New Heavens

by Boris Senior

  Unknown to me my mother had in the meantime arrived in Israel from Johannesburg, worried at not having heard from me for some time, and was overjoyed to see me. When she had first arrived in Tel Aviv and inquired as to my whereabouts, she was met by my friends and associates initially with a blank stare and then some cock-and-bull story of my being away in the Negev. Strangely enough, her flight, like all flights from South Africa to Israel at the time, passed through Athens and she had spent the night in the Grande Bretagne hotel a few days before I was released.

  101 SQUADRON

  After getting back to Israel, I was posted to 101 Squadron. I originally had been offered the command of Base Number Three, which was to be at Kfar Sirkin and the airfield from which our new Czech Spitfire squadron was to operate. During my time at Kunevice, I spent hours planning this undertaking, but when forward units of the Iraqi army advanced to within shelling range of Sirkin, the plan was scrapped. The Israel Air Force would make do with one fighter squadron equipped with its original complement of Messerschmitts, plus the Spitfires ferried from Czechoslovakia and three P-51 Mustangs now at our disposal. I was disappointed at losing my intended command of a second operational base but was quite happy to be a fighter pilot again and part of 101 Squadron.

  Of the original six Spitfires that had departed Czechoslovakia on our first ferry flight, only three arrived safely. One crashed and two remained in Greece. When the three remaining fighters arrived in Israel, a crowd of bigwigs, including the prime minister, met the flight. As is known the Spitfire has no toilet facilities, and when one of them touched down after six hours’ flying, the pilot pushed everyone aside and ran quickly to a corner to relieve himself before shaking hands with the dignitaries.

  101 Fighter Squadron was based at Herzlia Airfield, a short rubble-covered strip at an angle to a longer one on the rich black loam of the agricultural land in the area. It was some fifteen kilometers north of Tel Aviv and next to Kfar Shmaryahu, a pleasant village of chicken farmers who hailed mostly from Germany. The pilots were billeted in the village in pastoral-like pensions, which usually catered for family holidays. The villagers were mostly former German professionals and not real farming yokels. One of the farmers turned his personal book collection into a lending library for us to use. Not surprisingly, our main fare consisted of chicken.

  The peace and tranquility of the village and its European atmosphere made it highly attractive to us, and we spent many happy hours there. I was so taken with Kfar Shmaryahu that I vowed that if I ever settled in Israel I would make my home in the village. And I did. The occasional drunken parties we held were taken in their stride with equanimity by the staid farmers of the village. We soon felt at home, and one of our pilots bought a horse he named Gibor. I heard him raging bitterly at the paymaster when, as usually happened, pay was delayed for weeks, saying, “I have to feed Gibor. How for God’s sake do you expect me to wait for my pay?”

  We soon started flying operational missions. The squadron flew the Israel Air Force’s first ground attack mission on 29 May 1948. An Egyptian armored column headed for Tel Aviv had gotten as far as Isdud, present-day Ashdod. After overcoming Kfar Darom and Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, the column, according to the boastful Egyptian radio commentator, would be in Tel Aviv within forty-eight hours. Indeed, when the Messerschmitts attacked, the Egyptians were a scant forty kilometers from the city. Our Czech-built fighters stopped the enemy’s advance, but not without cost.

  During that operation, we lost my close friend from the early days in the Air Service, South African Eddie Cohen, flying one of the Messerschmitts. After Eddie’s death one of his friends, an American Mahal pilot from Atlantic City named Coleman Goldstein, asked me to arrange a scholarship at the Haifa Technion in Eddie’s name. Unfortunately, the sum Coleman had, the entire savings of his Mahal salary from the day he came to Israel, was too small to do anything worthwhile, and we had to shelve the scheme. This intended donation by Coleman is one example of the camaraderie among the Mahal flyers.

  Eddie was the first of the original nine pilots of the Sherut Avir to be killed in action. I knew he had crashed not far from Hatzor in the southern part of the Sharon plain, where we eventually moved with 101 Squadron from Herzlia. In November, during a lull in the fighting, I took off in a Piper Cub and found the crashed Messerschmitt not far from Hatzor.

  I landed in a field near the crashed plane, but a deep wadi prevented me from getting near to it. I could not see any signs of a body, and as I had to keep the engine running, I took off immediately and reported my findings to Southern Command after landing. Hours later, the army telephoned to tell me that I was extremely fortunate for I had landed in the middle of a minefield. Eventually, the minefield was cleared and Eddie’s body was found. He is buried next to the air force memorial in the Jerusalem hills. His mother came from Johannesburg to attend the funeral. I was deeply touched to hear her mumbling “Eddikins, Eddikins” while his body was lowered into the grave.

  My only other contact with Southern Command was when two of us from the fighter squadron were invited to visit their headquarters in the village of Gederah a few kilometers from our field at Hatzor. The commander of the Southern Front at the time was General Yigael Alon, a well-known former Palmach commander. He had succeeded Yitzhak Sadeh. The atmosphere of the headquarters struck me as being very Palmach and kibbutzlike. In August 1948 Alon had become commander of the Southern Front. It was the most crucial front in the fighting at the time, because Egypt with its large standing army was the most dangerous of the enemies.

  Alon’s headquarters were located in a small house and gave the impression of being businesslike and efficient with no trace of rank or special respect for the senior officers. While I was talking to Alon, the door to his room opened and in walked his deputy. I caught my breath, for here was the epitome of a Herrenfolk German officer. He was wearing a battledress without any insignia of rank like all of us, but the impression was unmistakable. He had a shock of blonde hair, steely blue eyes, and a ruddy, fair complexion with a turned-up nose. He was born a Sabra and his name was Yitzhak Rabin.

  After the war Rabin was chief of operations at general headquarters while I had headed the air operations in the air force. We were in contact over a long period. Neither of us at that time could have foreseen that our families would in the space of a few years be linked and we should have a common grandson, Michael, after the marriage of his son to my daughter.

  In time, Rabin became chief of staff of the Israel Army and commanded the forces that achieved the brilliant victory over the Arab armies in the Six-Day War of 1967. He eventually became prime minister of Israel. As the world knows, Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing, Israeli orthodox Jew in November 1995. Of course, Rabin’s death was a great national loss as well as a personal loss for both me and my family.

  Many of the Mahal volunteers who came from the West were Jews who had served in the Allied air forces, but there were also a few Gentiles. Most of them came because they identified with the Jewish cause. Three of our pilots were former Battle of Britain fighter pilots. Some were Canadians, some South African Air Force veterans, and others Americans with varying degrees of combat experience. There was no friction between the Mahalniks, and the Gentile pilots mixed happily with the Jews. In many cases these volunteers became very close to Israel.

  The pilots of 101 Squadron were a wild lot. The staff of the Park Hotel on Hayarkon Street in Tel Aviv hastily removed chairs, glasses, and cushions as soon as they spotted a bunch of our pilots in their red baseball caps. Many of the hotel’s furnishings were to be seen in our mess at the base. Apart from the drinking and the wild parties, we sometimes had to steal vehicles to get back to base. For many months Israel’s sole fighter squadron’s combat operations depended upon stolen cars. Such was the shortage of transport in Israel for months on end. One of the cars was a black Dodge belonging to the minister of health, but as a gesture of support of the government, we unanimously agreed to retur
n it to its owner.

  Among the Americans was a pilot by the name of Wayne Peake. He came from the Deep South, and his accent left his origins in no doubt. We called him “Hillbilly Boy.” He shot down the “Shufti Kite” (In Arabic, Shufti means “look”). This was an RAF Mosquito XVI, which flew over Israel and our field at very high altitude day after day on photo-reconnaissance. For a long time, we were frustrated by the Mossie and often scrambled to intercept the fast airplane, without success.

  On 20 November 1948, Wayne intercepted and shot the intruder down into the sea. On that occasion, he was scrambled in time, but the great height of the Mosquito was a problem because we did not have oxygen. Wayne became so disorientated by hypoxia—oxygen starvation—that he reported he had shot down a Halifax four-engine bomber.

  When Wayne Peake died in the United States some thirty-five years after the War of Independence, he left instructions in his will that he be buried in Israel. A few of us former 101 Squadron pilots attended the service in the Christian section of the Israeli war cemetery near Haifa. Also the Canadian World War II ace Buzz Buerling and another Canadian Gentile volunteer are also buried in the same cemetery. Buerling had been one of the highest-scoring British aces and had particularly distinguished himself over Malta in 1942.

  Another enemy aircraft that was shot down was a Transjordanian Rapide flying from Egypt to Amman. It crossed into our territory, and one of our pilots was scrambled and shot him down. According to our pilot, he warned the Rapide’s pilot time and again by firing warning shots, which were ignored. We subsequently learned that one of the passengers was a well-known British press correspondent. The pilot should have chosen another route to his destination instead of over our lines in an enemy plane in the middle of the war.

  Another Rapide, which trespassed over Israeli territory, came from Egypt after the end of the war, in June 1951, but on this occasion, the pilot heeded the instructions of the interceptor and landed in Beersheba. It turned out that it was one of the two Rapides I had bought in South Africa that had been confiscated by the Egyptians while flying to Israel in May 1948.

  One incident gives some idea of the difficulties the Mahal volunteers faced, besides being far from their homes and their environment, not getting regular pay and fighting a war with comrades in arms with no common language. One 101 pilot was an American called Rubinfeld. He had served in the U.S. Army Air Forces and had a dark complexion. He did not know a word of Hebrew, and when his Messerschmitt was damaged by anti-aircraft fire, he baled out over the sea not far from Natanya. We believe he was shot down by Iraqi ground fire.

  He landed near the coast and swam ashore. There was an Israeli army unit on the shore and almost no one had seen or heard of an Israeli fighter plane at that time early in the war. Because Rubinfeld was dark-skinned, they likely assumed he was an Egyptian. They covered him with rifles and cross-questioned him in a threatening manner. Rubinfeld knew no Hebrew, and the soldiers knew no English. The poor guy feared for his life and started shouting loudly “Gefillte fish, gefillte fish.” This worked like a charm, and the soldiers helped him into dry clothes and brought him back to his squadron in Herzlia.

  The Herzlia airstrip was in the middle of an orange orchard, and we camouflaged our aircraft among the trees. We covered them with striped netting so well that neither the British nor the Egyptian reconnaissance aircraft found us during the war. One day I flew a Piper Cub to the long dirt strip at Kibbutz Ma’abarot, which I had used to land the Spitfire. On the way back with my squadron-mate Giddy Lichtman, we saw a column of smoke from the direction of our Herzlia strip and three fighter aircraft circling it.

  Thinking that the Egyptians had discovered our secret field and presuming that they had already bombed it, I dived low to try to escape detection by the enemy fighters. After a short while, we realized that the circling aircraft were from our own squadron. The source of the huge pall of smoke was from one of our Messerschmitts burning near the runway. When we landed I jumped out of my aircraft, yelling loudly to find out why no one was doing anything to get the pilot out. I was curtly told that exploding ammunition prevented anyone from getting close to the Messerschmitt. The pilot was my close comrade Moddie Alon, who had shortly before been in the Greek prison with me.

  To this day no one is sure what happened. Moddie had returned from a mission in the south, had been able to get only one of his wheels down, and after circling the field twice, he had suddenly nose-dived into the ground. I think he was wounded and lost consciousness while trying to get the other wheel down.

  At the time of his death he was the commander of 101 Squadron and had a great future ahead of him. His wife Mina, six months pregnant at the time, was nearby in the village, having come to spend some time with him the day before. A daughter was subsequently born and she bore his name and became our squadron mascot and a constant reminder of Moddie.

  AIR BATTLES

  The contrast between combat in the air and the everyday normality of our home in the pretty village when we returned often lent an unreal aspect to our days. Only in an air force does one encounter such contrasts during wartime. You wrap yourself in a flight suit, don a leather flying helmet, and after strapping on a parachute, take off, meet the enemy, and if you are lucky, return back home in less than an hour.

  Toward the end of the war, our missions were only occasionally to strafe or bomb at low level as in the past. Most of our operations now became fighter missions, either escorting our bombers or patrolling in pairs looking for enemy aircraft.

  As Israeli forces pushed the Egyptians back into Sinai, our sorties took longer. After we gained air superiority with our Spitfires from Czechoslovakia, we felt more secure from attacking fighters. We flew into the farthest reaches of the Sinai desert and penetrated enemy territory at the Suez Canal. We bypassed the main Egyptian air base of El Arish and continued over the forbidding wilderness of Sinai into Egyptian territory.

  By October 1948 the squadron moved from Herzlia north of Tel Aviv to Hatzor, formerly a large RAF base closer to the main front of air activity in the south. Though most of our operations consisted of patrols and escorting C-46 “bombers” and B-17 Flying Fortresses, there were more dogfights in the last days of December 1948 and early January 1949. Our squadron’s Spitfires, the remaining Messerschmitts, and two P-51s ran into Egyptian fighters on a number of occasions without losing an aircraft in the engagements. We shot down several Egyptian planes. I ran into Egyptian fighters a few times.

  The first aerial engagement I had in the War of Independence was when I shot down a Dakota over El Arish. I spotted it as I was leading a flight of two P-51s supported by my squadron mate Rudy Augarten. I saw the aircraft far below in the circuit and couldn’t resist the attack despite it being within the confines of the main enemy base. I shouted to Rudy, who grunted in return. Uneasy at venturing right into the lion’s jaws, I feared they would shoot me down right over their field at such a low level. A moment’s thought made me realize they could not open up on me with their anti-aircraft guns while I was in their circuit without endangering their own planes. I dived steeply toward the airfield.

  Though I had my back to the Dakota from time to time, I struggled to keep him firmly in sight the whole time as I spiraled down from 10,000 feet to a few hundred feet. When I got down to his level, I approached at high speed from right behind him and made one long pass, firing from almost point-blank range while he was concentrating on landing. Rudy followed me down, firing, too.

  The Dakota pilot aborted his approach and force-landed, wheels-up in the sand just outside the airfield. Though it was in the midst of the war, I did not feel very proud for it was a defenseless transport on its final approach. When I saw that he had crashed, I pulled up immediately after firing my guns and turned steeply to get out of range of the antiaircraft guns at the airfield. I did not see a single anti-aircraft shell and realized that our attack was a complete surprise. I subsequently heard that the plane was piloted by a senior staff member of
their headquarters, and though there were many wounded in the Dak, no one was killed.

  Some years ago an American journalist who was writing a history of the air war was invited to the home of a retired wing commander in the Egyptian Air Force. While waiting for dinner and seeing a bullet displayed on the mantelpiece, he asked what it was. On being told that it was a bullet taken out of the Egyptian’s chest when he was shot down during the Israeli War of Independence, he asked for exact details. When he heard the date, aircraft type, and time, he realized it was the Dakota I had shot down, for I had described the incident to him some time before in detail. I have tried—unsuccessfully so far—to locate the Egyptian so I can invite him to visit Israel.

  I had two more aerial engagements with the Egyptians. In November 1948 my Mahal squadron mate Sid Cohen and I were patrolling near the Mediterranean coast keeping our eyes peeled at what was happening on the ground. But most of the time we concentrated on the sky in search of enemy aircraft. We weaved from side to side as we each covered the other’s tail from attack. When I spotted two fighter aircraft silhouetted against the fawn-colored desert below and to the east of us, I prepared for the dogfight, increased engine RPMs, moved to rich mixture for more power at lower altitude, armed my guns, and turned steeply to get behind them. At the same time I shouted to Sid, who replied that he saw them too.

  We turned to the east to come out of the sun. Owing to the proximity of the main Egyptian base of El Arish almost directly below us, we wasted no time in making a positive identification. After a quick look to ensure that we were in no danger of being jumped by fighters at a higher altitude, we dove to attack.