T he surprise air strike at the beginning of the Six Day War that destroyed the Egyptian air force was no spontaneous mission — the IDF had been planning such a move for years already. Yet even the commanders of the attack had to admit there was an Upper Hand running the show — how else could all those “coincidences” converge to guarantee Israeli success against the odds?
It took just 80 minutes for the Israelis to knock out Egypt’s entire air force and lay waste to its air fields leaving the Egyptian ground forces stripped of their cover and forcing them into a hasty retreat in the very first hours of the Six Day War.
But it was only recently that the marvel of those 80 minutes of odds-defying success exactly 50 years ago was fully explained. For half a century strategists have been analyzing that first strike on June 5 1967 when hundreds of Egyptian warplanes were destroyed and the air bases radar sites and anti-aircraft missile batteries were disabled — those studies being on the curricula of war colleges around the world. Was it the incompetence of the Egyptians? The military prowess of the Israelis? Now newly revealed declassified data has proven to researchers what we believed all along: It was surely the Hand of G-d.
In an article that appeared some weeks ago Dr. Uri Milstein a respected military historian revealed details about that defensive aerial operation — after Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to the Israelis and had massed its troops on the border in preparation for an imminent offensive. While a comprehensive treatment of Dr. Milstein’s analysis isn’t relevant here several points are worth highlighting including the fact that the operation was so ambitious that a majority of military experts thought it had little chance of succeeding. The risk level was high because early discovery of the Israeli planes would have led to disastrous losses leaving the Israeli army without air cover. Even those in command who supported the plan were well aware that they were taking a dangerous gamble upon their shoulders. The air raid wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision though. In fact as early as 1962 the air force had been preparing for such an eventuality practicing and training for an operation like this and constantly improving the parameters. Nevertheless it was still fraught with great risk.
