BOXART STORY

#70152

Text: Yoav Efrati

Illustration: Adam Tooby

First blood

On the morning of May 15, 1948, citizens

of the newly proclaimed state of Israel

awoke to a new beginning. The hope of

2,000 years has materialized into a homeland for the Jewish people. The establishment of a Jewish state in parts of

Palestine, at this time still under British

mandate, had been approved by the United

Nations half a year earlier. Nonetheless,

the recognition of a new Jewish state was

not accepted by the local Arab population, nor by the Arab countries surrounding

Israel – Egypt in the south, Jordan to the

east and Syria and Lebanon in the north.

Leading the effort to annihilate the Jewish

state was the Royal Egyptian Army and

Air Force. At daybreak of Israel’s first day

of independence, Royal Egyptian Air Force

Spitfires bombed Tel-Aviv and the civilian

airport at its outskirts. Operating out of the

Sinai base at El Arish, makeshift Dakota

bombers and additional Spitfires conducted a daily routine of bombing civilian centers with impunity.

Israelis had yet no fighter aircraft to stop

them, but on April 23, 1948, the IAF had secured the purchase of 25 Czechoslovakian

S-199 fighter planes. On May 6, 1948, ten

local and foreign pilots, who volunteered

to fly combat missions for Israel, were

sent to Czechoslovakia for conversion

to S-199. Twelve days into their training,

news came from Israel that Egyptians had

bombed Tel-Aviv central bus station, killing dozens of civilians. On the morning

24

INFO Eduard

of May 20, Modi Alon, Ezer Weizman and

five Czechoslovakian mechanics squeezed into a C-46 Commando along the first

disassembled “Messer” and loads of

ammunition to land in Israel 11 hours later.

On May 29, 1948, Israel had four “Messers”

airworthy and ready for action, but although two more were delivered in the meantime, only one was airworthy on June

3. At the dusk of that day, pedestrians of

Tel-Aviv witnessed an overflight of a pair

of Egyptian Dakota makeshift bombers

escorted by a pair of Spitfires. This was

to be another bombing run on the largest

population center of Israel. This time, the

Egyptian’s daily bombing routine that had

begun on the morning of May 15, 1948, was

to be challenged for the first time. Palestinian Jew Modi Alon took to the air in the

only fighter plane Israel had, the S-199 coded D-106. Modi came in from the sea with

the sun at his back, so the Egyptian Spitfire

pilots did not spot him as he used his aircraft to slash at the two bombers, downing

one after the other in the skies of Tel-Aviv.

Alon’s experience at flying the “Messer”

was only a handful of flights at the time

of the kills but his fighter pilot experience amounted to hundreds of hours as an

active pilot with the Royal Air Force towards the end of World War II. Alon began gathering operational experience in

June 1945 with the No. 112 Squadron, flying

Mustangs Mk.III (P-51B), Mk.IV (P-51D) and

Mk.IVA (P-51K) adorned with shark mouth.

The Royal Air Force No. 112 Squadron was

stationed in Cervia, Italy and was disbanded at Treviso on December 30, 1946. Prior

to it, in September 1945, Alon was transferred to the No. 213 squadron at the Ramat

David airbase in British mandated Palestine, flying Mk.IVA (P-51K) Mustang. The No.

213 Squadron transitioned from the Mustangs to the late mark Spitfires and between November 1945 and April 1946 Alon

was redeployed with the unit to Italy. Soon

after this transfer, he quit the RAF to take

up architectural studies at the Technion

university in Haifa. During his studies, Alon

was summoned by the IDF command along

with other native Israelis who flew for the

RAF, to take up flight duty with the Palmach’s air component, flying civilian-marked

light aircraft.

On October 15, 1948, the IDF initiated operation “Ten Plagues” to dislodge the Egyptian

army entrenched along the Ashdod-Hebron road leading to Jerusalem. Returning

from a combat mission in “Messer D-114”

Alon experienced mechanical difficulty

over Herzliya air strip and in his attempts

to correct it while airborne, he lost control

of the aircraft which ended in a fatal crash,

killing the hero of the new state of Israel.

September 2022