Israel's Best Defense: The First Full Story of the Israeli Air Force [Hardcover]

Eliezer Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 1993

An experienced pilot traces the evolution of the Israeli Air Force in a candid study of the IAF's triumphs and failures, personnel, and role in modern Israeli history. 15,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Founded during the 1947-1949 War of Independence, the Israeli Air Force earned its reputation for combat efficiency during the 1956 Sinai Campaign and the 1967 Six-Day War. These victories convinced the Israelis that they possessed an invincible military whose air arm guaranteed "clean skies" and provided a far-reaching force to thwart surprise attacks. As the author of this popular history reveals, the 1973 Yom Kippur War shattered this delusion, as Egyptian airplanes achieved the first strike, catching the IAF unprepared. Cohen chronicles the IAF's successes and misfires, introduces leaders and heroes, explains IAF organization and training methods and reviews its procurement and testing policies and how the American-built F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers became the backbone of the IAF. The book offers a fresh version of the IAF's role in the 1976 hostage-rescue mission at Entebbe, which the author cites as a significant turning point: concentration shifted toward the war against terrorism. Cohen, himself a veteran of air combat in several of Israel's wars, incorporates his own and other pilots' recollections into his fast-moving narrative. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This book repeats many of the same war stories told in Ehud Yonay's No Margin for Error ( LJ 3/1/93) , from the rickety beginnings of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) to its outstanding successes in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. A former pilot in the IAF who now works for El Al Airlines, Cohen offers up far more historical details than Yonay. He is also able to place the personal tales of pilots and squadrons into the broader context of the development of the IAF, the changes in its strategy, and the impact of its victories. There are still victory rolls and gut-pounding G-Turns, but these high-altitude tales are grounded in discussions of the policies of David Ben-Gurion and Shimon Peres. There is also more insight into and analysis of Israel's enemies. Unfortunately, like Yonay, Cohen still lacks a central theme and ends without an insightful conclusion, but his book makes good reading for popular collectionss-- John Yurechko, Georgetown Univ., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 504 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1st Ed. (U.S.) edition (October 26, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517587904
• ISBN-13: 978-0517587904
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,676,503 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An insider's look at the develoment of the Israeli Air Force, August 31, 2004

By 

H-53 Driver (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Israel's Best Defense: The First Full Story of the Israeli Air Force (Hardcover)

I picked this book up in a bookstore in Tel Aviv when I was in Israel to interview IAF pilots on their experiences for a book project. I found it to be an excellent, detailed history of the development of the Israeli Air Force from birth through the Lebannon War. Strangely enough, Colonel Cohen was a helicopter pilot, not a fighter pilot, and the squadron commander of the only helicopter squadron (H-34s) they had during the '67 War.

Perhaps the best part of this book is the detailed description of Operation "Moked" - the preemptive strike against Egypt, Syria and Jordan during the opening stages of the Six-Day War in 1967. This details how Israel, with about 180 combat aircraft, destoyed their three enemy's 650 aircraft force swiftly with most of the damage ocuuring during an initial 15 minute period. For students of Air Warfare this strike stands out as one of the preeminent uses of air power against a numerically superior enemy's center of gravity. The irony of this battle plan, which had been developed years before the 67 War, was that it was based on the German Luftwaffe's air campaign during Operation "Barbarossa" - the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Military aviation enthusiasts will appreciate the insight and history behind one of the world's pre-eminent military force's and the personailities that shaped its development. Colonel Cohen's insider's description of the characters who shaped the IAF gives the reader a priveleged look at what made the difference in making the IAF the formidable fighting force it is today. You can't study military aviation without looking at the IAF and this book is an excellent, detailed account.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Gets the facts right, but misses much of the story, October 14, 2002

By 

Rottenberg's rotten book review (nyc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Israel's Best Defense: The First Full Story of the Israeli Air Force (Hardcover)

This book tells the extended story of the Israeli Air Force, famed but also perhaps a sometime victim of its own rep. From its humble beginnings of foreign volunteers and Piper Cubs to the supersonic age of super-aces in F-16s, the IAF always possessed the veneer of the heroic. Being the principal military branch for a young nation repeatedly beset by war, the IAF's story closely parallels the history of Israel - from the scrappy jury-rigged days of the war of independence, the disappointment of 1956, the near-miraculous triumphs of 1967, the tragic near reversal of 1973 and the painful realities of Lebanon. Though the IAF has come a long way since its humble beginnings, and its history covers half a century, the shift from a cobbled-together, volunteer-staffed air force to an elite-trained arm equipped with cutting edge aircraft was sudden - about the time the major European powers turned to Israel as a counter for the pan-arabism of Egypt's Nasser, leading up to the abortive Suez campaign. Most of the foreign volunteers had returned home by then, and the Spitifres that fought the Independence War put into storage. (Late model F-51 Mustangs, however, remained in service and flew missions against the Egyptians in 1956; though seeming contemporaries of the Spitfire, IAF's Mustang's are more identified with the '56 war, then the war of independence). Israeli pilots, traveling abroad (seemingly on vacation) were taught to fly unforgiving transonic jets like the French Mystere. The IAF had opened its own academy by then, and had already established its reputation for being unforgiving to its cadets.

Because it's almost impossible to separate the stories of Israel and her air force, the authors can't go that deep into the individual stories of the pilots or the various conflicts in which they serve. With so many stories, so many people and hardware, it's hard to become interested in any one of them. Sure, this wasn't meant to be an especially dramatic reading, but air combat, like drama, relies on perceptual powers of its participants. In short, we get the stories - all of them - but have no human dimension in which to frame them. We learn that the Avia S-99, a Czech copy of the famed Me-109 fighter of WWII, was about as dangerous to its pilots as its enemies, or that the supersonic Mirage III had a severe problem with its engine, one that would soon show reveal itself to its pilots. We learn that Avi Lehnir flew too close to the MiG-21 he destroyed, and returned home covered in soot. Because the book is only concerned with getting the facts right and utterly ignoring the impact of the events on those who lived them, it's hard to get a sense of what it must have been really like to fly one of those monsters, and, more importantly why the Israelis were much better at it than any of their enemies. In fact, the difference was lay in how the Israelis excelled in learning how to fly their aircraft in ways not envisaged by their designers - the drag of the big delta wing on the Mirage III made it unsuitable for flying low altitude, or in extended dogfights where it lost energy quickly; the F-4 Phantom was designed as an interceptor rather than a dogfighter. Nevertheless, the Israeli triumph in 1967 owed much to her pilots' ability to coax unknown agility out of the Mirage, and fly them well below Egyptian and Syrian radar; and, echoing the American experience in Vietnam, the Israelis discovered a master dogfighter in the F-4 as well. Missing is any sense of the people flying these planes or at least responsible for them. The enormous success of the IAF therefore remains a mystery, probably unintentional. By the end of the book, you've covered 50 explosive years of aviation history, and can't begin to explain a single thing you've read.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Book for the Serious Student of Israeli Military History, December 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Israel's Best Defense: The First Full Story of the Israeli Air Force (Hardcover)

Any serious Israel Air Force buff should have at least three books on his shelf: Ehud Yonai's "No Margin for Error", Peter Mersky's "Israeli Fighter Aces", and Eliezer Cohen's "Israel's Best Defense". As a former fighter and helicopter pilot, Eliezer Cohen had first hand experience with, and access to the pilots and leaders who have made up the most respected air force of the jet age. His retelling of his own, and comrade's experiences in the face of war is riveting, and the scope of his IAF history takes him a full decade further into the story of this remarkable marriage of machines and men than does Ehud Yonai's own remarkable telling. Perhaps his one weakness in telling this story, is that Eliezer Cohen is a pilot by trade, and not a journalist, or novelist. Reading this book, you can see his skills as a story teller developing with each turn of the page. His finesse as an author starts out weak, but by the time that you reach his account of the Six Day War, Cohen's narrative becomes far too absorbing to pass this book by.