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| Thread: Beg, Borrow, Steal Part 2: The formation of Israel's Air Force | |
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privatehudson
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posted August 07, 2004 10:51 PM |
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Beg, Borrow, Steal Part 2: The formation of Israel's Air Force
Beg, Borrow, Steal: A story of how Israel first armed itself
Part Two: The Air Force
To form an army from scratch is not really very hard, just sufficient weapons and ammunition, a little motivation and elementary training, and the beginings of the army will take shape. An air force though is another matter entirely. Not only is it difficult to train such a force, acquiring it is almost infinitely harder than acquiring infantry arms and considerably harder than tanks, and that is before we even begin to talk about maintenance and supplies!
Beginings
The beginings of the Israeli Air Force (also known as Chel Ha') was with the formation of the Sherut Avir (Aviation Service) of the Haganah, clandestinely formed though civil flying clubs. Two of these, the Carmel Club and the Flying Camel Club began as far back as the early 30s and by the end of WWII had earnt for themselves some small respectability giving them a certain freedom of action. Others, such as the Civilan Flying Club were less respected by the ruling British authorities, this one being a clandestine reconassaince element of Sherut Avir. The clubs were aided by two companies, the Aviron company and the Palestine Air Serice. The former bought and sold aircraft and pilots legitmately, but also receruited pilots for the Sherut Avir. The latter was a small commercial carrier which had a rather interesting habit of training far more ground crew and pilots than it's real activities actually needed...
By 1947 these disparate elements were able to provide a variety of planes into the air for military purposes, though the planes were almost entirely hopeless for this role! The planes came from a variety of sources and types. The civilian flying club's contribution consisted of a handful of Taylorcraft and Polish light aircraft and also legally managed to import some De Havilland DH82 biplanes from Canada and England. The Aviron Company acquired a number of privately owned Taylorcrafts and also rustled up a De Havilland Dragon Rapide and a Seabee amphibian plane. The Haganah captured a Fairchild Argus from an Egyptian smuggler! Pictures of some of these are below:
The Dragon Rapide
The Seabee Amphibian
Finally, in typical pre-independence mix of genius and illegality Aviron fooled the British authorities once again. The British were looking to sell 24 Auster Air Observation Post machines for scrap, but unfortunately, the planes were far from all being ready for scrapping. A representative from Aviron promptly bought the lot, and before the British could stop them, they stripped every one of the planes and canabalised all of them to produce 12 working planes!
The Auster
The war years
But this was only half the problem, the planes were still totally unfit for ariel combat against the Arab air force Spitfires and similar. During the pre-independence days this was little consequence, they were mere transports and reconaissance planes. Once war broke out though, anyone could tell that their survivability was going to be very little. Israel could muster just 28 light aircraf when independence came. They were faced with a combined arab force that outnumbered them nearly 8:1. This blatant air superiority was clear to anyone, and the Arabs used it straight away, attacking Tel Aviv's airfield as part of their oppening moves, damaging over half the Sherut Avir's planes before they could even act! In rather amusing fashion, the survival of Sherut Avir then relied on Israeli conservation and Arab incompetence. The Israeli's dispersed their planes and gradually repaired them bringing them back into action. The Arabs on the other hand managed to bomb another airfield, this time one still occupied by 2 RAF squadrons, who promptly shot down a number of aircraft.
Now the innate inventiveness of Israel though once again shone through. The Sheryt Avir began to adapt their civilian planes to become bombers. The Dragon Rapide and a Norseman (pictured at the end of this paragraph) were both fitted with crude but effective bombing racks. The Auster and Taylorcrafts though could not have this alteration. The Israeli's promptly improvised and the pilots turned to throwing hand grenades out of the plane at the enemy! Though this seems almost farcical, apparently with their relatively silent engine, a swooping attack at night by one of these was very demoralising on the enemy, and if it works...
Soon into the fighting the Israeli's acquired a number of Piper Cub planes for ferrying supplies, but these were still unarmed. Not to be daunted by such petty problems, the Piper pilots undertook such tactics as flying around in tight circles near the ground (the piper planes consumed less fuel than a spitfire and could afford to hang around longer) or diving for the ground and pulling up at the last minute. The Egyptians soon learnt the hard way that Spitfires may have been faster, but a Piper Cub was much more manouverable.
On the 27th May 1948 though, having done an admirable job, the Sherut Avir was disbanded and replaced with the Israeli Air Force (Chel Ha'). Right from the outset the force was determined to be one of a tactical role. Strategic, carpet bombing would never achieve Israel's aims, only destruction of the enemy's military would play a major role in Israeli Air Force planning. This new force though was only new in name, the planes were the same as before. Statehood though brought with it changes for the better, Israel could now legally buy equipment abroad... if only it could find a seller and get it into Israel. The first acquisition was a Douglas Dakota DC3 transport plane, the backbone of the allied air transport in WWII which was converted into a bomber soon after. At this stage Israel was still taking anything it could get hold of, as evidenced by the purchase of that plane, against the tactical aims of the Chel Ha'. Soon after though came the first fighters to see service.
The first large scale fighter into comission with the Air Force was the Avia S-199, an interesting plane with a rather interesting history. The Czech Avia factory had manufactured Me109 fighters throughout WWII for the Luftwaffe and continued to do so after WWII for the Czech air force. Unfortunately, the factory producing the ME109 engines (Damiler Benz types) was destroyed in a fire soon after the war, a solution was needed. The Czech designers replaced it with a Junkers Jumo engine, one used during the war for Heinkel bombers. The resulting plane, though ME109 on the outside was an appallingly bad copy in reality.The slower running, heavier plane made landings and take offs a nightmare due to appalling handling. Some two dozen were bought before independence and gradually were stripped down and transported to Israel in small numbers each time. In their first operation, just 4 of them managed to bomb and strafe an Egyptian column which was waiting to cross a damaged bridge. The attack drove the column back relieving pressure on Tel Aviv. At this time, the 4 were the only modern fighters Israel had, and had the Egyptians known that half of this number were lost in that flight (one crashed on landing and the other was shot down) their reluctance to continue might have been less! Pictures of the S199 are below.
Further attempts to secure proper up to date machines continued throughout the 1948 war. Spitfires were one of the main aims of the government, being then still one of the best fighters in the world. The first two acquisitions of this type of plane were through were through excellent repair work. One, an ex RAF plane had been dumped by the British when they left, the other, an egyptian plane was shot down by the Israelis over Dov airfield. Both were rebuilt and put back into use in the Israeli air force. Further Spitfires were again bought from the Czechs, who had purchased them from Britain at the end of the war. These 60 planes also though needed transporting, and with no means of doing so (the amercians pressured the Czechs into preventing it) a problem presented itself. The missions that brought 13 Spitfires in time to fight in the war of independence were probably the most dangerous they flew in the war. In two Velveta operations, 18 Spitfires that had every spare piece of equipment taken out and replaced with fuel tanks were flown all the way from Czechoslovakia to Israel, (13 made it). with one refueling stop in Yugoslavia. Except in the flight leaders plane, radios and compasses were not spared, if a plane lost visual contact with the formation it would be lost. It is hard for a person unfamiliar with WWII fighters to understand the madness of these missions. Not only were WWII fighters short ranged, but the Spitfire was one of the least ranged among them. The remaining Czech Spitfires were shipped to Israel by sea and did not make it in time for the war. The history of these planes is hard to track, but they undoubtedly performed much better than the Avia planes and were invaluble to the Israeli efforts. Some Spitfire pictures are below.
In acquiring some planes though, sheer ingenuity was at play. An announcement was made in Britain that a film was due to be made about New Zealand pilots who had flown in the formiddable Beaufighters during WWII and the makers wished to purchase a number of the planes to do so. Having 5 of them and proceeded to go through the initial parts of the script, he moved to the parts where the pilots trained in New Zealand and asked British permission to use an area of Scotland to duplicate it. Having been granted that permission, the planes took off alright... but never landed in Scotland! Of course the 5 that mysteriously appeared in Israel soon after could not have been the same 5 that left Britain, no sir, not in a million years, they must have ditched in the north sea those ones, ours fell off the back of a lorry...
P51 Mustang fighters served in small numbers, smuggled out of America before the end of the war, but only two were used. Later the IAF purchased another 75 of these fine piston engined fighters.The Israelis also purchased 4 B17 bombers which the USAAF were selling as "transports" with the weapons removed. They left the US bound for Brazil, but in a theme common to this period and topic, mysteriously ended up being diverted to Tel Aviv! On similar grounds, one Constellation ariliner and 9 curtis commando transports arrived in Israel after round about trips from the US supplementing the forces there already. Below are some of the planes discussed.
One of the B17G's
The Bristol Beaufighter
After the 1948 war
The Air force ended the war and took stock of it's position. The war had been fought with large numbers of foreign volunteer pilots who returned home afterwards. The mixed collection of planes were mostly fit for nothing but scrap, having barely been kept flying for most of the war. After the war, spending on the air force was greatly reduced compared to the army. New purchases were given very low priority and usually restricted to small numbers of fighters and bombers until 1953, with numbers of trainers also purchased to train new Israeli pilots instead. The Air force though had standardised her equipment and become something like a regular force again.
So we find that once again, like with armour, Israel's early formative years of development relied heavily on clandestine and often illegal operations and when units where formed they were formed with ragtag equipment. The very fact that this miscellaneous group of ex WWII and civilian planes began the process that lead to the force that would smash all before it in the next few decades is in itself something of a modern day miracle. Her elite nature in the air force never seems in doubt, despite every obstacle, Israel suceeded where others would fail. Whatever we may each personally think of it's politics, whatever your belief on her current military, the facts speak for themselves. Israel's Armoured and Air Forces from the begining have proven resourceful, capable and elite.
This has been the second of the two part article I promised on the Israeli forces, I hope you enjoyed both 
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We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' down!
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terje_the_ma...
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Disciple of Herodotus
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posted March 09, 2005 10:14 PM |
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I first read this over at the history subforum at civfanatics, and I gotta say that I enjoyed it very much.
(Sorry about the spam, but I just wanted to express how much I appreciated these two articles of yours. )
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"Sometimes I think everyone's just pretending to be brave, and none of us really are. Maybe pretending to be brave is how you get brave, I don't know."
- Grenn, A Storm of Swords.
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privatehudson
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The Ultimate Badass
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posted March 09, 2005 11:38 PM |
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Thanks
There's one minor error in the text. (other than spelling but I don't much worry about that!) It should say "Also known as Chel Ha' Avir instead of Chel Ha'.
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We're on an express elevator to Hell, goin' down!
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