Grandma's army

  Schwimmer had already put down the money for five Commandos at $5,000 each and placed an order for five more. All were parked at a war-surplus boneyard in California. Schwimmer’s fleet of transport aircraft was coming together. But who was going to fly them? Lewis had been one of the few Jewish airmen at TWA to become a captain and, together with Gardner, a Jewish flight instructor, had been kicking around the idea of starting an airline to fly refugees and cargo from Europe to Palestine. By agreeing to realise their individual dreams of helping build a new airline, they would also be serving a higher purpose – saving their fellow Jews. They would spread the word through aviation circles that an outfit called Schwimmer Aviation was hiring. Within a couple of weeks, the roster of employees swelled. More airmen were joining the group already in Panama. From there they were eventually able to make their way to Rome. Nearly fifty volunteer airmen had arrived – fighter pilots, t...

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 prem...