safety limits. But it worked.
Indeed, our SAM hunting was just an initial step on a new path, a far from perfect method, and couldn’t be used all the time. But there was promise in it—that there was a way to fight SAM batteries even without preliminary location intelligence. And it had another, surprising benefit: it was not an operazia. In this method you could start attacking the SAM arrays with any force you had at your disposal, with no need to involve the whole air force and concentrate all its power, the way Operations Defy and Model required. At that time I didn’t understand the constraints such operazias put on the commander of the air force in wartime, sucking him dry and conditioning his decisions. Who knows? Had I understood that aspect of the story better and said it loud and clear at the time, would someone have heard me?
It seems not soon enough. Benny Peled didn’t think any differently from his operations planners, and after the war he argued that his superiors promised him that the air force would get the first couple of days free of any other requirement, just to execute its SAM plans. Until his dying day Benny blamed himself for his believing this alleged promise, but this is how the air force got ready for the coming war.
Like all the attack squadrons, the Orange Tails also were slated to be part of the operazia of the SAM attacks using the method for static batteries with known locations. But the Orange Tails—out of the whole air force—had a possible alternative. Only we had taken part in the experiments and maneuvers with the Baboons, devised a new method, and continued to work on it.
For me, this experiment was an escape from a conceptual box. I felt just the way I had four years before, when the method of “specification of one target” in massive dogfights showed how a section of two could compete in multiparticipant battle against any number of MiGs.
IN JULY 1973 OUR BBN course ended. The command cars division returned to Southern Command, and the Baboons went back to their units. Major General Sharon was replaced by General Gorodish, and the new commander of the South began a campaign of chasing cars and throwing speeders into jail. Benny Peled replaced Moti Hod as the IAF commander. Everything returned to normal. The Orange Tails began a course for new Phantom pilots and navigators. The war was closing in.
I WAS THE TRAINEE WHO had learned the most in the BBN course for advanced leadership. The lectures and the visits, Ran Pecker–style, and especially the intellectual leadership I had to supply for those smart, rebellious Baboons, started new thought processes inside me.
I took a new, clean notebook and wrote on its cover, “Thoughts about the air force.” On the first page I drew a simple table, like a chessboard, and I labeled the X and Y axes respectively “missions” and “tools.” The squares soon filled themselves in, and I saw it was out of balance. I was surprised to find some of the squares empty. The significance was that some missions had no tools, and some tools had no missions. I began thinking about it, asking myself new questions.
I was changing fast. Without asking, I got out of the circle of “shouters” and “being shouted at” of my friend Goldie and found myself in no-man’s-land. From just a squadron commander, a lieutenant colonel heading a battalion, I turned into an amphibian, a fighter pilot slouching about with the thoughts and worries of a general officer.
I told Ali all this and she, laughing, cited Miguel de Cervantes. I wasn’t surprised. Dvorah, my mother from the Galilee, used to call me “Don Quixote.”
18
Model
THE OFFICIAL HISTORY says that this war caught us by surprise. Some say that if we hadn’t been surprised, the air force would have attacked first, as in the Six-Day War, and all would have been different.
I don’t think so.
Because when the sirens wailed on Saturday morning, October 6, 1973, at 6:30 a.m., I was seated with the other unit commanders in the office of our new base commander, Colonel Shumi. We had just gone over our preparations for war and only lacked accurate knowledge of when it was going to start. This was the same as in the Fighting First six years before. The base was ready, we had enough people standing by and ready for action, and we had plenty of time: the war began at two o’clock in the afternoon, so we still had a full seven and a half hours.
Thus when the wailing of the sirens began, Shumi nodded to us and said, “That’s it—to your squadrons.” I started my car and drove very slowly to the Orange Tails. There was no need to race. In my Phantom squadron, all the aircraft were armed and ready for war, according to orders, my readiness crews standing by. The squadron was ready and briefed for the first action. So I drove slowly. And I had another reason: I wanted to show the base personnel, who were peering out their doors in their pajamas, rubbing their eyes on a holiday morning, that the sky had not fallen, that everything was okay. I knew I was their barometer, and I wanted everybody to know that as far as I was concerned, we could start anytime.
I understand that with Israel’s reserve forces as a whole the situation was totally different. For the hundreds of thousands of citizen soldiers who slept at home, or were praying in the synagogues on this holiest day of the year, during which no one goes anywhere and the streets are literally empty, the sound of sirens came as a shock. But as far as I was concerned—and from what I learned since, for the air force and the IDF high command, this war came as no surprise. Only the soldiers who were not prepared by their officers were surprised.
NO SURPRISE, BUT WHAT I found on arrival at my squadron was a big mess. All the telephones were ringing, and every call brought contradicting orders, do this and then… no, never mind, do that. All our people were trying to figure out the orders and carry them out on the double. At noon the war still hadn’t started. We made an all-out effort to complete the last munitions changes on all the aircraft, and hurriedly prepared maps and plans for different targets. At the same time, a flood of reservists was pouring in. They filled the aircraft hangars and the corridors of the squadron building, needing rations, mattresses, blankets, and a place to store their gear. They needed to be given jobs. They needed officers to tell them what to do. I felt I was going to lose my focus.
I called my deputies, Egozi and Krieger, my technical officers, Mike and Jimmy, and the adjutant, Shemer, and told them, “Don’t bother me with administrative stuff anymore. I have to try and see the main thing.”
And Jimmy asked, “What about the the mechanics?” He knew the mechanics were the apple of my eye. I answered,
“Their problems don’t interest me anymore. As far as I am concerned they can burn to ash, just let them get the aircraft ready on time.” Now it was clear. There were no more questions.
AND THEN, IN EARLY AFTERNOON, the balloon went up.
Shumi, our base commander, received a telephone call. We were in his office. He turned to us, his voice shrill, “Enemy aircraft approaching the base! Get the Orange Tails—everybody—airborne!”
I drove back rapidly to my squadron and shouted down the empty corridor, “All pilots scramble, fast!”
I grabbed my flight gear, found a navigator, and we raced to the next hangar. All the other pilots were running ahead of us, so I jumped into the first empty aircraft I found—it was sitting there with a full load of bombs—and started its engines. In all the other hangars other aircraft roared to life, all carrying tons of bombs. Somebody was already taxiing out and passed in front of me, blasting the whole hangar with his heavy jet exhaust
