the remains of the temple the Romans had destroyed in 70 AD.
‘Think of it, David! We might just get it back. For the first time in two thousand years Jerusalem might again be our capital, and for the first time in nearly two decades Jews will be able to pray at Judaism’s holiest site.’
‘It’s been a long time,’ David agreed, aware of his superior’s strong Jewish faith.
‘Of course it all depends on whether Jordan attacks first, but between you and I, I hope they do!’
Menachem Kovner would not have long to wait.
In the Knesset in West Jerusalem, Israel’s Military Intelligence Chief, Brigadier General Yossi Kaufmann, was winding up his briefing to a divided War Cabinet. ‘Nasser will go to war to shore up his own position in the Arab League,’ Yossi concluded.
‘We have no choice, Prime Minister.’ It was the Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan. ‘If we wait for them to strike first we face the very real possibility of defeat. We are outnumbered by overwhelming Arab strength on the ground, in the air and on the water.’ Moshe paused and eyed each of his colleagues. ‘If we strike first, we will have the advantage of surprise, and that is a critical principle of war,’ he concluded, quoting the great war strategist Von Clausewitz.
The Cabinet fell silent. All eyes turned to the Prime Minister.
Prime Minister Eshkol looked at the faces of his Cabinet ministers sitting around the table.
‘I am reminded of our ancient forefathers and Psalm 27,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘“Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.” We go,’ he said sadly, ‘and may God go with us.’
Once again the trumpets of the shofars, the ram’s horns, were sounded as they had been sounded so many times before. As they had done under Joshua and King David, the twelve tribes of Israel were once again going to war. This time, instead of the sound of swords being unsheathed, the chilling sounds of war would be those of 105mm Howitzer rounds being slammed into steel breeches.
Opposite the Gaza, in the Negev, and in the Sinai the big guns exploded with a roar of flame and smoke, jumping with the recoil. Before the shock absorbers could fully retract, young Israeli warriors, sweat already beading, sprang at the gun levers. Steel breeches clanged open and smoking brass casings bounced to the ground, to be replaced immediately with another deadly round. Like mini express trains, thousands of rounds roared into the night, each with an Arab life etched on the high explosive casing.
A father, a mother, a son, a daughter.
Death to the Arabs.
A taxi driver, a sales representative, a bank teller. Death to them all. It was time to teach them all a lesson.
Underneath the roar of the big shells the huge twelve-cylinder Merlin engines of the centurion tanks snarled into life, forming three separate spearheads. Before the sun rose on yet another bloody Middle East battle, the Israeli armoured divisions roared into the Gaza and across the ancient desert of the Sinai, battalions of young Israeli infantry soldiers lurching crazily in their wake.
Hatzor Air Base, south of Tel-Aviv
Like every other pilot on the giant Hatzor Air Base, Lieutenant Michael Kaufmann had been woken at four in the morning. The waiting was over; the squadron safes had been opened and the sealed orders for the high-risk Operation Moked broken out.
In the past, air superiority had been achieved by operating the Mirages in large numbers to attack the Egyptian air bases. At the same time as the runways were bombed, base installations were attacked with rockets and the anti-aircraft defences were suppressed. Now, the Soviet-supplied Egyptian Air Force was much bigger and the Israelis had been forced into a strategy of operating small groups of three and four aircraft against a greater number of targets. The Egyptian air defences would be ignored, as would the base installations, and more importantly for the pilots, there were no Israeli fighters assigned to provide protection from Egyptian interceptors. The Israeli pilots would have to watch their own backs.
Hatzor Air Base was still shrouded in pre-dawn darkness as Michael found a space and perched himself on a table at the back of the crowded briefing room. The room was noisy, but the laughter was nervous. No one knew what the Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missiles were really capable of and that was every Israeli pilot’s greatest fear. Suddenly the room hushed as their Commanding Officer, one of the Israeli Defense Force’s most experienced pilots, made his way to the front of the room.
‘What we’ve all been waiting for,’ he said confidently. ‘As you can see from the board behind me, H-Hour is in just under three hours at 0745. The strategy is to hit hard and destroy the Arabs on the ground, and given that their reaction is on a par with a wet week, that shouldn’t be too hard.’
More nervous laughter echoed around the room.
‘A total of seventeen air bases will be hit simultaneously. Our task is to destroy the enemy aircraft at Bir Tmada and Cairo West. The first strikes will take out the runways to prevent the Egyptians getting their aircraft into the air. The next waves will target the aircraft on the ground. I will lead the first wave into Bir Tmada with Captain Linowitz on my wing and Major Shapirah will lead the first wave into Cairo West with Lieutenant Kaufmann on his.’
Michael nodded, his face set with determination.
‘Benny and Michael,’ he said, looking first at Major Shapirah and then at Michael, ‘when you have released you are to refuel and return to the navigation turning point here.’ The Commanding Officer turned to the operations map and indicated a point off Bardavil and Port Said.
Michael listened with rising excitement as their Commanding Officer flicked on an overhead showing the enemy deployments and the tasking detail. The Egyptian line-up was impressive: one hundred and fifty MiG-15 and -17s; eighty MiG-19s; one hundred and thirty of the latest Russian MiG-21s; twelve SU-7s; and thirty of the massive TU-16 strategic bombers.
‘We will take off in complete radio silence with our radio sets switched off. Our strategy depends heavily on surprise.’
‘What happens if we have a problem after take-off?’ one of the younger pilots asked. ‘The base will be busy with aircraft behind us and we’ll be on radio silence.’
‘You set course for the coast and eject.’
Several of the pilots exchanged glances. Even under normal conditions the chances of being found in the sea after ejecting were by no means certain. The chances of being found when no one knew where or when you had ejected were almost nonexistent.
Michael had no such fears. Instead he felt a surge of exhilaration. He was in the first wave and a short time later he and the other superbly trained young Israelis strode from the 101 Squadron crew room at Hatzor Air Base into the crisp early morning air. It was still an hour before dawn, and darkness cloaked the quietly humming air base. The bus to take them out to their aircraft was ready, its engine running. Unlike their fellow airmen across the Suez Canal, the Israelis had been careful to disperse all of their precious aircraft in blast shelters and one by one the bus dropped each pilot at his allotted bay.
Michael’s ground crew were waiting. With the exception of the sergeant, every one of them was a civilian and like much of the Israeli Defense Force, they were a ragtag-looking outfit with not a matching windcheater in sight, but appearances could be deceptive. They might have seemed a far cry from the immaculate pit crews of the world’s Formula One racing teams, but Michael’s crew and the other Israeli ground crews would have been employed by any Formula One pit boss on the circuit. They could re-fuel, re-arm and turn an aircraft around in under eight minutes. It was one of the factors that would decide the war in the air. For the first two days of the war, the Israelis would manage to have their jets in the air for 80 per cent of the day. It was a feat that no other air force in the world could match, and certainly not the Arabs.
Michael greeted his crew with his customary smile and sprang up the aluminium ladder propped against the fuselage of his aircraft. He eased himself into the narrow cockpit and gave the ground crew the thumbs-up.
The Mirage IIIC was coiled in its nest like a giant three-legged bee with sand and brown coloured camouflage and a touch of green that on low-level runs made the Shahaks very hard to pick up from above. The Star of David was emblazoned on the starboard and port air intakes of the fuselage; some things were not meant to be hidden. The trademark delta wings were swept back at sixty degrees and external fuel tanks were suspended under each wing like two giant cigars. Under the fuselage were 150-kilogram runway-piercing bombs along with two 30mm cannon on either side that could fire over a thousand rounds a minute. In Michael’s case, his aircraft’s wing racks
