Israel at the moment is considered to be one of the countries with the best military forces and there are very good reason to say so. Unfortunately this is the result of constantly having to defend the country and her citizens against attacks, so this great result that Israel may be proud of comes as a response to great threat.
The beginning of this army goes back to the time before even Israel was created. Starting in late XIX century and intensifying through the time attacks on Jews in Ottoman Empire and British Mandate Palestine made it necessary for Jews to defend and protect themselves.
The war of independance oficially started with the declaration of independance on 14 May 1948, but the actual war between Jews and Arabs has started before that and was already intensive before British troops left.
I would like to recall few incidents from around this time connected to the beginnings of the future Israeli Air Force. They very well illustrate how desperation the situation of Jewish civilians was and how determined they were to keep their newly gained home, the only one they had, right after the Holocaust.
The first story goes back to February 1948, 3 months before actual creation of the State of Israel. At the time there was no official Jewish armed forces, British troops were still trying to discover any trace of weapons in Jewish settlements and the level of violance from Arab neighbours was on the raise - in fact undeclared war was already in progress. On January 10, Arab Liberation Army attacked Kfar Szold (right by the border with Syria) - 900 Arab soldiers attacked less than 100 Jewish settlers by the later were helped by British armoured unit. When later British officially complained to Syrian PM they have been told that "Soon Arab armies will teach the Jews a lesson they will never forget".
So here we are in February, there are no planes in British mandate except few sport or commercial small ones. Arab attackers have cut off the lonely settlement of Nevatim on Negev desert. The nearest settlement was Beit Eshel, 5 miles away. From there the pilot, Pinhas Ben-Porat, of small Piper Cub airplane took off and flied to Nevatim with volunteer gunman and some hand grenades. As the light sport-plane was obviously not meant to take part in any kind of military operation they could only either throw grenades by hand or shoot at the sides (shooting to the front or back would have demaged the plane). The settlers from Beit Eshel helped to push the plane enabling it to take off. They succeeded in scaring away Arab attackers for a time, landing by Nevatim settlement and evacuating two wounded (on a stretcher, through barbed wire) leaving gunman behind. The plane landed at Beit Eshel and after delivering first aid to the wounded it took them to Tel-Aviv to get the proper medical attention. The plane was back in Lodda airstrip 3 hours after it has taken off without anybody from British authorities realising it went missing. Few days later Arabs complained to British that Red Army plane has been used by Zionists in Nevatim. The complaint was ascribed by British to "fertile oriental imagination".
By the end of March 1948 only 2 Piper Cubs were maintaining any contact with northern and southern settlements along coastal highway. They were delivering minimal supplies and newspapers from which the settlers could follow the course of the war.
On the day the independance was declared 3 Egyptian planes bombed Tel-Aviv and devastated its airfield creating damages in Spitfires left by British behind as scrap, together with little Austers, the outdated sport-planes, they were the only ones owned by newborn Israel at the time. John Barrard, overseas volunteer recolled: "In any other airforce those planes would have been written-off. But there was no choice. They were painstakingly restored, parts made or cannibalized and they flew again."
The next planes to arrive were Messerschmitts bought from Czechoslovakia in 1948. It is some kind of irony that those (already outdated) German planes, that in the Battle for Britain were delivering so hard blows to RAF were now employed by the nation most horribly harmed by the country where they were manufactured. The engines in them were too heavy and additional propeller had to be installed which seriously deminished the capability of shooting, still they were widely used and still canb be seen in IAF museum at Hatzerim near Beer Sheba.
After these hard beginnings came years of wonderful development and many successes. However the very place where the museum is is in the range of missiles fired from Gaza and has to have shelters (not just for show but for used) and antimissile battery. It makes the message being carried by the museum and history of early IAF even more powerful for contemporary visitors.
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