two of the four which shot down the Egyptians at Ramat David nearly a year before, the other two being Roy Bowie no.2 to Geoff and Les Hully no.2 to Tim. That occasion was the last on which an RAF unit shot down an aircraft in air-to-air combat.

After a couple of hours with no contact it began to dawn on us that this was a long sortie and Group began to check with other RAF and then Egyptian airfields to see if they had heard anything from our four. After three hours the truth began to sink in, the strange thing being that a 13 Squadron PR Mosquito had been in the area and had heard nothing on the R/T. In the afternoon we were instructed to send up another four on an area recce. to find any trace of our aircraft, with an armed escort from Deversoir of two squadrons of Tempests, led by their Station Commander, Gp.Capt. Anderson. These Tempests were bounced by Israeli Spitfires and the leader’s no.2, P/O Tattersfield, whom I had just met on New Year’s Eve, was shot down and killed. During this exercise one of the squadrons discovered that their guns weren’t cocked (ready to fire) and this shambles caused the recce to be abandoned without finding any trace of our aircraft. It was when the three live pilots were returned to us by the Israelis that learned the awful truth. The next day I went to an MU (Maintenance Unit) at nearby Kasfareet to collect the first of our replacement aircraft, and it really sank in that this was for real. The incident on 7 January 1949 was the last occasion on which an RAF unit involved in air-to-air combat.

Some days later we were briefed to attack an Israeli road convoy allegedly heading south towards Aqaba, and were actually taxying all bombed up, when we were recalled and the attack never took place.  We felt cheated at the time, but probably wiser heads prevailed somewhere up the line. Geoff and Tim were returned on the 23 January. Probably why we were recalled, and we heard from them the full story, which we were forbidden to communicate to anyone, to the extent that our mail home was censored - there some very powerful Jews in the British government at the time.

As a matter of interest, during the previous sorties we had begun suffer several radio failures, which was unusual, and the CO some comment to me on the subject. I asked if he had considered name of our radio mechanic, which was lsaacs, and his eyes widened but he said nothing.  Next day Isaacs was posted away from squadron and our radio failures disappeared with him.  In the vein, when a major parade is to have prayers from the padre the parade commander issues the order ‘Fall out the Roman Catholics and Jews”, and they march to the edge of the parade ground until the prayers are over. That June, during the parade for the Kings birthday, our Station Commander gave the order “Fall out the Roman Catholics and Israelis” - I could not believe my ears, and there sniggers all round. Remember, however, that, until a year be there had never been a Jewish nation, and it was obvious that there was confusion on the difference on all sides - with the exception of Israelis of course.

To revert to the ‘actualities’ of the sortie. I make no apology describing these in detail, because a number of false versions have been put about, mostly by people who weren’t there, or had an interest in ‘modifying’ the facts. For starters, we were NOT armed on  any of these sorties. Some of the aircraft might have had ammunition in the tanks, from previous practice sorties, but, as the Tempests found, an aeroplane isn’t armed unless the guns are cocked. There was no reason to have done so, since we were only doing recces for the UN and the thought of being attacked was never mentioned during our briefings. The following version is what was reported to us, at the time, by Geoff Cooper and Tim McElhaw.

It appears that at some point Ron Sayers reported the presence of two unidentified Spitfires, and was told to keep his eye on them. Very shortly afterwards Frankie Close was badly hit by small arms fire from the ground, which gave him the choice of baling out or doing a forced landing. In the few seconds available he decide to bale out, pulled up till he was inverted and took to his parachute. Unfortunately, at that low height, his ‘chute opened only a few feet above the ground, which he struck face first, smashing his jaw.  

Geoff saw this and instructed the top cover to join him, looked over his shoulder and saw two Spitfires with red spinners coming towards him. (A spinner is the dome-shaped object on the forward side of the propellor, which initiates the streamlining of the fuselage, painted red for decoration in our case, and initially to distinguish our aircraft from 32 Sqdn. when we were in Cyprus).

Meantime, possibly because Frankie was Ron’s mate and they were watching him, the top cover pair were shot down by the two unidentified Spitfires, which turned out to be Israelis. No radio calls were made by either of them, Ron was killed and Tim baled out successfully - no wonder Geoff thought his top cover was coming to join him. As an unfortunate coincidence the Israeli Spitfires had spinners the same colour as ours, but when they started scoring hits on him he realised all was not well.

Until that time nobody (except the donors) knew where the Israelis were getting their aircraft from, and there were plenty of early models about from the war. We had therefore assumed that everybody except us was flying these earlier models and Geoff accordingly decided to out-climb this hostile pair - as I already mentioned, we were unarmed, being on UN duties, so he didn’t have a lot of choice. Unknown to us, the Israelis had smuggled in several ex-Czech Air Force Spitfire 14 which were virtually identical to our 18’s, and these were two of the Naturally they stayed with him in the climb and when he ran outairspeed they let him have it in the side, causing him also to bale out.  The Israelis hospitalised Frankle and rebuilt his jaw with what looked like miniature scaffolding, but they interrogated the other two under the influence of Pentathol.  Both allegedly admitted being over Israeli side of the Egyptian border, and we discovered that they had bulldozed Ron’s wrecked aircraft onto their side also. There was no explanation of the motivation for this incident at the time, nor he ever seen one since, even from the pilots concerned. At one time of the pilots was alleged to have been Chaim Weizmann, who became the Israeli Prime Minister, but in fact this is not true, it being his cousin of the same name who had served in the RAF during the Battle Britain.

As one might expect, the RAF has maintained a low profile on this incident ever since. We were reminded of it for a long time, having our spinners and tails painted white - just in case!   I still have in my possession the only indication we ever received illustrating the lsraeli aircraft markings of the period.

For some reason I have no recollection of how long the Israeli incursion lasted - probably we all wanted to forget it, believing it to be between two other nations. At any rate my logbook records me as carrying standard sorties for the rest of January as if nothing had happened.

For the next four months my logbook shows the type of sorties more like a straight fighter squadron, with odd interesting exceptions. One of these was when I went back to Nicosia to represent the squadron at the funeral of one of 32 Squadron’s pilots. For this I had to take with me a large wreath, for which there was no room in the aircraft except in the cockpit. This meant flying 200 miles over the sea in a single engined aircraft with a funeral wreath round my neck - I just hoped wasn’t an omen!

One day in April I noticed a large formation of 24 Tempests, which too good an opportunity to miss. One crucial activity of all formations is to keep a good lookout for potential attackers, though the less experienced tend to spend more of their time trying to hold position in the formation. On spotting an attacker at a late stage,     
Home. Previous. Up. Next.