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

in may of 1967 egypt's president gamal abdel nasser declared war on the state of israel telling his followers our path to palestine will be covered with blood nasa moved his troops into the sinai peninsula expelled the un peacekeepers there then blocked the straits of tehran to israeli ships for israel it was time to strike or be struck and for the next three weeks the israel 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 sure that the idf could really handle the arab armies two weeks after the birth of my son i had to leave him without knowing if i would ever see him again armed by the soviet union the egyptians had the largest and best air force in the arab world israel's only chance of survival was a pre-emptive 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 aboriginal kid was the brainchild of ezra weitzman he was commander of the israeli air force he was a pilot himself he was about the british air force in world war ii flew spitfires later the president of israel and it was an incredibly daring program the plan was for dozens of squadrons to strike 11 airfields throughout egypt and the sinai peninsula the main goal was to strike when all the arab planes were still on the ground fully exposed and the idea was to bomb out the runways first to prevent any aircraft from taking off and to keep them from flying for a few days in 1966 the plan's creator ezr weitzman had been promoted to idf chief of operations and his successor general motti hood now had the task of executing weizmann's plan moti was a commander of the air force that kept on flying as a fighter he understood what we felt in the cockpit we understood the issues brave man the nicest person in the world he had nerves from a metal and always thinking forward ahead like he did on the time to attack egypt for israeli civilians the pre-war tension was high but for air force squadron commander yalo shavit israel's victory was the israeli air force is like a tied spring ready to somebody to cut the cable that prevent it from it will be done in no time because we have been trained since the last 11 years i told my wife go to gedera guedera is a small village in the south find a small to ferret a la detailer and you know what do you want to wear for parties with all those news prime minister and down have three sets why three i said because i'm telling you to do three there will be parties he says you're crazy i said listen to me go into the you did it she was the best woman dressed in the parties israeli intelligence had spent years gathering details about the egyptian targets from the location of each plane to the name rank and even the 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 yet i was the intelligence officer of the squadron for three weeks we learned the most accurate intelligence we could learn we also prepared the combat doctrine for attacking airports i was a part of that system it was so confident that they know exactly what to do they trained so many times they knew it with close eyes to receive an aircraft with empty fuel tanks with empty munition with empty whatever and they got to a record of eight minutes eight minutes to prepare the aircraft to be ready to take off monday morning the 5th of june they woke us up and we went down to the base we knew that the big moment had arrived the commander of the air force came in with the wing commander and they said dear friends operation focus will start today at 7 45 am sharp this is a fateful operation friends of yours will be injured and killed in battle right next to you it is going to be tough but we will make it then 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 perform our duties in the best way possible when i took off i didn't realize it would be it will be such a complicated mission squadron leaders gave their pilots some ground rules issued by commander moti hood there is no communication whatsoever no radio no nothing so we were prepared with all kind of signs and flags colors of the flags when you're ready to start the engine where you have to take off no radio zero you fly at zero altitude the lowest you can if something happened you do not report back that you crashed or that you jump the air force will find you you do whatever it takes to reach to the target we have to destroy the aircraft on the ground we were also told that the mission was more important than anything and that even in an emergency even if a friend of ours is about to be killed we were not allowed to warn him we had to just let him crash as cruel as that may sound this was also that we will not disrupt the operation if someone is attacked you have to go on and fight nearly all of israel's 196 combat planes were committed to the airstrike only 12 were left behind to defend the state of israel the planes flew low over the mediterranean to avoid being detected by radar we took off and stayed between 35 feet to 50 feet impossible below that we smell the smell of the salt over the sea miss i was assigned to the foursome that was under yala's leadership i was number two in the squadron and our mission was to attack the end slash field near cairo egypt's radar didn't pick them up but someone else did at 8 15 egyptian time jordanian radar screens lit up with an unusual concentration of planes heading over the mediterranean and from there a series of mistakes gave the israelis an overwhelming advantage the top general in jordan radioed the word grape the pre-arranged code for war to egypt's defence minister in cairo but the egyptians had changed the code word the day before without updating jordan so the jordanians messages were tossed aside and the warning never reached cairo but even if the message had been deciphered there was no one around to read it egypt's air force commander was at his daughter's wedding the ground force commander was on vacation and the defense minister had gone to bed a few hours earlier leaving orders that he was not to be disturbed egypt's chief of staff field marshal amer was flying in that morning from 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 sunrise the egyptians had already flown their dawn patrols and returned to base for breakfast moti was the man that planned it caused the soldiers and officers to be 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 there was a fog so i started circling finding a hole in this fog that i see the runway i dive i bombed the runway everything was okay two is okay three i don't hear anything four is okay something happened to this excellent officer pilot that he tried to aim and meantime he lost altitude and when he tried to recover he hit the runway but as we were told in the briefing before the takeoff there is no mercy there is no there is only one thing keep on doing the job we turned around 360 degrees and performed the second attack the planes were already burning and there was a lot of smoke those bombers went up 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 then finally the controller the egyptians fired some anti-aircraft missiles at my plane but they did not hit me in the last second i saw from the left anti-aircraft position and before i knew what happened i got a hit by three four bullets the front wheel i saw it disappear the aircraft stopped my air brakes went out and from 500 knots it went down to 220 in no time the two other number two and four flew forward i gave them an order go by yourself to the base get as soon as possible to the sea so nobody will shoot at you because i found myself after i was it at 3000 foot looking forward and what do i see mig-21 in front of me maybe 500 meters shooting my instinct immediately is to shoot at him he broke to the right i broke to the left and then close to israel i went up to 7000 in case i bail out i came to the area of the base benny pellet the commander of the base in the control tower hello you have a problem i understand go to the sea next wash door then bailout he says no he says i'm telling you i said i hear you but i know i'm not going to bail out i said don't worry i will land on one third of the runway toward the defense [Music] so i came there i hold the aircraft in the lowest speed i can and i crossed there one way i touched full breaks i saw a lot of pieces of fire from the both sides i crossed the runway i went to the overrun a lot of stones and all this and it stopped and i went out and i was standing and i saw the security and the emergency emergency cars and they were so excited where's the pilot because they thought that something happened because of the dust and all this there was no fire because there was no fuel i came with zero fuel zero fuel nothing in the aircraft in the tanks nothing nothing nothing gradually 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 had lost 204 planes half of their air force the israelis had lost only 19. the kill ratio of operation focus had exceeded expectations by almost one hundred percent at half past ten general moti hood turned to the army's chief of staff yitzhak garbin and announced the egyptian air force has 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 truly a hail mary operation but for the egyptians the ultimate humiliation and very shortly after the israeli aerial strike israeli ground forces began moving into sinai the goals were very limited very limited the egyptians had three defense lines in sinai the goal was to take out the first of the three defense lines not beyond that but the egyptian army collapsed so fast and began running away that the other defense lines crashed and then as i said earlier israeli forces reached the suez canal without even intending to reach the suez canal they got sucked into sinai so for the egyptians this was the ultimate humiliation it cannot be that the people who just yesterday you had pledged to throw into the sea uh are now driving you across the suez canal all day long the egyptian propaganda machine ran in overdrive radio cairo falsely reported that egypt had shot down 85 israeli planes while only losing two of their own and field marshal amer told the jordanians that israel had lost 75 percent of its air power a lie that encouraged jordan's king hussein to enter the war so you have to develop a big lie and the lie is that just the opposite has happened that the israeli that the egyptian air force has surprised the israeli air force on the ground and destroyed the israeli air force that the egyptian army has crossed into the border into israel and is on the outskirts of tel aviv that's the big lie and this big lie is believed by 200 million arabs no one questions you know the credibility no questions the veracity of these claims and you know there's a certain debate about degree to which nasser himself understood or was informed of the direness of the situation how would you like to be the officer who walked in and said uh president nassar i got some bad news for you how would you like to be that person so maybe people were feeding him strange information there was one um one document i saw in egypt was that the person who reported the egyptian victory over the israeli air force was a young air force captain 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 planes while losing just 46 of their own after their stunning performance in egypt yala shavit and his crew finished the day in jerusalem bombing the jordanian tanks that raced 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 got killed that day it was an exhausting day both physically and mentally not all 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 that this was a very successful mission if one will ask me what was the thing which made it possible so successful i would answer it in one word simplicity i know there's a lot of stories about secret weapons which we used and but we didn't actually we use the spirit we use the the standard of flying and we use another thing which maybe doesn't exist in any other air forces in the world and we call it the no alternative and when you don't have alternatives you can achieve such achievements as we did in this war they don't know [Music] what a group of dedicated people professionals trained willing to invest their soul and everything they have can do for a country the amazing story of the six day war it's an incredible achievement for that air force for the idf and cbn's docu-drama in our hands it tells the rest of the story behind the six-day war and focuses on the battle for jerusalem you can see it on dvd or in streaming in 4k it's yours for a gift of any dollar amount all you have to do is go to cbn.com slash in our hands or you can call us 1 800 700 7 000 that was one of the dvd extras on that but you get to see the battle for jerusalem if you like it it's called in our hands and it's yours for a gift of any dollar amount just call us 1 800 700 700

Channel: CBN News

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Keywords: 700 club, cbn, cbn news, cbn news youtube, cbnnews, cbnnews.com, cbnnewsyoutube, docu-drama, documentary, egypt, erin zimmerman, iaf, idf, in our hands, israel, israeli, news, newsblock, newsblockclip, operation focus, six-day war, christian news, christian tv, christian stories, faith, faith news, faith stories, inspirational stories, jerusalem, middle east, holy land, jews, iran, middle east tensions, six day war, 6 day war, operation focus israel

Id: sB8aLlVz_8k

Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 06 2022