Loud and Clear

by Iftach Spector

  Approaching Lebanon’s coastal radar, we descended to very low altitude and picked up speed, plowing the still face of the sea, and leaving furrows of foam in the water behind us. The tops of Lebanon’s mountains rose over the rim of the huge azure basin we were hovering in and peered out at us. Now it was time to get our maps out and prepare for battle.

  The closer we got to the coast, the higher the Lebanon Mountains rose before us. I could already see their sides, mottled with black patches of forestry and scarred with whitish channels. Now I could see that clouds were heaped up over the mountain crests. The clouds were large, their tops white and shining in the sun, while their bottoms were dark, covering the mountaintops. The view was stunning, snowy mountains overlaying a white, sandy beach. What a vista, a Levantine late summer dream.

  The mountain reflections played before us on the surface of the water, and finally, between the mountains and their reflections, a thin white line appeared. It was surf on a sandy beach. I rocked my wings twice as a signal, and we opened our throttles and accelerated to combat speed. We thundered over the beach and began climbing the mountain slope, to cross the first barrier on our way into Syria. Shadows of the great mountains covered us, and the sky above us became cloudy. The atmosphere around us changed instantly into the dark of winter.

  “This is October?” Kamay chuckled from the backseat, but there was no humor in his voice. Our two pairs of eyes looked forward up the slope, searching for clearance between its tops and the clouds, to cross over to the other side. Finally there was something.

  “Here, over there,” and I pointed my nose between two high peaks that stood like pillars under the cloud ceiling, creating a gate. The air was brighter in there. My Phantom squeezed heavily into it, turning, and the other seven slid in behind me. Mountaintops passed over our heads on both sides, disappearing in the gray cloud cover above. Streams of tiny water drops slid down our canopies. And then we passed the summit, and the ground dropped away abruptly below us. A sigh of relief in each aircraft, and we lowered our noses and dove into the valley, away from the ominous atmosphere above us.

  Everybody took time now to prepare for battle and to arm his switches. The Lebanon Valley under the thick clouds was dim in the wintry light. I turned back in my seat and counted my buddies: Ascot was here, three Phantoms cruising in my wake, dark gray like sharks in the foggy aquarium around us. Dubek was just a blurry movement in the background. Good; everybody was in place. The target picture was almost black, and Kamay switched his cockpit’s red night lighting on.

  The Lebanon Mountains receded in the distance behind us, and in front of us—on the other side of the valley—towered the next chain, the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, heavy and high. It also had its tops in the clouds. The light around us was soft and smooth, as though we were underwater, and the greens of the Lebanon Valley passed under us rich and lush, checked and variegated with lines of light. No sound on the radio, total communication silence, as usual. Five minutes to target. Fine.

  The mountain slope. Again full power, nose up, and the Phantoms began climbing the slope of the Anti-Lebanon chain. Our altimeters rolled up, and the clouds in front of us came closer, growing in the windshield Again, Kamay and I searched for a break between the mountaintops and the cloud ceiling. This time it was seven times more important, since beyond this chain was the enemy. There, on the eastern slope down to Damascus, we would start our last approach to the city, and there the radars and the SAMs waited. We had to keep close to the bosom of the earth, descending on them, shaving the ground, and using every groove in the ground to hide from the missiles. Our eyes searched. Where was the break? We became more and more tense. Here it was, the unknown, the X factor in this sortie.

  The aircraft gained altitude and the clouds were already close, but no break to be seen. The steep climb bled our airspeed, and the Phantom felt tired and heavy, its steering clumsy. The slope came nearer and nearer as I pressed my aircraft to the ground to gain some seconds before I hit the clouds. Trees passed by my wings; my belly skimmed the rocks. A few hundred meters ahead of me, right in the windshield, the clouds merged with the mountain into one foggy, amorphous mess. There was no brightening whatsoever that might signal a break. Seven heavy Phantoms, loaded with fuel and bombs, dragged behind me. What I saw before me was a barrier of clouds filled with rocks. If I didn’t decide soon, the mountain would decide for me.

  I decided. Lighting both afterburners, I broke radio silence. “Ascot, Dubek, everybody climb full power, above the clouds!” Immediately I pulled up with what speed I had left.

  Immediately my aircraft cockpit was shrouded in humid, opaque cotton wool. My hand groped blindly for the cockpit lighting switch, my eyes wandered among the flight instruments. There was no voice but the aircraft’s sounds around us. I could hear Kamay’s and my own heavy breathing on the intercom in the gray silence. The climb went on and on. Did I make the decision to pull up in time? Did all of them hear and pull up immediately?

  The Phantom climbed, its altimeter turning slowly. A sigh of relief as the instrument’s hand passed the height of the mountaintops, hidden somewhere in the fog around us. But we were almost out of speed. When will we finally get out of this mess? At last the light around us began to flicker. The murky fluid that enveloped our canopy changed from gray to white, and all of a sudden our Phantom broke out of the clouds, and before us we saw vast blue skies and yellow sunshine. Gasping, we found ourselves hanging at twelve thousand feet over a white, brilliant cloud carpet that went all the way east, where Damascus waited.

  Our heads turned in search of the rest of the formation. One by one and two by two, black Phantoms popped out of the white, wavy rug. I lowered a wing and began drawing a wide circle, to collect them all and organize them again into combat formation.

  A FULL CIRCLE AND THEY were all here. Once again we were in formation, the bombs were still with us, and we were ready for battle. But the situation had changed. From where we are now, how do we get through the clouds and then reacquire the ground for our final approach? There were no holes in the clouds. I was disconnected from the ground, just as I was ten years ago in my Super Mystere, but this time I was not on my own. Seven other Phantoms depended on me and my decisions.

  Meanwhile, a warning light began flashing and I heard a chirp in my earphones. The advantage of surprise had been lost while we were circling up here at altitude, like geese on the horizon. Our warning gear told us that Damascus missile radars had already acquired us.

  I DID NOT KNOW WHAT to do. It made no sense to continue at altitude, to push eight aircraft above the clouds right over a locked-on missile array. The missiles would burst out at full speed from the clouds, leaving us no time to react. How many Phantoms would survive the first salvo? Two? Three? No; a low approach was the only option. But the ground was nowhere in sight, hidden under this white cotton wool. Then, maybe bite the bullet, give the order, and plunge head down into the clouds? No; this would be insanity. I could bang eight Phantoms on the rocks, eliminating a whole fighting unit from our order of battle. No.

  I didn’t know what to do. I finished the circle in formation, and when we were headed east I straightened hesitantly toward Damascus and began inching there, groping. I lowered one wing, then the other, looked down, searching for holes, for a piece of land so I could squeeze us through and reconnect to the ground and the original plan. I was hanging in blue space, over white carpet, and my whole formation trailed behind me. No one said a word to me, not even my navigator, but I felt their nervous eyes on my back. They awaited instructions, any instructions, from their leader and squadron commander, but I didn’t know what to do. We flew east, already encroaching on the danger zone. The red light came on and the horn chirped. The batteries’ radars were tracking us through the clouds. There had to be a way! A hole, just a small hole in the clouds! I looked around fervently.

  Nothing.

  Now, for the second time in this flight, I had to make a decision.

  I hea
rd my own voice talking on the radio, cool and businesslike: “Ascot, Dubek, turn one-eighty; head west.”

  PERHAPS THIS IS A GOOD TIME to remember the IDF tradition of no turning back before the mission is accomplished.

  This tradition was stamped into the IDF after a period of weakness that followed the War of Independence in 1948. The combat performance of the Israeli Defense Force dwindled, and then was saved thanks to the bravery and personal example of some daring operations led by Ariel Sharon during the 1950s. Moshe Dayan, the chief of staff, ordered that only 50 percent casualties justify aborting a mission. In the Six-Day War I had my own example of this: our base commander, Benny Peled, ordered us to fly to the Egyptian airfields without stopping for any reason, and if someone fell out along the way it would be “his own problem.” I was brought up on all this, and it lay heavy on me when a mix of stupid mountains and stupid clouds turned me back from Damascus. I had aborted before I suffered 50 percent casualties, and my hands were clutching my aircraft’s controls, my knuckles white. The formation trailed behind, every one of them aware of what had just happened. The whole trip home lay before us, and we were still carrying sixty-four expensive and desperately needed bombs, and we had to ditch them before landing.

  SUDDENLY VOICES BROKE OUT on the radio, on the combat channel. I heard voices coordinating a pull-up, a dive, and for a second I didn’t get it. Flinching in my seat, I looked to both sides onto my buddies around to see what was happening. But they were all around me, cruising in formation above the pastoral vista of clouds.

  And then I heard that somebody was hit. Cries of “Break, break!” and “Fire,” and a navigator fired off a geographical position—the location told me it was right near Damascus—and then another voice in a ridiculous but clear New York accent, like the narrator of a documentary, croaked, “Oh, it’s just a small fire.” And then it came to me that these were from Bats, a sister Phantom squadron. Actually, they had an American navigator, Grossman. Or was it Joel Aharonoff, another immigrant from the United States?

  And—yes, I suddenly recalled, the Bats were supposed to attack the same target right before us. How could I forget about them? And now they were there, hitting our target in Damascus. I recognized the voice of their leader, Arnon Lavushin.

  “Clear target area, heading south,” which meant they had completed the mission.

  I had turned back, but Lavushin hadn’t. He reached the target. And oh, boy, he was paying a price for it.

  “How did the bastards get in there?” Kamay mumbled behind me in awe.

  What the hell, I thought. Didn’t they encounter mountains, clouds? Lavushin, that cool bastard! God damn him! How did he get through that mess?

  I learned after the war from Lavushin how he found a way to Damascus. The route the Bats took was a little different, just a few kilometers away from mine, but there—thanks to luck—they found a nice hole and cleared the ridge easily. “I had no problem at all,” Arnon told me.

  Luck is important, too.

  This story of two squadrons that went to Damascus, and their very different adventures, has been told many times since then. It was a subject of discussion for the whole air force, as an example of decision problems and dilemmas flight leaders might face in battle. In one of those discussions the air force commander, Maj. Gen. Benny Peled, established a position toward aborting missions.

  “As a rule,” he said, “I permit every leader to abort and return to base, but I reserve the right to check why he did so, and decide if he should continue to fly and lead my men into battle. I have no rule book regarding this,” Peled said, “but remember that as you are volunteers, this obligates you as much as it acquits you. I shall not force anyone to fly.”

  In actuality, Benny devised those principal directives only after the war—when I raised publicly the story of my aborted mission to Damascus. During the war nobody cared to talk about it. I brought this issue up after the war, when I was entrusted with the operational training of the air force. To better learn the lessons from the war I thought that dilemmas like this one might help the education of our pilots. Although I remained content with my decision to abort in this particular instance, the discussions of the event were hard for me emotionally.

  ‡

  BUT BACK TO THE ORANGE TAILS, before we landed after the aborted flight to Damascus. There was an interesting sidebar to that flight, which the squadron never bothered to advertise. On our way home I called the northern controller and reminded him that we still had sixty-four five-hundred-kilo bombs, and asked for an alternate target.

  “Find out where we might be needed,” I told him. “We’ll stand by for orders.” And for added impact I told him, “We have time—plenty of fuel.” We had very little fuel by then, but no one in my formation demurred. So we circled over Galilee, conserving fuel and waiting for a target. At last the controller came back on and passed us over to ground army control in the Golan Heights. A familiar voice answered my call on that channel. It was Sivron, a veteran from ops. His voice was excited when he came on and said, “You’re a gift from heaven!”

  I had no fuel for friendly banter, and I cut him short: “I have thirty tons of ordnance for you. You have a target for us?”

  “I sure do! I have a fat target for you, Ascot!” Sivron’s voice was different from his usual slow talk; he spoke fast.

  “Then let’s have it, and fast.” Sixteen pairs of eyes were watching fuel gages. Sivron directed us to use this and that map.

  “Look,” I told him, “we have no maps and no time to waste. Get us there somehow, and quick!”

  “I’ll find a way,” Sivron answered. “Stand by.”

  We kept circling over the northern part of the Sea of Galilee, with engines on minimum. I refrained from asking my pilots about their fuel levels, so as not to require them to answer. I was waiting for the first of my pilots to announce “Short on fuel, returning to base.” We were all below the required minimum to continue, and I imagined how the dropping out would go. But my sixteen men were still with me, mouths shut. I kept my mouth shut, too, using all my willpower to avoid bugging Sivron down there. He was doing his job, and it was better not to interrupt him.

  As far as I was concerned, we were going to attack in any case. If Sivron took any more time we would have to penetrate and attack in a more economical way, at lower speeds. This would be more dangerous. But I didn’t care about danger anymore. By this time I almost wanted to pay. I guess all my pilots were aware of what was going on, and I was becoming prouder—in a dark and bitter way—of my men, with their hearts in their mouths, still silent.

  Sivron came back on, gasping for breath. He was a great navigator, and had found a way to direct us to the target without maps. He gave us a starting point—the estuary of the Jordan River into the Kinneret—and calculated for us headings and time to target. When we finished writing down the numbers, he described the target itself. This was the main axis of attack of the Syrian Army going from the east toward the Jordan River.

  “When you pull up,” he explained, “you should see before you two black hills, between them a road, and on that road and around it there should be massive Syrian forces moving west—tanks, artillery, trucks of all kinds, everything. Those forces are the target,” he said. “Divide your fire, hit as much as you can.”

  “And where are our own forces?”

  “Far to the west. No sweat; you won’t hit them.”

  I replied with a laconic “Thanks” and went to work. I had no time to waste. I ordered the formation in line behind me. I gave brief instructions and hurried in first. They followed me one after another, each aircraft taking a slightly different heading—two degrees right from its predecessor—and so we penetrated into the Golan spreading like a fan, each Phantom racing toward another section of that axis to engage another Syrian target. We all flew very low because the whole area was covered by SAM-6 missiles. It was more than an hour and twenty-five minutes since takeoff, and we were really short on fuel, a
nd avoided lighting our afterburners, because it was fuel that was going to dictate how this improvisation turned out.

  On the way, Sivron suddenly broke in on the radio and doubled our flight time—he had made his first calculation with the wrong scale and discovered his mistake at the last moment—but the change came in time. We just changed the clock, and when my second hand reached zero I pulled up from among the basalt rocks and thorn bushes, looked down, and there it was.

  Here was the road, and there were groups of vehicles and tanks scattered on and around it like black flies on a cord. Field artillery flashed, leaving black clouds. I rolled over, put my sight on the largest group of the lot, and eight half-ton bombs made a line of bursts on the ground, blooming with clouds of dust and smoke. With the last kick I turned immediately west, reduced power to the most economical setting, and circled a little to see my men coming out one after another. Finally we all were out, and the touchy question could be asked. Those with less than 1,500 pounds of fuel—that is, several minutes left to keep airborne—were sent to land immediately at nearby Ramat-David to fill up and return to our home base. The war was still on, and we had to get ready for the next mission orders.

  When I got back from Ramat-David and entered the squadron building, there was already a call for me. Sivron was on the phone. His pleasant voice had resumed its regular slow, drowsy rhythm, and I tried to cut him short again, thanking him for the extraordinary efficiency in the planning of that attack, and to please go away, I had work to do. But Sivron had a lot to say, and before he got to the point Maj. Gen. Moti Hod got on the line, too. I gathered that our former air force commander was now working in the northern command post. I had difficulty in understanding their voices; they both spoke as if they were a little drunk.