circles again.
I WAS SEARCHING FOR THE PATH, which is more significant than any single fact.
“The first warning of things going out of kilter in the unit comes in a casual conversation among men on the squadron balcony,” I wrote for a lecture to the air force. “Then it is time to get involved. If you miss out on that, you will have to confront more serious trouble later.” In Dubi’s case, for example, warning lights kept flashing in my head. For long periods he seemed “all green,” just a good, happy kid with no stress, but behind this misleadingly bright exterior hid a wild devil who would pop out at times. I numbered those pop-ups meticulously, and I warned him once or twice. Then, one day, one dot too many intersected his red line. I invited him in and on the spot locked him up for thirty-five days.
“For what?” he cried, flabbergasted and humiliated. “For one low pass? How bad is one buzz?”
“It’s not just about this one buzz,” I told him. “It is your punishment for the accident waiting for you in the future. When you get yourself killed, at least it won’t go without punishment.”
And off he went to the guardhouse.
I have no doubt that my decisions, which came from inside, seemed at times weird to my men, perhaps on the verge of absurd. The graphs in my booklet crept forward weekly, every man changing. Suddenly, when I felt a premonition of the future, I would call one of them out and talk to him, warning, praising, compensating, and punishing. My decisions regarding different people were not equal, and I admitted it openly. I didn’t keep any punishment charts, nor “bonus charts” for good work. I didn’t compare people. I was very subjective, all was personal, and they found a way to live with it.
One pilot, we shall call him Bee, kept shooting at aerial targets from too long a range, missing every time. He began to wallow in self-pity. I flew with him, encouraging him to approach to the minimum distance and even beyond it. On the same day I came down hard on some of his friends who were doing the same thing. Eventually some barrier fell inside Bee and he began to hit his targets. Commanding in this way may certainly seem capricious, unstable, even an unfair way of management. But in our case, in the Orange Tails, my men didn’t take it that way. I presume they understood there was method in my madness. Some among my men believed, and later said openly, that this treatment did actually foresee things, and for some it even saved their lives. And what’s more, some of this nervous alertness stuck to them. This was to bring good results in the approaching Yom Kippur War.
MY HANDLING OF THE FORMAL flight procedures wasn’t free of problems. Throughout the term of my command people asked me, and I asked myself, who gave me authority to change air force flight limits. This was a tough moral issue for me. I want to make it clear that when I led Bee beyond the limits, my goal was not to disobey orders. I believed that most standing orders “in the book” were the core of past wisdom and experience, and that as a rule we should abide by them. But the real world seemed to me more complex than the one in the book, and the regulations didn’t apply in many cases. And I also believed that responsibility was personal and devolved upon humans, not the book.
For me, the responsibility to free Bee from a problem and make him an efficient fighter pilot was mine. Otherwise I would have to wash him out of my squadron, together with the millions of dollars already invested in his training. I knew how to turn Bee into a good pilot—I myself had learned to get to the right shooting distance after violating the limits—but I didn’t think Bee had to go through all that process, to hide and lie and be caught and punished, and endanger his life till he learned. The responsibility was mine, and I thought that if the Orange Tails weren’t well prepared, it could only be my fault.
There is a story about an officer who, during a battle, turned to his commanding general and asked permission to change some detail of their plan. The general answered, “I gave you officer’s rank to exceed my orders.” This is exactly the way I understood it: we don’t need officers who turf responsibility up or down. The essence of being a man—and not a tin soldier—lies in making decisions and taking responsibility for them.
My real difficulty was with the question of personal example. This is complicated. Orders must be obeyed, and a good officer—who was given his rank just to exceed those orders—has to explain any deviation from a lawful order. But still you can sort it out.
When it is about ordinary things, I—like everybody else—believe in strict discipline. Such conflicts become important only if it is about crucial things, human life, or the law of the land. It is not by accident that serious concepts such as our notion of black flag, not relieving anyone from the responsibility for war crimes. These terms remind you that the ranking officer is not the supreme commander.
I believe, just like Mota Gur, who taught us in the BBN course, that when you are in conflict on a very meaningful issue, it would be incorrect and disloyal to be silent. You must push the issue up the chain of command, and not give up even though it can cost you in many ways.
But there are situations when even this process is not possible. Sometimes you are alone and there is no time for lengthy processes and discussions, or you are out of touch with your commanders. This is the usual situation for pilots in wartime. Then you must take responsibility and be a man, and decide according to your understanding and beliefs. In this moment you have to clarify to yourself to whom, or to what, you owe loyalty.
I ADMIT IT—MY WAY OF commanding Orange Tails—prognosticating through graphs and circles—was only a partly logical thought process, and a strange way to command men. Still, there was no mystery here. My inner world joined the dry, logical evaluation of men and situations, with all the data, and together they created a unique personal tool to develop sensitivity I had invented. And this tool evolved later into a most important new concept, that of “kettles.” This was a notion that soon turned out to be an exceptionally good weapon in war.
What are kettles? The idea of a kettle was born in the Orange Tails during the Yom Kippur War. The name originated from a children’s story in which a Bedouin came to town for the first time from the desert, and his host poured him a cup of coffee from the hot, whistling kettle. Excited with the world’s innovations, the Bedouin went out to see the town and admire its wonders. While walking on a railway track, he heard another whistle. Another kettle, thought the Bedouin, more coffee! But then a locomotive passed the corner, and almost ran over him. Shocked, the Bedouin interpreted the situation: “A grown-up kettle.”
IN OUR WORLD, THAT OF THE fighting Orange Tails, this joke became a mantra: “A kettle is a small thing that whistles, but if you don’t put out the fire under it, it grows, becomes a locomotive, and runs you over.” We used it to symbolize the presence of some vague, not clearly defined danger. When anyone felt it, he would say, “We have a kettle here,” and everybody understood that we needed to search out the improbable. Gut feelings or hunches sometimes anticipate the brain, which is trapped in rational boxes.
A gut feeling of uneasiness points at a small, invisible sign of trouble—just a kettle, but some of them grow. You might be just a second lieutenant, a backseat weapons officer/navigator, but did you hear a whistle in your inner ear? Then don’t be shy! Speak up. This is war and our time of truth, and we’d better check your hunch right now and find out. Tell us everything and don’t postpone that investigation till tomorrow, or you might find yourself alone on the track with a locomotive coming at you, and the cost will be high.
I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT all the important, difficult things give initial, small signs before they burst on the scene. Not that the interception of signs was easy and simple; there was always a lot of background noise, and the more sensitive the receiver, the more false alarms. But whoever was listening, heard more, and whoever thought about it knew more. I listened to my pilots and heard the malefactors among them sending me signals, as if asking me to deal with them: “Hey, Spector, I’m dangerous. Stop me!” I listened, and we had no accidents.
It was just like that with the enemy: he also kept talking to us during the war—willy-nilly—and sent us signals. All you had to do was work hard and listen closely. And if you prepared for something that didn’t happen, so what? This was war, and you just slept a little less.
In general, I don’t know of any surprises like lightning from a clear sky. If indeed such surprises exist—and I doubt it—they are extremely rare, and in my opinion they occur because you didn’t notice the signs, because you didn’t look and listen, because you didn’t care to do your graphs.
I suspect that most stories of surprises are excuses from commanders who failed to do their jobs.
AND SO A NEW GROUP OF young, independent men grew in the Orange Tails. I gave fewer and fewer
