Page 172 - Airpower in 20th Century - Doctrines and Employment

172 airpower in 20 Century doCtrines and employment - national experienCes
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external interference and be conducted like in peace time drill.
The surface-to-air missiles attack cell was not aware of the air combat and con-
frontations that took place at the same time, during which 26 Syrian jets were downed
in 40 minutes after being sent to disrupt our attack.
Upon opening our attack on the surface-to-air missiles at 14:00, all airborne
Syrian planes were diverted east and sent for immediate landing. In fact, within 5
minutes there was not a single Syrian aircraft in the air. The Syrian goal was obvious.
Allow the surface-to-air missiles to fire freely and shoot down any aircraft in the air
without having to identify it first. Until then, the Syrians used to patrol with several
aircraft along the Syrian-Lebanese border on the Syrian side.
It was clear that the Syrians expected impressive achievements from its surface-
to-air missiles, in light of their success during the Yom Kippur war.
However, within 20 minutes of the attack, the Syrian command suffered a great
disappointment. The surface-to-air missiles were desperate for air protection in order
to defend itself from the effective IAF attacks. Syrian aircraft were sent blindly on a
repeating trail, 3-5 minutes between a formation in an attempt to harass and threaten
our attacking aircraft and disrupt the attack.
The Syrian command center was under a lot of stress. My senses told me that the
operation of the Syrian fighters was under panic, which made it a lot easier for me
to control the battle. The fact that they flew the same route enabled us to ambush
them in the most convenient places. We disrupted their control and communication
systems with EW, which increased their panic. The Syrian command sent the aircraft
into the Beka’a at relatively low altitude in order to search for our attacking aircraft.
Since they could not receive guidance at such low altitude by Syrian radar, and the
radars in Lebanon were destroyed earlier, the “interceptors” became targets to our
aircraft that had guidance and were equipped with efficient radars.
In this case I had to restrain our controller’s enthusiasm to conduct the intercep-
tion without identification, which could have endangered our own planes. With the
help of the controllers, I selected the our patrols with the best chances and sent them
for the encounter, while others had to await their turn. On the other hand, in order to
stop our aircraft from chasing Syrian aircraft into Syria, I instructed them to cease
contact, so that the encounters were relatively brief, and our pilots’ agility was being
tested. Our pilots felt confident with the orders from the command center and total
trust in the command instructions, while entering combat like hunters more than hav-
ing to prove their capabilities. As things evolved, we could act with more discretion
and with fewer mistakes, so we ended with a score of 26:0. In 40 minutes we downed
26 Syrian aircraft without losing one single aircraft of our own.
I dragged some of the fights into an encounter above our ground forces, leading
to the capture of 9 Syrian air crew men. The idea was to get qualitative captives in
order to assure a quick swap of prisoners at the end of the fighting in case we lost
any of our crew men.