Israel's 'Operation Focus': Inside One of the Most Successful Air Campaigns in Military History

In May 1967, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared war on the State of Israel and told his followers that our path to Palestine will be covered in blood. NASA moved its troops to the Sinai Peninsula, expelled UN peacekeepers, and then blocked the Tehran Strait to Israeli ships. For Israel it was time to attack or be attacked and for the next three weeks Israel's defense forces were on high alert. The atmosphere in Israel before the war was very tense. People thought we were facing total extinction. Forty thousand coffins were prepared and no one was there. I'm sure the IDF could really handle the Arab armies two weeks after my son was born.

I had to leave him not knowing if I would ever see him armed by the Soviet Union again. The Egyptians had the largest and best air force in the Arab world. Israel's only chance for survival was a preemptive strike and the air force had prepared for this moment for more than a decade. Their plan was called Operation Moked, which means Focus in Hebrew, the Aboriginal boy was the brainchild of Ezra Weitzman, he was the commander of the Israeli Armed Forces. air force he was a pilot himself he was about the british air force in the second world war he flew spitfires later the president of

israel

and it was an incredibly daring program the plan was for dozens of squadrons to attack 11 airfields across egypt and the sinai peninsula The main objective was to attack when all the Arab planes were still on the ground completely exposed and the idea was to bomb the runways first to prevent the planes from taking off and prevent them from flying for a few days in 1966.

The creator of the plan, Ezr. Weitzman had been promoted to chief of

operation

s of the IDF and his successor, General Motti Hood, was now tasked with executing Weizmann's plan. Moti was an air force commander who continued to fly like a fighter. He understood what we felt in the cabin. We understood the problems. brave man, the kindest person in the world, he had nerves of metal and always thought about the future, as he did when he attacked Egypt, for Israeli civilians the tension before the war was high, but for the commander of the squadron of the air force, yalo shavit,

israel

's victory was the israeli air force is like a tied spring ready for someone to cut the cable that prevents it.

This will be done in no time because we have been trained for the last 11 years. I told my wife to go to gedera. Guedera is a small town in the south, look for a small one to browse the retailer and you already know what you want to wear for the holidays with all that news, Prime Minister, and below you have three outfits, why three, I said, because I'm telling you to do three, there will be parties. she was the best dressed woman at the parties Israeli intelligence had spent years compiling details about Egyptian targets from the location of each plane to the name, rank and even voice of each pilot.

I was one of the youngest pilots in the air force I had graduated from pilot training the year before the war I wasn't even 21 years old and yet I was the squadron intelligence officer for three weeks we learned the

most

accurate intelligence we could learn we also prepared the combat doctrine to attack airports I was part of that system I was so confident that they knew exactly what to do they trained so many times that they knew it up close to receive a plane with empty fuel tanks with empty ammunition with whatever empty and They arrived at a record eight minutes eight minutes to prepare the plane so that it was ready to take off on Monday morning, June 5, they woke us up and we went down to the base we knew that the big moment had arrived.

The air force commander came in with the wing commander and they said: dear friends,

operation

Focus will begin today at 7:45 am sharp, this is a fateful operation, your friends will be wounded and killed in the battle right around the corner. your side. be tough but we will make it so the wing commander told us that the fate of the Jewish people was on our shoulders we were not afraid for ourselves the only fear was that we would not be able to fulfill our duties to the best of our abilities When I took off I did not realize That would be such a complicated mission.

The squadron leaders gave their pilots some ground rules issued by Commander Moti Hood. There is no communication whatsoever, no radio or anything, so we were prepared with all kinds of signals. and flags colors of the flags when you are ready to start the engine where you have to take off without zero radius you fly at zero altitude as low as you can if something happened you do not report that you crashed or that you jumped through the air The force will find you, do what that is necessary to achieve the objective. We have to destroy the plane on the ground.

They also told us that the mission was more important than anything else and that even in an emergency, even if a friend of ours is about to do it. being killed we were not allowed to warn him we just had to let him crash no matter how cruel it may seem this also means that we will not interrupt the operation if someone is attacked you have to continue and fight al

most

all of Israel's 196 fighter planes we committed to the air attack Only 12 were left behind to defend the state of Israel. The planes flew at low altitude over the Mediterranean to avoid being detected by radar.

We took off and stayed between 35 and 50 feet. Impossible below that. We smell the smell of salt. Over the sea, miss, I was assigned to the quartet that was under the leadership of Yala. I was number two in the squadron and our mission was to attack the final cutting field near Cairo. Egypt's radar did not detect them, but someone else did at 8:15. At that moment the Jordanian radar screens lit up with an unusual concentration of planes heading over the Mediterranean and from there a series of errors gave the Israelis an overwhelming advantage. The top general in Jordan radioed the word grape, the pre-established code for war, to the Egyptian defense minister in Cairo, but the Egyptians had changed the code word the day before without updating Jordan, so the Jordanians' messages were discarded and the warning never reached Cairo, but even If the message had been decrypted, there was no one around to read it.

The commander of the Egyptian air force was at his daughter's wedding, the commander of the ground force was on vacation and the minister of defense had gone to bed a few hours earlier, leaving orders not to disturb him from the chief of the Egyptian general staff, Field Marshal Amer was arriving by plane that morning after an all-night party so at the first sign of trouble the Egyptians shut down their entire air defense system worried that Amir's plane might be shot down by mistake assuming that Any Israeli attack would begin at dawn. The Egyptians had already flown their dawn patrols and returned to the base for breakfast.

The man who planned it made the soldiers and officers get creative. He hit them exactly in the middle of landing, refueling, eating ready to go here, boom, we reached the target, but from a distance for 24 minutes I saw that it was foggy, so I started. going around finding a hole in this fog I see the runway I dived I bombed the runway everything was fine two is fine three I don't hear anything four is fine something happened to this excellent official pilot who tried to aim and in the meantime he lost altitude and when he tried to recover It hit the runway but as they told us in the briefing before takeoff there is no mercy there is no there is only one thing to keep doing the job we turned 360 degrees and carried out the second attack on The planes were already burning and there was a lot of smoke.

Those bombers burned in giant flames. First I attacked a bomber that seemed to be less damaged, then the second time I attacked an anti-aircraft battery and finally the controller, the Egyptians fired some anti-aircraft batteries. -plane missiles at my plane but they didn't hit me at the last second I saw it from the left anti-aircraft position and before I realized what happened I received a hit from three four bullets in the front wheel I saw it disappear the plane stopped my Los The air brakes were released and from 500 knots it dropped to 220 in a short time. The other two, number two and four, flew forward.

I gave them the order to go alone to the base and get to the sea as soon as possible so that no one shoots at them because I found myself after being at 3000 feet looking forward and what do I see the mig-21 in front of me, maybe at 500 meters firing, my instinct immediately is to shoot at it, it turned to the right, I turned to the left and then I approached. to israel i went up to 7000 in case i got out of trouble i came to the base area benny pellet the base commander in the control tower hello you have a problem i understand go to the sea next to the wash gate then rescue he says that No he says I'm telling you I said I hear you but I know I'm not going to get out of trouble I said don't worry I'll land on a third of the runway towards the defense so I came there I held the plane at the lowest speed I can and I crossed there in one direction I hit full brakes I saw a lot of pieces of fire on both sides I crossed the track I ran over a lot of stones and all this and it stopped and I got out and I was stopped and I saw the safety and emergency cars and they were so excited where is it? the pilot? because they thought something happened because of the dust and all this there was no fire because there was no fuel, I came with zero zero fuel. no fuel in the planes in the tanks nothing nothing nothing little by little the rest of the first wave returned to Israel in less than eight minutes the planes were refueled rearmed and ready for a second wave of bombing in just over half an hour the Egyptians They had lost 204 planes, half their air force.

The Israelis had lost only 19. The operation's death toll had exceeded expectations by almost one hundred percent. At half past ten, General Moti addressed the Chief of Staff of the army, yitzhak garbin, and announced that the egyptian air force had ceased to exist the jordanian and syrian air forces had also been decimated after less than five hours the israelis had complete air superiority over the middle east it is really a hail operation but for the Egyptians the definitive humiliation and very shortly after the Israeli air attack the Israeli ground forces began to advance towards the Sinai the objectives were very limited very limited the Egyptians had three lines of defense in the Sinai the objective was to eliminate the first of the three defense lines no further than that but the egyptian army collapsed so fast and started fleeing that the other defense lines crashed and then as i said before the israeli forces reached the suez canal without even intending to reach to the suez canal, they were absorbed by the sinai, so for the egyptians this was the ultimate humiliation.

It can't be that the people who yesterday agreed to throw him into the sea are now driving him through the Suez Canal all day the Egyptian propaganda machine went into overdrive radio Cairo falsely reported that Egypt had shot down 85 Israeli planes while had only lost two of its own and field marshal amer told the jordanians that israel had lost 75 percent of its air power a lie that encouraged king hussein of jordan to enter the war so a big lie has to be developed and the lie is that just the opposite has happened to the Israelis that the Egyptian air force has surprised the Israeli air force on the ground and destroyed the Israeli air force that the Egyptian army crossed to the border with Israel and is on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

That is the big lie and 200 million Arabs believe in this big lie. Nobody questions you. Know the credibility, do not question the veracity of these claims and you know that there is some debate about the degree to which Nasser himself understood or was informed of the seriousness of the situation. How would you like to be the officer who walked in and said, uh, President Nassar? I have bad news for you, how would you like to be that person? So maybe people were giving him strange information. There was a document that I saw in Egypt was that the person who reported the Egyptian victory over the Israeli air force was a young air. captain of the force by the name of husni mubarak operation

focus

remains one of the most

successful

air

campaigns

in

military

history

during the six day war, the israeli air force destroyed 452 enemy aircraft and lost only 46 of its own after its impressive performance in egypt yala shavit and his crew finished the day in jerusalem bombing jordanian tanks racing towards the city and providing air cover for israeli ground forces.

It was a long day that night. I came back to the room alone because my roommate was killed that day. It was an exhausting day. Day, both physically and mentally, not everything was taken for granted, even with the feeling of victory we had, no one was free to celebrate. When I think about it now, after years of experience, I still think this was a very

successful

mission, if you ask me. What was it that made it possible to be sosuccessful? I would answer it in one word: simplicity. I know there are a lot of stories about secret weapons that we use and we don't actually use the spirit, we use the standard of flying and We use something else that maybe doesn't exist in any other air force in the world and we call it non-alternative and when you don't have alternatives you can achieve achievements like the ones we achieved in this war, they don't know what. a group of dedicated people, trained professionals and willing to invest their soul and everything they can do for a country.

The incredible story of the six-day war. It is an incredible achievement for that air force. For the IDF and the CBN docu-drama in our hands. The rest of the story behind the Six Day War and

focus

es on the battle for Jerusalem, you can watch it on DVD or streaming in 4K. It's yours for a gift of any dollar amount. All you have to do is go to cbn.com. in our hands or you can call us at 1 800 700 7 000, that was one of the extras on the DVD, but you can watch the battle for Jerusalem, if you like it, it's in our hands and it's yours as a gift of any dollar amount. just call us 1 800 700 700