The Lion's Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War

by Steven Pressfield

  No pilot will fault another for a failure of navigation in circumstances so extreme. It happens. But I will buy drinks all night long for any formation leader who has the balls and the presence of mind to regroup and get it right.

  Major Ran Ronen, Squadron 119 commander:

  06:15. The sun is up but it’s still too early to board the planes. I drive to the hangars to check one last time with the technical crews. I love ground crews, and I make my pilots treat them with respect and care. They are more nervous than we are. They fly with us, in a sense that the non-airman cannot understand, and they die with us, too. As I enter the hangar where my plane waits, a sergeant stands alone in a shaft of sunlight, eyes closed, facing toward Jerusalem in his morning prayer, with his tallit shawl over his shoulders atop his uniform.

  My aircraft this morning is Mirage No. 58. Beneath its fuselage hang two 500-kilogram bombs—more than a thousand pounds each. We have two missiles, Israeli-made Shafrirs, but we will strafe and fight air-to-air primarily with our twin 30-millimeter cannons. The belts hold 250 rounds, 125 for each gun. The technical officer and his ground crew have been working on the aircraft and its systems all night. I go over all details with the ground crew. Check the flight equipment, rescue gear, communications sets, and my pistol, including an extra clip.

  06:45.

  You mount to the cockpit of a Mirage from the left side up a seven-step ladder. At the top of the ladder you place the heel of your left palm on the steel upper rim of the windscreen and your right palm on the headrest at the back of your ejection seat. Securing yourself on these points, you swing your legs in, straddling the control stick, and slide your weight down into the seat. The shoulder harness has a strap that goes over each shoulder to secure you to the ejection seat. You are wearing your flight overalls, your rescue belt, and your G suit. The throttle is on your left, a hand grip atop a short shaft that slides in a fore-to-aft track. Push it forward to apply power. To light the afterburner, twist the grip outboard as you push it forward. A pilot will say “Push it up” when he means “Go faster.”

  There are two radios in a Mirage. Red is the squadron channel, green the controller’s. You talk to your pilots on one, to ground control on the other. Both are on now, but we may not touch them. Strict radio silence will be maintained all the way to the targets. We will not even talk to the tower.

  Up front on the windscreen is the gunsight with its pipper. A switch toggles the targeting setting between air-to-air and air-to-ground. On the weapons panel, ordnance switches arm the bombs and cannons. All are pointed down now: off. Atop the grip end of the control stick is the “pickle” button—it looks like a pickle—for releasing bombs and firing missiles. You flip the mechanism with your thumb. Squeeze a trigger on the stick with your forefinger to fire the guns.

  We are below ground level now, in a secure hangar. A ramp leads up and out through the big sliding doors and along lanes between revetments to the runways. I cinch the straps of my shoulder harness tight, helped by the crew chief, who hands me my helmet. Back at the squadron office, the combat operations officer has given me a note with the updated takeoff time. Because of radio silence, any last-minute changes must be communicated in person or by note.

  Ready.

  Close the canopy and push the starter button; the engine’s RPMs climb and the red lights come on, one after the other. A ground crewman disconnects external power and signs, “Ready to roll.” I nudge the throttle forward but the plane doesn’t budge. The bombs and fuel tanks make it heavy. I apply more power. Here we go, slowly up the ramp and out into the sun.

  Rafi Sivron is the planner of Operation Moked:

  Air force headquarters is sited in the Kirya military campus in Tel Aviv. The operations bunker underground is called “the Pit.” I have been down these steps a thousand times but never on a morning like this.

  Here is Moshe Dayan in the seat that is normally mine. Next to him sits Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin. Operations chief Ezer Weizman is two seats over, beside Yak Nevo, and down front, alone at the central map table, sits Motti Hod, commander of the air force.

  My watch reads 07:07. I can recite from memory which squadrons are still on the ground awaiting their takeoff times and which are already in the air, departing from which Israeli bases, commencing their routes to which enemy bases in Egypt and Sinai, to arrive on the dot of 07:45. But here in the Pit we can confirm nothing. The only thing coming from the radio speakers is static. A ruse to foil Egyptian surveillance has been put into play. Aircraft of the IAF’s flight school have been sent up, within Israeli airspace, with their radios set to the frequencies normally used by the operational squadrons. We can hear the training pilots now, doing their best imitations of a workday morning.

  In the Pit, no one jokes. The women in uniform stand silently beside the situation table. The scene looks like a World War II movie. The female soldiers use long-handled pointers to nudge the little airplane markers, each one representing a four-ship formation, across the map toward their targets. But they are guessing, too. Until the attacks begin and radio silence is broken, we can know nothing.

  Am I nervous? I am human. But my faith in the plan is total.

  The only issue is detection. Will Jordan’s British-built radar station on Mount Ajlun pick up our formations skimming at altitudes of 100 feet and less over the Mediterranean? If so, will they know what they’re seeing? Will they convey this to Egyptian Air Force headquarters? Will Egypt’s controllers believe them when and if they do?

  Will mischance befall our formations once they enter Egyptian airspace? I have designed the approach routes to avoid enemy radar, and the planes, of course, are flying so low that nothing electronic is likely to pick them up. But will they be spotted by eye, over the desert or the marshland of the delta, perhaps, by some alert young officer manning an observation post?

  Ran Ronen commands Mirage Squadron 119:

  I am first to the takeoff holding point. Aircraft are taxiing in an intricate choreography, executed in absolute radio silence. I check my watch. The note that the combat manager handed me says we have seven minutes till takeoff.

  Odd.

  That seems a long time.

  Here come my numbers two, three, and four—Shlomo Egozi, Eliezer “Layzik” Prigat, Asher Snir—taxiing into place.

  I glance to the combat operations officer’s note with its updated time.

  Six minutes to takeoff.

  At the far end of the runway I see a four-ship formation of Vautour fighter-bombers from Ramat David Air Base. They will take off right after us.

  The first Vautour begins to move. What’s wrong? Why is he starting out of order? The Vautour leader advances onto the runway, gaining speed. His three formation-mates follow.

  The bunch of schmucks! They’ve got the time wrong. They’re taking off out of order!

  I can’t alert the tower. Radio silence is sacred.

  Then it hits me.

  They’re not the schmucks—I am.

  I stare at the combat operations officer’s note, the one that was updated and handed to me back at the squadron.

  My watch reads 07:24.

  Out loud I calculate: “Flying time to target: twenty-six minutes. We must be over the target at 07:45 exactly.”

  I look back at the note.

  Its time is five minutes late.

  My heart is hammering. The instant the last Vautour passes, I power onto the runway, full afterburner, accelerating like a madman. Here come my formation-mates behind me. Do they know what has happened? No matter. I know.

  I am banking toward Palmachim on the coast. Treetop level. To my left, the formation cuts the corner, catching up with me.

  Planned speed is 420 knots—seven miles a minute. I push it up to 480. Eight miles a minute.

  “Keep cool and think straight.”

  We cannot be late over the target. The enemy
will have time to scramble. The whole war could be lost.

  Over the Mediterranean now. Convoys of IAF warplanes hug the surface, streaking as if on highways toward Egypt. How will my formation get through this traffic jam? Go over? We can’t. Enemy radar will pick us up.

  Pass under.

  There’s no other way.

  In moments like this, your body is shitting bricks but your head must stay cool and focused. Glance to your gauges? You can’t. Every ounce of concentration is required to keep glued to the horizon, flying parallel to the surface of the sea. You “take a photo.” A fraction of a second. Check your heading. Click. Check your watch. Click.

  We pass under a four-ship formation of Mystères.

  There is no navigation system in a Mirage. The only computer is between my ears, and it is crunching numbers furiously. The route over water is in three legs, which we navigate using only time, heading, and speed. Each five minutes at 480 knots gains us a minute over the planned speed of 420. We are burning fuel like crazy, but there is no alternative. By twenty-five minutes, we should have recovered all lost time.

  We fly in combat formation, leader up front, wingman on the right, numbers two and three left and slightly to the rear. Asher Snir is my number four. He will tell me later we are flying so tight to the surface of the Mediterranean that we kick up a wake.

  The slower planes are heading for targets closer in. My formation’s target, Inshas Air Base, is farther away, adjacent to the capital, Cairo.

  Now: beneath a four-ship formation of Ouragans.

  We pass under another of Super Mystères.

  Eleven minutes into the flight. We have made up three and a half minutes. Is our heading correct? We should cross the coast at Bardawill Lagoon.

  There it is.

  I have flown half a hundred reconnaissance missions over the delta. These will save us now.

  The coast. We’re over land now. Throttle forward to 540. We’ve made up most of the time. Canals and power lines whip beneath us. Farmers heading to the fields. They wave, thinking we’re Egyptians.

  The Nile delta is full of little towns, all alike.

  I’m looking for Fakos.

  Five hundred forty knots equals 270 meters per second. We are riding a rocket sled at the height of a clothesline.

  You pick waypoints that are unmistakable. A gas station, a junction of canals. Farm country will fool you. Low spots will flood, lagoons will drain. Below us: rows of palms. Are these the trees I’ve picked as an IP? Roofs of mud-brick houses boom into view and vanish beneath the nose of the plane.

  Fakos!

  07:44.

  We’re on time.

  Switches armed. Gunsights on air-to-ground.

  Ten seconds to “pull.”

  Now: Tug the stick into your belly, throttle up to full afterburner, 50-degree climb, the heavily loaded plane hesitates for a second; then the acceleration plasters you into the seat, the altimeter spins clockwise wildly. Your muscles tense inside the G suit; the gauge climbs through two, three, four but you have no time to look. Approaching 6,000 feet, you start gently to roll onto your back.

  Inverted, I see Cairo ahead. Inshas is one of the fields defending the capital. There it is!

  First destroy the main runway. Two bombs, 500 kilograms each. The first pair of Mirages will aim for a point two-thirds of the way down the runway; the second pair goes for one-third.

  Clouds obscure the field, but we can still see. Turn now. Line up on the runway. Don’t overturn. When a four-ship formation dives onto a target, the planes go in order: one, two, three, four. Radio silence is no longer necessary. “One, in,” says the leader. Two in, three in, four in, each pilot repeats.

  My nose is down now, I’m diving at 35 degrees exactly, put the green dot on the target and lead it. I guide the stick gently, looking all the time to the altitude. Twenty-seven hundred, wait a bit, feel the pickle button on the stick; wait a little longer, you are dropping more than a ton, the plane is going to get very light when you release. Now. Pull at one thousand, eyes all around, watch for triple-A. You’re pulling out of your dive and breaking hard, pulling heavy Gs, with antiaircraft fire zinging all around you.

  “One, out.”

  At 100 feet put the plane over and turn hard, full military power. A Mirage puts up a lovely scream in that moment. You are flying at 550 knots, lower than the roofs of the hangars, dodging power lines, searching for your number two while you line up for the second pass. Where are the parked MiGs? Take a photo with your eyes. You’re on the radio nonstop to your formation-mates: Watch out for that power line, I’ll take the last four, you take the next four. Behind you, you see and feel the bombs detonating.

  What is my state of mind? Am I calm? Hell no. I am focused to a pitch of intensity that only a lion feels in a charge or an eagle in a dive upon its prey.

  “Two, out.”

  “Three, out.”

  “Four, out.”

  Switch to guns.

  Bombs off, cannons on.

  We are in a wide loop now at 550 knots, one Mirage after another, turning through 270 degrees as we pull to a thousand feet.

  The Egyptian method of antiaircraft defense is not to shoot at each plane as it passes above their positions (we’re moving too fast for their guns to follow) but to erect a “curtain” of cannon fire through which our planes must pass. Climbing now to commence our first strafing run, we can see this curtain. Our four planes must dive through it.

  Beyond the antiaircraft fire waits our target: Egyptian MiGs on the ground. Because Inshas Air Base protects Cairo, it has the most planes and the best. Forty MiG-21s. A prize beyond reckoning.

  As we dive we can see the enemy pilots scrambling. Men are racing toward their planes. On the flight line, pilots are strapping into their cockpits.

  “There they are. We have caught them. Make every pass count.”

  The MiG-21s are parked beside the runway in sets of four. Line them up in your gunsights. Put your pipper just below the first plane. At 900 meters, squeeze. The 30-millimeter cannon fires twenty rounds per second. You can feel the bullets as they go. The swath of gunfire rakes the parked planes. I see blooms of flame, fireballs of blinding intensity, as I pull a tight 270-degree turn directly above and come back to attack again from a new angle.

  Two passes.

  Three.

  The antiaircraft fire is more intense than I had expected. But we are here. I see MiG-21s still intact on the tarmac. This chance may never come again, not just to get the planes but to get the pilots in the cockpits as well.

  I take our four ships through another pass and another. Five strafing runs. The plan calls for three, but I have made up my mind to keep attacking until I hear the next wave of Israeli planes commencing their bombing run.

  Every antiaircraft gun on the field is firing at us. Speed is our only protection. Each pilot is turning as fast and tight as the aircraft can handle. Pull to a thousand, find the line that puts you on the axis of the parked MiGs, then plant your pipper and tear them up.

  On the squadron channel I hear the next formation overhead, going into its dive.

  08:02. My four are all safe.

  We climb and head for home. As we reach altitude we can see, across the delta, dense columns of black smoke rising from the other airfields that have been hit by other squadrons in the first wave. Though I have believed heart and soul in Moked, the sight is beyond anything I have hoped for. The plan works! We are doing it!

  Stay alert.

  Don’t be too happy.

  Other MiGs may have scrambled; now is the most dangerous hour.

  I am not thinking of my family, nor of my children, nor the air force, nor even the Jewish people. Only the mission. Concentrate. Do it. Do it well. Don’t let elation erode your focus.

  We climb. Fires can be seen all over the delta
. Cairo West. Abu Suweir. Fayid, Kabrit, Beni Suef. All the attacks of all the squadrons.

  We streak east for home. Somewhere below us, poised on the Egyptian frontier, three Israeli ground divisions are waiting for the order to attack. I cannot let myself think about them. My concern is only to land, refuel and rearm, strike again.

  Yael Dayan remains with the command group of Arik Sharon’s division on the Israel-Egypt frontier:

  07:00. Sharon’s tanks start moving toward the border. “I want to be,” says Arik, “on the last inch that is Israel.”

  The fight that is coming today and tonight, Sharon says, will be the most complex ground operation any Israeli force has ever attempted. But his eyes are shining. “We are going to win a war.”

  By 08:00 the entire division has moved up to the border.

  Last night Dov told me to pack what I’ll need for Sinai. I grab a bottle of whiskey, chocolate, writing paper, a change of uniform, and a Bible. “Don’t forget toilet paper.”

  Sharon is on the phone to his wife, Lily. “Be calm, kiss the children for me, don’t worry, shalom shalom shalom.” His car, a Studebaker Lark, waits with its driver.

  At 08:15 comes the attack code.

  Sadin Adom.

  “Red Sheet.”

  All division communication channels are switched open. Arik takes the mike. “Nua, nua!” he orders. “Move, move!”

  South, our tanks descend from the hills above the frontier. Arik peers through binoculars. “Here we go—we are firing!”

  Captain Ori Orr commands the Recon Company of the 7th Armored Brigade:

  I pass swiftly among the jeeps and half-tracks. Camouflage netting is being pulled off. Every engine fires up.

  “This is it. We’ve rehearsed, we’re ready. Do what you know how to do.”

  Our job is to lead. The brigade’s tanks will follow. Behind them will come General Tal’s command group. But we in Recon will cross the border before any.

  We will be the first.