hundred horsepower accelerated us to maximum dive speed; then Tsutsik pulled up hard. G-force crushed our asses into the creaking seats. The fat, round nose rose up and up into the yellowish sky, and stopped with the propeller pointing right at the Milky Way. As we lost momentum the engine coughed, and sparks from the exhaust pipe spattered near my right leg. The smell of gas filled the cockpit. Then at zero airspeed the Harvard stopped in the air and stood still vertically, its tail pointed at the ground. After a moment of hesitation, the chubby trainer shook and fell back on its tail and then rolled sideways in a perfect stall turn. The airspeed indicator vibrated, revived. The nose now pointed at the ground. The engine coughed and backfired. A blinding stream of fire wound around and slid in through the canopy’s slots, licking and burning my face.
“What a beautiful night, huh?” Tsutsik gleefully said with a howl. I happily agreed. The skin on my face burned a little, but I loved it.
Back from the first night flight, in our rooms, we all had difficulty falling asleep. We gathered in Goldie’s room. A jabber of voices, impressions, chattering, laughing. Oh, what a night!
“Is there anybody here who didn’t get an acrobatics lesson?” inquired ZBB. Nobody answered. If someone wasn’t lucky enough, he didn’t say. We were men enough to guard our instructors’ dignity and our own.
TWO WEEKS PASSED. We went out for a second night, this time dark, with no moon. We were to practice takeoffs and landings. The rear seat was manned by Assaf, a famous fighter pilot, superior flight instructor, and the leader of the IAF’s aerobatic team. We started up, and made our way cautiously onto the darkened taxiing strip. Finally we got permission to line up on the runway, a path of black void between two rows of kerosene lamps along it. The Harvard raced forward, became airborne, and the two rows of lights disappeared behind us. We closed the canopies over our heads, and the aircraft sank into the darkness like a sea of black ink. Only the constellations of the settlements’ lights glowed in the empty darkness streaming under our aircraft’s belly, punctuating points on the dark background not unlike the heavenly constellations that shone from space. It was hard to discern the horizon and difficult to stay oriented. A frightening experience for a rookie.
Assaf was “sitting on my controls” and guiding me. He taught me patiently how to combine outside vision with the instrument readings. He handled the ship with a gentle affection that for many years after I strove to imitate.
Finally we finished circling and got ready for the first landing, but then, “A Harvard has landed badly, and is upside down on the runway,” the radio informed. “Enter a holding pattern,” Assaf instructed me, then explained, “Just circle the field.”
I did as he said. The backseat went silent. Once around, twice around. Boring.
“Hey, tower, how long is this going to take?”
“Stand by, checking.”
On the third go-round Assaf took an interest in my performance in the course. “How are you doing?”
“So-so,” I answered, concentrating on the turn-and-bank indicator.
“Good,” the team leader volunteered. “Come on, show me a barrel roll.”
And from here to there I got one of the best lessons ever in acrobatic series performance, together with all the exercises. Assaf was flying the aircraft smoothly and precisely. He worked on my handling, and taught me to change the pressure on the pedals gently from one foot to the other, together with changes in airspeed and engine power. “Close your eyes,” he told me in the vertical climbs, and I learned how to avoid the blinding bursts of fire from the exhaust pipe. On the third practice run I could already keep the aircraft looping in a straight line parallel to the row of the kerosene torches along the runway. On the fourth, I succeeded in rolling it in a vertical dive, with the nose pointed directly at the cluster of fire trucks blinking in the darkness around the turned-over aircraft.
After midnight, when we were leaving after a meal of cold, oily sunny-side-up eggs, Assaf turned at the dining room door to tell me conscientiously, “Listen, Spector. Whatever you saw tonight, well, it’s not regulation. Don’t do that stuff in the future.”
“Of course not, sir,” I said with my best innocent, blue-eyed gaze. “Night acrobatics just aren’t done.”
NIGHT NAVIGATION CLASS. In the beginning we circled the country under the supervision of our instructors, but we were waiting impatiently for the next stage, solo navigation. We already had a secret plan involving what we would do when we could work unsupervised. The program was exciting. We developed it in complete secrecy. Finally the plan was ready down to the last detail, and written down. We approved it in a secret meeting in the barracks.
This was the program: We would take off from Tel Nof one after another, five minutes apart, and go north. The first “practice station” would be half an hour later, over Mount Tabor in the Galilee. There, everyone would do acrobatics for five minutes. That done, each one would clear out and navigate west. The next station would be over the small beach town of Atlit, on the Mediterranean coast. There we would form pairs, each odd number waiting, circling, for the next one behind him. When they met, take another five minutes for a mock dogfight. When that was over, they should separate and return home the same way they came, and say nothing to anybody.
And as in every well-planned operational scheme, we put in our plan all the necessary topics, such as “communications,” “concealment,” and “deception.” Regarding communications, the whole operation was to be done under strict radio silence, except for the mandatory reports each aircraft had to make to traffic control on the way. All the acrobatics, dogfights, and departures would be executed without uttering a word on the radio.
We still had no idea what a dogfight really was, least of all how to do it at night, and so everybody began to imagine tricks to surprise and beat his opponent. This night flight was going to outdo anything our commanders and instructors ever dreamed of.
Goldie, our leader, summarized it. “This operation must be top secret, before its execution and after it. Is that clear to everybody?” It was clear to all of us. But Goldie didn’t settle for that. “Let’s see some hands!” We all raised our hands and took an oath not to reveal anything to anybody outside the room. We were already ripe soldiers; we created our liars’ club.
A COLD, DARK NIGHT, February 11, 1960. Our canopies were covered with dew. Twenty Harvard trainers started up at five-minute intervals. Each took off at the same interval and headed north. In every aircraft an air cadet sat alone with his map in his left hand under the dim red cockpit light, passing alone over the dark land. Only one instructor was on duty in the squadron ready room, just in case. Terribly bored, he sat close to the kerosene stove, warming his hands and joking with the clerk, yawning and looking at his watch, waiting for the last aircraft to land so he could close up shop and get to bed.
I don’t remember much about Mount Tabor. I was one of the later arrivals, and when I got there it was pretty late. I recall there was some mist down there, and the mountain’s round top protruded from its white veils. The night was so dark that I probably passed on doing acrobatics. But I am not sure; maybe my memory is fooling me. Was I really brave? Did I lift my propeller and aim it right at the cold diamonds of Orion’s belt, shining like torches over the mountain? Who knows? Perhaps I didn’t do that and only rocked my wings a little, if only to keep my self- respect. I’m not sure.
In any case, if I didn’t accomplish great feats over Tabor that night, others did. Yakir no doubt did much more. Yakir was brave as a wildcat and flew like a devil. Yakir the innocent, who in the first week of flight school wrote a song and even composed its music: “To the sky we yearn, there to soar among the clouds,” he would sing in a high-pitched, sentimental voice. “There we shall defend our country from all its enemies!” The same Yakir who suddenly demanded that we erect a memorial stone for the fallen in our class (tonight we were going to lose the second one), and was silenced only when ZBB said maliciously, “Yakir, you turkey. Tomorrow you yourself will be history.” We looked at each other and shivered.
I REMEMBER ATLIT perfectly.
As planned, I circled, holding a left turn over the beach at two thousand feet, waiting for Brutus, the next guy after me. The town under me was dark except for a few streetlamps, and I was looking into the darkness around me. Suddenly something emerged, flying right at me, felt rather than seen. Startled, I broke right. A stream of sparks poured into the air nearby as from a grindstone, issuing from a point in the middle of nothing and spilling out to space. It immediately vanished. I heard two clicks on the radio. I answered with a click of my own. The burnished sea beneath me glistened dimly in the pale starlight. A great fear came over me and I turned and fled Atlit, racing south along the beach toward home.
