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

THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE
King Hussein of Jordan can claim to be soldier, airman, and head of state, giving
him an unrivalled perspective from which to write My “War” With Israel (New
York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1969), a transparently honest account of
Jordanian participation in the 1967 campaign that emphasizes the fearful damage
done to his army and air force by the IAF interdiction campaign.
The essential underpinnings of the Israeli air arm are to be found in Edward
Luttwak and Dan Horowitz, The Zsraeli Army (London: Allen Lane, 1975) and
Gunther Rothenberg, The Anatomy of the Israeli Army (London: B. T. Batsford
Ltd., 1979). Luttwak and Horowitz concentrate on the political, strategic, and tactical
debates which shaped Zahal doctrine; Rothenberg’s is more concerned with
structure and organization. Ze’ev Schiff’s A History of the Israeli Army (1870-1974)
(San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1974) has an interesting chapter on pilot
training. Murray Rubinstein and Richard Goldman’s The Israeli Air Force Story
(London: Arms and Armour Press, 1979) emphasizes technology, design, and procurement,
as does Bill Gunston’s An Illustrated Guide to the Israeli Air Force (New
York: Salamander Books, 1982).
In addition to Dupuy’s great single-volume study of the Arab-Israeli wars, the
equally prolific British author, Edgar O’Ballance, has produced five separate, slimmer
volumes recounting the flow of operations in five separate campaigns. The Third
Arab-Israeli War (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1972) deals with the 1967 campaign,
while the 1973 fighting is described in No Victory, No Vanquished: the Yom
Kippur War (San Rafael, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1978). Each book provides a chapter
on the air war. His account of The Electronic War in the Middle East, 1968-70 (Hamden,
Conn.: Archon Books, 1974) deals exclusively with the air aspects of the “War
of Attrition” and is virtually the only work in its field outside of the periodical
literature.
S. L. A. Marshall wrote perceptively about the 1956 war in Sinai Victory (New
York: William Morrow & Co., 1958), paying appropriate attention to air aspects of
the fighting. So did Robert Henriques, a British, non-Zionist Jew and a retired British
Army officer of some distinction, in his One Hundred Hours to Suez (London:
Collins, 1957). Henriques was certainly deceived by the Israelis on the political
background to the war, but was more capable of judging for himself tactical air and
ground matters.
Understandably, in view of the preemptive counterair strike, little has been
written on air-to-air fighting in 1967, although Peter Young’s The Israeli Campaign
1967(London: William Kimber, 1967) has afew interesting pages outlining the Egyptian
Air Force’s intentions, had it not been destroyed on the ground before it could
act. Ze’ev Schiff’s October Earthquake: Yom Kippur, 1973 (Tel Aviv: University
Publishing Projects, 1974) can be balanced off by D. K. Palit, Return to Sinai: The
Arab Offensive, 1973 (New Delhi: Palit and Palit, 1973), but neither of them emphasizes
the air superiority aspects of the fighting. Palit is an Indian general who has
many friends and contacts among the Egyptian and Syrian military and was on the
scene soon after the fighting ended.
Putting the Middle Eastern experience of air power into a global context is
M. J. Armitage and R. A. Mason, Air Power in the Nuclear Age (Urbana, Ill.: University
of Illinois Press, 19831, an excellent survey of the field, while Israeli tactics
are put into a wider and deeper perspective by Mike Spick’s superb little book,
Fighter Pilot Tactics: The Techniques of Daylight Air Combat (Cambridge, England:
Patrick Stephens, 1983). Lastly, there are a multitude of articles in popular periodicals-Time,
Newsweek, etc.-and technical journals such as Aviation Week and
Space Technology and International Defense Review. There is much to be learned
from a judicious study of the best of them, but they nearly all need to be read with
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