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Not their finest hour By Uri Dromi Tags: Israel New, Israel Air Force  "Shloshim sha'ot be'oktober, hahlatot gorali'ot: hel ha'avir bitihilat milhemet yom kipur" ("30 Hours in October, Fateful Decisions: The Air Force at the Beginning of the Yom Kippur War") by Shmuel Gordon, Maariv Books, 604 pages, NIS 98 Let me begin with some due disclosure: Shmuel Gordon was my instructor at flight school, and it should be noted that even after more than four decades, the awe a trainee feels for his instructor never wears off. But the book Gordon has given us is so important, and its subject - the wisdom and ability of leaders to make the right decisions in times of crisis - is so crucial, that I have dared to write a review of it. This is a book constructed with meticulous care, by a writer who is a rare combination: a fighter pilot and operational man down to his marrow, and also a historian and theoretician of air warfare. Colonel (res.) Dr. Gordon read everything having to do with the war, interviewed key figures, listened to recordings and found his way to authentic documents. In this book he examines how the Israel Air Force (IAF) was deployed at the beginning of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, focusing on several decision-making junctures. His findings are dismal. Advertisement At the first junction - would there be a war or not? - IAF commander Benny Peled actually made the right call when he informed base commanders as early as Friday, the day before the war's outbreak, that war was imminent (not all of the commanders internalized the news, but that is another matter). When IAF intelligence chief Rafi Harlev continued to adhere to the "conception" that war was unlikely, Peled said to him: "Rafi, at the Intelligence Corps, you can dance to the tune of their drummer. Here you are my soldier." But later, according to Gordon, at the junctures that followed, the decision-makers failed, especially Peled. Their bad calls caused the air force, perhaps the foremost asset of Israel's military might, to be worn down through improper deployment and thus to fail to live up to what was expected of it. Moreover, the rapid attrition caused Peled to announce that the air force was about to reach its critical "red line," leading the chief of staff to recommend, on October 12, 1973, that Israel agree to a cease-fire. Shocking decision The most fateful decision of all, and the one that is at the center of the book, was Peled's choice, on October 7, to stop the aerial attack on the missiles on the southern front, and to transfer the brunt of the air force's power to the Golan Heights, where the lines had been breached. In doing so he violated the air force's own deployment doctrine, approved by the IDF General Staff, which held that only after the enemy's surface-to-air missiles were destroyed and air supremacy achieved, was the force to turn to supporting the ground forces. This decision had an adverse effect on the IAF's fighting later on; in fact, it doomed it to failure. Trying desperately to support the ground forces without gaining air superiority first meant sustaining great losses without being able to provide efficient support. In other words, the worst of all possible worlds. I once reviewed "Esh bashamayim" ("Fire in the Sky") by Amos Amir, who was present at the air force's underground command center during the war, and was shocked when Peled made that fateful decision. I claimed then that even if that decision had been an unfortunate one in terms of the IAF's proper deployment, Peled could not have withstood the pressure exerted by defense minister Moshe Dayan (who in the difficult early days of the conflict was talking about "the destruction of the Third Temple") and by chief of staff David "Dado" Elazar. And since he believed that the Golan Heights were in danger of falling into Syrian hands, Peled halted the IAF's momentum in the south and diverted it to the north. Peled will be judged by history, but even Gordon's book raises the question of whether, within the overall circumstances and not from the narrow perspective of the air force, his decision was truly so destructive. Even if we do not accept the claim of someone who had a stake in what happened, Elazar, that "diverting the air force to the north helped us not to lose the Golan Heights," Motti Hod - Peled's predecessor, the air advisor to the Northern Command, and a vocal critic of Peled's performance during the war - summed it up: "We held the southern part of the [Golan] Heights only from the air. We did not let them descend to Ein Gev." Perhaps the right decision would have been to continue the anti-missile assault in the south while also attacking in the north, as IAF Operations Division head Giora Furman suggested at the time. But not enough counter-pressure was exerted on Peled from below to change his decision. From the book we now learn how unanimous the high-brass at the IAF headquarters were in their negative view of that fateful call. But Amir confessed to Gordon in an interview that, "There was no man and no power at headquarters to tell the IAF commander, 'You are making a catastrophic mistake, drop it!'" In his book he wrote: "High-ranking commanders with authority and operational experience disappeared or fell silent." Furman did try - unsuccessfully - to challenge his superior, but the others held their peace, and only years later shared their bitterness with Gordon. This is a critical point, and Gordon does describe it, but not in sufficient depth. After all, in his previous book, "Manhigut avirit" ("Air Leadership"), published by the Defense Ministry in 2003, he devoted an entire chapter to what he called "critical discipline." "It is not only an illegal command that should not be carried out," he wrote there, "but also a command that makes no sense ... Mutual criticism of decisions made by high-ranking and lower-ranking commanders creates a higher quality of decisions, as the result of better decision-making processes." Nothing of the sort occurred on October 7, 1973, but Gordon, whose focus is more on the decisions themselves and less on the reaction to them, leaves us with some unanswered questions. 'Dado wasn't decisive' Just as Benny Peled should have stood up to Elazar, his own subordinates should have stood up to him. Perhaps if Peled had felt pressure from below, he would have taken a firmer stand before the chief of staff. Avner Shalev, Elazar's bureau chief, told Gordon: "It was not a good decision, but Benny Peled did not pressure Dado to change it. Benny Peled gave up, he did not ask, 'Wait a bit longer, we've just started in the south.' He did not present arguments in favor of continuing in the south. Dado was not so decisive. If Benny had fought, Dado would have gone with him." To cite one very different case, in the German army - known for its harsh discipline and for the oath of personal loyalty its generals were required to take to Hitler - there was one general who nonetheless dared to defy the Fuehrer. This was Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, Germany's greatest field general during World War II, the man who devised the breach through the Ardennes that led to the fall of France in May 1940. Starting in the summer of 1943, after the defeat at the Battle of Kursk, Manstein refused to follow Hitler's strict "no retreat" policy, which caused German troops to suffer terrible attrition, and in a series of brilliant retreat battles, managed to save a large part of his forces. In a private meeting with the Fuehrer in January 1944, he even dared to propose that Hitler not run the war in the east himself, but rather appoint a professional commander to the front. This is not merely a distant historical issue. After the Second Lebanon War, then-chief of staff Dan Halutz said that in real time, only one major general (Gadi Eisenkot, then head of the Operations Branch) dared to challenge him. And speaking of that war, I have no doubt that the industrious Gordon will eventually study it, too; after all, in his book "Misdar ha'abirim ha'aharon" ("The Last Order of Knights"), published by Ramot/Tel Aviv University in 1998, he developed a new doctrine whereby the air force should gain dominance at the expense of the ground forces. Those who are quick to dismiss Gordon's conception in the wake of the Second Lebanon War forget that in the first 30 minutes of that war, Hezbollah's heavy rockets were destroyed, precisely in the spirit of Gordon's innovative doctrine. The trouble is that it is hard to address all threats effectively without the use of ground forces, especially when dealing with an elusive enemy that uses Katyusha rockets, which are difficult to detect and destroy from the air. A little advice Either way, the next book will be an important one, and for it to be effective, the student will here risk overstepping his boundaries - and yet act in accordance with the IAF culture of debriefing, which holds that the truth must be spoken even when it is unpleasant - and offer his former instructor a few bits of advice. First, Gordon would do to well to abandon the habit of flooding his writing with quotations. His words are interesting enough, at times even fascinating, and he does not need to impress us with the wise words of others. And as if one quote at the opening of each chapter were not enough, he is in the habit of stringing a few of them together, so that Virgil, David Ben-Gurion and Elhanan Oren end up sharing cramped quarters as epigraphs to a single chapter. Not necessary. All this without mentioning the quote that opens the book's sixth and final part, which in flowery, even pompous language sets out to explain the goal of the book: "To turn mythos into ethos, a legend that must someday be shattered, like any legend, into a noble reality where the confrontation of human beings with their weaknesses creates their glory. To recount a 30-hour Iliad, which crowns the heads of warriors with unexpected laurels." What name appears at the end of this odd quote? "The author." Moving right along: Anyone who puts a 600-page book on the shelf takes the chance of having the average reader return it to the shelf midway through, especially if the reader does not happen to be an aviator. Frequently the dramatic plot is interrupted here at peak moments by learned lectures, important in their own right, but deserving of a separate book. There are also repetitions here and there that dilute the tension. And Gordon, after all, is no Tom Segev, who has the ability to weave a compulsively readable historical tapestry, leading his readers after the heroes of an era - their personalities, preferences, letters, desires, disappointments. In Gordon's case, the main protagonists - Golda Meir, Dayan, Elazar, Peled and others - appear immediately and begin to act, without being introduced in any way by the author. Even if we assume that everyone knows the top officials, what about less well-known figures? These are described in a stingy manner that contributes little. Furman, one of the most important figures in the book, "is known for his sharp tongue, strong opinions and unusual voice." That's it. Meanwhile Ze'ev Bonen, director general of what is today called Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, "is a slightly stooped man, with hair as unbendable as its owner." We've said already that Gordon's next book might be important, perhaps critical, since the threats materializing around us will make the future deployment of air power no less than fateful - literally. Therefore, Gordon needs a resolute editor to cut his next book in half. Colonel (res.) Uri Dromi was an IAF navigator and the editor of Ma'arakhot: Journal of the Israel Defense Forces. Bookmark to del.icio.us   A man of peace Vatican defends wartime pope Pius XII against charge he turned blind eye to Holocaust. Feminine features An Iranian motor company unveils plans to design cars specifically tailored to women.   1.   about "Not the finest hour" by Uri Dromi 12:37  |  Huegelsberger Joe 04/10/08   2.   first of all i wish haaretz would give us more 18:44  |  harzion 04/10/08   3.   What the Goverment Is Not Telling You 21:50  |  Ralph Levy 04/10/08

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