One of the exciting highlights of the graduation ceremony of the pilot training that will be
held tonight (Thursday) at Hatzerim airbase, will be an aerial show of two old American
airplanes – Howard and Stearman. On board the Stearman will be Givati Brigade
Commander Colonel Eliad Moati, symbolically marking the first collaboration in IDF
history between ground forces and the Air Force, in an operation that stopped the
invasion of Gush Dan by Egyptian army forces – 35 km from Tel Aviv.
During tonight’s show, the old airplanes, which will signify the Messerschmitt fighter jets
that were used in that attack in June of 1948, will split from the formation in two different
directions – and one of them will be joined by an F-35 “Adir,” the latest and most
advanced in the world. The plane itself, that Moati will fly on, is from 1938 and has a
piston engine that in the distant past, was used for navigational training.
In the fierce battle on the outskirts of the village of Isdod, later the city of Ashdod, 54
IDF soldiers were killed – most of them from Givati Brigade – and one of them was the
pilot Eddie Cohen, who immigrated to Israel as a volunteer from abroad, as part of the
establishment of the Air Force. An anti-aircraft force in the Egyptian convoy shot down
Cohen’s plane into the old airport near Be’er Tuvia, in the first-ever sortie by the Israeli
Air Force. “Our forces from the 53 rd Battalion blew up Ad Halom bridge and entered a
very difficult containment battle against the Egyptian army,” described Col. Moati in a
conversation with Ynet. “In the first part of the battle we managed to stop them, but in
the second part the 54 th Battalion had an entanglement near Gan Yavneh, and the
forces needed air support.”
Link to the article on Ynet:
https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/sjdhvj5dn#autoplay
