By Joe Spier
CALGARY, Alberta, Canada — On July 6, 2010, as the sun was about to set over Arlington, Virginia, 89 year-old ex-U.S. Marine and Israeli Air Force fighter pilot, Lou Lenart stood on the reviewing stand at the base of the Marine Corps War Memorial, flanked by generals and took the salute of marching and musical units from Marine Barracks, Washington D.C. Before that, Marine Corp Brigadier-General Michael Brogan read the citation honouring Lenart who flew in combat for both the United States and the State of Israel, as one whose “uncommon valor was a common virtue”.
Laslo Lenovits was born in 1923 in a small Hungarian town. In 1930, he emigrated to the United States with his parents and settled in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania. As a Jewish kid with a funny accent, he was a regular target of anti-Semitic taunts. In 1940, he Americanized his name to Louis Lenart and joined the Marines at the age of 18 with one objective, “killing as many Nazis as possible.” After completing basic training, the only Jew in his boot camp, Lenart served in the infantry for 18 months and then talked his way into flight school.
Lenart received his wings in 1943 and was assigned to the Pacific where flying Corsairs, the carrier-based fighter aircraft, he took part in the battle for Okinawa and made numerous attacks on the Japanese mainland. Lenart remained in the Pacific until the surrender of Japan. Retiring as a captain when the war ended, Lenart moved to Los Angeles.
One night in the fall of 1947, Lenart attended his synagogue to hear Major Wellesley Aron speak about the situation in Palestine. Aron had been an officer in the Jewish Brigade of the British Army during World War II and was now tasked with recruiting volunteers from abroad with vitally needed military skills to fight for Israel in its coming War of Independence. As fourteen of his Hungarian relatives including his grandmother were murdered by the Nazis in Auschwitz, Lenart required little persuasion. That night, he drove to Aron’s hotel and handed him his military resume. A few weeks later, Lenart’s telephone rang. The man on the other end, without introducing himself, said, “I understand that you are interested in flying”.
On April 30, 1948, Lenart was on his way to Italy. He and co-pilot, Milton Rubenfeld, a former USAF pilot, were to fly a Norseman aircraft to Tel Aviv. The Haganah had recently purchased 20 Norsemen in France and they were to be flown, two to three at a time, from Italy to Palestine. The Norseman was a Canadian manufactured light transport aircraft, not suitable for combat but to be used to ferry supplies to isolated settlements and kibbutzim. Lenart and Rubenfeld were to pilot one of the first two through the British blockade. An American and a South African, both veterans of the Second World War, flew the other.
On May 2, the two aircraft, with Lenart at the controls of one, took off from an abandoned Italian airfield to make the 1,400 mile run to Palestine. The flight was dangerous. Each aircraft was a flying Molotov cocktail as the interiors were filled with extra gas tanks required for the lengthy journey. Flying was by dead reckoning as there were no navigational instruments or radios. Palestine had to be approached at night to avoid the British. Thirteen hours after leaving Italy, they saw runway lights and landed on a dirt strip near Tel Aviv. The runway lights were tin cans filled with sand and kerosene. The four pilots were the first aerial blockade-runners.
The United Nations had supported Jewish nationhood by voting for “partition” but support ended there. No country, save for Czechoslovakia, was prepared to sell military equipment to the Jews of Palestine. Israel was to declare independence on May 14, 1948 and war with the surrounding Arab States would then be inevitable. Israel had no fighter aircraft to counter the Arab air forces.
Three weeks before Israel was to declare statehood, the Haganah purchased from the Czech government ten Avia S-199 fighter aircraft along with spare parts and armaments for the exorbitant price of $180,000 each and optioned fifteen more. The Haganah was in no position to haggle. The Avia S-199 was based on the German Messerschmitt airframe but with a mismatched engine and was dubbed by the Czechs, “Mezek” or “Mule” in English. The Czechs also agreed to train the pilots on Czech soil. On May 6, ten pilots left Israel and by a circuitous route ended up in Czechoslovakia. Only five, including Lenart, had combat experience.
As the Haganah pilots discovered, the Mules were nose heavy, sluggish in the air and torqued sideways. Lenart would later describe the Mules as “probably the worst airplane that I have ever had the misfortune to fly.” The Mules would however due to the skill and daring of the pilots serve Israel with distinction.
On May 15, one day after the creation of the Jewish State, five Arab countries with modern armies invaded Israel. At that time, none of Israel’s fighter aircraft and none of the pilots were in the country.
Three days later, the Egyptian air force bombed Tel Aviv’s central bus station killing 42 people. Even though they had not completed their training, Lenart and the four other combat experienced flyers demanded to return to Israel. Because of their short range, the Mules, were not capable of flying to Israel under their own power and would have to be disassembled and placed in cargo planes. By May 22, four Mules and the five pilots were back in Israel where the planes were reassembled in secrecy. Israel’s entire air fighter capability now consisted of four aircraft and five pilots.
On May 29, the Mules were ready for action. The first mission was to be a surprise raid on El Arish, the principal base for Egyptian air operations. That changed. An Egyptian force of about 10,000 troops supported by 10 tanks and 500 other armored vehicles was advancing toward Tel Aviv. The column had reached the area of Ashdod about 16 miles south of the City. Holding them back was a blown bridge that the Egyptians would replace within hours. Only about 250 lightly armed Israeli soldiers stood between the Egyptians and Tel Aviv. If Tel Aviv fell, so would the Jewish State. The fighter planes were ordered to attack the Egyptian column.
The four planes were each armed with two 70 kg bombs, two 20 mm cannons and two machine guns. The Mules, just reassembled, had never been test flown. No one knew if their systems worked, if their guns would fire, if their bombs would drop or if their wings would not. The pilots were about to find out.
The attack leader would be Lou Lenart, the pilot with the most combat experience. His wingman was Modi Alon, a native of Sefat who served with Britain’s Royal Air Force in the Second World War. Following them would be Ezer Weizman, born in Tel Aviv, also an RAF veteran and Eddie Cohen a South African volunteer.
At dusk, the planes took off; Lenart first, followed by the other three. Once in the air, Lenart unfamiliar with the country realized that he did not know the way to Ashdod. With no radio, Lenart used hand signals to indicate his bewilderment to Alon who pointed him in the right direction. Coming over the target, the planes came under anti-aircraft fire from the Egyptians. The attack, as planned by Lenart, was for the planes to dive on the Egyptian column in a cloverleaf pattern unleashing their bombs and strafing with cannon and machine gun, a tactic he learned in the Marine Corp. Each plane would make three passes.
Lenart dropped his bombs on his first pass. His cannon ceased firing after ten rounds and his second and third passes were limited to strafing with machine guns. His cockpit was peppered with anti-aircraft fire and his plane lightly damaged.
Alon also dropped his bombs on his first run. In his passes, he exhausted his ammunition. Upon landing at base, his left brake failed to function, the plane looped, a tire exploded and the wing tip struck the ground. The plane was no longer flyable.
Weizman dropped one bomb on his first pass and the other on his second. His cannon fired one round and jammed. His machine guns worked fine.
Cohen after completing the mission, tried to return to base with his plane damaged by anti-aircraft fire. The plane crash-landed and was engulfed in flames. Cohen was killed, the first air casualty of the war.
In its first mission ever, Israel lost one-half of its fighter aircraft and one-fifth of its fighter pilots and the few bombs and limited strafing did little damage to the Egyptian column. Yet the psychological effect on the Egyptians of seeing Israeli combat planes was devastating on their morale. Surprised and unnerved by the attack, they halted their offensive, dug in and later retreated. Tel Aviv was saved.
That evening also marked the official formation of Israel’s first fighter squadron, the 101st Hakrav Harishona Squadron. From then on planes of the 101st always flew with the unit’s biblical “angel of death” logo (a suggestion of Lenart) painted on their fuselages.
Shortly after the raid on the Egyptian column, another Mule crashed while attacking Iraqi troops, leaving Israel with only one serviceable fighter aircraft. Lenart and Alon took turns flying that plane protecting Tel Aviv from Egyptian bombers. Lenart would marvel that when aloft he was the only fighter pilot in the skies defending all of Israel.
By July, with new planes and combat ready pilots arriving in Israel and the Egyptian air force having lost their zeal for fighting and staying home, Lenart transferred to Air Headquarters where he was appointed chief of air-ground operations for the southern region. He introduced the concept of forward ground controllers, a tactic learned with the U.S. Marines. He and his crew would prowl the southern front in a jeep with front and rear mounted machine guns, a generator and radio equipment and call down air strikes on the Egyptian armor and troops. That is how Lenart finished the war.
By the time the Israel-Egypt Armistice Agreement was signed in February 1949, the Egyptian forces had been pushed out of Israel.
Modi Alon was killed in action on October 16, 1948. Ezer Weizman went on to become Commander of the Israeli Air Force, Minister of Defense under Menachem Begin and Israel’s seventh President. He passed away in 2005. Weizman and Lenart remained close friends until the end.
Following the war, Lenart participated in Operations Ezra and Nehemiah, the airlift that brought some 130,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel and afterward flew for El-Al. Later in life, he became a movie producer and at one time general manager of the NBA’s San Diego Clippers basketball team.
Lou Lenart passed away on July 20, 2015 at the age of 94 and is buried in Israel. His funeral was attended by high-ranking officers of both the U.S. Marine Corps and the Israeli Air Force.
The bridge near Ashdod is today known as Gesher Ad Halom (Up To Here Bridge) and marks the furthest advance of the Egyptian army into Israel. It is the place where the Egyptian column was stopped by Lou Lenart, Modi Alon, Ezer Weizman and Eddie Cohen who together saved Tel Aviv and in so doing the fledgling State of Israel.
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Spier is a retired lawyer with a keen interest in Jewish history. You may contact him via joe.spier@sdjewishworld.com