of the earth, descending on them, shaving the ground, and using every groove in the ground to hide from the missiles. Our eyes searched. Where was the break? We became more and more tense. Here it was, the unknown, the X factor in this sortie.
The aircraft gained altitude and the clouds were already close, but no break to be seen. The steep climb bled our airspeed, and the Phantom felt tired and heavy, its steering clumsy. The slope came nearer and nearer as I pressed my aircraft to the ground to gain some seconds before I hit the clouds. Trees passed by my wings; my belly skimmed the rocks. A few hundred meters ahead of me, right in the windshield, the clouds merged with the mountain into one foggy, amorphous mess. There was no brightening whatsoever that might signal a break. Seven heavy Phantoms, loaded with fuel and bombs, dragged behind me. What I saw before me was a barrier of clouds filled with rocks. If I didn’t decide soon, the mountain would decide for me.
I decided. Lighting both afterburners, I broke radio silence. “Ascot, Dubek, everybody climb full power, above the clouds!” Immediately I pulled up with what speed I had left.
Immediately my aircraft cockpit was shrouded in humid, opaque cotton wool. My hand groped blindly for the cockpit lighting switch, my eyes wandered among the flight instruments. There was no voice but the aircraft’s sounds around us. I could hear Kamay’s and my own heavy breathing on the intercom in the gray silence. The climb went on and on. Did I make the decision to pull up in time? Did all of them hear and pull up immediately?
The Phantom climbed, its altimeter turning slowly. A sigh of relief as the instrument’s hand passed the height of the mountaintops, hidden somewhere in the fog around us. But we were almost out of speed. When will we finally get out of this mess? At last the light around us began to flicker. The murky fluid that enveloped our canopy changed from gray to white, and all of a sudden our Phantom broke out of the clouds, and before us we saw vast blue skies and yellow sunshine. Gasping, we found ourselves hanging at twelve thousand feet over a white, brilliant cloud carpet that went all the way east, where Damascus waited.
Our heads turned in search of the rest of the formation. One by one and two by two, black Phantoms popped out of the white, wavy rug. I lowered a wing and began drawing a wide circle, to collect them all and organize them again into combat formation.
A FULL CIRCLE AND THEY were all here. Once again we were in formation, the bombs were still with us, and we were ready for battle. But the situation had changed. From where we are now, how do we get through the clouds and then reacquire the ground for our final approach? There were no holes in the clouds. I was disconnected from the ground, just as I was ten years ago in my Super Mystere, but this time I was not on my own. Seven other Phantoms depended on me and my decisions.
Meanwhile, a warning light began flashing and I heard a chirp in my earphones. The advantage of surprise had been lost while we were circling up here at altitude, like geese on the horizon. Our warning gear told us that Damascus missile radars had already acquired us.
I DID NOT KNOW WHAT to do. It made no sense to continue at altitude, to push eight aircraft above the clouds right over a locked-on missile array. The missiles would burst out at full speed from the clouds, leaving us no time to react. How many Phantoms would survive the first salvo? Two? Three? No; a low approach was the only option. But the ground was nowhere in sight, hidden under this white cotton wool. Then, maybe bite the bullet, give the order, and plunge head down into the clouds? No; this would be insanity. I could bang eight Phantoms on the rocks, eliminating a whole fighting unit from our order of battle. No.
I didn’t know what to do. I finished the circle in formation, and when we were headed east I straightened hesitantly toward Damascus and began inching there, groping. I lowered one wing, then the other, looked down, searching for holes, for a piece of land so I could squeeze us through and reconnect to the ground and the original plan. I was hanging in blue space, over white carpet, and my whole formation trailed behind me. No one said a word to me, not even my navigator, but I felt their nervous eyes on my back. They awaited instructions, any instructions, from their leader and squadron commander, but I didn’t know what to do. We flew east, already encroaching on the danger zone. The red light came on and the horn chirped. The batteries’ radars were tracking us through the clouds. There had to be a way! A hole, just a small hole in the clouds! I looked around fervently.
Nothing.
Now, for the second time in this flight, I had to make a decision.
I heard my own voice talking on the radio, cool and businesslike: “Ascot, Dubek, turn one-eighty; head west.”
PERHAPS THIS IS A GOOD TIME to remember the IDF tradition of no turning back before the mission is accomplished.
This tradition was stamped into the IDF after a period of weakness that followed the War of Independence in 1948. The combat performance of the Israeli Defense Force dwindled, and then was saved thanks to the bravery and personal example of some daring operations led by Ariel Sharon during the 1950s. Moshe Dayan, the chief of staff, ordered that only 50 percent casualties justify aborting a mission. In the Six-Day War I had my own example of this: our base commander, Benny Peled, ordered us to fly to the Egyptian airfields without stopping for any reason, and if someone fell out along the way it would be “his own problem.” I was brought up on all this, and it lay heavy on me when a mix of stupid mountains and stupid clouds turned me back from Damascus. I had aborted before I suffered 50 percent casualties, and my hands were clutching my aircraft’s controls, my knuckles white. The formation trailed behind, every one of them aware of what had just happened. The whole trip home lay before us, and we were still carrying sixty-four expensive and desperately needed bombs, and we had to ditch them before landing.
SUDDENLY VOICES BROKE OUT on the radio, on the combat channel. I heard voices coordinating a pull-up, a dive, and for a second I didn’t get it. Flinching in my seat, I looked to both sides onto my buddies around to see what was happening. But they were all around me, cruising in formation above the pastoral vista of clouds.
And then I heard that somebody was hit. Cries of “Break, break!” and “Fire,” and a navigator fired off a geographical position—the location told me it was right near Damascus—and then another voice in a ridiculous but clear New York accent, like the narrator of a documentary, croaked, “Oh, it’s just a small fire.” And then it came to me that these were from Bats, a sister Phantom squadron. Actually, they had an American navigator, Grossman. Or was it Joel Aharonoff, another immigrant from the United States?
And—yes, I suddenly recalled, the Bats were supposed to attack the same target right before us. How could I forget about them? And now they were there, hitting our target in Damascus. I recognized the voice of their leader, Arnon Lavushin.
“Clear target area, heading south,” which meant they had completed the mission.
I had turned back, but Lavushin hadn’t. He reached the target. And oh, boy, he was paying a price for it.
“How did the bastards get in there?” Kamay mumbled behind me in awe.
What the hell, I thought. Didn’t they encounter mountains, clouds? Lavushin, that cool bastard! God damn him! How did he get through that mess?
I learned after the war from Lavushin how he found a way to Damascus. The route the Bats took was a little different, just a few kilometers away from mine, but there—thanks to luck—they found a nice hole and cleared the ridge easily. “I had no problem at all,” Arnon told me.
Luck is important, too.
This story of two squadrons that went to Damascus, and their very different adventures, has been told many times since then. It was a subject of discussion for the whole air force, as an example of decision problems and dilemmas flight leaders might face in battle. In one of those discussions the air force commander, Maj. Gen. Benny Peled, established a position toward aborting missions.
“As a rule,” he said, “I permit every leader to abort and return to base, but I reserve the right to check why he did so, and decide if he should continue to fly and lead my men into battle. I have no rule book regarding this,” Peled said, “but remember that as you are volunteers, this obligates you as much as it acquits you. I shall not force anyone to fly.”
In actuality, Benny devised those principal directives only after the war—when I raised publicly the story of my aborted mission to Damascus. During the war nobody cared to talk about it. I brought this issue up after the war, when I was entrusted with the operational training of the air force. To better learn the lessons from the war I
