SUDDENLY YONI CRIED, “Look! Look!”
A line of dim light shone out of the dark figure that hovered a little before us. The MiG’s vertical stabilizer glinted. It was turned sharply to its maximum. We both knew that that was that, the last move. The knight in front of us spurred his mount one last time, trying to get one more jump out of him, the decisive one. The MiG lifted its nose. Clearly Hassan was giving me the show of his life.
My legs trembled, and once again I had to restrain myself from pulling up against the MiG—just fly and watch. I couldn’t lose our wings’ frail hold on the air. We simply hovered there, waiting.
And then, really close to us, Hassan’s horse rebelled against its rider. The MiG’s nose reared up in an abnormally fast, light movement, almost reaching the vertical. The MiG stood on its tail like a tower in the air. We were very close and I saw Hassan’s canopy glistening like a soap bubble above us. Then he lost it—the MiG suddenly rolled in the air and spun down toward us, almost falling on our heads. The canopy blew off, and the pilot flew out of the cockpit like a small parcel and hit the ground with his parachute still closed. Instantly the MiG fell right on him, and they both blazed among the black rocks like a napalm bonfire.
Yoni and I breathed a sigh of relief and released our wonderful Phantom No. 10 down to the horizontal, freeing him, too, and breathing the air. We slowly accelerated and turned west among the black Syrian hills, on half power. When we climbed the big mountain going home, we took a last look back: a dirty red fire was burning on its feet, sending up a black pillar of smoke.
We were so short on fuel that on the way home we shut one engine off and flew home directly across all the missiles. They somehow gave us a break and let us pass, and we reached Ramat-David on a wing and a prayer.
THIS STORY ENDED EARLY the next morning at a debriefing. I called in all the pilots and told them what had happened—not that they didn’t already know everything from the grapevine—and then I told them seriously, “This was an egregious offense of squadron rules. The pilot who did it is here and now washed out of our squadron. He is to pack his bags and go. We don’t need pilots like him in the Orange Tails. Let him go home and watch from there how those who know to fight continue to defend Israel.” I saw their surprised faces. We were in the middle of a terrible war. I saw in their eyes the question “What the… ?”
Then I explained, “I will make a technical distinction between two men. The pilot Iftach, who committed a serious offense endangering a crew and an aircraft, is washed out right now. But Squadron Commander Spector is needed in this squadron right now, and he stays. Your squadron commander shall continue to command and lead you as usual.”
They looked at each other.
“And this MiG is scratched and goes into oblivion. No kill will be claimed in this case.”
They kept silent.
“And let me make it clear, the rules have not changed a bit, and their enforcement shall be, if anything, more strict. Any wiseass who commits an operational offense shall be punished without mercy.”
Again they looked at each other, and back at me.
“Is all this clear to everyone?”
They all understood. There were no discipline problems in that squadron after that.
21
Wholeheartedly
I AM NOT GOING TO RELATE EVERYTHING about the Orange Tails in the Yom Kippur War, nor tell stories about other battles I was in during that war. I have already tried to do part of it in another book, and I shall likely never finish the whole story. I only want to say now that the combat effectiveness of this squadron has nothing to do with the happy fact that it didn’t lose a single pilot in the war. This fact was evident, of course, only after the war ended.
As a rule, the index for the combat effectiveness of a military unit must in no way begin with counting its casualties.
I DON’T LIKE THE NEVER-ENDING praise for the Orange Tails—coming even from generals and air force officers who should know better—for “bringing all the boys home safe.” This is an unlooked-for compliment. In my eyes, these kinds of commendations represent a fundamental misunderstanding of war and set the wrong standard for officers and men. A good combat unit does two things: accomplishing the mission well is primary, and then—and only then—a good unit looks to minimize casualties. Whoever turns this order on its head better not fight at all.
The Orange Tails fought and behaved well because we had been prepared well for war and understood the situation from the beginning, and because we had the right mixture of toughness in combat and flexibility in thinking. The Orange Tails managed not to sink into laziness or stupidity even in its toughest moments. This was no small feat. And we never had slogans such as “The hard things we do fast.” It was all business.
The Orange Tails was a dynamic battle unit, alert and always thinking. We all watched for kettles, and prepared to douse the fire under them in time. We kept correcting and re-correcting our combat methodology. Thanks to all the above, the Orange Tails met every challenge in the Yom Kippur War.
So nobody was killed in the Orange Tails? Great. But this is just the dessert, the cherry on the whipped cream. The Orange Tails fought well because we put the bullets in the targets and because we had some of the art of war drummed into us.
Squadron commanders were ordered to write fitness reports when the war was over. The last sentence in my very brief report to air force headquarters summed it up this way: “The Orange Tails are fit and ready for another war.” I knew that all my men stood behind these proud words.
This was such a wonderful feeling that it’s hard to convey in words. I knew I had done my job right. I felt like a carpenter who cut the wood without breaking the saw.
And my happiness welled out of a hidden personal satisfaction, too. Now, after four years of commanding squadrons in two wars, I finally knew how to command men.
IN DECEMBER 1973, TWO MONTHS after the end of the Yom Kippur War, I handed the Orange Tails’ flag to their second commander. The event was modest, with only a small audience. Again, just like two years before, it was a cold winter day and we had the ceremony inside the squadron’s first aircraft hangar, still shining and clean. Our families watched from the sidelines. They had just returned to base housing after they were dispersed to a boarding school for the duration to bite their nails and await the outcome. The women returned, cleaned up their homes, threw out the putrid remnants that were still in the refrigerators after three weeks, reactivated the kindergarten, and tried to smile through their personal troubles.
Every family had someone dead; names kept coming in from everywhere. We ran around nights, driving all over Israel to visit, to console, to hear stories, to try to understand. Ali’s brother, Maj. (Res.) Yair Dgani, returned from the dunes of the western Sinai to Givat-Brenner still picking the thin steering wires of the antitank Russian missiles out of his hair. Yair was physically unhurt but as shaken as I, and for similar reasons. I heard about how some of his senior commanders had performed only after the war, and later read about it in the report of the Agranat Commission, which investigated the conduct of the war. Sheani was dead. And Goldie. They joined the eternally young faces in the photo of flight school class 31—just six of us left now to get older. Only after the war did I tell Ali about the death in battle of Col. Arlozor Lev, Zorik, the commander of Ramat-David, that beloved man who had welcomed us to the Scorpions and into his home when we were a young couple.
THE NEW COMMANDER AND I saluted each other. I left the podium full of conflicting emotions. Like all of Israel, I was shocked by the failures of leadership in the war and by the removal of Chief of Staff David Elazar— definitely not the guilty party, and perhaps the one man who’d showed any balls in the high command—and with Moshe Dayan’s ugly evasion of responsibility. But on the other hand, I myself was full of pride and felt very lucky. I
