by Boris Senior
The schism between the Haganah and the Irgun was so deep that it was impossible to be a member of one force while even hinting at sympathy for the other. Though fighting against the British forces and at the same time preparing for the coming battle with the Arabs, the two organizations were bitter rivals and refused to cooperate. This pattern of deep division seems to have been endemic in Jewish history and was one of the reasons for the final defeat when the Romans subdued Judea 2,000 years ago. (The force was finally disbanded and absorbed into the official Israeli army in November 1948. There was much opposition to the breakup of this fine military organization with its special history and character. But Prime Minister Ben Gurion was rightly adamant there be only one army and one chain of command.)
When I finally met Menachem Begin, his advice was that because the Irgun had no aircraft, Ezer and I should join the Haganah’s air service. Aware of the fierce enmity between the two groups, I realized that Begin was a real statesman and not merely a politician with a short-term view. Relations between the Haganah and the Irgun being so bad, Ezer and I made a pact to keep absolutely secret that we had been members of the Irgun in Europe.
Begin was a short, thin, unremarkable-looking man with spectacles, dapper and always well dressed. At thirty-five, he was some ten years older than Ezer and me and had an almost mystical approach to anything connected with the projected Jewish state. Moments after I met him for the first time, he rose from his chair and, turning to a map of Palestine on the wall of his office, put his open hand on the map and said in a quiet voice, “Oh, our landele, oh, our landele,” with such feeling that I was much moved. He was a strange man with an unusual naiveté about mundane matters, which were often elementary to most people. When I told him of the difficulties of flying aircraft to Israel from far away places such as South Africa, he asked, “Can’t a big airplane carry a small plane on its back?”
I kept in contact with the Irgun and my former comrades in Paris on a strictly informal friendly basis, inquiring from time to time about what was happening to them. One of these clandestine meetings was with Jacob Meridor. He was put in charge of the Irgun forces in the field when Begin took command of the Irgun. This meeting was not the first contact I had with Meridor.
Meridor had spent two years in British detention camps before he was deported to Gil Gil in Kenya. Though it was possible to escape from Gil Gil, that was only the beginning of the odyssey for the escapee because it was a major problem for a white man to be wandering around Africa without money or resources looking for ways to get to Europe. Meridor had escaped in a way similar to that used by Eliahu Lankin.
Whereas Lankin had managed to reach Europe partly by hiding in the double floor of a bus for some days, Meridor needed help to get out of Africa. During one of my visits to Paris on Irgun business long before coming to Palestine, I had been asked if I would be prepared to fly Meridor out of Kenya. A twin-engine Lockheed Lodestar had been donated by an Irgun sympathizer in Canada and was to be ferried to Paris.
When it arrived, I talked to the ferry pilot. At that time, all my flying had been on single-engine aircraft. The ferry pilot refused to check me out on the Lodestar and there was also a problem with the range. In addition to these difficulties, the whole operation was illegal, and with other problems to be overcome, such as places to land on the way back from Kenya to France, the Irgun in Paris decided to use a professional French pilot. Unaware of the formalities required by the French authorities for crews making their way to Africa and not having prepared themselves for the French investigations about the flight, the Irgun soon got into trouble and the Lodestar was impounded.
The next development in the saga of getting Meridor out of Africa came when Irgun sympathizers in England located a surplus twin-engine de Havilland Mosquito bomber for sale. I went to inspect the aircraft, but again there was the problem of my getting checked out in this advanced twin, for there was no dual-control Mosquito available. Finally, I persuaded the Irgun to allow me to go to a twin-engine conversion course at Hamble near Southampton, and I got my twin-engine rating.
By this time, the whole operation had become known to the French authorities, and quite possibly the British had learned what we were planning, so we dropped the project. When I had arrived back in Johannesburg after a hasty departure from England at the time of the General Barker fiasco, I arranged with a South African pilot who was an Irgun sympathizer to buy a twin-engine Oxford aircraft for the job. This operation must have been jinxed, because the pilot crashed the aircraft, and we were forced to scrap the whole plan.
Jacob Meridor had been operations officer of the Irgun after escaping from the British banishment center in Kenya and was in Palestine when I arrived in December 1947. Ezer and I were asked to meet him. He told us that the Irgun had acquired three Dakotas, which would be arriving in Palestine shortly, and the Irgun wanted advice about a projected mission for them.
In Egypt a dam was being built on the Nile that was to be the forerunner of the Aswan High Dam. The Irgun thought that destroying the dam would wreak havoc on the Egyptian war effort, and the Irgun wanted to use the Dakotas to bomb the dam. This was an example of the independent and uncoordinated activities of the Irgun and the Haganah at a time before the Irgun was incorporated into the regular forces of the State of Israel. I explained that because the Dakota was not a bomber there was little chance of doing more than minimal damage to the dam wall. Meridor looked at me and in a very matter of fact way said, “Well, then you will just have to dive the two aircraft into the wall of the dam.” For a few minutes there was dead silence as the full reality of the proposal sank in.
After the enormity of the proposal sunk in, Ezer and I paled and exchanged glances. We did not continue the conversation, and to this day, I am not sure whether Meridor really intended us to fly into the dam wall. After all we were not Kamikaze pilots. Since that fateful afternoon, I do have some understanding of today’s suicide bombers, though I cannot under any circumstances condone such acts. Fortunately, the Dakotas never arrived. I have given much thought to that projected mission and have come to the conclusion that in my frame of mind at the time I might well have agreed to do the job.
THE AIR SERVICE
I enlisted in the air service immediately after coming to Tel Aviv from Haifa. The city was peaceful, and the only danger was from sniping by Jaffa Arabs from the minaret of the Hassan Bek mosque on the Jaffa side of the border between the two cities. It was a good vantage point from which the snipers could see most of Tel Aviv. In December 1947 Jaffa was an Arab city of some 80,000 inhabitants. Later, the Haganah constructed a large, solid-iron gate across Mea Shearim Street, the main channel through which the bullets were sprayed into the center of Tel Aviv. Apart from that and the shots heard when driving through the orange groves in the vicinity of the city, life was peaceful, although I did sense the awareness and tension of the impending struggle in everyone.
In the beginning I found the harsh sunlight blinding, and I soon learned not to venture out in the morning without sunglasses. The streets, too, were different, much narrower than those I knew, but invariably tree-lined, softening the harshness of the stark white bauhaus buildings.
After the stability and orderliness of the South African environment at that time and the formality that existed there in many ways, the smallness of the Yishuv and the warm intimacy that existed between the people was a revelation to me. It showed itself in many ways: the universal use of first names, the casual dress and lack of ceremony, the directness of speech, and not least, my immediate acceptance into one of the fighting units of the Haganah.
The entire Jewish population of Palestine amounted to a little more than 500,000 people, and we all felt part of one large family, anything happening in the country being of interest to each and every person in a very personal manner. Everyone seemed to know everyone. I am glad to say that despite the population having grown to nearly ten times that number the same feeling of intimacy and closeness underlines lif
e in Israel to this day.
In Tel Aviv there were few signs of a military buildup, though when one passed Café Pinati on Dizengoff Street, one usually saw groups of young men and girls wearing boots and white socks, and white or dark blue shirts. We knew that particular café was the meeting place of the Palmach members, no uniforms and no ranks, but clearly fighting personnel.
Ezer was waiting for me in Tel Aviv and his detailing my experience and background eliminated any difficulties for me in joining the air service. Apart from a few cursory questions about my flying experience, no further details were asked, and I joined Squadron A immediately as one of the pilots. The fact that I was the first and only volunteer at that time from overseas to the air service helped smooth the way.
We were a total of nine operational pilots. A handful had World War II experience; the rest were younger Israelis with only a few hours’ flying time. All were former members of the Palmach. Coming from the Palmach, they were highly disciplined fighters but their discipline was unlike that of regular armies. They discharged their duties selflessly without payment. There were no uniforms or ranks or saluting or “sirring,” and they required no military code to serve their commanders.
This was my first encounter with the young Sabra (Israeli-born) members of the Palmach. In their sandals and shorts, they were a wholesome bunch, and I was delighted to become one of their number and fly with them. This new generation of Sabras retained the qualities of intelligence and resourcefulness of the Diaspora Jews but without their hang-ups and complexes. I was struck by their lack of pretentiousness, boasting, or conceit. All in all, their being the product of a different environment and culture to mine in the Diaspora, they did not seem strange to me. On the contrary, notwithstanding the superficial differences, I immediately felt close to them like to a brother.
Kibbutzim were well represented among the founding pilots of the air service and were the forerunners of those who later made up the Israel Air Force in the War of Independence of 1948. As these were the pioneers of flying in Israel, who left an indelible stamp on the character of the Israel Air Force, I go into some detail about them:
Eddie Cohen was a South African who joined the Air Service from his kibbutz of Ma’ayan Baruch. Eddie was a former Spitfire pilot in the South African Air Force. He always wore his sheepskin jacket, which carried our signatures on its back. He had come to the kibbutz because of his belief in the need for a Jewish state and the communal values of the kibbutz way of life. I felt close to him because of our flying and South African heritage. Eddie was one of our first casualties. On 29 May 1948, he was shot down by ground fire and killed in the first Messerschmitt operation near Isdud (Ashdod), while attacking an Egyptian armored column approaching from the south and dangerously close to Tel Aviv.
Pinye Ben Porath was a diminutive dark-skinned member of Kibbutz Na’an. He could have been taken for a settler from the Yemen but was of Russian origin. He was a little older than most of us and had a long history as a fighter in the Haganah. He once attacked Arab marauders in the early days of flying before the Air Service’s creation. In July 1955, he was killed while flying an El Al Constellation, which inadvertently strayed from its flight path from Zurich to Tel Aviv and was shot down by a Bulgarian fighter near that country’s border. Pinye loved the suede desert boots he always wore, and we found them so attractive that we soon followed him to the cobbler on Mercaz Mishari Street. In a matter of days, we were all outfitted with the same handmade boots.
Ya’acov Ben Haim, known to all of us as “Black,” was from Kibbutz Kiryat Anavim in the Jerusalem corridor. He was from a family that originated in the Ukraine, and he had the outlook and mannerisms of a farmer, being solid, ponderous, and slow to absorb techniques but very reliable once he absorbed instruction.
Eli Feingersh (later Eli Eyal) was born in Germany and was a member of Kibbutz Sarid in the Jezreel Valley. He was a longtime member of the Palmach, and his opinion carried weight because of his reliability and the analytical way in which he approached our problems.
Pesach (Pussy) Tolchinsky, former U.S. Army Air Force C-47 pilot, was for many years a member of Kibbutz Kfar Giladi in Upper Galilee, and still is.
The pilots who did not originate in kibbutzim were:
Misha Kenner (later Keren), former Strumovik pilot in the Soviet Air Force, who arrived in Israel earlier on an illegal immigrant ship from which he had to jump into the sea and swim ashore. Not having a common language—apart from his Russian and Yiddish and my Hebrew being just more than nonexistent—I soon learned from Misha some juicy swear words in Russian, and we became good friends.
Yitzhak Hennenson, longtime Israeli from Tel Aviv, also of Russian birth, with his ready laugh and eyes twinkling with humor, was one of the more experienced pilots among the young Palestinians.
Ezer Weizman. After I introduced him to the ranks of the Irgun and we later joined the Air Service, we were both conscious of the ideological chasm that divided the Haganah and the Irgun.
PRIMUS IN THE SKY
This mixed team of pilots with its small fleet of aircraft was soon known to us all as “primuses”—the buzz of the small engines sounding like paraffin primus stoves—and they made up the beginnings of the air force. It took months for reinforcement aircrew and aircraft to arrive from abroad. In the meantime, the small band of Air Service pilots managed to hold the fort. In May 1948, when the war began, the major fighting in the air war was carried out by mahal (volunteers from abroad)—pilots from the United States, South Africa, Canada, England, and a few other countries.
Most of the local pilots were without operational experience with limited flight time on light aircraft. Among the others, Eddie Cohen had a few hours in fighters of the South African Air Force, Pussy had flown Dakota transports, and Ezer, Thunderbolts, but the war had ended too soon for him to see action. Misha had flown Russian Sturmoviks, but when later on in the war we got Czech Messer-schmitt fighters, he couldn’t cope with the faster aircraft. That left me as the sole pilot in the Air Service with combat experience. Naturally the young ex-Palmach pilots hoped to graduate to combat planes some day, but, by and large, they were too inexperienced to cope with the unforgiving Messerschmitts we obtained. It is now clear that we shouldn’t have expected them to cope with this hybrid. It used a German airframe, Czech engine, and a propeller meant for a bomber, not a fighter. It was altogether a handful even for the experienced pilots who came later as Mahal volunteers and who had flown advanced British and American fighters in World War II.
Sde Dov airfield, in the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv, was our base. There was an assorted collection of civilian aircraft: an Auster, two Tiger Moths, a Taylorcraft, which flew backward at a hint of a headwind, and one luxurious Polish three-seater with the unusual name of RWD 13. This was the nucleus of the future Israel Air Force. Not one of the aircraft boasted an engine larger than 100 horsepower, and they had no armament of any kind.
The field consisted of one east-west runway of 800 meters in a sandy waste on the Mediterranean coast. The sand on which the field was built pervaded our environment completely, and its tawny color is etched into my memory to this day. As Palestine was still a British mandate and no hint of military flying could be shown, we operated from Sde Dov in the guise of a flying club. The field was reached via a dirt road that crossed over a rickety wooden bridge put up by the management of the electric corporation. The corporation charged us a toll of ten piastre each time we crossed the bridge over the narrow Yarkon River. The field was next to the electric-power station with its large chimney. We had one hangar and a tiny wooden hut, which served as our changing room and store for our flying kit. In time, someone appeared without warning and in a true spirit of private enterprise, began to serve us tea and biscuits at a price until someone at headquarters put his foot down and to our regret removed him.
A large, hollow wooden cube painted in black-and-white squares was brought to the field and served as our control tower. Shmuel, a former Belgia
n Air Force navigator, acted as our flying controller. Not having any radio equipment, he used an Aldis lamp to give us a green for “go” and red for “stop.” One mechanic saw to the line maintenance of our small fleet.
We operated entirely clandestinely from Sde Dov. At that time, as the area was still under British mandatory occupation, a British army motor-transport unit used the field as a base. One of my tasks was to shout our identity in English to the British soldier guarding the entrance to the field as we arrived from our billets every morning in a large taxi.
The airfield’s single runway ran east to west toward the sea and was also the main approach to the sands on the beach north of Tel Aviv. Quite often, we had to stop takeoffs and landings when a long line of trucks would form to use the runway. They came for the fine building sand near the sea. It was a reminder that we were in the Middle East when we sometimes saw long trains of camels making their way along the side of the runway from the beach, their saddlebags loaded with sacks of sand.
Our billet was in a hostel in north Tel Aviv used for trade union and kibbutz members who came to the city to study and to attend seminars. Accommodations were on the second floor of the modern building, usually three or four to a room. The atmosphere was suffused with the wholesome feeling of a kibbutz. It was rough but aesthetic, clean and businesslike and run by old Yishuv Slav types, who had such an overwhelming impact on the original molding of Israel and whose influence remains to this day.
After having eaten English breakfasts and prepared meals all my life at my boarding school and in the SAAF, I was baffled by my first encounter with the Israeli breakfast in the dining room. Cold hardboiled eggs, rye bread, which we had to slice ourselves from the loaf, white cheese, and fresh vegetables, the latter not served as a salad but in large basins on the tables. We chose the vegetables we fancied and then peeled the cucumbers, cut up the peppers and tomatoes, very communal and kibbutzlike. I made the acquaintance of a kibbutz custom, the kolboinik, into which we threw all our peels, egg shells, and other debris at the table.
