Page 483 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

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and against the Egyptian Army deployment along “Gaza strip”. The Emir Farouk’s actions
were seen as a threat to Operation Yoav and the IDF General Staff ordered action. The Emir
Farouk was to be sunk.
This would not be an easy operation. The Emir Farouk moved about with another ships
for escort, a minesweeper, and both usually stayed within protective range of coastal gun-
batteries. The small Israeli Navy could not sink it with conventional methods. The small
E-Boats, special operations unit, under captain Ben-Noon would have to be activated. That
unit, who was established just two months ago, specially trained by Capriotti, would under-
take the operation.
Yochay Ben Nun was born in Haifa in 1924 and volunteered for service in the Haganah
at an early age. By 1942, at the age of 18, he was already a recognized figure in the Palmach
- the elite strike force of the Haganah – leader of the naval demolition squad of the Palmah
against the British mighty navy who blocked the Israeli coast from Jewish refugees fleeing
from Nazi Europe. Serving in the Jerusalem Theater of operations during the war, where he
was severely wounded. He turned out to be “one of the most capable infantry squad leaders
in the Palmach”, noted for his prowess. He would remain in IDF Navy Service for the next
thirty years, rising to the rank of commander.
Trained to deal with the freezing cold and to swiftly and silently approach their targets,
Yochai Ben Nun’s crew was the obvious choice to perform the operation against the Emir
Farouk. The operation, however, almost never got off the ground. Yigael Yadin, the IDF
Chief of Operations, refused to authorize the operation. Undaunted, the Israeli Naval Com-
mander Gershon Zaq drove to the home of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to argue his
case.” At first Ben-Gurion was very much against the plan, but Zaq soon convinced him it
could be done. The news was quickly relayed to the wireless set on the main ship they would
be using, the Ma’oz.
Ben-Nun and his men went to work right away. They approached the Egyptian flotilla off
the coast of Gaza. They had four E-Boats. At dark, the Ma’oz crew lowered four small ves-
sels (assault/explosive motor boats) into the water. It took nearly an hour for them to reach
the Egyptian ships. The pilot of the first vessel gunned his boat toward the Farouk, explosives
armed. at the last moment, he leapt into the water. He heard an explosion and saw that the
Farouk had been hit. Almost immediately, the second assault boat scored a direct hit on the
huge warship, which erupted in flames and sank within minutes. As the Farouk slipped below
the surface, the retrieval boat plucked the commandos from the sea.
This was a tremendous feat for the young Israeli Navy. But the minesweeper still re-
mained, and the Egyptian soldiers aboard began firing wildly in all directions in the hope
of hitting something. But Yochay Ben-Nun, the naval commando leader, was determined to
take out the minesweeper. He positioned himself for a headlong rush at the ship. As he did
so, a high powered Egyptian searchlight illuminated his boat and the Egyptians focused their
fire on him.
Ben-Nun ejected his flotation device but it simply would not eject. He was stuck. Faced
with the prospect of being neck-high in water about to absorb a 300-kilogram blast did not sit
well in Ben-Nun’s head - neither did driving his boat straight into the mine-sweeper’s hull.
He tried to manually free himself 100 meters from his target, but the lever wouldn’t give. He