On the afternoon of October 7, 1973, Raz would finally have the chance to do what he had dreamed of all his life: lead a squadron of brave men into a desperate battle. The preceding afternoon, at exactly two o’clock on the Sabbath of Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, Syria sent the most artillery, tanks, and infantry arrayed since World War II pouring over the Green Line, sweeping down the Golan, and nearly overrunning the fragmented IDF brigade assigned to hold the north. Subjected to a murderous counterbattery fire, outgunned 12-to-1, the Israeli mechanized artillery brigade tried desperately to hold the line. The Israeli Air Force had the fastest turnaround time from takeoff to takeoff of any nation on earth. But the sorties of F-4 Phantoms and Skyhawks cycling through Beersheba to provide air cover to the besieged divisions were being decimated by new radar-controlled Soviet SAM-6 surface-to-air missiles. Unbelievably, the Syrians were on the brink of breaking through and racing to the coast, cutting Israel in two.
Raz led his squadron off the runway, climbing steeply to the northeast, the sun a bright ball in the west behind him. The F-4s headed straight to the Syrian border. Over Mount Ramon, Raz spotted his first MiG-21. The MiG turned to engage, and Raz fired off an air-to-air Sparrow. Seconds later the MiG exploded in flame and smoke, and Raz had recorded his first kill. He felt a rush of adrenaline, but he took no joy in the death of the Syrian pilot. It was a job, something he had been trained to do—and do expertly. Within minutes the squadron chased out the Syrian MiGs and provided air cover for the besieged battalions battling below. Twenty-four hours later, Israel had managed to reinforce the northern battalions and halt the Syrian advance.
Raz’s discipline, attention to detail, and ability to organize and lead men lifted him steadily up the ranks of the IAF, first as an F-4 squadron leader and then as one of the renowned instructors at the IAF pilots school at Hatzerim. From the beginning, Ivry picked him to be his F-16 leader.
Ivry greeted Raz warmly after the pilot transferred to Ramat David. They made small talk, Ivry asking about his family. With its history of volunteerism, the Israeli military was more informal than most, especially compared to that of the United States. Not a lot of stock was put in marching and drilling and saluting.
Ivry got down to business quickly. He wanted Raz to lead the first group to Hill. “Who else is going?” Raz asked.
“Hagai Katz, Relik Shafir, and Doobi Yaffe,” Ivry said.
Raz nodded. Dov “Doobi” Yaffe was a good man. It would be good to work with him again.
The two pilots had attended the U.S. Navy’s famed “Top Gun” school together at Miramar, California, just east of San Diego. Ostensibly enrolled to hone their air-to-air combat skills, Raz and Yaffe were in reality sent to collect intelligence on the new F-5e jet fighters. The Saudis and Jordanians had bought scores of the new American-made planes to beef up their air forces, and Israel was worried about the plane’s performance specs and capabilities in combat. Top Gun was one of the few places that flew F-5es to simulate “enemy” aircraft during training exercises. By enrolling, Raz and Yaffe could study the planes in action. The Americans, of course, were not let in on this secret.
Yaffe and Raz had at first been uneasy together at Miramar. They had not known each other in Israel. And they were polar opposites. Israel then was perhaps the closest thing the industrial world had to a “classless” society. Even money did not buy you nobility. There were no Rockefeller or Kennedy Israelis. But that was not to say there were no social divisions. In Eretz Yisrael the social pecking order was based on how close your family tree grew to the nation’s heroic founding fathers and the generation of young men who had fought for Israel’s independence. In this sense, Doobi Yaffe was practically royalty. His grandfather Dov Yaffe had come to Israel as a Zionist pioneer from Russia at the turn of the century and founded the first agricultural settlement in Galilee. His father, Avraham, was one of the first Israeli fighter pilots and commander of Israel’s largest air force base, Tel-Nof. Doobi’s uncle “Yossi” was a national hero, a tough paratrooper who led the famous charge in the Battle of Ammunition Hill, known to every Israeli schoolboy and -girl and immortalized in the song “Givat Hatakh Moshem.”
On the second day of the Six-Day War, Jordan’s crack 2nd al-Husseini Battalion held the hill, blocking the entrance to Jerusalem. Named after the garrison where the British had stored their ordnance during World War I, the Ammunition Hill fortification was a labyrinth of minefields, trenches, and concrete bunkers manned by artillery and tanks. Six barriers of barbed wire ringed the hill. Yossi Yaffe had to get his company up the hill, through the barbed wire, and then seize the concrete bunkers. Chewed up in a no-man’s-land by blistering machine gun fire, the paratroopers crawled barrier by barrier, using pipelike Bangalore torpedoes to destroy the barbed wire. When they finally reached the hill, the paratroopers fought hand to hand in the bloodiest combat of the war. At 03:10, Yossi radioed Commander Motta Gur that the hill had been taken. The commander shouted back: “I could kiss you!” Yossi had lost a quarter of his command, but he had opened the way for the historic taking of Jerusalem and the Old City. When he was killed by a land mine a decade later, half the nation turned out for his funeral.