SAVIOURS IN THE SKY - RESOURCES

Adolph “Al” Schwimmer was crazy about every aspect of aviation. He had spent the war years in a USAAF uniform, flying throughout Asia and the Middle East. After he learned about the Haganah organization that was smuggling Holocaust survivors to Palestine, he knew he had found a mission. After repeated attempts to win over Jewish Agency personnel in the U.S.with his ideas, Schwimmer finally found a willing ear - in the Haganah’s star spy and smuggler, Yehuda Arazi.

Following his handshake deal with Arazi, Schwimmer had burned his bridges and resigned from TWA. On their second meeting, Arazi handed him a fistful of dollars, telling him it was for expenses. Schwimmer left immediately for California. He was going to buy airplanes for the Haganah. 

Ben-Gurion was aware of the fact that Czechoslovakia had been a major arms producer for the Germans in WWII. It still had  large inventories of munitions, even war planes. It had been a wartime manufacturer of the Luftwaffes premier fighter, the Messerschmitt. Hearing that they were interested in selling 25 of the Czech versions of the Messerschmitt cheaply, Ben-Gurion was willing to buy. The problem was that there was no way to ship contraband weapons from landlocked Czechoslovakia to Palestine.

At the same time, Schwimmer began negotiations for three beat-up transport planes fםr $15,000 each. In addition, he intended to purchase a fleet of 10 war surplus Constellations and transport  Commandos for   $5,000 each. The biggest problem was, that each of the “tired old birds” required thousands of hours of reconditioning, and many more thousands in expensive replacement parts. Another “slight” drawback was the requirement that such aircraft must be registered for use in the United States.

To Schwimmer, these were all solvable problems. He had a plan, which he had to sell to his Haganah boss, Nahum Bernstein. He knew that the Haganah had insufficient funds but his plan was to provide the technical expertise and some temporary space at the Lockheed plant in California, which would cheapen the overall costs considerably. With the postwar glut of trained mechanics who wanted to keep working in the aviation business,  he could choose the best.

His powers of persuasion did not fail him this time either. What Bernstein was seeing – and hearing – was the beginning of the Al Schwimmer legend. Although every single stage of Schwimmer’s negotiations was faced with obstacles - some  seemingly impassable – nothing seemed to intimidate him.

At last his boyhood dream had come true. The door of the office he had just leased in the Lockheed Air Terminal now bore a black-lettered sign: “Schwimmer Aviation Services.” Most of the 200 mechanics Schwimmer hired were non-Jews. They were told that the big Connies and the Constellations were part of a start-up international airline flying out of Rome.

Schwimmer Aviation Services was a maintenance facility, not a certified commercial airline. To fly his airplanes out of the country Schwimmer needed the cover of a legitimate airline. As if on cue, a few days later a tall young man called Irwin “Swifty” Schindler appeared in his office. As with many who’d flown for the Air Transport Command during the war, flying was in his blood. Like Lewis and Gardner, his burning ambition was to someday operate his own airline again.

Back in 1944, while he was still in uniform, Schindler, together with his pilot wife, had incorporated a new airline which they began after the war – and promptly went broke. After finding work as a copilot, his boss had made it clear that he’d never  have a Jew as a captain and Schindler was looking for another job .

Schindler also happened to mention that he still had the operating certificate for his defunct airline, Service Airways, Inc. Not long afterwards, he was installed in his new office. An old navigator friend was now made a vice president, together with another pal who was also a mechanic. 

Only one item was missing. To fly their transports to Europe, Service Airways needed a legitimate cover business – beyond the scrutiny of the FBI and US treasury agents, who were close on their tail. Schwimmer’s alibi was that the airline’s purpose was to commence commercial flights to Palestine as soon as the British Mandate ended. None of his purchases were warplanes and, they could see for themselves, were being renovated solely for civilian use.

Panama happened to be where another old friend, Martin Bellefond owned a franchise for a flag-carrying airline. After considerable legal machinations, Bellefond had obtained a franchise for an airline, called LAPSA in short. The airport was being ignored by the international airlines.

Because of his unreliable management, Bellefond was kicked out of the company he had founded. He owned the Panamanian franchise but had  neither airplanes nor an airline to operate it. Swifty Schindler knew he had found what he was looking for. He managed to transport most of the planes out of the US and into Panama under cover of the pseudo-airline LAPSA.

This was just the beginning of the long-awaited airlift to Palestine.