke. The pillars climbed fast and expanded above like huge mushrooms, creating dark shadows over the field. These great fires were enemy planes our predecessors had already lit up. It was clear now. The Egyptian bombers were caught full of fuel, ready to take off.
From altitude we rolled over and dove along the axis of the runway. I was full of cool and pleasant purpose, neither rage nor battle joy. Just a calm, straight dive until the runway filled my gun sight like a long, black strip, broadening as I went lower. Exactly at the right height and on target I gave the bombs button a nice, long press. The aircraft rocked; bang one, bang two, and it was over: two half-ton bombs released and gone to earth. I pulled up and out of the dive. Good. The runway passing under me was blocked; no takeoffs today. And now to more exact work: my cannons.
I expanded the radius of my turn and moved away from Marom, to open some working space for Neumann and myself. We all spread out to get some distance from the airfield, very fast and low, and when we were lost in the distance, hidden among the hills, we toggled switches from “bombs” to “guns” and prepared the gun sight for a strafing run. When all was ready, we turned back and returned to the burning hell.
The place actually looked like hell. The great smoke pillars, and the shadows of the cloudy “treetops” above, showed from far away like a huge, dark jungle. Only a few rays of the sun penetrated from the eastern side among the huge trunks, painting marks of gold here and there. Kerosene fires belched red, sending black and white balloons among the bellows of the blacksmith’s fantastic shop.
Marom pulled up in front of me, rolling high over my head, and dove in. I followed him through the smoke, and found a Tupolev 16 bomber, its tail sticking up between the walls of a revetment. There it stood, the size of a Boeing 707, but longer, narrower, and painted dark green. It looked like a lizard. The sun glinted off Marom’s Mirage two or three times and then he vanished into the shadows and smoke.
My turn. I pulled up, leading Neumann in. Each of us was looking to get a Tupolev. A tall tail peered through the columns of smoke and I jerked my aircraft sharply once left and right, and the bomber was exposed. Under the black clouds darkening the whole airport, it all felt strange, like winter. I dove toward my prey. Slowly and patiently I walked my gun sight’s pipper up and into the large aircraft. There. Hold it. Fasten and lock the pip exactly on the wing root. When the range became short enough and the bomber loomed large in my windshield, I gave the trigger a long, gentle squeeze. Sparks flitted about the nearer wing, crossed the center of the fuselage, and continued onto the other wing. Suddenly, point-blank range. The Tupolev was enormous in my windshield. I stopped firing and pulled out hard. When I passed over the bomber, a big explosion and a belch of oily fire knocked me and my Mirage upward, banging my head twice on my Plexiglas canopy.
I cleared the smoke out to the sunny, clear air. On my way around I could see the bonfire I had started. My tree of black smoke was still young and slim and black, but it was definitely a healthy plant. It grew fast and surely would continue to grow and become a respectable tree for President Nasser to see, no less so than the others in the area. Ignoring streams of ack-ack sent in my direction by a brave antiaircraft gun position, I passed through them untouched and proudly added another smoke tree to the growing garden.
All along the way through the Nile delta, we cruised among tall towers of smoke. From Inshas and Abu-Zweir in the delta, from Kabrit on the Suez Canal, and from other, more distant military airfields. We rejoiced. Israel was no longer under threat by long-range Soviet bombers.
ON THE WAY HOME, FROM ALTITUDE, I could see dust rising on the border between the Sinai and the Negev. That meant that ground battle had begun, too.
On my landing approach to Hatzor, the base looked odd: two Super Mysteres were stuck with their noses in the mud on both sides of the runway, and one Ouragan was lying near the control tower in a pile of dirt, blocking the last section of runway. I understood: not everyone got home untouched.
“Request clearance for the other runway, please.”
“The other one is even worse, Desk. You are clear to land.”
“What a Zikago,” I mumbled to myself, deploying my braking parachute just off the ground, braking hard, and making it to a stop just before the pile of dirt, clearing the runway at the halfway point.
When I shut my engine off in the hangar, the mechanics pulled me out of the cockpit, going nuts: “Where were you? What did you do? Speak up, man!”
“It was all right,” I answered them, knowing very little. For the past hour I had been caged in my cockpit, seeing only details without the big picture. The mechanics, on the other hand, were full of confusing information. The radio transmitted news. It seems that things were going well with Egypt, but there were rumors of casualties, especially in the Scorpions. On the squadron balcony I saw Ilan Gonen’s face go pale: he already heard names of friends. Someone waved to advise that Yak shot down a MiG. I was amazed: I didn’t know the old wolf was back from his year of studies in America.
THAT WAS HOW THE NOOSE around our neck was removed. The continuation of the war went like a dream. In the following days our enemies around us crumbled one after another. The radio reporter went nuts when East Jerusalem was taken. I shed real tears, together with all the mechanics around me, when the hangar loudspeakers trumpeted the voice of the paratroopers’ brigade commander, Col. Motta Gur: “the Western Wall is in our hands.”
OPERATION FOCUS, THE DEMOLISHING of enemy airfields that had opened the Six-Day War and determined its military outcome, was extraordinary in military history because it was a tactical operation that had strategic significance.
Focus had a tactical goal: to abolish the aerial threat to Israel and secure air superiority for the continuation of the war on the ground. But unintentionally, Focus had achieved a strategic result: victory in the war.
Why did this happen? Because Focus struck directly through the pupil of the eye of the enemy, right at the symbols of his power. The enormous bonfires that flared all over Egypt were seen in Cairo, the Suez Canal, and in the fields of Sinai. They gave each Egyptian soldier and citizen an astounding answer, sharp and merciless, to the bombastic boasting of their leaders. The successful neutralizing of the Arab air forces was much less important to the results of the 1967 war than the theatrical effect the lighting of these fires achieved. Into the arrogant, inflated show President Nasser staged, the Israeli Air Force broke in, kicked ass, flattened the set, and deflated the balloon.
To be sure, one must not fake such a performance. The drama is in danger of becoming a comedy (or a tragedy, depending on the viewer). And the greatness of the genius scriptwriter Yak and the outstanding directors Maj. Gen. Moti Hod and Cols. Rafi Sivron and Rafi Harlev and their assistants, came through here: the lightning flashed at the right place and the thunder roared on cue, and all the lines were recited correc
tly by us actors. Within three hours the Middle East was on fire, and the audience was left open-mouthed in their chairs.
Yak and his men never imagined that they were producing theater. But it was the theatrical effect that dismantled the Egyptian government and its army, led to Nasser’s resignation, and sent General Shazli’s division running home without shoes, even before it bumped into Israel’s ground forces. True, our armor and infantry had much pounding and crushing left to do, but they fought against an enemy who already lost his spirit, and his command and control systems were disintegrating at all levels. The fall of Egypt led to the crumbling of Syria and Jordan, which were hit less severely.
And this strategic performance—taking an enemy state and army and taking it apart in one aerial strike—wasn’t planned at all. The possibility wasn’t even in the minds of the planners and commanders. The greatest achievement of Focus came completely by accident.
Like Saul, the first king of Israel, we searched for donkeys and found the throne.
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THE COST OF FOCUS WAS NOT CHEAP. In the 490 sorties of this operation, we lost twenty aircraft. This was a casualty rate of more than 4 percent per sortie, a price four times higher than what the military world sees as acceptable. And indeed this number was put on the table in full knowledge that there was only one chance. The windlass of fate turned, and when it stopped, the gamble was successful: twenty pilots dead; one country saved.
And it should be clear that in this case it was really a gamble. The success of Operation Focus depended totally on fair weather, absolute surprise, and perfect data. The existence of all three conditions was far from certain. In fact, the launch of Focus was a challenge to fate.
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