August 15, 2019
In Just 6 Hours Israel Proved Why Its Air Force Is Nearly Unbeatable
Something special.
by Michael Peck
To say that Operation Moked is unique is incorrect. On June 22, 1941, the Luftwaffe pounded Soviet airfields during Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union. The Soviets may have lost almost four thousand aircraft in the first three days of the offensive—many destroyed on the ground—at a cost of less than eighty German aircraft.
At 7:10 a.m. Israeli time, sixteen Israeli Air Force Fouga Magister training jets took off and pretended to be what they were not. Flying routine flight paths and using routine radio frequencies, they looked to Arab radar operators like the normal morning Israeli combat air patrol.
At 7:15 a.m., another 183 aircraft—almost the entire Israeli combat fleet—roared into the air. They headed west over the Mediterranean before diving low, which dropped them from Arab radar screens. This was also nothing new: for two years, Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian radar had tracked Israeli aircraft—though never this many Israeli aircraft—taking off every morning on this same flight path, and then disappearing from their scopes before they returned to base. But that morning, instead of going home, the Israeli armada of French-made Mirage and Super Mystere jets turned south toward Egypt, flying under strict radio silence and just sixty feet above the waves.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/just-6-hours-israel-proved-why-its-air-force-nearly-unbeatable-73771
