All language subtitles for Above and Beyond.en

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Visualize two little
beaten-up airplanes
on this abandoned runway,

in Brindisi, Italy.

We had to travel
a thousand miles to Israel.

We were reading every day
about the convoys,

in Israel being trapped
in the hills.

In one case, it was
a convoy of 40 doctors
that were killed.

It was desperation
time, in Palestine.

There was food to be dropped,
ammunition to be dropped,

and they only had
a few Piper Cubs.

So, these airplanes
were critical
to get over there.

We took out the seats
in the back,

and put in a big rubber tank
filled with fuel,

with a pipe going
to the wing tank.

We were a flying
Molotov cocktail.

We didn't have life rafts,
no operational radios.

We were in a hurry.

I saw some beautiful
wildflowers right
by the runway.

I saw Lou
jump out of his airplane
and pick flowers.

I wanted to kill him, but, uh,
I was able to control myself.

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Just off the edge
of the airstrip was a cliff,

and the airplane
just sunk like this.

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♪

Eleven and a half hours
of watching
that single propeller

go round and round and round.

Never saw land,
never saw a ship,

never saw an airplane,
nothing but just water.

It was
the dumbest thing
we ever did, flying 11 hours

over water,
single-engine aircraft.

The only person I know
that ever did that,
was Lindbergh.

♪

♪

Finally, we made a landfall
in Netanya, turned south.

We circled the Tel Aviv Airport.
It was nothing but a dirt strip.

Had no lighting, except
what they call "goosenecks."

And after about 45 minutes,
we were able
to come in and land.

These two
little airplanes

were the biggest thing
that they had in Israel.

The very next morning
they were already
dropping supplies
to the Kibbutzim.

I handed the flowers
to the first woman I saw.

Well, that's Lou.

I learned afterwards
that we were
the first ones to arrive.

That was the beginning
of the Israeli Air Force.

♪

♪

It's a day
they've been waiting for.

It's a day of days
for these sailors,
and for the best reason
in the world.

They're the first group
to be released by the Navy.
Thanks, mates,
for a job well done!

After I returned
from three years of war,

I was in Minot, North Dakota.

Partners in a used car
and truck business.

Money, girlfriends, cars...

The whole enchilada.

I really wasn't
very concerned
about Palestine.

I never went to Hebrew school.

My mother had to drag me
kicking and screaming
to get me bar-mitzvah'd.

I grew up in an age of
very virile and anti Semitism.

People like Father Coughlin...

We believe in
Christ's principle,

of love your neighbor
as yourself,
and with that principle,

I challenge every Jew
in this nation,

to tell me
that he does
not believe it!

It was tough.
When I was walking home from school,

we used to get it
up, down, and sideways.

Christ killer, sheeny,

dirty Jew, and the whole bit.

We tried to ignore it,
but you just couldn't.
It was part of your psyche.

They'd surround me
and the guy would hit me
from the back, and I'd turn
around and then he'd hit me.

I realized by the time
I was about
13 years old that,

in order for me to survive,
I gotta get very strong.

So I wrote away to a guy
called Charles Atlas,
with a dollar bill.

By the time I was
15 years old,
nobody was beating me up.

I graduated high school
in April.

End of April I went
to the recruiting office,
and there were guys lined up

and there was a guy
sitting at a desk.

I filled out the form.

Of course it said there,
"religion." "Jewish."

He looked up at me,
and he says,

"Marine corps is a tough outfit.
You think you can make it?"

I looked down at him
and I says,

"If you made it,
I can make it."

I grew up in Newark,
New Jersey.

I used to come back
from a battle
with black eyes,

and I'd walk into the house
and my father said,

"What did you do
to the other guy?"

My old man was a tiger.

We didn't have cars,
but I had friends
who had bicycles,

and we'd go across highways
and everything in our bikes.

♪

I lived near Newark Airport.

We would watch airplanes land,
and watch the pilots
and admire them.

So I was always interested
in aviation.

When we were kids,
I used to go to Coney Island
with my friends.

I would go on the Cyclone
or the Thunderbolt
when I could afford it.

It was probably
10 or 15 cents a ride.

It's that rush of.

Being frightened
and loving it
at the same time.

That was my introduction
to taking risks
and wanting to be a pilot.

We kept a kosher home
out of respect
for my grandparents.

But I didn't like being a Jew.

I don't think you could
get a job in a fire department
or a police department
in New York if you were Jewish.

I didn't deny my Judaism, but...

I wasn't happy
about being Jewish.

What changed me simply was
knowing what Hitler did
to the Jews.

He murdered six million!

I didn't
understand Zionism,
but I knew

what had happened in Europe
in the concentration camps.

And the refugees
were trying to find
some place to live.

And also, the British
intercepting them
on the high seas

and putting them
behind barbed wire in Germany.

I thought, there should be
something done about this.

Europe's displaced persons
are on the last lap
of a journey towards freedom.

Their eyes turn
toward the horizon,

seeking the shoreline
of the promised land.

Off in the distance,
a British destroyer fires away.

So near and yet so far.

Palestine is still a promise.

At the end
of the war, there was

massive pressure
on the British,
who control Palestine,
to allow Jews

to immigrate in large numbers
to Palestine.

Which is something
the British government
just refused to do.

Because they know
if they're gonna have
a future in the region,

they have to have the good will
of the entire Arab world.

And they will not have that
if they allow
massive immigration
of Jews to Palestine.

The British realized
that they could not
achieve a compromise

between the warring clans
in Palestine, the Jews
and the Arabs.

And they understood
they couldn't
remain here indefinitely.

So the British in February '47
said, "We'll hand Palestine
and the whole problem,

back to the world community."

And the United Nations came up
with a Partition proposal.

The idea being
to partition the country
into two halves,

two states, one for the Jews
of Palestine,
and one for the Arabs
of Palestine.

The Jews accepted
the Partition Resolution
of 29 November, 1947.

The Arabs rejected.
They want all of Palestine
for themselves.

The United Kingdom,

abstain.

United States,

yes.

Uruguay,

yes.

While the vote
is being tallied
people are counting
in their head.

And when they realize
the two-thirds majority
has been reached,

there is such a cry of joy.

Their dreams of statehood
had finally been granted.

The resolution
was adopted by 33 votes,

13 against, 10 abstentions.

♪

The people here
were overwhelmed.

Everybody was dancing
and singing in the street.

There was just one sad man.

His name was David Ben-Gurion.

I stand on his side
when he looked
at the dancing people.

And he says,
"Well, today they dance,

tomorrow their blood
will be spilled."

And so happened.

There was violence.

From the time of the Partition
through to spring of 1948.

A kind of civil war
between Jews
and Palestinian Arabs.

This is when
Jerusalem was besieged.

It's when the state of Israel
looked like it might
never emerge.

Large numbers of Palestinians

turned into refugees,
or were displaced
from their homes

as a result of the fighting.

In a few cases,
there were expulsions.

And in others, their leaders
told them to leave.

But basically, they fled
in face of the flail of war.

After the Partition vote,
the British announced

that they were going
to leave Palestine
on May 15, 1948,

and that started
a ticking clock.

Everybody knew
that, come May 15,
there would be a vacuum.

And so for the Jews,
they knew they had
to be organized

and ready to fight a war
with the neighboring
Arab armies.

Who were preparing to invade
as soon as the British left.

The Egyptians
have an air force

with several dozen Spitfires
and a few other
military aircraft.

The Jews in Palestine
had a very small air arm
called the Haganah Air Service.

Their air service
was insignificant and
didn't have military aircraft.

Ben-Gurion called me,
and he says "Look,

we have a little bit of rifles,
a little bit of machine guns.

We don't have planes,
we don't have tanks.

And unless we should
get some arms,
we are lost."

And he says,
"I'm going to United States
to mobilize an army.

Ben-Gurion's view was
that the US really would
be the place

to go for everything.

American money,

World War II surplus equipment
either rotting in fields,

or being sold
at scrap prices,

Jewish veterans who had
current military skills.

I got a letter
from a friend of mine at TWA

and the letter
just simply said,

"If you're interested in flying
ammunitions to Palestine,

call this number
in New York
and ask for Swifty."

Just like that!

So, what the hell,
I called the number.

"Livingston! Where the hell
are you? We've been waiting
a week for you!"

I said, "Waiting for me, huh?"

"Yeah, we need you
right away!"

The minute I got this,

I knew my whole life
would be different.
I just knew it!

I'm in Hollywood.

There was
a Palestinian general

who was going to speak
at the temple that night.

I went up to him and I said,
"Look, I know there's going
to be a war there,

and I'm a fighter pilot,
and I wanna go there."

He said, "Well, I don't
know anything about it."

'Cause, you know, it wasn't
like, a newspaper ad,
"Join the Haganah!"

It was illegal, of course.

Although Truman
had been a strong supporter
of a Jewish state,

the State Department
had become very ambivalent
about Partition.

They thought
that a Jewish state
could not successfully
be established,

that the Jews would be
overrun by the Arabs.

And so, the US took
a number of steps

to make it clear that
anybody who tried to go
to Palestine to fight
would lose their citizenship,

and that there would
be no exportation
of American war material
to Palestine.

The Americans took the lead
in establishing embargo alarms
to the entire Middle East.

Our problem
was how to break
the embargo.

We used every possible way.

Ingenuity, connections,

smuggling, everything.

Because it was a matter
of life and death.

This is when a pivotal figure
named Al Schwimmer stepped in.

Al Schwimmer was
in many ways the founder
of the Israel Air Force.

He began his career
as a flight engineer.

It was Al Schwimmer,
the American,

who, when he got involved
in this enterprise, suggested

you're not going to win a war
against the Arab states
if you don't have an air force.

Ben-Gurion, now, he thought
very similarly.

I got a phone call
on a Sunday morning

from Al Schwimmer.

He gave me an envelope
with $5,000,

sent me down to
the war surplus administration.

At that time the desert
was filled with airplanes,

and if you were a veteran
you could buy one.

So the airplane cost to build
about 175,000.

For $5,000 I became the owner
of a C-46.

Schwimmer purchased
a dozen or so of these C-46s,

two or three
of the Constellations,

and got an operation
established in California.

Essentially, from scratch,
he created an airline

and ultimately the nucleus
of Israel's transport squadron.

The important point
at this time

was to recruit crews.

We had these airplanes,

but no one to fly them.

My first job
was not flying.

It was scouring stolen records
of New York Air National
Guard rosters

looking
for Jewish-sounding names
with pilot status.

I got
this phone call
from New York

appraising me
that Israel was going
to declare itself a state,

that they had purchased
some airplanes,

but they had no one
to fly them.

My father
was a stunt pilot,
daredevil flier.

He was very swaggery
and macho.

He was like a, um...

Indiana Jones, kind of,
you know, I mean...

He had that kind
of personality.

After the war,
the airlines were not
hiring Jewish pilots.

So an opportunity to fly
for a good cause
was just grand.

I believe that
the reason he went

was purely because he was
so passionate about it.

He felt like
it was destiny.

He said "yes"
almost immediately

and called four friends
who all said "yes."

I was working
as a flying instructor

in Philadelphia
on the Delaware River.

I began to make inquiries

to see whether I could go
to Israel.

I was invited
to New York,

met with Al Schwimmer.

It was supposed to be
hush-hush.

I got a form, "Were you in World War II?
In what capacity?"

So, I filled it out.
I was a fighter pilot.

Boom!

A couple of days later
I start getting phone calls
and telegrams.

"Meet a guy with a flower
in his lapel

on West 57th Street."

These clandescent operations

to recruit pilots
and procure arms

were centered in a hotel
in which the Copacabana
was located.

And Frank Sinatra
used to perform there.

In fact,
he once volunteered

to pass money
to buy illegal weapons.

♪

They asked me
how much I wanted
to get paid.

I said I don't
need any pay.

I thought I'd be home
in a month or two.

I really thought
we would lose.

You know, you're talking
about 600,000 Jews

and 50 million Arabs
surrounding them.

I didn't see how they could
possibly survive.

I said, "Mom,
I'm going to Palestine."

She said,
"You're not going.

Under no circumstances
are you going."

And I said, "I'm going."

My father said nothing.

I know he would've gone.

I was risking
my citizenship
and also jail time.

I didn't give a shit.

I was gonna
help the Jews out.

I was gonna
help my people out.

Jewishness to me
didn't mean anything.

I was an American!

But the idea that Jews
were going to fight...

I found exciting.

It's about time.

My father,
I had an argument
with him about it.

I was always arguing
with him.

He was always telling me
I... I wasn't a good Jew.

And I said,
"I'm gonna go and
risk my life to be a good-"

He said, "You don't
have to kill yourself
to be a good Jew!"

I told my mother
I was going to work for
a cargo airline.

In World War II,
she'd received a telegram

from the War Department
that I'd been
missing in action.

I didn't wanna put her
through that again.

My mother
threw herself on the floor
and started crying
hysterically,

and I almost didn't
make it out the door.

I had just made up my mind
that nothing was gonna stop me.

I couldn't live with myself
if I didn't do this.

Part of my family
wound up in Auschwitz.

My grandmother
and my cousins.

I felt that the remnants had
a right to life and some
chance of happiness.

The alternative
is too hard for me
to envision,

the possibility of what
the Arabs could have done.

And they talked about
the fact that
what Hitler did

would be nothing compared
to what they're gonna do.

Schwimmer
had to figure out a way to get
the planes out of the US.

You couldn't take them
to Palestine
because the British
were still there

and on high alert
for arms smugglers.

But you couldn't
leave them in the US

because of the arms embargo.

So they would
have to hopscotch
around the globe

to get as close to Palestine
as possible.

This idea was hatched to
turn these Jewish planes

into the nucleus
of a fake airline.

There was a former
air force major

who was friends with the nephew
of the Panamanian President.

So we were
Lineas Areas de Panama,

which was a phony.

You have these planes
lining up on the taxi
ready to take off

and they're very well aware
that this embargo
is taking effect.

And you have these
treasury agents, or T-men
as they were called in the day,

show up,
and there's a confrontation

with some of the pilots
who are getting ready
to take off.

Swifty said, "These are
foreign-registered aircraft."

"No, they're not.
They're US."

Swifty says,
"Wait a minute."

Goes in the hangar, he
comes out with a mechanic
with a can of blue paint.

The mechanic gets up on one of
those sides of the C-46s
and he prints,

"LAPSA." L-A-P-S-A.

Lineas Aereas de Panama.

Sloppy letters,
all bleeding down.

Swifty says to the guy,
"Okay, now they're
foreign registered."

And the guy says,
"But I still won't
let you go."

And he said to the T-man,

"You wanna stop us?
Shoot us down."

♪

In Panama,
we had the run of the town.

We settled on a favorite place
which I remember
was called Tierra Feliz.

Happy Land.

♪

We bought a Buick sedan.

My friend Norman Woods and I
bought white suits.

And we would ride around
and pick up girls.

We were young,
good looking, had hair.

We had a lot
of testosterone,

and we didn't want
to waste it.

What else can I say?

♪

We got out of Panama,
we had to go through
the South Atlantic.

so we landed
at Natal, Brazil.

Then, we took off,
got to Casablanca.

Payoffs are
all over the place.

And then we headed out,
landed at Rome.

Rome was the headquarters
of the Haganah,

and there were
gathering pilots there.

We were all young guys,
flight jackets.

And Rome was a wild place
at that time.

Beautiful women
with beautiful boobs

and I'm having
a hell of a time there.

And I meet Buzz Beurling.

They introduce me to him.

Buzz Beurling was Canada's
leading World War II ace.

He was the Falcon of Malta.

He was the kind of person who

single-handedly
had the potential to alter
the course of the war.

The Arabs wanted him.

He wasn't Jewish,

but he made it known
that he wanted to fight
for the Jews.

For him, going to Palestine
was going to get him back
to his glory days.

And, in Rome,
while other pilots,
like Giddy Lichman, were out

running around
and picking up women,

he was
in his hotel room practicing
with his model planes.

One day Buzz Beurling
says, "I'm gonna fly
a Norseman tomorrow."

He says, "You wanna go up?"
I say, "Sure!"

Just prior to that,
I had met this lovely
young Italian girl.

I spent the night
with her,

and she wanted me to,
and I wanted to stay longer.

I called up
Buzz Beurling.

I said, "Buzz, I can't
make it today.

I have a young lady here."

So, he says,
"I understand."

So, he got another guy...
I think his name was Cohen.

Unfortunately,
that particular plane
had caught on fire and crashed.

He and his co-pilot
were killed instantly.

There was some
thought that his plane
had been sabotaged

to prevent him
from ever making it
to Palestine.

Perhaps some of the women that
soldiers were carousing with
were spies.

No one will ever really know.

There was only one
country in the world willing
to break the embargo

and sell arms and aircraft
to Israel.

Czechoslovakia
needed Yankee dollars.

The Zionist movement had
millions of American dollars

because of the American-Jewish
contributions to the cause.

The Czechoslovakians
made available an air field
so the Israelis could base

all of these transport planes

that they had smuggled
out of the US
and down to Panama.

The Israelis were able
to set this up

as essentially
a remote Israeli base.

When I met these people
in New York,

they asked me what I flew.
I told them in combat
I flew the...

Thunderbolts P-47,
the Mustang,
the P-51...

"Oh," they said.
"We've got them.
We've got them."

I said, "Great! Wonderful!"
I thought.

Anyhow, that was not correct.

They were training us
in an Me 109.

The Messerschmitt was a famous
German fighter in World War II.

The Germans
during the war had built
a Messerschmitt factory
in Czechoslovakia.

The Czechs took it over
after the war and continued
to turn out planes.

The factory
that made the engines

apparently had burned down,

so they had to take an engine
out of a bomber.

Mickey Mouse had to fit in
through this little
4,000 pound fighter.

This thing
was put together from junk.

Different propellers,
different engines,
and so on.

"Messershit" I called it.

I was amazed that it could
get off the ground.

And most of the time
it couldn't.

We lost a lot of planes
on takeoffs and landings.
A lot.

They gave us
flight clothing.

Blue suede
with the Nazi wings,
Luftwaffe wings on it,

which I immediately
took off.

I remember
sitting in the cockpit
of my Me 109,

wearing a German uniform,
German helmet,
German parachute.

What's a nice Jewish boy
from Saint Paul doing
in a place like this?

The irony of it
did not escape any of us.

♪

The hour of destiny
approaches in Palestine.

Last pictures from Jerusalem
before the end
of the British mandate

show a city tensely quiet,

barricaded and armed
to the teeth.

Eastward, the Arab Legion
deploys for invasion
on the Transjordan border.

The rarely photographed
King Abdullah reviewed
a brigade of reinforcements
from Iraq.

How far will the Arabs go
to prevent the partitioning
of the Holy Land?

On the 12th of May, 1948,

Ben-Gurion summoned
his chief commanders
to a session

and asked them
what's going to happen
if we declare a state.

On the 12th of May
he asks them,

and Yigael Yadin,
the head of Haganah operations

tells him the chances
are 50-50.

That is,
we don't know whether
we're going to win

against the Arab states
if they invade.

♪

The Arab media did talk
about killing the Jews,
destroying the Jews,

throwing Jews into the sea.

And the Jews absorb this.

And that motivated them

in the sense of fearing
that if they lost the war,

there would be
a second Holocaust.

And that the world
would not intervene
on their behalf.

Ben-Gurion declared
the State of Israel

on Friday afternoon,
the 14th of May, 1948.

I was a volunteer,

and our mission was
to fly over Jordan

and to give
the Army High Command

an estimate of the strength

of the Jordanian army
that was invading Israel.

It really was
a very grim situation.

The armored cars
and the troops

and the trucks
were nose to tail for miles,
coming in from Jordan.

This evening, the invasion.
Arab armies are pouring in.

Their tanks have already
crossed the borders,

and the frontier settlements
have heard the first onslaught

of the fighting forces
of the organized Arab army.

Saturday morning
Tel Aviv was bombed.

The Jews are holding
their ground

in the country
in spite of the fact

that they have
been outnumbered
by the Arabs,

and the Arabs have come
much better equipped,

with heavy arms,
than the Jews have
in their possession.

Jews who are fighting
in Palestine,
the State of Israel,

are fighting for
the only thing that they have
in their possession.

It is life or death to them.

The Egyptians bombed
sites inside Israel.

They attacked the central
bus station in Tel Aviv,
killing several dozen people.

The Jews actually have nothing
with which to respond

to these Arab air attacks.
They have no proper air force,

and psychologically
they feel very vulnerable.

In Czechoslovakia,
three of us were in
the Commandant's office.

The Czech Commander
was in there.
I told him, I said, "Look,

we have to go back
right now."

But he says,
"You haven't finished
your flying course yet."

"Can't wait. We're going."

They say, "You're on your way
to go to Israel."

I say, "How the hell
am I gonna get to Israel?"

"In an airplane."

We set up what was known
as the Air Transport Command,

ATC.

These aircraft, which Schwimmer
had smuggled out of America,

started flying equipment
to Israel.

They would
bring Messerschmitts.

We would dismantle
these airplanes.

One fuselage would
fit into the C-46,
plus a wing.

The rest was filled
with boxes

which contained machine guns
and ammunition.

Over this fuselage,
they take the wings,

and over the wings

they stick me, Giddy Lichtman.

♪

As I flew into Israel,

I had the greatest feeling
I've ever had in my life.

I'll never forget it.

And that was to land
in my country.

You're gonna think this is corny
but I had been there before.

I had this deja vu.

Maybe I was with Joshua
at Jericho or someplace
because everything started
to look familiar.

I remember
the smell of the citrus groves,

then coming into the hangar
and seeing all these people
in uniform.

These are Jews?

My cynicism vanished
very rapidly,
I'll tell you that.

The first four
Messerschmitts arrived

a week or so
after the war started.
They had to be assembled.

And at that point
they were truly
a secret weapon.

They were being
assembled in one hangar,

and the Egyptians came over
and bombed the other hangar.

Got a little bit
lucky there.

They'd been put together,
but it wasn't clear

how successfully they'd been
put together, and they couldn't
be tried out.

Their first fight
was going to be
a combat mission.

At first there was
the thought of using them
against the Jordanians,

but then, a frantic call
came in for assistance
in the south.

By 5:00, Shimon Avidan
rushed up in the jeep.
He says, "Look,

six miles from where
we're standing now
at the airbase

is the whole Egyptian army
of about 10,000 men,

and we have
nothing to stop them."

He says,
"If you don't go now,

they'll be in Tel Aviv
in the morning
and there's no Israel.

♪

♪

The pilots were actually
two Palestinians,
Ezer Weizman, Modi Alon,

a South African
named Eddie Cohen,

and Lou Lenart.

And Lenart led the mission.

This was
the air force of Israel.

These four people

and four junk airplanes.

♪

♪

♪

♪

I'm climbing at 6,000 feet
in the climbing turn

Modi Alon realized
that I wasn't sure
where it is,

and he went like this.

I looked down,
and as far as the eye could see

the Egyptian army was there
on the road.

Tanks, trucks,
artillery, everything.

I looked there.

I saw the enemy
that came to destroy us.

I looked back and saw
the people of Israel
were behind me.

I just did a quick
Shema Yisrael
even though
I'm not religious,

turned the planer upside down
because to dive bomb,

the steeper the dive,
the more accurate is the hit.

I dropped my bombs,

and then I stayed down,
strafing

what they call a clover leaf
like this.

There are machine guns
firing through the propellers,

like in World War I.

Timing mechanisms
didn't always
function properly,

and some of the pilots
were shooting
off the propellers.

♪

♪

This is what we suspect
happened with Eddie Cohen.

♪

We were like a band of brothers.
It's like a piece
of your heart breaks off.

♪

♪

That evening,
our Intelligence intercepted

a radio message
from the commander
of the Egyptian army,

and I quote,

"We are heavily attacked
by enemy aircraft
and we are scattering."

The commander of that column
decided to dig in
and not to advance further

thinking that this was
the vanguard of a much larger
Jewish air force

and that it was going
to be much stiffer

opposition if he continued
to just sort of rumble
through the desert
in broad daylight.

It was probably the single
most important flight

in the whole
Israeli air force.

They stopped
the Egyptians cold.

There was a second air strike

which followed
immediately after
on the 30th of May

by an American pilot
against the Iraqis.

The Iraqi army
in the '48 war was the largest
of the Arab armies involved.

They struck westward
into Israeli territory

and controlled and occupied
the Northern West Bank.

And this is where the Israeli
Messerschmitts attacked them.

Two pilots were on patrol.

Ezer Weizman
and Milton Rubenfeld.

This is from
my father's debrief.

"Open fired with MG
and cannons on
Tulkarm Police Station

and dropped the second bomb
on Police Street.

Made a 90-degree
turn to north,
attacked four tanks

registered hits, tracer,
on all four of them,
zero distance."

This helped
persuade the Iraqis
to hunker down

and not attack
Israeli territory
thereafter.

"No flack
until hit right over tanks
by two cannon shells,

one in left wing
and one in belly.

Left wing crumbled up,

climbed above clouds,
all instruments gone."

He realized that he wouldn't
be able to get back to his base.

He bailed out
on the beach.

He saw a number
of kibbutzniks
coming in with rifles.

Now, bear in mind

that nobody in Israel knew
that we had
a quiet combat aircraft.

All they knew was that
they were being attacked
with an Egyptian aircraft.

They thought he was an Arab,
and so they were shooting
at him.

He didn't speak Hebrew.

He had his arms up.

He started yelling

Yiddish words
and the names
of Jewish food.

"Shabbos! Gefilte fish!

"Gefilte fish, gefilte fish."

"Matzo, Pesach..."

- "Gefilte fish."
- "Gefilte fish."

So, hey, they stopped
with the pitchforks.

Fighter squadron was
at that time

made up entirely
of foreign volunteers.

♪

♪

With two notable exceptions.
Modi Alon and Ezer Weizman.

Modi Alon
was a very cool customer.

Modi Alon was a good pilot,
totally fearless.

One day,
Modi calls us all in
and said,

"We wanna have an insignia,

and we wanna have a number
for our squadron."

I said, "What's the number?"
He said, "101.

We want them to think
we have a hundred squadrons."

♪

They were sitting
in a bar in Tel Aviv,

and someone said,
"You know, we need

a logo
for the fighter squadron."

I said,
"Let's call ourselves
Malak ha-Mawet.

Angels of death."

There were two veterans
from California
who volunteered together.

Their names were Bob Vickman
and Stan Andrews.

They met on the campus
of UCLA

and they were both
incredibly talented artists.

Stan and Bob literally
got out a cocktail napkin,

and they drew this logo
of the angel of death
with flight goggles.

And that emblem's
on Israeli F-16s today.

8:00 in the morning,
I'm not sure of the time,

I can feel somebody
tap me on the shoulder.

"Get ready.
You're going to fly."

"I'm gonna fly what?"
"You're gonna fly the Me."

I say, "Okay, fine."

I get into the cockpit
and I'm looking around,

"Where the fuck is this?
Where's this...

I don't know
where this is."

Before I flew
a fighter aircraft
in the American Air Force,

I got at least a hundred hours
of intensive instruction.

Here I got 35 minutes,

and I'm taxing out
the airplane.

Modi says, "Let's take off,"
so I give it a throttle,
I take off.

♪

And I'm trying to follow him
through this mist,

and I can barely see him.

We see below us
four Egyptian Spitfires.

I'm looking
for the gun sight switch.
I'm looking for everything.

I can find nothing.

Modi rolls over,

and I roll over

with my thumb up my tuckus
'cause I can't shoot the guns.

He makes a pass,
shoots at 'em,
and they break off,

and they go into the mist.

We got 35 minutes fuel
in these farshtunken airplanes.

Finally,
I find the gun switch.
I find all the switches.

I see one of them
break out.

He sees me now,
so he makes
a half-assed turn.

I drove up his tuckus
and pulled the trigger,
and I see pieces

fall out into the mist.

And I come back
to the base.

They say there's an airplane
that crashed.

That was the first kill.

♪

A promise of peace
for at least four weeks
comes to the Holy Land.

But almost until the very hour
set for the troops to begin,

grim, real war
still in progress.

Jews held in fortified parts
of New Jerusalem and Tel Aviv

while Arabs advance
through other parts
of Palestine.

♪

That first phase
ended successfully

in the sense that the Egyptians
had been stopped
in the south

and there still was
a Jewish state.

And Israel geared up
knowing that there would be
a round two.

Israel was far
better organized
than the Arab states

and knew how to use,
and did use the truces

which the United Nations
had forced on the sides,

to re-arm, resupply,
reorganize its troops.

far better
than the Arab states.

Volunteers continued
to make their way
to the country.

These volunteers
from outside the land
are called Mahal.

Mahal is a Hebrew acronym.

"Mitnadvei Hutz La'Aretz."

"Volunteers From Abroad"

The Mahal
was a truly global enterprise.

There are about 3,500 of them
from throughout the world.

Many were not Jewish,

and about 190 of the Mahal
were volunteers
for the air force.

They came
from Canada,

from England,

from South Africa,

Everyone came
for a different reason.

The arrival in Israel
of large groups

of volunteers or allies
had a tremendous impact.

The Israelis understood
that they weren't alone,

if you like, in contrast
to Jews in the Holocaust
who did feel alone,

and were alone.

They had expertise
that very few people
in Israel did.

Ground crew,
radio technicians...

Each individual
Mahal participant
had the potential

to contribute
to the war effort

far above and beyond
even their experience
in World War II.

During truce periods
they took us into this

little hotel called
Le Parc Hotel.

And they were partying!

Beautiful girls,
guys, soldiers...

And I figured,
this is a great war.

♪

We were notorious.

We weren't looking
for trouble, but we were
always looking for action.

The fighter squadron
had these red baseball caps.

Any time a bar owner
saw the caps coming,
he'd call the police.

We used to steal the jeep
because we had no vehicles.

We called that
moonlight requisitioning.

Somebody would come along
with a tow chain

and hook onto the jeep
and pull it out
through the base

and that's how we got
our vehicles.

Somehow or other,
Modi Alon was able
to keep us together.

He had to put up
with a lot of nonsense.

One night we got
so bombed out

that we took a big jar
or something and threw it
against the mirror.

Somebody took out
the back bar
at the Parc Hotel

which Modi
made us pay for...

collectively.

These are some of
the shtick we used to pull.

We used to pull
all kinds of stuff.

I love Giddy.

He's special.

Leon Frankel
was legitimate.

Torpedo bomber pilot
in the Navy.

He won
the highest medal,
the Navy Cross.

Handsome.

We were all shtuppers,

but he was
the primo shtupper.

I had a couple
of girlfriends there,

and I don't know if it
was my looks, or my status,

or what it was
that attracted them,

but we got along
very well, and...

Well, that's about all
I can say about that.

Many of the volunteers,
most of them,
did not speak Hebrew.

Many of the Israelis did not
speak very good English.

Social relations
between the two of them
could be difficult.

I don't think
the Israelis were
too pleased with us,

because we swaggered around.

For them, it was
a different experience.
It was a hard life.

The economy was
not firmly established.

There was great poverty there,
and there were shortages.

And the new state
was still absorbing
tens of thousands of survivors.

I met this girl
at the Parc Hotel.

The conflict arose,
when it came

whether I would settle
in Israel.

I said, "No, I'm a Yankee.
An American."

"Well, you're a Jew." I said,
"I can be an American
and a Jew, can't I?"

I said, "I'm here
to help you people."

"You can help us
by helping us grow."

I said, "I'm helping you
become an entity.
Isn't that enough?"

I didn't know then
that I was one of them.

Or I didn't admit it.

On the 8th of July,

the Egyptians broke
the first truce.

Then Israel went over
to the offensive.

The air force plan was to have
this lightning raid

right at the beginning
of the next round of fighting

to go after the most forward
Egyptian base in El-Arish,

and to knock their planes
out on the ground.

Lou Lenart again headed
that mission.

Bob Vickman was one
of the other pilots.

Stan Andrews was to be
part of that mission as well.

He and Bob were going
to fly together.

♪

Andrew's plane,
as these planes often did,
ground looped on takeoff,

and he ended up
in a cloud of dust.

The remaining three planes
formed up, went south,

but they'd used up
valuable fuel

while waiting
for the Andrews situation
to be sorted out,

and had to turn back
before reaching the target.

I'm flying low, south,
and I saw a troop ship

unloading supplies and troops
in the Port of Gaza.

I turned left
and came over,

and my other two planes
followed me.

And I dove down on the ship.

My number two...

Was hit.

An American kid.

Bob Vickman's plane
plunged into the sea.

Stan was devastated by

his best friend
having gone missing
on this mission,

and committed himself
to doing everything
in his power

to locating Bob,
dead or alive.

He said, "I came here
with Bob, and I'm not
leaving without him."

Tragically, he ended up
keeping that promise

because his plane also crashed,
and his body was never found.

♪

♪

♪

One of Al Schwimmer's
great coups was to purchase

three B-17 Bombers,

and he smuggled them
out of the country
through Florida

and managed to get them
over to Czechoslovakia.

So then there became
this great debate. What do
we do with these B-17s?

Do we just fly them
to Israel?

And do we actually use them
to strike at the Arabs

before they've made their way
into the country?

Egypt had been bombing Israel
for all this time.

Cairo had never
been bombed before.

Schwimmer himself
had been a TWA pilot,

and some of the others
had been commercial pilots
as well.

So when they flew into Cairo,

the radio went off
from the traffic control tower
at the Cairo airport

asking the plane
to identify itself.

One of the pilots said,
"Oh, this is TWA Flight 38.

We're coming in."
And they turned on
the runway lights

at the airport
for this B-17,

which of course strafed
and bombed the Cairo area
as a result.

One bomb fell near
King Farouk's palace,

and psychologically it made
a very very profound
impression on the Egyptians.

The next day,
thousands left Cairo.

They felt it was too dangerous.

And Israel, at that point,
had a real,
credible bomber force,

which nobody else really had.

For the third round
of fighting, the goal
was to displace

the Egyptians once and for all
from the Negev.

We had a contingent
of soldiers down there

totally cut off,
totally isolated.

They had no weapons.

You couldn't get in by sea.

You couldn't truck them in.

They had to be flown in.

That was Schwimmer's mission.

And he put air strips in
on the sand.

♪

We brought them in.
We brought
every screwdriver in.

They would have
literally starved to death

had it not been
for the supplies
that were brought in.

Really, though,
the whole survival
of the Negev communities

was because
of the air force.

We would take off
from Tel Aviv.

We'd bring Palmachniks in.

Take our wounded,
fly them back.

These guys
were real soldiers

who had taken one
for the country.
Tough guys.

A lot of them were refugees
too, by the way, from Europe.

They were pleased

to have given what they gave
for this.

I went down
and I saw these kids.

Couldn't believe it.

They could only be equipped
with what we could
equip them with.

I did have
a conversation with a girl.

Gun in her holster.

I thought about my own sister,
my little sister who was
about the same age at the time.

Packing a gun.

Jesus.

The Arabs,
if they were in trouble,
they could go home.

And live to fight another day.

The Israelis couldn't afford
to lose, and they knew it.

They were willing
to give their lives.

♪

♪

October 16th...
I remember the day very well.

I was heading out
over the Negev by myself,

and I came upon
this engagement.

I saw an Me 109
right behind a Spitfire
knocking chunks off of it.

Then I looked to the left
and saw another
Egyptian Spitfire.

By the time I pulled around,
he was a little speck
in the sky halfway to Cairo.

And all of a sudden, the engine
started running rough.

So I looked
at the oil gauge,

and it read zero.

In all of my years of flying
I'd never seen
an oil gauge read zero.

And then I started
smelling smoke.

And I said, "Leon,

you better look for a place
to come down because
you're not gonna make it."

I just cleared
the orange groves,

slid forward, went up
on its nose,

then back down on the ground.
I got a face full of dirt.

I knew
I had to go west and north

to get away
from the Jordanian lines.

Off in the distance,

coming down the road, I saw
a truck with soldiers in it.

I knew what had happened
to other downed pilots,

a couple of them,

and I wasn't going
to be taken prisoner.

I pulled out my revolver.

Well, if it's Jordanians,
I'm gonna take five of them
and save the last bullet
for myself.

About 50 yards away,
I heard Hebrew being spoken.

So I jumped out and started
waving my arms

By the time I got
to the air base,

I could see there was
an airplane burning.

I asked somebody what it was.
They said, "Oh it's one
of the pilots."

It was either Modi Alon
or Ezer Weizman.

Ezer's parents,
they came into my room,
hysterical, both of them.

"Is my son dead?
Is my son dead?"

I said, "No, he's alive.
He's alive. He's alive."

It turned out
to be Modi Alon.

It was a horror.

Devastating. Devastating.

We felt that we'd really
lost our leader.

It was like
losing our heart.

♪

And as we were
leaving the funeral,

I was in the back
of a jeep.

I started going
into shock.

And my limbs
wouldn't move. My...

I felt...

totally paralyzed.

So they took me
to a hospital in Jaffa.

And I decided
that I'd had enough.

We'd gotten some
replacement pilots,
so I didn't feel like I was

leaving the squadron
in any kind of jeopardy.

♪

Volunteers were always
free to leave.

The Israelis realized
they're going to need
as quickly as possible

to train the local population
to be able to take on
this burden themselves.

Dani Shapira
was a particularly fascinating
young Israeli pilot.

Some of us
were sent to Czechoslovakia

to train as soon as possible
to fly back to Israel.

We heard that some
of the volunteers,

they left the country

had families, you know,
and went back.

I said to the guys,
"We will never surrender.

We have to study
as fast as possible

so there will not be
another Holocaust."

In November,
they asked me to go back
to Czechoslovakia

and train some of
the Israeli pilots that were
being trained in Czechoslovakia.

George Lichter was fearless.

He was not afraid to go up
time and time again

in a plane that everybody else
was quite fearful of.

One day arrived a guy
who looks, you know, tough.

He said, "I'm George Lichter.

I came to see
who is capable

to fly a fighter airplane
and who is not.

In fact, we didn't sleep
that night, you know.
I was so scared.

He flew with me
one flight.

♪

♪

He said, "Do this,
turn left, turn right.

Stall, spin..."

I got back,

and I made a nice landing.
George Lichter said, "Now...

You brief those guys

what to do, what to avoid."

The Czechoslovakians agreed
to sell a bunch of World
War II Spitfires to Israel.

The Spitfire
could climb like an angel,
it was really a great plane,

and they asked me to fly
with the Spitfires to Israel

so they could
enter the war right away.

We were short two pilots,

and I recommended
that we take these students.

They were basically novices.
They were beginners.

The more experienced pilots,

they spoke to us
like if we were going
to get killed.

They said,
"It's very dangerous.

You don't have any experience
flying in bad weather."

I said to Moti,
"Let's keep the mouth shut.

They won't put us
on the formation if we will say
that we are afraid to fly."

So I didn't say anything.

♪

♪

♪

It was so cold, you know.
I was freezing.
My hands were freezing.

They flew on my wing.

Moti on one wing
and Dani Shapira on the other.

Once we got
into the clouds,
it all messed up.

I was close to George,

and all of a sudden
I lost sight of him
because of the clouds.

To avoid a collision,
I turned slightly
to the right

to open up the space.

All of a sudden
I was alone.

I saw my artificial
horizon moving.

And I'm losing altitude.

Somehow, he got
lost from the group.

I went down
looking for him.

My air speed
was building up.

I didn't know
how to recover.

And I knew, "Dani...

That's it.
You're going to die."

I was very concerned
how am I gonna find
that little speck.

And all of a sudden,
he saw me

much lower, you know,
spiraling.

I saw George saying,
"Come over, come over!"

I could see his mouth.
"Come over!"

He picked me up
and he brought me back.

♪

He saved my life.

♪

♪

He was sure
that we will make it.

And we made it.

We made it.

The next day, the Israel army
pushed the Egyptian army back.

And those Spitfires
took a big part.

We were really
fighting and winning
by this time.

As a Jew, I now felt
proud of being Jewish.

The final phase of the war
was from the 22nd of December.

It was a great battle,

and the air force threw in
everything it had
against the Egyptians.

The B-17s and the Spitfires
and the C-46s.

It really was
a hell-out effort,
you might say.

♪

♪

♪

The '48 war ended

when the Israelis surrounded
the Egyptian army,

which was concentrated
in the Gaza Strip,

forcing the Egyptians
to call it quits

and to call
for an armistice.

The United Nations
Security Council decreed
that the final ceasefire

would be
on the 7th of January, 1949.

♪

The 1948 war was the most
historically significant
of the Israeli-Arab wars.

This was a tremendous blow
to the Arab world,

and is remembered as such
to this day.

It's also significant
because during that war,

Palestinian society was
essentially crushed,

and 700,000 Palestinians
were displaced from their homes
and became refugees,

and this is a second
consequence of the war.

The Palestinian people,
to this day,

see it as a catastrophe,
or in Arabic, a
Nakba.

It was
a very difficult war.

Close to 1% of the population
were killed,

so it was
a very, very difficult
and extended war.

♪

The people who fought
in 1948 brought about

the creation of
the State of Israel.

For most of them,
this was the golden moment
of their lives.

On March 14, 1949,
there was a big parade.

♪

♪

I received my wings.

I had tears in my eyes.

This was my wish.

Long time, when I was a kid.

Now I became a pilot

in the Israeli Air Force.
In my air force.
In my country.

To train a pilot takes years.

And there came a group...

Experienced,

volunteers,

who risked their lives,

who risked their passports.

They fought,

they trained, they built...

It was a godsend.

When I came back,

my father would boast

to his patients
and his colleagues

about "My son
who saved Israel."

It changed my whole life.

It made me a mensch.

I had done something good!

For once.

♪

♪

There was a picture
of me standing
next to Ben-Gurion.

My father,
he used to
kvell.

He loved it.

My father used
to look at me

kind of out of the side of...

You know, like this.

What is he going
to do next?

When I went to school,
I got terrible grades 'cause
I never cracked a book!

I know they were both
very, very proud.

Those were
the best days.

When we built an air force.

We started an air force.

During
difficult times, did you feel
that Israel would survive?

Somehow, yes,
and I'll tell you why.

Israel is an article
of faith.

I felt more at home
in Israel than I did

in the United States.
I felt, this is my home.

When I came back
with my wife to Israel.

We were four couples
and one little apartment.

We shared everything.

Doors were open.

I don't remember
a locked door
in those days.

The happiest days
of my life.

I was born to be here,
at that moment
of history.

To contribute
to Israel's survival.

And that's the most
important thing I did
in my life.

We have a great
word in Yiddish,
that's
"bashert."

It's fated.
It's meant to be.

Maybe God spared us
in World War II

so that we could come
to Israel and help

the remnants
of our people survive.

♪

♪

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♪

♪

♪

Shortly before I left Israel,

I happened to be in Tel Aviv

when they were bringing in
refugees from the death camps
in Europe.

I remember them getting down
on their hands and knees
and kissing the ground.

I knew
then and there

that was the reason
that I came.

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