SAVIOURS IN THE SKY - RESOURCES I

 

By now, the Egyptians knew that Israel had fighters and they knew the whereabouts of the airfield. A new, secret  base beyond the range of Arab guns was  hastily prepared. It was constructed in a patch of sand dunes and the orange groves of the sleepy farm community of Herzliya.

The pilots all hated the treacherous Messerschmitts, but they were still the only fighters available. In fact, the Israeli forces were short on everything – except for resourcefulness. They had already used scraps from tanks, guns, warships, etc. to cobble together weapons. Why not a fighter?

When the British withdrew, they left behind a scrap heap containing the remains of Spitfires. Even better was the almost intact Egyptian spitfire ditched on the first day of the war.

Three months before the War of Independence, a brilliant mechanic named Jack Friedman, defected from the RAF and joined the Haganah – even giving himself a Hebrew name. He, and his ragtag team of mechanics, had to stitch together a giant jigsaw puzzle of scraps from various models - without any  technical documents. By the end of June,  the completed pseudo-spitfire became the first of Israel’s new secret weapons.

Under the cover of a dummy corporation, Al Schwimmer in Miami, had acquired two WWII bombers from the War Assets Administration. These had been demilitarized for civilian use. He purchased another two from  a non-Jew named Charles Winters who had been using the surplus warplanes for a fruit-selling business between Miami and Puerto Rico. Winter also agreed to guide them to “somewhere” in Europe. When he was questioned later by federal prosecutors as to why he agreed to help smuggle warplanes to Israel, he answered that “it was the right thing to do.”

The unsuspecting customs officers in Puerto Rico were familiar with Winters’ comings and goings. Previously, he had declared to US customs that the aircraft were only leaving US airspace for a short while, making an aerial survey of the Azores.

However, rumours were circulating around Miami that the once mighty warplanes were involved in some kind of undercover operation. Under constant tension from the looming threat of the FBI, Schwimmer could hardly breathe until the last of the bombers managed to take off. Waiting for Winters and his crew in San Juan were ten contract airmen who would fill out the crews to ferry the bombers across the Atlantic. He had filed a false flight plan for Corsica. Without relaying their positions to air traffic control, they managed to pass the invisible border of the Iron Curtain and landed, as planned, in Czechoslovakia.

Winters was astounded by what he saw. The field was a beehive of activity. All around him were planes in various stages. Messerschmitt fighters were being disassembled while others were being stuffed into transports. At one end of the field stood an airliner, next to a Skymaster. All the workers stood gazing with awe at the sudden appearance of actual bombers

By now, the whereabouts of the missing bombers was not a secret. The BBC in London had reported the existence of a mysterious airlift operation in Czechoslovakia. The American Embassy in Prague was being regularly tipped off by observers in the Czechoslovakian airbase.

Home in the states, Winters was being fully interrogated about the missing bombers and  knew he was going to need a lawyer.

It was the end for Schwimmer’s warplane smuggling operation. With the FBI closing in, he began preparations for one last audacious flyaway. The State Department and the FBI had caught up with him. Not only Federal indictments were coming, but Schwimmer would be banned from leaving the country. The next day, he boarded a commercial flight for Rome and then flew on to the Czechoslovakian airbase.

It was like a homecoming. Everywhere Schwimmer went, he ran into volunteers he had recruited in the United States. The airlift he had put together was taking him to his new home - Israel.

Al Schwimmer was not only the man who enabled the young State of Israel to create an air force from nothing. He is also the man who founded and led the aerospace giant Israel Aircraft Industries in its first decades.