Then, when he ardently approached me, I performed abruptly a “pass me” maneuver, and exactly as I anticipated, he shot past me and pulled up. I hurried after him, relighting my afterburner.
This was a mistake.
At that altitude the air is thin, and the Mirage’s engine—a variant of the Super Mystere engine—is very sensitive. With a loud bang my compressor stalled, and the engine choked. Here I was, stuck behind and below the MiG, too slow to get to him and with no engine power. The MiG rolled over above my head and turned back toward me.
But high altitude and gravity can be used to give a trained pilot—for a limited time—a good substitute for an engine. I lowered my nose down together with the MiG, and in a dive we rolled down, each opposite the other in a descending vortex. The fall kept me alive and maneuvering, and at lower altitude the air pressure was higher. I caressed my engine carefully, and it sprang back to life. Cautiously I lit the afterburner, and was rewarded by its wonderful kick forward. I was back in the game.
THE MIG WAS STILL FASTER and higher than I, pushing itself into me like a dog chasing a bicycle.
“Hassan,” I told him, “you’re not going to get anywhere this way.”
I began to give him what he wanted, leading him on, titillating him. I reduced my rate of turn and widened the radius, accelerating, while he was avidly scrabbling to stuff his nose into me. Now we were at much lower altitude, as in training, but the difference was that instead of the desert of Ruchama, I saw under me strange, red hills. The sun broke out on the eastern horizon, and the MiG’s silhouette on the background of the narrow, blinking silver line of the faraway Red Sea looked like a black arrow.
Now my engine was working fine and my Mirage began to do its magic again. My disadvantage was gone, and I started taking command of the battle. I gradually eased my wing bank and lifted my Mirage’s nose gently. I began to rise above the MiG’s tight circle, moving to its center. I paid with some of my speed, but caught the pivot point high above him. My next move should be to lower my nose at the right moment and nail him from above.
At this point Hassan understood what was happening to him. I watched, and the flight instructor in me nodded approval when in a clear and correct decision he leveled his wings, gave up the fight, and dove straight to the northwest. He fled, using the little altitude he still had to dive to the deck and increase his speed.
I had an answer for this, too. I finished my turn, came in behind him, and launched my two Shafrir heat- seeking missiles after his hot jet exhaust. But this time luck was on Hassan’s side—both missiles missed. This was no surprise. The Israeli Shafrir 1 was just a prototype from our research and development laboratories, and usually it didn’t work very well.
And still Hassan flew on ahead of me, racing toward Cairo, and it seemed he had made good his escape. All I had left were my guns, and the range was far too long for them. I couldn’t continue the chase—Cairo was coming up fast, and I was already at my fuel limit for a safe return. I had to give up. Unhappily, I shut down the afterburner to head for home.
And then things began to happen.
PERHAPS HASSAN LOST SIGHT of me. Perhaps he thought he was home free, where Mommy and Daddy would protect him. I don’t know. But exactly when I gave up the chase, Hassan also shut off his afterburner. The flame from his engine diminished. He was a thousand meters in front of me, slowing down and stopping his run from me. This was an invitation that the fighter pilot in me could not refuse.
My left hand pushed the throttle again beyond the detent and lit the afterburner, sucking up my reserves of fuel. My right hand pushed the stick forward, aiming my Mirage into the ground shadows. The distance between us vanished in a flash. In no time I was on him, my gunsight stuck in the center of his black jet pipe and my cannons spitting fire. The houses of a peripheral suburb of Cairo were passing under us when a large piece of aluminum tore off his plane—a part of a wing or a stabilizer—and passed me. Hassan rolled left, turned over, and hit the ground. Shutting down my afterburner, I passed victoriously over him and immediately turned east, to get out of there— fast.
If I flew really carefully, I still had enough fuel to get back. Though I might not make it to Hatzor, certainly I could make it to a safe landing in Refidim, our nearest airfield in the Sinai. But I was not out of the woods yet. I still was alone over Cairo, having to cross a hundred kilometers of enemy country to the Suez Canal, and then another fifty over the Sinai. Fuel was short, so I had to repress the impulse to open full throttle and get out of there. I had no reserves for any hot-dogging. So I began climbing up to the east slowly, flying carefully, not wasting a drop of fuel.
When I reached an altitude of twenty thousand feet, two MiGs caught up with me.
I SAW THEM WHILE THEY WERE still far away, two silver specks approaching from the north. They came closer and materialized, long and sharp, right beside me, sniffing at me. I had no fuel to deal with them and continued placidly on my way, so for a while we flew east together, as though we were part of the same formation. It was such an unbelievably peaceful trip together toward the black line of the Suez Canal that I asked myself, “Could it be they don’t see me?”
But then they were satisfied with what they saw, and a decision was made. Pulling up, they split into a line in back of me, one of them staying put behind and up to watch from above, while the other turned confidently to attack my six. I could do something, or continue flying forward and wait for the bang.
I decided to do something.
I rolled my Mirage on its back, and for the second time that day, gravity was my engine and accelerated me down to the waiting Earth. The hills were nearing, but the prospect of a safe landing in Refidim was shrinking fast.
When I came out of the dive at low level I was again among flat desert hills, and those two MiGs came after me, one after the other. I watched them pulling out of their dive, and for some reason they seemed soft and easy, like a couple of trained poodles. But even so, I was definitely screwed, and my chances of getting out of this seemed so small that my hands twitched with an abrupt wild desire to go for it and shoot them both down, one after the other, and then see what would happen. But then reason took command over my emotions and forced me to cool off and try to find a way out.
Two MiGs behind me and it played out like this: I couldn’t run away from them, and they didn’t need to do any tough fighting. All they had to do is run me around in circles here, and here I would remain, forever. All that was left for me was to slip-slide slowly to the east, to try to reach the Suez Canal. I must hug the earth, for only an extremely low flight, following in the ripples of the earth, could save me from their guns and missiles. I had to hope for poor marksmanship from them until I crossed…
Crossed what?
Suddenly I realized that I could not continue east to Suez. There was not a chance in the world that I could cross it alive. At low altitude and slow speed, even if those MiGs didn’t shoot me down, the canal’s dense antiaircraft systems would make mincemeat of me. Without wasting time on any detailed plan I made up my mind and turned south. A wide, yellow valley opened before me, and I glided into it. Certainly all the streams here led to the Red Sea. And beyond the sea was Sinai. I would have to find someplace to land there. I remembered there were some landing strips along the coast, left by the Egyptians: Ras-Sudr, Abu-Rudeis, E-Tur, maybe more. I should be able to find something over there.
And if my fuel should run out before that? It better not, since wherever the fuel ran out would be my last stop.
I CRUISED SLOWLY AT VERY LOW level, perhaps two to three meters above the stony bottom of the wadi, hopping over small hills and practically hiding behind bushes. The MiGs followed me. One of them hovered up on my left side, high above the wadi’s left wall, and the other came up on my six. In spite of my decision to ignore them and continue flying east, when that MiG disappeared behind my back I got a chill down my spine. I could not restrain myself and broke sideways, up to the rim. Immediately I saw him, eight hundred meters behind me, and nosed out. As I broke, he quit and pulled out.
Then the second one tried his luck. I slipped back into the wadi using the flat slope to regain the speed I lost, and continue toddling along with minimum engine power, preparing myself for the next break. When the second MiG disappeared behind me I broke, and then he quit, too. The first one went in again. We danced around like that for
