A Yank In The
Israeli Air Force

“Eventually we had an air force of a sort. At its very greatest strength it consisted of three B-17s (flown ‘illegally’ from America); 25 single-engine Norseman (flown ‘illegally’ from Canada); 15 Messerschmidts (bought in Czechoslovakia); 30 Spitfires (given to Czechoslovakia by the British as a gift and sold by the Czechs to Israel); two Mosquitoes (bought by a British Film Producer ostensibly to use in the making of a picture but smuggled out of England to Israel); six Osts (two-engined British training planes smuggled out of England); two C-54s (flown illegally from the United States); ten C-46s (flown from America) and a fleet of Piper Cubs, which, so help me, were used for bombing.”

“That was our air force. It was this tiny group of planes that cleared the skies, gave air cover to ground troops and in the final analysis turned the tide of history.”

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