Tribute to Al Schwimmer, founder of Israel's airforce and Israel Aircraft Industries

Al Schwimmer, who died on Saturday at 94 and whose funeral was held on Monday, was branded a “legend” by President Shimon Peres for his vital life’s work in Israeli aviation. This extract from the book Start- Up Nation, the best-seller on Israel’s “economic miracle” by Dan Senor and former Jerusalem Post staffer Saul Singer, is posted as a tribute to Al Schwimmer and an inspiration to Jewish ingenuity and support for Israel:
...Al Schwimmer was a raconteur, who’d been captivated by the airline business in its earliest days, when flying machines were an exotic novelty.

He was working for TWA when the United States entered World War II and the entire airline was drafted into the war effort. Though not officially in the US Air Force, Schwimmer and his fellow fliers were given military ranks and uniforms and spent the war ferrying troops, equipment, and the occasional movie star all over the world.

During the war, Schwimmer’s identity as a Jew meant little to him and had almost no influence on his thinking or way of life. But seeing a liberated concentration camp and the newsreel footage of countless bodies and speaking with Jewish refugees in Europe trying to reach Palestine transformed him.

Almost overnight, Schwimmer became a committed Zionist.

When he heard that the British in Palestine were turning back ships full of European Jewish refugees, Schwimmer came up with what he was convinced was a better way: fly over the British Navy patrols and smuggle the Jews in by landing them at hidden air-fields. He tracked down Ben-Gurion’s secret emissary in New York and pitched him the idea. For months, the representative of the Haganah, the main underground Jewish army in Palestine, sat on the idea. But when it became clear that the British would soon withdraw and a fullscale Arab-Jewish war over Israel’s independence would ensue, the Haganah contacted Schwimmer.

By this time, they had an even more urgent need than smuggling refugees: building an air force. The Haganah did not have a single aircraft and would be completely exposed to the Egyptian air force. Could Schwimmer buy and repair fighter planes and smuggle them into Israel? Schwimmer told Ben-Gurion’s agents that he’d start immediately...

Within days, Schwimmer had tracked down a handful of Jewish pilots and mechanics from the United States and the United Kingdom, for what he told them would be the first civilian Jewish air-line. He was obsessed with secrecy, and did not even want to bring them into the fold about the idea of building fighter planes. Few were even informed that the planes were destined for Israel.

When outsiders inquired, the cover story was that they were building a national airline for Panama and would ferry cattle to Europe.

Though the FBI impounded the largest aircraft he bought – three Constellations – Schwimmer and his gang succeeded in smuggling out other aircraft, some by literally flying over the heads of the FBI agents who’d demanded that the planes be grounded. At the last minute, the Haganah cut a separate deal to buy German Messerschmitts from Czechoslovakia, which Schwimmer was also drafted to fly to Israel.

WHEN THE 1948 War of Independence came, Schwimmer’s aircraft fought off Egyptian planes that were bombing Tel Aviv. In certain battles, the barely trained Israeli pilots were instrumental in ensuring that the Negev desert – a relatively large triangular swath of land starting a few miles south of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, between the Egyptian Sinai and Jordan – became part of Israel.

After Israel prevailed in the War of Independence, Schwimmer returned to the United States...

...By 1950, Schwimmer had joined forces with Shimon Peres, then a young Ben-Gurion protégé working for the new Israeli Defense Ministry. Peres had tried to buy thirty surplus Mustang aircraft for the Israeli Air Force, but the United States had decided to destroy the planes instead. Their wings were sliced off and their fuselages cut in two.

So Schwimmer’s team bought the cutup planes at cost from a Texas junk dealer, reconstructed them, and made sure they had all their parts and were operational.

Then the team disassembled the planes again, packed them in crates marked “Irrigation Equipment,” and shipped them to Israel.

But because of the urgency with which they had to get the aircraft to Israel, a few of the planes were left assembled, and Schwimmer and Peres flew these to Tel Aviv. And that is how they found themselves in 1951 talking about a future Israeli aviation industry.

Peres became captivated by Schwimmer’s ideas for creating an aircraft industry in Israel that would serve a purpose beyond a short-term military strategy...

Schwimmer insisted that in a world flooded with surplus aircraft from the war, there was no reason why Israel could not buy planes cheaply, repair and improve them, and sell them to militaries and airlines in many countries, while building Israel’s own commercial industry.

...Unbeknownst to Schwimmer, Ben- Gurion had recently instructed the Technion to build an aeronautical engineering department. In giving the order, he’d said, “a high standard of living; a rich culture; spiritual, political and economic independence...are not possible without aerial control.”

... Within five years, Bedek, the airplane maintenance company [Schwimmer ] founded with two Israelis, became the largest private employer in the country.

By 1960 Bedek was producing a modified version of the French Fouga fighter plane. At an official unveiling and test flight of the plane, dubbed Tzukit (“swallow” in Hebrew), Ben- Gurion told Schwimmer, “This place isn’t just Bedek anymore. You’ve gone beyond repairs. You guys have built a jet. The new name should be Israel Aircraft Industries.” Peres, who by now was deputy defense minister, translated the new company name.

Peres and Ben-Gurion had managed to recruit an American Jew to provide one of the biggest long-term jolts to Israel’s economy, all without asking anyone for one investment dollar.

Britain apologises for using fake IDs

From Huffington Post, February 23, 2010, by Martin Lewis:


 

Nazi-Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich. His undercover assassins used FAKE IDs!!!

The British Government has issued a profuse apology to the German and Slovakian governments that two of Britain's special operatives during World War II used fake IDs in their successful ...mission to assassinate Nazi SS chief Reinhard Heydrich in 1942.

The mission in May 1942 -- codenamed Operation Anthropoid -- took place in German-occupied Czechoslovakia (renamed the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia by the Nazis). Two British-trained undercover operatives working for the UK's Special Operations Executive -- Jan Kubiš (a Czech soldier) and Jozef Gabčík (a Slovak paratrooper) -- were transported on a secret flight with other operatives to the market town of Nehvizdy near Prague in December 1941.

Given the nature of their mission -- to eliminate a vicious war-criminal who was proudly and openly committed to the annihilation of their nation -- all the members of the undercover squad were naturally given fake IDs. As was customary in such clandestine missions, they were given papers that used the names of real-life people.

The mission was planned over a five-month period and the attack took place on May 27th 1942. Heydrich initially survived the attempt but died a few days later on June 4th. ...Sadly, Kubiš and Gabčík died later in June following a brutal SS reprisal raid.

At the time -- and in the 68 years since the raid -- the British government consistently refused to apologize for the fact that their Special Operations Executive had had the temerity to give their undercover operatives passports that bore the names of unrelated living people!

...the British government attempted to justify this heinous act by pointing out that Reinhard Heydrich was a proven war-criminal dedicated to the elimination of the nation of Czechoslovakia and to the extermination of Czechs and Jews.

...However -- after 68 years of deliberation -- the British government has come to its senses and has realized that simply because Heydrich was a leading member of the Nazi elite that was on a publicly-declared mission to kill every Jew on the planet - (about 17 million in 1940) this was no excuse to have used the names of a dozen innocent people on fake passports that could have taken the victims UP TO THREE WEEKS TO REPLACE!

The British government has now admitted that it would have been far better if SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich would have lived and continued being a leader of the Gestapo and key aide to Hitler in their mission to wipe the Jews off the map rather than causing a dozen people to have to apply for a new passport.