were even fewer, and the future Phantom jockeys were very much missed. International telephone conversations were out of question back then, so Rana sent us post cards from the American town they were living in—I believe its name was something like Arcadia, a Greek sound that reminded me of green, mythological fields. We missed them both, and particularly Sam’s exceptionally bad cooking in Refidim.
When they returned from America, and Khetz began building his new squadron—the Falcons, the Phantoms of Hatzor—Ali and I were already at Hatzerim, in the flight school. Khetz had his work cut out for him building his new squadron, and I was working hard, too, so in the next six months we met very rarely. And so, on our first evening back in Hatzor, when we sat down together for dinner, I was amazed to see how much thinner he was, and that his back was bent more than before. There were shadows under his cheekbones, and the flash of joy in his eyes seemed to have faded. The women were talking about their stuff, so we spoke of ours.
“So, how is the Phantom?” I was curious. This was the new magical aircraft—“a knight in shining armor,” some called it. Khetz waved his hand dismissively. He was fed up with talking about the wonders of the Phantom, and he was very tired. The burden he bore was the absorption of magnificent and complicated aircraft and getting them into action in an escalating war. He had begun his squadron from scratch, and was up to his neck in the details, from the developing of fighting doctrine to the integration of a lot of intricate and expensive hardware, with too few trained people to help him. In the Falcons, the competent pilots trained new pilots, navigators trained navigators, and mechanics trained mechanics, while at the same time the Phantoms pushed themselves—and were pushed by the IAF—into battle, with all the power they could muster.
The story of the first two Phantom squadrons in the Israeli Air Force, 1969–1970, is an untold epic. I am not the man to tell it, since I was not there. But the Falcons squadron was my neighbor, and I could see how my friend Khetz was pushed to the wall until he broke.
MEANWHILE, I ALSO HAD a few problems. The two reservists who took off during the ceremony landed safely. But there was a dogfight involving other squadrons, and the radio in my operations room went nuts. The two-ship section from the Fighting First arrived in time but was ordered to patrol the border, and when their fuel was finished they were sent home without doing anything.
Still, I didn’t suspect anything. But the next morning fighting broke out again and the whole air force was airborne, but the Mirages of the Fighting First were left sitting in our hangars. Amazed, I called central control.
“What’s going on here?” I asked the controller peevishly.
“Just a moment.”
Then I heard somebody saying, “Yes, it’s him.”
“Okay,” the controller returned, “talk to the air force commander.”
Moti came on the line. He used to run operations personally, and his control of every detail was famous.
“Sir,” I began, “I have four sections here in a high state of readiness. Why aren’t they in the air?”
“Iftach, they are not going up today.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Take a look at your personnel and you’ll understand.” He hung up.
I was stunned and humiliated. I hadn’t yet finished the first day of my new command, and this was a real slap in the face to the pilots of the Fighting First.
I had difficulty even uttering the words to share the bad news. I put the receiver down and left the operations room. I went up to my room and sat there for a while. Then I called Sharon in and told him the story. I was really steamed.
“Take it easy, Iftach,” said Menachem. He was a large man with a very centered disposition. “Come on, let’s look over the personnel and rethink everything from square one.”
When we looked up from the list of the squadron’s pilots, we got the commander’s message. The menu the Fighting First offered was varied, eclectic, and tasteless. We served a lot of dishes, from experienced aces to rookies, students, desk jockeys, airline captains, and senior officers still putting in flight time. All of them were great guys personally, but many were rusty and others ready for the scrap heap. The Fighting First was not serving a decent lunch, but a dog’s dinner. Now I saw the formations I had called ready for battle with new eyes. I also understood that Moti knew us all, and he was watching us closely. Moti was running a war, not a soccer match. And I knew that he didn’t have time for any bullshit. He needed super-ready teams—“top guns” and nothing else. I understood I was going to have to give him the real thing, not kids or the over-the-hill gang. It was just my bad luck—or perhaps my good luck—that he decided to deliver his message on my first day there.
I looked closely at the list of pilots and agonized. Some of them were my former instructors, commanders, and leaders. Others were my personal friends who came from my own age group. Still others were my own students. The people of the Fighting First were my best friends and my reference group. Over the past four years we had fought together in the Six-Day War and numerous other battles. These were the men with whom I spent weeks in the bunkers at Refidim on cots, studying for matriculation examinations, soaping each other’s back in the field showers, viewing endless films at night, cooking up all kinds of weird shit, telling each other personal secrets, laughing together. Together we ran to the aircraft, took off, flew to the heart of darkness and back. Some of them had protected my tail from MiGs; others I had saved. This was the moment of truth, and I really felt the pressure. I didn’t want to do what had to be done now.
Hesitating, I looked at Menachem, waiting to get his opinion. Even he, Captain Sharon, my exec, was not considered a top gun. Sharon got to his feet.
“Iftach, this is your call. This problem you have to face on your own. You are the CO of the squadron.” Before he closed the door silently behind him he added, “I’ll see you.”
That evening I worked late.
DURING THE FOLLOWING WEEKS I talked to eight of the squadron’s pilots. Eight pilots, 30 percent of the force of the Fighting First on the day of my arrival, packed their bags and unceremoniously left the squadron. Some of them got angry, some froze up when I told them of my decision, and their faces hardened. One pilot could not restrain himself and wept openly in my office, another preached at me, a third one seethed with anger and humiliation. But a few understood. Curiously, in this difficult command process I found myself alone. This was like an upside-down situation—I made decisions involving more senior officers than myself, but none of the higher-ups said anything. Yak and Moti kept quiet. No one asked for a report, or gave any advice, or just parted with me in my difficulties. The commanders looked from above and kept their distance. I decided who left and who stayed; the washed-out left offended and their friends who remained watched me with visible uneasiness.
This is how Moti taught me a lesson I never forgot. Since then, the manning of formations for readiness and operations was handled only by me or under my supervision. Within a week from the beginning of the process the ban was lifted, and the Fighting First rejoined the fighting air force.
What happened, moreover, was that once I was burned with hot water, I became careful even about the cold. I began to fly in most of the operational missions. In my logbook I find that in June 1970 I flew thirty-six Mirage flights, a considerable number, but the point is that twenty-three of the total were written in red pencil: operational flights. Clearly I had difficulties trusting my comrades and subordinates.
They felt it, too.
THE AIR WAR AGAINST EGYPT, which began to boil over in March 1969, reached its peak in the middle of 1970. The Syrian front was hot, too, and Jordan also made noise, but in relation to Egypt those two were secondary, lukewarm fronts. All our aircraft—Mirages, Skyhawks, old Mysteres—fought day and night. And among us all the special role of the new Phantoms began to appear.
These heavy American fighters that just appeared in the region with their rookie pilots and mechanics who had just learned how to load ordnance on their aircraft went on all the missions. More than that, soon they became exclusive players in two of the hardest missions: attacking strategic targets deep in Egypt, and the dangerous battle against the surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries the Egyptians stationed beyond the Suez Canal.
The Egyptians could not deal with us in the air, and asked the Soviets for more and more SAM batteries, and they got them. Every day new red circles were added to our maps, indicating danger zones to avoid. These were the killing fields of the missiles; they could get you if you flew there. Initially we attacked the batteries, bombed them, cleaned out some red areas for limited periods of time; but then, like the plague, the batteries returned, modernized and multiplied anew.
