on his way to the runway. Objects flew all around us.
I began opening my throttles to go after him, intending to take off fast and once in the air to take command and organize whomever I might find into a defense of the base against the incoming MiGs. We still had to figure out where to jettison those dozens of tons of bombs hanging from our bellies.
Then I got a call on the radio.
“Spector, where are you?”
In the IAF we do not use our real names on the radio, just call signs. But in all the confusion, nobody had gotten a call sign. The thundering of the first takeoffs was deafening even through the helmet, and I might not have heard this call hadn’t that voice called my name again and again. “Spector!” and one more time: “Iftach Spector!”
“Spector here,” I finally answered. “I am in hangar five, on my way out.”
“Iftach, listen to me,” continued the voice, and now I recognized it was my second-in-command, Shlomo Egozi. “Hold it for a moment. As you were! There is no attack right now.”
“What?”
“Let me get some order here!” He was talking fast, but his voice was firm and clear. “Gilutz has already taken off leading a section; they’ll circle the base. That’s enough defenses for now. Stand by with your engines running; be ready to scramble at any moment. Your call sign is Ascot. I’ll get you a four-ship section in a minute.”
I said, “Okay, take it.” And immediately a series of calls began, identifying the pilots in the aircraft one after another.
“Krieger here, started up, with Oren.”
“Gordon here.”
“Goren.”
“Kamay here.” the navigator talked for the pilot in his front cockpit, who hadn’t put his helmet on yet.
And even a voice of one of the “chicks,” the students in the transition course to the Phantom, broke into the radio, “Gino here, standing by.”
I almost laughed aloud.
Egozi continued to manage things, fast and serious and very accurately, selecting formation leaders, assembling formations.
“Gino, exit your aircraft and return to the building. Panay is on the way to replace you in the cockpit.”
“Roger.” I felt his disappointment.
I knew we were in good hands, but I was standing in my stirrups. The MiGs were out there on the way, hanging above our base like clouds full of hail, and I worried that too much management might delay our defense and fuck us up.
“Ascot, how do you read?”
“Five,” I answered for my whole four-ship formation he had collected for me.
“Ascot, stand by with your engines running. Every one of you, tell the mechanics around him to unload the bombs off his aircraft, fast.” Every aircraft was loaded with some four tons of bombs.
“Take note: fuses are in,” I protested. When a bomb is fused it is dangerous; you don’t touch it.
“Copy that. Do as I said.” I realized that Egozi knew something about authority and responsibility, too.
“Roger, will comply.”
The mechanics around me reacted in disbelief to the signals I gave them, then were convinced and came with their yellow carts and got under the big aircraft’s belly. Hard knocks were heard, and the Phantom hopped when four tons of bombs, with fuses, slipped off.
“Ascot, when you are clean, taxi out to the runway. You will replace the airborne flight.”
THE ATTACK ON THE BASE never happened. After some time on the runway we were sent back to the hangars, and gave the aircraft back to the mechanics to arm them again with the same bombs. Egozi had prevented us from throwing away huge loads of fused bombs in the expanse of the Negev or into the sea, together with the rare and expensive weapons pylons. Within a short time the Orange Tails was ready and armed again, and I knew I had a young battle commander under me.
But even though Hatzerim hadn’t been attacked, the war had really started.
The Egyptians and the Syrians attacked in force, large, armored columns moving toward the Suez Canal in the South and into the Golan Heights in the North. I took command in the operations room, and the squadron began scrambling on various missions. By sunset we began to get some startling reports. Egozi and Duby caught an aerial convoy of Egyptian helicopters full of commandos crossing into the Sinai and shot down six of them. I was happy to learn that my young partner Roy Manoff had been Egozi’s navigator, and with five aircraft shot down, was now officially an ace. An even more fantastic item came from the Far South. A section from our squadron, led by Captain Nahumi, defending the Ophir airfield in the southern tip of Sinai against aerial attack, had shot down seven Egyptian MiGs.
DARKNESS FELL AT HATZERIM, and all our aircraft returned safely. After the noon madness, that good news instilled a feeling that we had gotten off on the right foot in the war. But it was too early to celebrate.
After the daily debriefing, Egozi sent the pilots to get some sleep and conserve their strength for the next day. We decided to keep all of them in the squadron building, to have them close by. The administration of Egozi and Shemer was excellent: mattresses and blankets were spread in every office, and the squadron’s operations clerks wrote down who slept where and when. That enabled us to dispense with the loudspeaker, and if somebody was needed they would wake him quietly without disturbing all the others. We all stayed in the squadron building; in fact, for the next three weeks, until the end of the war, that’s where we lived. Similarly, the mechanics lived, ate, and slept in the subterranean hangars, by their aircraft. This arrangement prevented any physical or mental distraction. Everybody in the squadron had only one thing on his mind: the war.
AFTER EVERYBODY HIT the mattresses, the managing crew remained in the operations room. We looked at each other. We had only a very partial picture of what was happening, but we knew well that our squadron’s successes were just local affairs, just defensive reactions. We got the news that the Egyptians and the Syrians were attacking from the south and the north, and because the defending Israeli units had only skeleton personnel on the line because of the Yom Kippur holiday, they probably had already crushed them. It was clear that defense alone was not going to get us to victory. The big game had just started, and things were going to change. We waited for orders for the morning attack so we could arm our aircraft accordingly, draw the required maps, and prepare our briefings.
But that night was different from what we expected. Beginning at midnight, orders began to arrive, and the craziness of the previous day was repeated: as we were figuring out the first order, and had awakened all our men to get ready, the telephone rang again.
“Stop! The mission has changed.” We stopped the mechanics and ordered them to strip and then rearm all the aircraft with new ordnance, and the navigators had gone to prepare their maps, when the teleprinter clattered and out came a new roll of crap. Do it all over again—truck new weapons from the stores, undress and rearm the aircraft—the navigators threw their maps away and spread new, clean ones on the tables. The intelligence officer repacked his target files and tore open new envelopes from the safe. The duty officer erased the boards and began to draw new briefing instructions on them—and the telephone rang again.
At three o’clock in the morning, with all the squadron red-eyed and frazzled, I decided this had to end. I instructed Jimmy to load all the aircraft with simple iron bombs, eleven half-ton pieces on each, and that was that. No matter what target we were going to attack on the morning’s first sortie, this was what we were going to use. I sent my pilots and navigators to get some sleep. They were left with only one hour of sleep, and one more hour to plan and draw maps for whatever mission we got before dawn. I had no intention of updating the chain of command about my decision.
And so we learned how this nocturnal war had to be fought. On subsequent nights we let our people sleep. The duty officers in the ops room went through the stream of orders flowing in, from which they gleaned some idea of what was on their minds at high command. Then they took notes and filed them. We took seriously only orders that came in after three o’clock in the morning. This method required our technical and operational staffs to be very efficient; they had to prepare anything—everything—within two hours, come what may.
