Raid on the Sun(28)

The first of February 1980, Raz flew ahead to Hill outside Salt Lake City. The rest of the squad, Yaffe, Katz, and a young F-15 fighter pilot named Israel Shafir, followed later in the week, flying a commercial El Al flight from Israel to New York, then transferring for the three-hour connection to Salt Lake City. The pilots were allowed to bring their families with them to Hill for the three-month training course. Yaffe brought along his wife, Michal, and his young son. Both Shafir and Katz brought their wives as well. Raz, intensely focused as leader and commander, rode alone.

The pilots and their families moved into a small motel in the tiny military town that had grown up outside the base, which was situated in a valley beneath the Rocky Mountains. Raised in the deserts of the Middle East or the flat fertile plains off the Mediterranean, most of the Israelis had never seen anything like the towering, snow-capped peaks that surrounded them. The pilots were awestruck by the majestic backdrop of the white-topped ridges that rose up to encircle them as they descended to the runway below.

The pilots attended flight school five days a week and had the weekends off. Indeed, the conversion training was more like a nine-to-five job than Hollywood’s Top Gun camp—with the one crucial exception that their workday could well end with their funeral. The pilots were professionals, most far along in their careers. They resembled more a steeled special ops team with a job to do than the clichéd cocky cowboy-pilot. Unlike infantry combat units where men often did form tight friendships or fraternities, single-seat fighter pilots were loners. The feeling was more or less that you were on your own. You did the flying alone; you made the crucial decisions alone; if you were hit, you died alone. The camaraderie between fighting men expressed itself in joking or good-natured hazing. Feelings, fears, even missions were never discussed.

But despite this natural proclivity for solitude, the men and their families, working and living together so closely, especially so far from home in a wholly alien environment, formed a close-knit community, a little Israel of the Rockies. Though not overly religious, the men and their wives felt it important to keep up family traditions and the culture of their homeland. So every Friday evening all of the families, including Raz, would gather at the motel home of one of pilots and celebrate the Sabbath, lighting the candles, singing folk songs, and sharing favorite dishes. Yaffe, wisecracking, easygoing, even irreverent, kept everyone loose. Shafir, a superb musician, played guitar and led the songs.

Known to everyone as “Relik” or “the Major,” Israel Shafir was the unofficial squadron philosopher. Dark-haired, with intense brown eyes and classic Roman looks, he was educated, urbane, well spoken. He liked to read historical novels and write poetry, though he didn’t like anyone to know that. Shafir had lived and gone to school in Canada and Scotland, spoke perfect English, and evinced a devilish, self-deprecating humor, routinely addressing everyone in mock aristocratic accent as “Doctor.” If asked a question by one of the OTU instructors, Shafir typically answered playfully à la Cary Grant, “Yes, Doctor?” or, when walking across the tarmac, would call out in greeting, “How are you today, Doctor?” When he finished with flying, he planned to return to university for a doctorate in philosophy.

Some nights the Israelis would join their Yank instructors at the local base bar for a round of beers, some good-natured nationalist boasting, and even a song or two. On weekends the Israelis turned out like tourists, traveling to national parks Bryce Canyon and Zion. In an “only in America” moment, they caught the local tour of a demolition derby, watching crazy Yanks smashing perfectly good cars into one another. Later, during training for the third group, the pilots and their families were shuttled to Park City’s famed ski resort. Dressed in T-shirts and Levi’s that were standard wear in the Middle East, the Israelis were stunned to discover a picture postcard forest of snow packed ten feet deep. Bare-armed and freezing, they were like kids and spent the day hiking the drifts and challenging the instructors to snowball fights.

But mostly the pilots were excited about flying the new machines, the F-16s. Raz’s group in March eagerly awaited delivery of Israel’s first four aircraft to Hill—the two two-seaters and two single-seaters. Finally the day came when the four aircraft, painted virgin military gray, without wing and tail insignia, sat quietly, regally, on the tarmac before the Hill hangars. Later the planes would be emblazoned with the familiar blue circle and Star of David of the Israeli Air Force, but for now, for the pilots, the planes on the runway, sparkling in the early morning sunlight, were tangible symbols of their nation’s strength. They were inexplicably proud. And excited as children at Christmas—or, at least, Hanukkah. The planes would ultimately be flown to Israel, but for now they were the aircraft Raz and his pilots would fly during training. No longer would they need to borrow the USAF F-16s for conversion exercises.