Ezer Weizman - Military Career

Military Career

Weizman was a combat pilot. He received his training in the British Army in which he enlisted in 1942 in order to fight the Nazis. He served as a truck driver in the Western Desert campaigns in Egypt and Libya. In 1943, he joined the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and attended aviation school in Rhodesia. He served with the RAF in India in early 1944. Weizman ended his service in the RAF as a sergeant pilot.

Between 1944 and 1946, he was a member of the Irgun underground in Mandatory Palestine. Between 1946 and 1947, he studied aeronautics in England.

Weizman was a pilot for the Haganah in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He was the commander of the Negev Air Squadron near Nir-Am. In May 1948, he learned to fly the Avia S-199 at the České Budějovice air base in Czechoslovakia and participated in Israel's first fighter mission, a ground attack on an Egyptian column advancing toward Ad Halom near the Arab town of Isdud south of Tel Aviv. In a battle between Israeli and British RAF aircraft on 7 January 1949, he flew one of four Israeli Spitfire fighters that attacked 19 British fighters, which were on a rescue mission in Egypt searching for four aircraft that had been destroyed in an earlier IAF attack. An RAF Hawker Tempest was shot down by the IAF, resulting in the death of the pilot. Due to a failure by ground crewmen, most of the RAF aircraft were not armed.

After the establishment of the State of Israel, Weizman joined the Israel Defense Forces and served as the Chief of Operations on the General Staff. In 1951 he attended the RAF Staff College, Andover in England. Upon his return he became commander of Ramat David.

He served as the commander of the Israeli Air Force between 1958 to 1966, and later served as deputy Chief of the General Staff. He directed the early morning surprise air attacks against the Egyptian air bases, which resulted in giving the Israelis total air superiority over the Sinai battlefields by totally destroying the Egyptian Air Force in 3 hours. A total of 400 enemy planes were destroyed by the Israeli Air Force on the 1st day of the 6 Day War.

Although he became the IDF's Deputy Chief of Staff in 1966, he retired from military service in 1969.