To Be An Israeli: The Fourth Book in the All My Love, Detrick series

by Roberta Kagan

  When she had moved to Israel, the world she’d left behind was a completely different place than it was now. She’d seen the news of America on the TV. She’d heard all about the protests against the Vietnam War, the hippies, the changes in society, and the civil rights movement, but she had never experienced any of it firsthand.

  It was hard to believe that people were gathering in protest marches right in the streets all across the United States. They were fighting against the police. She would have never believed anything like that could happen in the US. Janice felt like she’d been away a long time even though it had only been four years. But while she was gone, the world where she grew up had disappeared.

  It was a long walk through the crowded airport to the baggage claim, and all around her was evidence of the changes. It reminded her of how different Americans were from Israelis. The Israelis did not question going to war. When called up, they stood behind their country, no matter what the consequences were. She knew that the Israelis disagreed amongst themselves. She had seen the different factions with conflicting ideas of how the country should be run, and she had no doubt that they would fight against each other for control. However, when it came down to the wire, they stood strong and together against foreign enemies.

  Now in America, people were not united like Israelis. From what she’d heard, Americans were openly burning their draft cards in protest against the Vietnam War. Boys were refusing to go to battle and fleeing the country, many of them going north to Canada. It was quite different from what she’d come to expect in Israel.

  Outside the airport with her suitcase in hand, she climbed into a yellow cab and gave the driver instructions. Janice was on her way home. She watched the familiar landscape as the taxi weaved through traffic. This was where she belonged, in America: where people could speak freely, where the citizens were not blindly devoted to their country, where love and family came first.

  Her parents were both waiting for her. They knew what time her flight had landed and were watching out the large picture window in the living room. When the taxi pulled up to the curb in front of the house, both of her parents rushed outside. They took turns hugging her. Her father pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket and gave the cab driver a generous tip and then carried Janice’s bag into the house.

  “We’re so glad you’re back,” Janice’s mother said.

  Her father put his arm around her shoulder and squeezed. “Welcome home, sweetheart.”

  Janice’s bedroom was the same as she’d left it when she moved to Israel. Even her giant, pink teddy bear with the white bow that everyone had signed at the lavish sweet sixteen party her parents had given her, still sat in the middle of her canopy bed. On the mirror above her dressing table was a picture she’d cut out of a magazine and taped there with masking tape. It was of the Beatles’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Gently she reached up and touched the photograph.

  The baby-pink rotary princess phone sat on the nightstand beside her bed. Janice ran her fingers over the receiver. She wanted to call her best friend, Bonnie. Janice longed to tell Bonnie that she had returned, and things would be the way they were before she’d gone off to Israel.

  However, the truth was that things were not the same, not at all. Janice was pregnant. It was going to be difficult raising a fatherless child. How would she ever resume her old life? A part of her buried deep inside missed Elan terribly. Not that she wanted to return, but the memories were still there. Janice was angry at him. She wanted to punish him for walking out on her when she needed him. So in haste, she’d left the country. Now back in her childhood home, alone in the room where she’d grown up, she was having second thoughts about that, too.

  Janice kicked off her shoes and lay down on her bed. She felt the chiffon of the bedspread against her cheek. Moving it out of the way, she laid her head on the crisp, white cotton pillowcase. Janice was exhausted. Perhaps after she took a nap, she’d be clearer on what to do next. It had been a long, tiresome flight, and she had not slept much the night before leaving. Within minutes after lying down, Janice was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER 38

  Upon arriving at the Hatzor Air Base, Elan was allowed to get two hours of sleep, fed breakfast then ushered into the briefing room.

  “I’ve received orders to activate Operation Moked (Focus) A, the attack of all Egyptian air bases. Twelve aircraft will be kept in reserve to protect Israeli airspace. All the rest of our nearly two hundred planes will be involved in the attack. War is inevitable. If we allow Egypt to have an air force, Israel will perish. They say all clouds have a silver lining. Egypt has been at war with Yemen for five years, and almost half their army is in Yemen. This is good news for us.” The Base Commander Beni Pelid paused, pulled a drag on his cigarette, stubbed it out and continued. “The mission will be on complete radio silence.”

  A young pilot asked the question they were all thinking. “What happens if there is trouble after takeoff?”

  “Set your course for the sea and eject,” the commander said.

  “But we can’t call for help.”

  “I wish you luck.”

  Elan thought about that for a moment and raised his hand. “Sir, since the Egyptians have a better recovery plan for their pilots, we’ll have to oblige them to use it.”

  “Very good, Captain, just what I was thinking.” Commander Pelid smiled.

  “And to continue… The Egyptians are used to Israeli jets flying routine patrols at dawn. We will give them something to look at while the rest of you fly under the radar, flying west and low over the Mediterranean and entering Egyptian airspace from the north. Once the Egyptians conclude that it is business as usual, they will return to their bases, refuel, and have breakfast.

  With God’s help, we will destroy their air force while they are at the breakfast table. Seventeen of you will be sent to attack the Egyptian air bases, and four will be held as quick response units to go where they are needed. ABA (Air Base Attack) will be as follows: Shahaks 73, 75, 84, 77, 06 (Madaf 2), 51, 34, 56, 86, 08, 09, 62, 06 (Michtaba 3), 04, 82, 81, & 52. QRA (Quick Response Alert) are as follows: Shahaks 12, 59, 15, & 33.”

  Elan was filled with excitement at the thought of wasting the entire Egyptian Air Force while they were on the ground. Maybe I might even get an air-to-air kill, he thought.

  “Moked first wave: Cairo West - Shahaks 73, 75, 84, 34, 56, 86, 08, 09, 62, & 06 (Madaf 2). Bir Tamada – Shahaks 77, 06 (Michtaba 3), & 51. Beni Suef – Shahaks 04, 82, 81, & 52—secondary target is Inchas in the Nile Delta if so ordered. Your launch time and order will be posted on the board. May God be with you. Israel is depending on you. Dismissed.”

  Elan checked the board. His jet was Shahak seventy-three, and his call sign was Vilon (Curtain) 1. His mission target was Cairo West, and he was the third to take off at zero seven hundred seventeen hours Israeli time which was an hour ahead of Egyptian time.

  In his Shahak (Hebrew “sky blazer,” the name the Mirage IIIC jets were given) in addition to his thirty-millimeter cannon, he carried two runway-piercing bombs, which had to be delivered low like a napalm pass. This took a lot of guts on the pilot’s part, exposing him to anti-aircraft defenses, but the damage to the runway was much higher than the GP bombs. The runway-piercing bombs deployed a ’chute to make sure they drifted nose-down. They were designed to destroy runways by creating an additional sinkhole which took considerable effort to repair.

  Once the launch started, the planes flew out quickly, nearly back to back. Elan taped his cassette player with an American rock and roll music tape down within reach with black electrical tape. He loved to listen to fast, hard-driving rock and roll during an engagement but didn’t want the cassette player to go flying in the cockpit when he did a barrel roll or a hard vertical climb.

  Elan flew one-hundred feet over the sapphire-blue Mediterranean Sea with Jerry Lee Lewis singing, “We ain’t fakin’ it baby. There’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.”

  At zero hun
dred forty-five hours, local Egyptian time, Elan’s group of ten bomber-interceptors approached the airstrip at Cairo West. Each of the planes approached from different directions to minimize the danger of being shot down by air defenses. Since they had flown in under the enemy radar, the base was not alerted.

  The Israelis ascended to an altitude of four thousand feet before descending on their targets. Not all of the planes had runway-piercing bombs, but Elan’s did. His squadron had practiced bombing runs like this hundreds of times. Elan was the fourth plane to approach the runway, and he could see thick smoke and flames coming from the first three bomber’s handiwork. Using the smoke to conceal his approach, Ethan came in fast and leveled out low and kept the smoke on the runway between his bird and anti-aircraft guns. He made it to a clear spot in the runway and released his bombs. They hit the ground soon after the release and burrowed themselves into the concrete runway with a deafening blast. Fire and thick, black smoke was all that was left of the runway section Elan bombed.

  This wasn’t a spur of the moment attack. Operation Moked had been practiced for years. Elan cleared the runway and climbed to four thousand feet again and dove fast to run the strafing patterns he had practiced so many times before. As he approached a spot on the runway that wasn’t covered we thick black smoke, he spotted two Tupolev bombers that were a high-priority target and considered a threat to Israel.

  Elan waited until he had the right distance from the targets, and cut them both in two with his thirty-millimeter cannon. One more strafing run yielded a MiG 17 and a MiG 21.

  With the runway and all targets destroyed, Ethan and his squadron returned to Hatzor Air Base for a quick reload and refuel which took only six minutes.

  During Operation Moked, 189 enemy planes were destroyed on the first wave, 107 enemy planes on the second wave, and a total of 320 by the end of the third wave. This all occurred within three hours. On the second day of the operation, an Israeli pilot chased a MiG instead of taking an Egyptian transport which was carrying Egyptian Marshall Ahmed and his staff. This, too, was the hand of God. Marshall Ahmed had seen firsthand the devastation of the Egyptian Air Force and was so affected by the sight that he ordered the Egyptian Army to withdraw from the Sinai.

  King Hussein of Jordon received faulty information of the Egyptian defeat and ordered air strikes on Israeli targets. Israel responded by destroying the two air bases in Jordon and five bases in Syria.

  CHAPTER 39

  Elan ran the preflight check on his bird and decided it was a go. His flight crew completed their check of his armaments that were loaded last night when he came in and concluded everything was okay. Since one of the Shahak’s cannons had blown up in use due to a cleaning rod being left in the barrel, maintenance was double-checking everything. The maintenance crewman closed his hatch and rolled the stairs away from his jet. The maintenance chief backed off from the bird and gave Elan the thumbs’ up sign, and Elan responded in kind.

  This was the morning of the third day since Operation Moked had begun. Ninety percent of the Egyptian Air Force had been decimated on the first day. Jordan’s Air Force had been completely destroyed, and what was left of the Syrian Air Force had been discreetly removed to rear air bases to keep the Israelis from destroying them. The raid on Iraq’s air base gave them second thoughts about joining the fight. There were no aerial threats on the northern or eastern Israeli border. Elan’s job now was bombing runs on choice targets in the Sinai and within Egypt and combat air patrols to intercept what was left of Egyptian aircraft still offering resistance.

  Elan smiled with the anticipation of another day of rock and roll and making mayhem on the Egyptians but was hoping for a chance to paint another kill score on his jet from another air-to-air engagement. He had three kills already, one before the war and two yesterday, but he needed two more to be the second Israeli ace on record. He sighed…another bombing run. Their mission was to bomb a radar station northeast of Ismailia on the Suez Canal. He and his number two fired up their engines and proceeded on a course heading to the target.

  It was a surreal thing, really. Flying close to the desert with nothing in sight but miles and miles of sand felt peaceful while they were planning to rain fire and destruction on their targets.

  Elan glanced at his watch. They should be coming up on the target in about three minutes.

  Elan’s radio crackled a message from GCI, Ground Control Intercept. “Vilon 1, abort mission. Vector two seven zero to interdict four MiGs spotted fifty kilometers due west of your position.”

  “Roger that, Vilon 1 out,” replied Elan. As much as he wanted some more kills, he saw the radar station just one minute away.

  “You heard the man, his number two radioed.”

  “Not yet. We would have to dump our extra fuel tanks and bombs to chase them anyway. I have a better place to drop them besides the desert. I’ll drop my fuel tanks and bombs on the radar station building, and you drop them on the radar tower. That should light up their life.”

  “You are one extreme individual, but I like it,” he said, laughing.

  They climbed to four thousand feet just before arriving at the radar station and sharply dove upon the station, leveling out at two hundred feet and dumping their excess weight on the intended targets. The bombs and fuel tanks made a pyrotechnic display that resembled fire falling from heaven with the thunderous voice of God.

  “Goodness gracious, great balls of fire,” laughed Elan. “Now let’s go kill some MiGs.”

  “Roger that.”

  He should be afraid. After all, intellectually he knew he could be killed in battle, but he felt no fear for his heart was filled with exhilaration. His fingers trembled as he ran them over the controls. Adrenaline rushed through his veins, and he felt alive in a way that only a combat pilot can understand.

  His mind was consumed with the upcoming challenge of battle, so he forgot all of his pain, the loss of Katja, his father’s death, his mother’s needy pull, and his wife’s spoiled demands. They disintegrated like a sun shower on a very hot summer day. Poof, gone, all of the pain all of the memories, for the moment they were gone. There was no time, no room for any thoughts other than the challenge of the present moment. Elan smiled and sucked in a deep breath. He had come into his own, for Elan was a true warrior, and he felt ecstatic.

  Elan and his number two broke hard left, excited at the prospect of another air-to-air engagement. As the two of them streaked across the desert sky at mach speed toward their intended target, Elan turned on his cassette player. Jerry Lee Lewis sang, “Help me Mister Fireman, please. You know I'm burning from my head to my knees…”

  Elan’s number two was a twenty-one-year-old, Daniel Goldstein, with eyes as sharp as an eagle’s. He spotted the MiG 21s first. “Four MiGs at two eight fiver, on a course heading of zero two zero at nine o’clock.”

  There was an unusual amount of cloud cover that day for the desert, and both men hit full afterburner and climbed to five thousand feet and stayed above the clouds, navigating not by sight but by compass, elapsed time and airspeed. Elan dipped his wing to signal his number two it was time to drop down. They dove hard to gain as much energy and speed as they could, and Elan caught a visual of the four MiGs flying in tight formation at one thousand feet.

  The pair of Mirages dropped down to put themselves behind the MiGs six o’clock because the MiGs had a blind spot to their rear which the pilots call the killing zone. Elan could see his number two’s face plainly through the cockpit bubble, and he gave hand signals to take the outside two, Elan being on the left and Daniel on the right. Both pilots activated their short-range radar lock of four hundred meters and after four seconds got tone.

  Daniel fired his two thirty-millimeter cannons with their explosive-tip projectiles at his target, and it tore its left wing completely off. The MiG automatically started to turn in a tight circle to the right, dropping from the sky like a stone and exploded in a ball of fire and smoke. The desert below was charred black where
the pilot crashed, but the pilot did not live to eject.

  At the same time that his number two was firing, Elan pulled the trigger on his target, placing his explosive-tip projectiles into the enemy’s fuselage. The MiG exploded in a ball of fire and smoke, broke into two pieces and fell to the ground. The pilot had punched out in time, and Elan pulled up hard to avoid hitting him as he parachuted to safety. The other two MiGs split right and left in a sharp turn to avoid the same fiery fate of their partners, and the Israelis gave hot pursuit.

  Daniel followed close to his target while the Egyptian did a dance of tight turns to try to entice the Mirage into a horizontal fight which favored the MiG. The Mirage was one hundred miles per hour faster, but couldn’t turn very quickly. Daniel’s preferred fight was one done on a vertical plane where he could take advantage of the extra speed and energy of his fighter.

  As the MiG made a hard left turn for the third time, Daniel deduced that he was probably right-handed as it was easier for a right-handed person to push the stick to the left. He stuck with him, looping on the vertical plane and came down on his six again. The Mig did some more breaks and weaved side-to-side to try to shake his adversary and avoid a radar lock.

  Then came the moment the Israeli was waiting for. The Egyptian turned hard left, and Daniel was waiting for him. As soon as the MiG started his turn, the Israeli flew vertical with a slight turn and executed a barrel roll and came down on his enemy’s six, locking his radar and firing his cannons into the MiG’s fuel tanks. The MiGs had a design flaw. The oxygen tanks were right next to the fuel tanks. The MiG exploded in a ball of fire and fell from the sky in three pieces. The pilot was dead before he had a chance to pull the ejection handle.

  Elan’s adversary went on full afterburner and initiated a hard climb to try to get into the cloud cover so he could lose Elan. He wasn’t trying to initiate any turns because the MiG would lose energy and speed. The Mirage was already faster than the MiG, but Elan had to engage his afterburners to dump more fuel into the engine so as not to lose his quarry.