Download or read book Angels in the Sky written by Robert Gandt and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gripping story of how an all-volunteer air force helped defeat five Arab nations and protect the fledgling Jewish state. In 1948, only three years after the Holocaust, the newly founded nation of Israel came under siege from a coalition of Arab states. The invaders vowed to annihilate the tiny country and its 600,000 settlers. A second Holocaust was in the making. Outnumbered sixty to one, the Israelis had no allies, no regular army, no air force, no superpower to intercede on their behalf. The United States, Great Britain, and most of Europe enforced a strict embargo on the shipment of arms to the embattled country. In the first few days, the Arab armies overran Israel. The Egyptian air force owned the sky, making continuous air attacks on Israeli cities and army positions. Israel’s extinction seemed certain. And then came help. From the United States, Canada, Britain, France, South Africa arrived a band of volunteer airmen. Most were World War II veterans—young, idealistic, swaggering, noble, eccentric, courageous beyond measure. Many were Jews, a third were not. Most of them knowingly violated their nations’ embargoes on the shipment of arms and aircraft to Israel. They smuggled in Messerschmitt fighters from Czechoslovakia, painting over swastikas with Israeli stars. Defying their own countries’ strict laws, the airmen risked everything—their lives, careers, citizenship—to fight for Israel. They were a small group, fewer than 150. In the crucible of war they became brothers in a righteous cause. They flew, fought, died, and, against all odds, helped save a new nation. The saga of the volunteer airmen in Israel’s war of independence stands as one of the most stirring—and untold—war stories of the past century.
Download or read book Angels in the Sky How a Band of Volunteer Airmen Saved the New State of Israel written by Robert Gandt and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Reads like a World War II thriller, only better because every word is true.… One of the great untold stories of history. Robert Gandt has brought it vividly, unforgettably to life.” —Steven Pressfield, best-selling author of Gates of Fire In 1948, when the newly founded nation of Israel came under siege from a coalition of Arab states, a band of volunteer airmen from the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and South Africa arrived to help. They were a small group, fewer than 150. Many were World War II veterans; most of them knowingly violated their nations’ embargoes on the shipment of arms and aircraft to Israel. The airmen risked everything—their careers, citizenship, and lives—to fight for Israel. The saga of the volunteer airmen in Israel’s war of independence stands as one of the most stirring—and little-known—war stories of the past century.
Download or read book Saving Israel written by Boaz Dvir and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-06-14 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incredible true story of a WWII veteran’s renegade operation to help Israel defend itself during the First Arab-Israeli War. Shortly after Israel was created in 1948, it faced the threat of invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies. Though the United States opposed supplying arms to either side of the conflict, American World War II veteran Al Schwimmer was determined to do whatever it takes to help Israel defend herself. Schwimmer created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the government, and sent his pilots to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia. Schwimmer and his team risked their lives, freedom, and US citizenship to prevent what they viewed as an imminent genocide. They evaded the FBI and State Department, gained the support of the mafia, smuggled weapons—mostly Nazi surplus—across hostile territories, and went into combat in the Middle East. This book vividly tells the story of this little-known yet historically significant mission.
Download or read book Without Permission written by Samuel Flaks and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fantastical propaganda play depicting an armed revolt financed the purchase of the yacht Abril and its conversion to an “illegal” immigrant passenger ship renamed the Ben Hecht. The plan was to evade the British naval blockade and bring Holocaust survivor refugees to Palestine. Henry Mandel volunteered aboard the Ben Hecht, a converted yacht that challenged the British blockade of Jewish immigrants to pre-state Israel. Captured and detained in Acre Prison, Mandel aided the efforts of prisoners planning an escape. After release, Mandel helped set up a secret bazooka shell plant in New York, which he helped to reassemble in Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Mandel was an Orthodox Jew whose reminiscences provide a uniquely illuminating perspective on the creation of the Jewish state. Mandel’s story is explicated in a running commentary that includes the personal narratives of other members of the Ben Hecht crew as well as historical background.
Download or read book Air Space Smithsonian written by and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 600 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fighters Over Israel written by Lon O. Nordeen and published by Crown. This book was released on 1990 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Air Force Combat Units of World War II written by Maurer Maurer and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1961 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Desert Storm 1991 written by Richard P. Hallion and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-17 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An expertly written, illustrated new analysis of the Desert Storm air campaign fought against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which shattered the world's fourth-largest army and sixth-largest air force in just 39 days, and revolutionized the world's ideas about modern air power. Operation Desert Storm took just over six weeks to destroy Saddam Hussein's war machine: a 39-day air campaign followed by a four-day ground assault. It shattered what had been the world's fourth-largest army and sixth-largest air force, and overturned conventional military assumptions about the effectiveness and value of air power. In this book, Richard P. Hallion, one of the world's foremost experts on air warfare, explains why Desert Storm was a revolutionary victory, a war won with no single climatic battle. Instead, victory came thanks largely to a rigorously planned air campaign. It began with an opening night that smashed Iraq's advanced air defense system, and allowed systematic follow-on strikes to savage its military infrastructure and field capabilities. When the Coalition tanks finally rolled into Iraq, it was less an assault than an occupation. The rapid victory in Desert Storm, which surprised many observers, led to widespread military reform as the world saw the new capabilities of precision air power, and it ushered in today's era of high-tech air warfare.
Download or read book New Heavens written by Boris Senior and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origins of Israeli air power.
Download or read book Fighting Back written by Jeffrey Weiss and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-17 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fighting Back is the story of Stan Andrews, an assimilated American Jew and World War II veteran who became one of the first fighter pilots in the history of the Israeli Air Force. “Jeffrey and Craig Weiss have uncovered the story of a Jewish hero in the mold of a Leon Uris character. Readers will enjoy trying to keep up with Stan Andrews—a typical Jewish New Yorker turned daring combat pilot—as he chases history from the air force planes of the United States and the nascent state of Israel.” –Dan Senor, New York Times bestselling co-author of Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. “Absorbing and beautifully written, Fighting Back tells the thrilling story of an unlikely American Jewish hero. At a time when some American Jews are distancing themselves from the Jewish state, this book is a powerful reminder of the deep roots connecting American Jewry and Israel.” –Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow, Shalom Hartman Institute, author, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor In 1948, Stan Andrews left a comfortable postwar life in Los Angeles to travel to the war-torn Middle East, where a four-front Arab invasion threatened to destroy the newly-declared State of Israel. There he joined the Israeli Air Force and became one of its first fighter pilots. Andrews was an unexpected volunteer for the fight for a Jewish state. He was many things—an artist, writer, assimilated Jew, ladies’ man, pilot, and combat veteran of the Pacific War. He had previously been aloof from the struggle for Jewish independence but found himself so roused by the anti-Semitism of 1940s America that he decided to go to Israel and risk everything. Stan made the most of his time in Israel, serving in fighter and bomber squadrons and leaving his mark on an Israeli Air Force that has since become the stuff of legend.
Download or read book Above and Beyond The Birth of the Israeli Air Force written by and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1948, a group of World War II pilots, mostly from America, volunteered to fight for Israel in the War of Independence. As members of “Machal” - volunteers from abroad - this ragtag band of brothers not only turned the tide of the war, preventing the possible annihilation of Israel at the very moment of its birth; they also laid the groundwork for the Israeli Air Force. Above and Beyond is their story. The first major feature-length documentary about the foreign airmen in the War of Independence, Above and Beyond brings together new interviews with pilots from the '48 War, as well as leading scholars and statesmen, including President Shimon Peres, to present an extraordinary, little-known tale with reverberations up to the present day. Filmed in the U.S., Israel and the Czech Republic, Above and Beyond recounts the harrowing missions of the men who helped repel five Arab armies and create Israel's vaunted Air Force. The film follows the pilots on their circuitous route from the United States - where they met and trained in secret and struggled to stay two steps ahead of the FBI - to Panama, Casablanca, Rome and even behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia, where they flew versions of the very Nazi planes they had tried to shoot down in World War II. Recalling the terrifying first days of the war, when Arab armies occupied East Jerusalem and advanced perilously close to Tel Aviv, Above and Beyond reveals how underequipped and isolated the Israelis were, how desperately they needed planes and pilots and how critical the actions of a handful of young American men were for the country's survival. Set against the backdrop of an emerging nation still reeling from the horrors of the Holocaust, Above and Beyond examines the motivations of the foreign volunteers - Jews and non-Jews, some Zionists, many others not. It mines the tensions between the Israelis and Machal soldiers - Would the foreign pilots stay in Israel after the war? Were they Americans first or Jews first? The film recounts the personal stories of the young pilots, whose experiences in Israel were life altering. And ultimately, the film taps into universal themes of courage, commitment and sacrifice. At a time when much of the world stood by, unwilling to help a fledgling nation under attack, a tiny band of airmen answered the call for help. They risked their citizenship, their futures and even their lives. Above and Beyond finally gives them their due.
Download or read book Fire in the Sky written by Amos Amir and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2005-07-19 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a Middle Eastern pilot’s life—from his childhood in Tel Aviv during WWII to his early career in the Israeli Air Force to the Lebanon War. General Amos Amir’s autobiography tells the story of the man, the warrior and the commander and the story of the struggling, newly-born, Israeli Air Force. From the Six Day War of 1967 and onward, the IAF turned to be an extremely important component of the overall Israeli defense power. The years from the Sinai War in 1956, through the Six-Day-War, the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the Lebanon War in 1982, were the years of Amir's flying, fighting and commanding career. Amir tells his own story in talented, vivid and fluent language. He succeeds in pulling the reader into his narrow cockpit from the early stages of his flying school to later air combats and reconnaissance missions. Tense dogfights, long-range reconnaissance missions and memorable aerial episodes, including piloting a Phantom jet from the deck of the American carrier Kitty Hawk, are vividly described. The book reveals previously untold stories about the traumatic Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the early stages of the war in Lebanon in the 1982.
Download or read book No Margin for Error written by Ehud Yonay and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 1993 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Israeli-born, award-winning investigative reporter, whose story about U.S. Navy fighters was made into the movie Top Gun, presents an important military history, with all the excitement of a high-tech adventure, focusing on a heroic group of youngsters as they are molded into the highly-skilled pilots of one of the world's most sophisticated air forces. Photos.
Download or read book The Machalniks written by Dick Berman and published by Pelhamgrp. This book was released on 2017-10 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1947, two Jewish American World War II airmen, Mike Kaplan and Paul Schatz, had a plan. They bought two surplus C-46 airplanes to fly Holocaust survivors trying to immigrate to Palestine, over the British naval blockade set up to prevent their arrival.The plan changed when United Nations voted to partition Palestine. Five Arab nations with a combined population of over 60 million, vowed to annihilate the virtually unarmed 600,000 Jews when the British withdrew and Israel declared itself a State on May 14, 1948. Realizing the Jews needed weapons to defend themselves, Kaplan and Shatz purchased increased their fleet to twelve cargo planes, and gathered a volunteer crew of Jewish World War II pilots to fly them. They were called Machalniks, the Hebrew acronym for Volunteers from Abroad.Facing fines, prison, and loss of their citizenship for attempting to break the Mid-East Arms Embargo, they set up a Panamanian airline and slipped the planes out of the United States. They eventually arrived in Czechoslovakia, the only country willing to sell them armaments. Days after Israel proclaimed itself a State, a column of 5,000 Egyptians, in tanks and armored cars were poised on the door step of Tel Aviv, a mere 15 miles away. If Tel Aviv fell, the War of Independence would be over, and the fledgling State of Israel would cease to exist.In untested planes, reassembled only days before from parts smuggled into the country, Kaplan led the only four combat pilots in Israel to engage the Egyptians. They flew the only combat planes in the Israeli Air Force. As they soared into the sky, beneath their wings lay the fate of the newborn nation and its air force.
Download or read book Fire in the Sky written by Amos Amir and published by Pen & Sword Aviation. This book was released on 2020-09-19 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Amos Amir's autobiography tells the story of the man, the warrior and the commander and the story of the struggling, newly-born, Israeli Air Force. From the Six Days War of 1967 and onward, the IAF turned to be an extremely important component of the overall Israeli defence power. The years from the Sinai War in 1956, through the Six-Day-War, the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the Lebanon War in 1982, were the years of Amir's flying, fighting and commanding career.Amir tells his own story in talented, vivid and fluent language. He succeeds in pulling the reader into his narrow cockpit from the early stages of his flying school to later air combats and reconnaissance missions. Tense dogfights, long-range reconnaissance missions and memorable aerial episodes, including piloting a Phantom jet from the deck of the American carrier Kitty Hawk, are vividly described. The book reveals previously untold stories about the traumatic Yom Kippur War of 1973 and the early stages of the war in Lebanon in the 1982.
Download or read book Against All Odds written by Hugo N Gerstl and published by . This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1947 - The UN declares that the British Mandate over Palestine will come to an end. In May 1948 Israel and Arab Palestine will be divided into two independent states. The Arab world reacts immediately: There will be no Jewish state; it will be driven into the sea! Sixty-five million Arabs against six hundred thousand Israeli Jews. Britain has washed its hands of the problem. The United States, under the guise of the Neutrality Act, makes it a felony for any American to supply either side with any arms. Americans Al Schwimmer, Hank Greenspun, and Charlie Winters boldly defy the Neutrality Act and risk convictions by purchasing twenty-three former Nazi Messerschmitt Bf-109s in Czechoslovakia, painting out the swastikas on the tails with Jewish stars of David, and smuggling them to Israel; founding a "Panamanian" airline and flying seven large aircraft out of Panama "to do an aerial survey," but never returning; securing a huge cache of ammunition from a sympathetic junk dealer in Hawaii; smuggling weapons to Mexico on a hijacked yacht, and ultimately shipping them "to Nationalist China" - via Israel. Stripped of most of their rights as US citizens, Schwimmer is recruited to start a small aircraft maintenance plant in Israel, which will become Israel Aircraft Industries, a billion-dollar-a-year operation; Greenspun purchases a defunct newspaper, which he turns into the Las Vegas Sun and is among the first to call witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy to account; Winters returns to importing and exporting fruit and diamonds between Israel and the United States. After the 1967 Six-Day War, when France reneges on its commitment to sell Israel fifty advanced fighter jets, the trio manages to "steal" plans from a friendly engineer in Geneva. Within six months Israel turns out its own homegrown Mach 2 fighter aircraft. And that's just the beginning. International best-selling author Hugo N. Gerstl has crafted a tantalizing, rewarding, magnificently readable tour de force based on the true life stories of three of Israel's most unheralded heroes, cementing and enhancing his reputation as a master storyteller. Novels: Scribe (International Best Seller) - Legacy - The Deathmaster - Misfire! - Oldies But Goodies Show - Amazing Grace (International Best Seller) - Billy Jenkins - Against All Odds (International Best Seller) - Assassin (International Best Seller) - Arcade - The Wrecking Crew (International Best Seller) - Skorzeny - Dancing With the Devil - Stalemate. - Coming Soon: The Good Brother - The trial of Albert Goring - Set Rome Afire - The story of the First Pope John XX/II - The Danube.
Download or read book I Am My Brother s Keeper written by Jeffrey Weiss and published by Schiffer Publishing. This book was released on 1998 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on recently declassified documents and more than two hundred interviews, I Am My Brothers Keeper tells the story of the more than one thousand Americans and Canadians, Jews and non-Jews, who fought in Israels War of Independence. This is a story about men like Rudy Augarten (shown on the front cover), who interrupted his studies at Harvard to fly for Israel. This, despite the fact that Augarten had been shot down over occupied France during World War II, and survived sixty-three days behind enemy lines. Its about Chris Magee, a World War II ace and veteran of Pappy Boyingtons Black Sheep Squadron who felt the Jews deserved a homeland. And about American Indian Jesse Slade, who believed that fighting for Israel was the Christian thing to do. And Buzz Beurling, the legendary Falcon of Malta who sought to recapture the glory days of World War II. I Am My Brothers Keeper captures the powerful story of those Jews and Christians who stood up to be counted at a critical time in Jewish history. Only three years after the Holocaust, these volunteers helped establish the State of Israel. This story will forever change your understanding of the relationship between Americans and Israelis.
