New Heavens

by Boris Senior

  I flew in a Lockheed Constellation of the Israel Air Force with a young American transport captain, Larry Raab. Our course to Czechoslovakia from Israel was via Corsica where we refueled. This refueling arrangement in Corsica and the tacit cooperation of the French at that time allowed the undercover airlift to exist. From there it was only about three hours to Czechoslovakia.

  This was my first visit to Czechoslovakia and to the Israeli arms airlift base in the ancient village of Zatec. I was astonished to find in Zatec, behind the communist Iron Curtain, an airfield occupied by Israeli liaison men and a boisterous crowd of hard-drinking airmen, mostly American Jews. The leader of the American B-17 crews was a powerfully built former New York policeman, Ray Kurtz.

  He was a bit older than me and very self-confident. When we met at the Stalingrad Hotel and I introduced myself he said, “No one is going to tell me where to fly my aircraft.” He then ignored both me and the written operational order I had brought. Such was discipline at that wild time, for there were no ranks and no real command structure in the air force. Orders were carried out by persuasion or threats. In this case the fact that I was a fighter pilot did not help much either for these were bomber pilots with their own opinions about fighter pilots. We had very little contact after the initial cold shoulder he gave me, but he eventually obeyed my operational orders regarding the approach to the target as well as the targets themselves.

  The B-17s took off on the raid shortly after I arrived back in Israel. They flew in loose formation from Zatec to the Adriatic, on the way edging into Albanian airspace. The Albanian anti-aircraft batteries fired at them to no effect, then they headed out to sea. There was oxygen in only one of the bombers, and it made for the main target of Cairo at high altitude while the other two bombed the Egyptian air base at El Arish. There were other mishaps on the flight including one near-fatal event. A crew member, trying to repair a fault in the bomb bay of one of the B-17s, fell and got stuck in one of the bomb bays with half of his body hanging out below the fuselage at 12,000 feet. He held on for dear life while the slipstream buffeted and tugged at his body, but the crew managed to pull him back into the aircraft.

  FAROUK OFF THE TEL AVIV COAST

  Chief of Staff Yigael Yadin’s younger brother was Mattie Sukenik. He was a tall, sandy-haired young Sabra with a light brown mustache. He was one of the early Palmach pilots and I had taken an immediate liking to him. Unfortunately, he was washed out of his Palmach pilot’s course when it was discovered that he was color blind, and I took him as my bomb-chucker. He sat beside me on raids holding the bombs on his lap and twirling his long mustache as he waited for my signal to throw the bombs over the side. He had to arm the bombs by pulling a fuse, sometimes with an alarming audible detonation when we arrived over the target. He would then throw the bombs out of the right-hand window or through the luggage-loading hatch behind me. In those days I had contact on a daily basis with his brother Yigael Yadin who once confided to me that he was sure nothing would happen to his brother as long as he flew with me. Those were prophetic words.

  We normally went on bombing missions with either the window or the right-hand door removed. In the earlier missions, we did the chucking ourselves, but later on found it better to employ someone especially for that purpose. When we approached Kfar Etzion while it was surrounded and cut off from the rest of the Yishuv, we had to dive low to deliver ammunition and medical supplies. Our missions often had mixed results owing to inaccurate dropping. Later on, bomb racks with electrical releases were fitted on the Bonanza; they provided much greater accuracy. I began to fly without a bomb-chucker.

  Early in June 1948, Mattie and I were lunching at Café Kassit on Dizengoff Street. By this time the two bomb racks fitted under the fuselage of my Bonanza made possible much more accurate bombing and Mattie was flying as bomb-chucker with other pilots. Suddenly a waiter came up to me saying, “There is an urgent message for you from general headquarters.” I hurried to the phone and was shocked to hear that Egyptian vessels were heading for the Tel Aviv coast in an attempt to land invading troops. The threat meant that we were in serious danger, for apart from the token forces of the Kiryati Brigade, there were no troops available to meet an invasion in the Tel Aviv area. Obviously, the Egyptians possessed enough intelligence information to know that this populous heart of the Jewish state couldn’t defend itself against a combined operation landing.

  I ran to my Jeep. Mattie had just learned to drive, and he begged me to let him drive me to the airfield. I did not refuse him, though I knew that he had been driving only a short time. Sadly that decided his fate.

  I telephoned general headquarters, and we agreed that I would carry out a reconnaissance to give them a report of what was happening. I took off in the Bonanza, and as I crossed the coast I saw below me a small ship of ours wallowing slowly toward the west with one man on the bridge manning a solitary machine gun. The air force was not the only branch of the Israeli forces that had to make do with ridiculously inadequate weapons.

  We climbed to 2,000 feet, and I was shaken to see less than six kilometers from the coast a naval flotilla approaching Tel Aviv. The invading force consisted of one large naval vessel, a tank-landing craft, and an escort ship. As soon as my aircraft approached, they turned to face me and I saw from their wake that they had increased their speed. The large ship, which I subsequently discovered was the flagship of the Egyptian navy, was well equipped with anti-aircraft guns. As soon as I approached, the sky was filled with shell bursts. I circled out of range of their guns and had a good look at them. It was amusing to see the three large vessels increasing to maximum speed and turning to face my relatively harmless Bonanza every time I headed to them from a different angle. I decided to attack them and, after climbing to 4,000 feet, went into a steep turn and dived. Throughout the encounter we were so close to shore that the Tel Aviv beachfront was in full view.

  I released my two bombs and pulled up and away from the exploding anti-aircraft shells in a weaving skidding pattern. When I had settled down out of range of their guns, I circled and observed the results, noting the explosions of my two bombs in the water close to the flagship but probably not near enough to do any damage. I returned to Sde Dov, reported my findings to general headquarters, and bombed up for another sortie. There were a mere thirty minutes between sorties. The second attempt was better, for one bomb landed in the water close to the big flagship and the second was a direct hit on the ship. The vessel slowed appreciably and ceased turning to face me as I flew around it, indicating that the steering was damaged.

  On returning to the field, I sent off our twin-engine Rapide carrying a large number of small bombs, which it dropped in a long stick. In the Fairchild I sent one of the young ex-Palmach pilots, David Sprinzak, accompanied by Mattie as bomb-chucker. After two approaches the Fairchild suddenly plunged into the sea. I went out to search for it but found only wreckage floating on the sea near the shore. My bomb-chucker partner Mattie died when he should have been off duty but, instead, insisted on driving me to the airfield.

  Recently, I learned that Mattie and David were probably shot down by a Hawker Fury fighter-bomber on loan from the Iraqi Air Force after radio calls for assistance from the flagship to their El Arish air force base. In Independence Park in Tel Aviv, there is a large statue dedicated to the flyers of 1948. It was put up some fifteen years after Mattie and David were shot down. It is close to the shore near the water where they were hit, and for me it is a memorial to David and Mattie. I pass by it occasionally and it still haunts me. To this day I have a clear image in my mind of dear Mattie sitting beside me during our drops of ammunition and medical supplies to Kfar Etzion. I picture him waving and blowing kisses to the kibbutzniks from the opening on his side of the aircraft.

  Because my Bonanza was the only one fitted with an electrical bomb rack, I know my bomb was the only one that hit the ship. After my bombing run, it turned sluggishly into a southerly direction and made slow progress at much reduced
speed toward the Ashkelon coast, where it was sunk by the brave men of the secret Flotilla Number 13 of the Israel Navy.

  The morning after the battle with the Egyptian invasion force, I was having lunch at the Galey Yam restaurant on the sea front. It had a full view of the action that had taken place. Not all our volunteers from overseas were modest, committed young men. We had a few of the usual bull-shitters and boasters too. At the next table was a Mahal volunteer who was loudly relating how he had seen the whole action from the seafront the day before saying, “I would have attacked the Egyptian ships differently. I would have flown in at low level and skidded my bombs into the ships and not have tried to dive-bomb them. These guys don’t know a thing about bombing a ship.” I listened without saying a word. The efficacy of our attack was to be seen clearly with the limping flag ship wallowing away to the south and the others turning tail and escaping from the scene of the engagement as quickly as they could. I doubt whether the loud-mouthed volunteer had ever seen any action anywhere, and I did not subsequently see him flying from any of our airfields.

  His boastful comments were not typical of the volunteers who came to help during Israel’s baptism of fire. Most of them were fighters deeply committed to the survival of the Israeli homeland 2,000 years after Rome completed the conquest of Judea.

  No doubt, some of the volunteers were seeking adventure and escape from their humdrum civilian lives after they had been fighting in World War II, but the majority were fired by idealistic motives. One would have expected that, among the pilots who had not long before been on active service in the allied forces, there might been much flotsam and jetsam from the war years. It is surprising that, on the contrary, the human material that came was made up largely of dedicated volunteers.

  In general, expectations were to a large extent colored by what had been told by those who recruited them. There was a minimum of friction and disappointment among the volunteers from South Africa. I was in the fortunate position of having been in the Air Service before returning to South Africa to recruit the first batch of volunteers. I had been careful to impress upon everyone that there would be virtually no pay and that conditions would be Spartan in the extreme.

  The recruits from South Africa were the first Mahal volunteers to arrive and were the forerunners of many hundreds who came in the following months to take part in the War of Independence. It is also of note that, by chance, the three aircraft that foiled the attempted Egyptian invasion of the Tel Aviv shore were among those purchased in far-off South Africa. They had survived the difficult flight up the African continent to Israel and the Egyptian bombings of Sde Dov on 15 May.

  On 11 June 1948, shortly after the attempted invasion of Tel Aviv, a truce was declared between Israel and the Arabs. Two days later, a large white DC-3 was seen approaching Sde Dov from the southeast. Our anti-aircraft gunners took up positions for we were on edge expecting more attacks from the Egyptians. I barely had time to get them to hold fire when a transport with the letters KLM printed largely on its fuselage landed. When the door of the aircraft opened, two passengers made their way down the steps.

  Not knowing who they were, I greeted the man who was evidently the leader as graciously as possible under the circumstances. He was a tall, slim man with cold, blue eyes, and he looked somewhat disdainfully at my armband. No one in the Israel forces yet had ranks or insignia, and I had ordered a dark blue armband with red Hebrew lettering stating “field commander” and another for my squadron commander. The leader’s companion was dark skinned and for some reason I decided (erroneously) that he was one of ours, perhaps someone from the Foreign Office.

  Still mystified, I served them tea in my office. After a while a message came that the tall man was Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish United Nations mediator. Being so far removed both in time and geography from my skiing trip to Sweden in 1945, and in the stiff, formal atmosphere that prevailed during this meeting, I did not mention that I had met his niece and we had become friendly while we were on that skiing holiday.

  I summoned the largest taxi I had at the field and told the driver to take them to the Gat Rimon, which was the best hotel in Tel Aviv at the time. As I accompanied them to the vehicle, I dropped behind so that I could have a word with the dark-skinned gentleman. I complained about not having received any indication from headquarters as to what to do with Count Bernadotte. I didn’t realize he was the second UN mediator, Dr. Ralph Bunche.

  Bernadotte was assassinated shortly afterward near Jerusalem, by the Stern Group, the most radical of the underground forces. Later it was explained to me that they had managed to gain access to one of his diaries and that the Stern Group suspected him of being an anti-Semite, who was planning to sell us down the river to the Arabs. I doubt if there is any agreement about his true role, though in the short time I spent with him he was cold and unfriendly.

  ALTALENA

  My final encounter with the Irgun occurred in June 1948. It was right after the Irgun had reached agreement about joining the newly established Israeli armed forces. In the preceding months, the Irgun had been busy with massive acquisitions of arms in Europe for its units in Israel. The main object of the arms acquisition was for use in the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem. The Irgun made a deal with the French government according to which the Irgun would be allowed to load men, arms, and armed cars on a 5,000-ton vessel, the Altalena, at port in France. The vessel had been used in World War II as a tank landing craft. The Irgun promised support for France in its conflict in the Maghreb. The French were unhappy at having been ousted from their traditional role in Syria and Lebanon, and were not adverse to helping anti-British forces. Everything was done in absolute secrecy. Discovery of the Altalena project by the Arabs would have been a serious blow because it was breaking the Anglo-American embargo on the passage of arms and military personnel to the Middle East.

  On the night of 19 June, the Altalena arrived off the Israel coast and made for Kfar Vitkin, a settlement forty kilometers north of Tel Aviv. The Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion knew of the ship’s pending arrival, but differences between the Irgun and Ben Gurion arose concerning the agreement between the Irgun and the government about distribution of the arms. Because of misunderstandings, which had their roots in the deep antagonism that had existed for years between the Haganah and the Irgun, a profoundly sad situation developed. The Irgun wanted to use the arms and the personnel for their comrades who were fighting desperately against the Arabs in Jerusalem. They refused to hand over control of the ship and its contents to the legitimate government. Based on mutual distrust, Ben Gurion and the army chiefs feared a coup d’état by the Irgun. A force of 600 soldiers was sent to Kfar Vitkin and the army refused to let the Altalena unload its cargo of arms and volunteers. Shots were fired at the Irgun fighters and the Israel Navy vessels fired at the Altalena. The volunteers on board the Altalena returned fire.

  While all this was going on, I was asleep in the Yarden Hotel in Tel Aviv, exhausted as usual from the endless night flying. I was awakened by someone who told me what was going on and warned me there were rumors the Irgun was about to try to take over control of Israel. The news was so incredible that I believed it only when I saw an armed soldier posted outside my door to protect me, as commander of the main air unit of the country, from the Irgun.

  This bizarre situation in which I, as a secret member of the Irgun, was being guarded and protected from the Irgun by the army was untenable. Feverishly, I sought a way out of the dilemma. I got into my staff car and rushed to the headquarters of the Irgun in the former Freund Hospital on Lilienblum Street in Tel Aviv. As I drove alone through the darkened streets of the city, I tried desperately to find a solution. Only an occasional military police vehicle could be seen.

  I found the Irgun headquarters in darkness; there were no guards at the entrance. It seemed deserted, but I found one of Begin’s deputies, Haim Landau, seated alone at an old-fashioned switchboard. I said, “Haim Landau, I am being guarded against
a supposed coup d’état by the Irgun. What is going on?” He looked at me in astonishment and said, “I don’t know anything. It’s ridiculous. All I know is that there has been some shooting at Kfar Vitkin, and Begin has gone there to clarify matters.”

  I returned to my quarters at the Yarden Hotel, where the night porter told me there was an urgent call for me to telephone general headquarters. I drove to Sde Dov, and from the operations room got on to headquarters. I was ordered to prepare three aircraft immediately to bomb the Altalena. Now my predicament was overwhelming. On the one hand, I had to obey orders from my commanders, but no force on earth could have made me bomb the Irgun ship with its complement of Jewish volunteers. Later, I discovered that the former leader of the Irgun forces in Europe, my close friend “Benjamin,” was in command of the Altalena.

  I set about locating two other pilots, who unknown to anyone in the air force, were former Irgun members. Ezer was not available. Fortune smiled, for two of them were nearby in Tel Aviv and I brought them to Sde Dov quickly. I was not sure what I would do when the order came to bomb the ship. I considered various stratagems such as deliberately missing the target or sabotaging the aircraft before takeoff.

  I consented grudgingly when, an hour later, an order came to fly over the ship and circle it while flashing navigation lights without dropping bombs. I took off and made my way along the coastline in the pitch-black darkness, the sea and the sky merging in the pervading gloom. I thought of my comrades far below in the blackness, surrounded and embattled by their own government’s troops. Now they were about to be entombed in their ship at the very moment of their triumph, having finally reached Israel with their desperately needed arms and fighting personnel. I was in agony. No! I could never bomb my fellow Jews.