07:45
Shefer turns to face the room. No speech is necessary. The squadron commanders do not glance to one another. No one speaks a word.
The date is Sunday, June 4. Sunday in Israel is the first day of the working week, following the Sabbath on Saturday.
Shefer’s briefing is as short as any I remember. Nothing of operational import needs to be said. Each squadron is as ready as it can be. Shefer stresses two elements only: surprise and secrecy.
Twelve hours remain till H-hour. No hint must be offered to the pilots. Let them go home and get some sleep. As for us commanders, nothing in our demeanor must alter. This evening’s briefing will be like every other. Wives? Say nothing. Best friends? Nothing.
For the past three weeks my squadron, the Bat Squadron, has been sequestered on the base, training for nothing but the coming attack. Seven other squadrons are based here at Tel Nof, at Hatzor, and at Ramat David. Each has its own targets. Each has been drilling for nothing else.
In the evening after the day’s training, I assemble the pilots of my squadron in the briefing room to go over the day’s exercises and to plan for tomorrow’s. I look at the faces of my young fliers—Menahem “Hemi” Shmul, who will go on in his career to make five and a half kills; Eitan Karmi, eight; Shlomo Egozi, eight; Reuven Rozen, four; Asher Snir and Avramik Salmon, thirteen and a half each; Giora Romm, who will shoot down five MiGs in three days. I myself will finish with eight kills. Around the room sit others, many others, with whom I would gladly fly against the finest pilots in the world.
But no one in the government knows this. All is in the future. For now we are untried and unblooded. To the senior commanders of the General Staff, most of whom have made their careers in the army, going back as far as the Haganah and the Palmach, the air force is the junior wing of the defense establishment. Its effectiveness is regarded with skepticism. Who are these pilots anyway? They get the best of everything; their demands eat up the defense budget. Can we count on them? What do they do except wear Ray-Bans and eat steaks and go home each night to sleep on clean sheets?
Operation Moked, I know, is viewed by the cabinet and the prime minister as a madman’s dream. A preemptive strike that will destroy the entire air force of Egypt—four hundred planes—in three hours?
Dayan, we know, has approved Moked—but based on a presentation delivered on a single sheet of paper. Does he believe the plan will work? Or does he simply see no alternative?
Two days ago, a message arrived for me from Base Commander Shefer. General Rabin’s office has just phoned; the chief of staff is on his way to Tel Nof. Shefer wants me to show Rabin the squadron.
I am furious.
In my office my secretary asks where we should assemble the men. “We will assemble nothing,” I tell her. “When Rabin’s group arrives, I’ll take them to the Standby Shack.”
On every Israeli air base, four fighters are kept on intercept alert at all times. The pilots assigned to this duty wait in a rough building adjacent to the ready line. The men call this “the Villa.” Inside is a coffee urn and a fridge, a 16-millimeter projector playing To Sir, With Love over and over, along with bunks, boards for backgammon and checkers, and a pair of threadbare couches.
The date is June 2, three days before the war. This day I have six pilots on intercept standby—one major, two captains, and three lieutenants.
I will take Rabin there. I will not warn the pilots beforehand. Let the chief of staff walk in on them.
He has come to test the air force’s capacity to execute Operation Moked.
Let him test it.
Rabin’s plane comes in on Runway 33 and is directed by the control tower to the standby lot. I greet him outside the Villa.
“Welcome, sir.”
“Major.”
I march Rabin straight into the shack. When the pilots see the chief of staff enter, they leap to their feet and snap to attention. Base commander Shefer and air force chief Motti Hod follow.
Rabin can see that I have prepared nothing. The pilots are taken totally by surprise.
“Gentlemen,” I say, “the chief of staff has some questions he would like to put to you.”
Rabin begins in his signature baritone. He grills the pilots about Operation Moked. I stand to the side, saying nothing.
“What airfield is your primary target?” Rabin asks the major.
“Beni Suef, sir.”
“Where is Beni Suef?”
“One hundred ten kilometers south of Cairo, one hundred thirty west of the Gulf of Suez.”
“What is your secondary target?”
“Inshas Air Base.”
“What is the configuration of Inshas?”
The major details the locations of the runways, hangars, and fuel depots; he tells Rabin the types and number of aircraft the Egyptians have on this site, where each plane will be parked, and how he will attack them.
Rabin queries the flight leaders. He interrogates the young wingmen. “What is the distance to Cairo West? To Dumeir outside Damascus? In what formation will you attack? At what speed?”
The pilots answer everything. They are flawless.
“What weapons will you carry?”
“Two 500-kilogram bombs and two hundred fifty 30-millimeter rounds in the cannons.”
With each answer Rabin’s color grows stronger. He stands straighter. His voice gets deeper. He can see that these young pilots know their stuff. They do not brag. Their tone is not arrogant. They are prepared and professional.
“Can you pull off this mission, Captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have any doubts?”
“None, sir.”
“You, Lieutenant?”
“None, sir.”
Rabin looks from one pilot to the other. “Thank you, gentlemen.”
I walk the chief of staff out to his Cessna. He will return now, I know, to report to the cabinet. What will he tell them in this critical hour?
Has he come to Tel Nof expecting, perhaps even hoping, to discover fliers who are uncertain, ill prepared, lacking in self-confidence? Has he anticipated reporting to the government that Moked will not work?
If so, the opposite has transpired. Rabin’s confidence has mounted moment to moment. From a period of reported self-doubt, he has returned to himself. He has become the Rabin we all know—hero of the War of Independence, the IDF’s youngest captain, youngest general, youngest chief of staff.
Beside his plane Rabin stops and turns toward me. “Thank you, Ran. Good luck!” When he shakes my hand, he holds on for an extra moment. I see in his eyes he has made up his mind.
He believes now that Israel is ready.
He believes now that we can go to war and win.
• • •
When I enter the briefing room, the pilots are horsing around as usual. I alter nothing in my tone or posture. We go over the training schedule for tomorrow. Questions arise about the fighter planes that have deployed to Tel Nof from Ramat David, Israel’s northernmost air base. Is the war starting tomorrow? Ran, what’s going on?
“When war starts, I will tell you. Don’t worry, I will not let it happen without us.”
The mission board in the ops room displays the names of the pilots and the assignments of each. I have spent hours fine-tuning this roster. My first deputy is Motti Yeshurun. During the waiting period, I have instructed him to stop me twice a day and cite at random one pilot’s name from the lineup. I must be able to tell Motti exactly why I put that pilot in the slot he is in.
At H-hour tomorrow morning, four pilots from our squadron will remain at Tel Nof on intercept alert. They will not fly in the general attack. I have assigned my other deputy, Eitan Karmi, as leader of the first pair; Giora Romm will be his number two. The second pair is Avramik Salmon and Menahem Shmul. Why these four? Because t
hey are my best dogfighters.
These two pairs from our squadron will stay behind to protect Tel Aviv. Eight pilots from the other two Mirage squadrons are also assigned to intercept duty. Twelve planes to defend the entire country.
Operation Moked will bet everything on a single roll of the dice.
I send the pilots home. Darkness falls. The base grows quiet. Stepping out of the squadron building, I can see the night maintenance crews crossing to work in the blacked-out hangars and hear, in the dark across the runways, the yip-yipping of jackals and the sound of distant traffic.
These are my favorite hours. The closest thing to war, during peacetime years, is flying photo reconnaissance missions. Your plane crosses the border, penetrating deep into enemy territory. You’re alone. You can’t call for help. If you’re detected, the enemy will scramble every interceptor for miles. And you can’t even shoot back because your gun package has been replaced by a supplementary tank carrying 300 liters of fuel.
Preparing for these missions, I would hole myself up in the operations bunker and go over every detail of the coming flight. This is not like studying for exams. You are running the mission like a movie through your mind, anticipating every possible emergency, then planning and mentally rehearsing your response.
A fighter pilot accelerating down the runway on an operational mission must keep foremost in his mind one reality: At some point before his wheels touch down again, something is certain to go wrong. Will he have an engine failure? Will an unseen enemy appear? Will another plane in his formation experience a crisis of some kind? Bank on it: Something unexpected will happen. When it does, it will be followed almost always by a second emergency, and often a third, in immediate succession, each one producing a graver crisis than the one before. In such a situation, the pilot’s body will exhibit all the manifestations of fear. His heart rate will soar; his flight overalls will become drenched with sweat. But his mind must remain focused. His thinking must stay clear and calm.
Why do we train? To perfect our flying skills, yes. But far more important, we practice to elevate our threshold of emotional detachment, to inculcate that state of preparedness and equilibrium that enables a pilot to function effectively under conditions of peril, urgency, and confusion.
I have sent the keyed-up pilots home at 21:00, nine in the evening, having told them nothing. Alone now except for the two pilots on standby duty and the operations monitor, I retreat to my office, turn on the lights, and crank the radio up to high volume. Down a short flight of stairs is the operations bunker. I walk down silently.
The file for Moked is in the operations safe. I dial the combination and open the door. I take the folder and slip it under my arm. Another flight of stairs takes me down to the lower briefing room. I enter, close the door, and lock it behind me. For what is surely the hundredth time, I open the file.
I prepare the briefing for tomorrow morning.
Up front in the briefing room are several blackboards suspended from the ceiling on sliders, so that the front boards cover up those to the rear. With chalk, I write out the technical details of tomorrow’s operation—on the rearmost, the final lineup for the four formations of the first wave; on the next, the diagrams for the method of attack; then the comm channels, flight restrictions, safety regs, and so forth. I leave the outer board blank, concealing the boards behind it.
It never crosses my mind that we can fail or that pilots might be killed.
At 23:00 I lock the briefing room from the outside and put the keys in my pocket. I drive home in my Deux Chevaux with the canvas roof open to catch the night air. The drive is only a few minutes to our bungalow—my wife Heruta’s and mine—in the upper part of the base. When the squadrons go to war, the wives and families will be evacuated. Heruta is awake. She has been packed for days. I say nothing about tomorrow and she doesn’t ask.
In their bedroom are our children—Orit, eight, and Zohar, four. I tiptoe in, careful not to let the light from the hall wake them, and give each a gentle kiss. I shower, grab a bite to eat, then slip under the covers. Do I have trouble sleeping? I conk out like a child.
At 03:00 I awaken before the alarm. I shave and dress. I phone my deputy commanders. They arrive at the squadron shortly after I do. Every pilot’s home or room is linked by an operations telephone. “Get them up,” I say.
Within minutes, the lower briefing room is packed. There is no joking. Every eye is fixed on the blank outer blackboard. I slide it aside and give the briefing. It is all business and lasts a little over an hour.
Every pilot is present except Karmi and Romm, Salmon and Shmul. They have already left for their intercept alert stations.
I give no final emotional pep talk. “You are ready. The survival of the nation depends on you. We must succeed at any cost. En brera. No alternative.”
Giora Romm, twenty-two-year-old Mirage pilot:
We younger pilots still cannot make the visceral connection to war. What will it be like?
Two years and three months from now my Mirage will be shot down over Egypt. I will seize the eject handle, unaware that my left arm and wrist are broken and my right leg has been shattered in a dozen places, and find myself seconds later hanging from the straps of my parachute, looking down as Egyptian farmers and field workers sprint into position below, eager to hack me to pieces with their pitchforks and hoes. By then I will know what war feels like.
Now? The idea that men will die, that wives will be made widows and children left fatherless, is beyond my comprehension. Not to mention the hell that we ourselves will soon inflict upon the enemies who have marshaled to destroy us.
Here is how clueless I am. The afternoon of June 4, a day before the war, I’m on cockpit standby with another Mirage at the end of Runway 33. All of a sudden I see a Vautour fighter-bomber land, and then another and another. On their tails is the emblem of a squadron based at Ramat David Air Base. Then Mystères from the same base begin landing. I say to myself, “Planes from Ramat David are moving here to Tel Nof—what’s the story?”
Later, in the dining hall, I approach several Ramat David pilots lining up for omelets and salads. One of them, Elisha Friedman, is a friend from my flying class. “Elisha, what are you doing here?”
He says, “Giora, we are attacking Bir Gafgafa tomorrow. We were ordered south from Ramat David so we would be in range. Don’t you know? There is a war tomorrow.”
Lieutenant Menahem Shmul is a twenty-one-year-old fighter pilot in Squadron 119. He will fly in five wars, finish his career with five and a half kills, and go on to become, with Danny Shapira, the premier test pilot in Israel:
My father was murdered by Arabs ten days before I was born. This was in 1945, in Mandate Palestine, when he served in the Shai—an acronym for Sherut Yediot, “Intelligence Service”—which would later become the Mossad. My name, Menahem, is the same as his.
My father was born in Safed, the city of the Kabbalah, in northern Galilee in 1915. He spoke fluent Arabic, having grown up with many Arab friends. Following the riots of 1929 my father joined the local defense forces. He was fourteen. When the Shai was founded, around 1940, my father was recruited to work undercover. His official post was as a mounted policeman. In this capacity he was involved in a number of clashes with our Arab neighbors, including some that resulted in bloodshed.
Ten days before I was born, my mother’s water broke. My father took her on his mare, Galilah—the same horse he rode on his mounted policeman’s duties—to the hospital in Rehovot. Returning home that evening, he stopped by an Arab village called Na’ane. The mukhtar, or mayor, welcomed my father. This same man had secretly sent confederates to lie in wait for my father when he left the village. They ambushed him, stabbed him with knives, and dropped him alive down a deep dry well. That night and another day passed before my father was found by his comrades of the mounted service. He had bled to death in the interval.
The d
ate was July 3, 1945.
My father’s murder is not something I have dwelt upon. It seems to have happened many lifetimes ago. But this night, the night of June 5, 1967, I cannot sleep.
The elder Menahem Shmul on his mare Galilah, Sea of Galilee, 1943.
Photo courtesy of Menahem Shmul.
My father’s family came to Israel in 1845. No one is even certain where they came from, except that it was somewhere in eastern Europe. The story goes that the mother of the family, who was already a widow with three children, walked all the way, across Turkey and Syria, three years, with just a donkey.
In Tiberias there are Jews, it is said, who never left Roman Palaestina when the legions destroyed the temple in 70 CE and drove out the last Hebrews sixty-two years later. My mother’s family traces its lineage to these. So when an Arab says to me, “I am a Palestinian,” I tell him, “I am a Palestinian, too—and from six hundred years before the birth of Muhammad!”
Ran Ronen, our squadron commander, has a doctrine that he has drilled into our young pilots’ skulls. He calls it “operational finality.” What this means is: Stick to the target. Ignore all danger. Continue the attack. At all costs, do what you have been sent to do.
A fighter pilot cannot think about his own safety. Personal survival is not among my top five priorities, except as it bears upon my ability to keep flying sorties and to continue inflicting damage upon the enemy.
Dvekut baMesima.
Adherence to the mission.
What you worry about are the little things, the simple mistakes that are so easy to make and so difficult to recover from.
The air force debriefings after Moked revealed that not every attack formation found its target on the first try. There’s a well-known story of one flight leader who pulled, climbed to 6,000 feet, rolled onto his back, and saw . . . nothing.
What did he do? He retraced his steps. He led his formation back to their final waypoint and picked up where he left off. The leader did it over. This time it worked. He struck the target and blew the hell out of it.
The Lion's Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War Page 15