Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE
during the war by “constantly selling futures that never happened,” according
to Tolkovsky. After the war, he pressed for “a truly independent air
force . .. RAF-inspired, which simply couldn’t have worked,” and “got into
awful rows with the Chief of Staff, [Yigael] Yadin.”h “Aharon was no great
organizer and not very systematic,” wrote Ezer Weizman, who served as
IAF’s Commander in the 1960s. “Under his command the air force didn’t
exist in the day-to-day reality, rather it lived in the infinite. . . . Everyday
questions like what kind of radar we needed and where it should be placed,
what kind of plane we should prefer (taking into consideration the severe
political restrictions that limited our purchasing ability) and how to train
new pilots did not elicit clear answers from him.”’
Remez resigned in 1950, to be succeeded very briefly by an infantryman
turned naval officer, Shlomo Shamir, who was quite unfitted for the post. He
was followed, within a year, by a brilliant and remarkable soldier. Chaim Laskov,
who established the conceptual basis of Israeli air strategy.H Laskov later
became head of the General Staff (Operations) Branch, 1955-56, and Chief of
the General Staff from 1958 to 1960. His successor was Tolkovsky-like
Remez. an ex-RAF pilot, but one who was more flexible and pragmatic in his
approach to organization and doctrine.. Tolkovsky rejected those Britishinspired
ideas that viewed air power in distinctly compartmented terms of
strategic and tactical bombing, antisubmarine and maritime strike forces, air
defense and tactical fighter operations. “I think I was probably in the happy
position of being able to wed these things for the first time into a monolithic
concept, which, of course. was the answer in this country.”’ The IAF was
never going to be so diversified, or deployed over such large areas, that either
functional or geographic commands would be appropriate.
Economics dictated that, in practice, this approach, which focused on
the need for air superiority, required multi-purpose machines and the maximum
possible degree of standardization. Bombers were out; so were pure
interceptors and specialized ground support or reconnaissance airplanes.
lsrael could never afford the cost. All these functions were to be performed
by one kind of machine, the most recent-and most expensive-acquisitions
fulfilling the air superiority role as their primary mission, while older,
perhaps obsolescent, aircraft concentrated on destroying enemy bases,
interdicting his lines of communication, or attacking his forces in the field.
Thus, when France became frustrated by Egyptian support of rebel Algerian
nationalists (and the “nationalization” of the Suez Canal), and Israel
found a willing purveyor of sophisticated new aircraft in 1955, Tolkovsky
resisted pressure to buy the readily available Mystere I1 interceptors, preferring
to wait for the Mystere IV, which had a multi-mission capability.1”
The price was significantly higher--“360,000 dollars and only one seat !”
mourned Levi Eskhol, the Minister of Finance, when the first of them
landed in Israel.“ However, the Mystere IVs provided a foundation for
building Tolkovsky’s kind of air force.
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