The Six Day War (Part 3)

Israeli Air Force Kfir. Image from Israeli Weapons. Click on image to open in a larger window.

THE LION CUB THAT ROARED.

This is some of the story about how the Israelis turned what was a disadvantage into a huge plus, about the espionage and ingenuity behind one of Israel’s famed fighter aircraft, the Kfir, which is Hebrew for Lion Cub. The Mirage lll used to such telling effect in the Six Day War was originally designed in 1955, and although considered State of the art as an interceptor, a replacement was needed for the aging aircraft. This is the aircraft that eventually replaced those Mirages.

The ‘Top Gun’ Effect

After this short conflict, eyes all over the World turned to Israel. Those in far off Countries became interested as to why such a tiny Country could so comprehensively destroy what was so obviously a vastly numerically larger group of Countries all aligned against them, and stemming from that point in time, the whole World became more aware of the Israeli situation.

However, different eyes focused on Israel also, on the micro level. Pilots in the West all wanted information. Combat pilots the World over a pretty rare breed, and sometimes they are a hard bunch of guys to work out.
Those pilots in the US however were very interested, not because they wanted to get together and yarn over a brew, but what they wanted specifically was to learn more clues against what it was actually like to go up against an opponent in aerial combat, and even more specifically what it was like to engage with those Russian designed MiGs. Many lessons were learned and the pilots knowledge base expanded.
What most interested the US pilots however was that the Israeli pilots were proficient in using their on board guns, which really made those US pilots sit up and take notice. The Israeli pilots actually preferred to use their guns rather than air to air missiles which had become almost the sole weapon of choice for aerial combat, and the use of guns had virtually diminished to zero, because it was considered too hard to actually engage with just guns alone, so much so that guns on some aircraft, although still there, were reduced almost to an afterthought. Aircraft were being designed with more pylons to carry more air to air missiles. The sidewinder was the weapon of choice because it was a heat seeker, and each aircraft always had that one big fat source of heat, where the really hot air came out the back of the aircraft from the burning fuel of the engine that drove the plane. You could just point your plane in the general direction of the bad guy, hit the button, and the missile would chase down that heat source of its own accord, and the pilot who fired off the missile could go onto something else.

However the Israeli pilots preferred to use their guns, in this case those 30mm cannon I mentioned in the earlier post, each round about eight inches long, an inch and a half thick, and with HE, so, virtually only one round had to hit the target to down the opponent. The Israelis did it out of necessity more than anything else. They had to be proficient with their guns because the old Mirage could only carry two Sidewinders, and once they were gone, they either flew away in haste, or stuck around and worked with their guns.

Terrible thing to be talking about I know, but I want you to consider this.
Some of you may actually have fired a rifle. You hold it steady, aim at a target, in the main not moving, carefully aim across the sights and let go the round.
However, in aerial combat, that target is weaving around the sky at close on 600MPH and he might only be in your sights for a fraction of a second. Let off a short burst of the cannon, and by the time those rounds reach where you were aiming, the bad guy is probably miles away.

So, how do you actually practice for something like this then?
The pilots first get their practice shooting the cannon to a large target draped over a mound on the ground. They dive, aim at the static target, let off a short burst and then climb back out. After a few times of this, they then get to shoot at an airborne target. The target is an orange mesh weave weighted target so it stays upright. It’s around 100 feet long by 10 feet wide, and is towed at the end of a (very) long tether behind an old jet bomber, lumbering along at around 400MPH, out over the Ocean. The pilots aim the plane in front of the target and let off a burst of around a second and a half or so. Each burst might only be 15 or so rounds out of the rapid firing cannon. Each aircraft only carries 120 rounds, so they only get four passes, five at the most. The program is carried out in 4 plane groups, and the whole process is accomplished in around an hour, a little less than the maximum flying time for the aircraft. Okay, you say, how do they know who it was who actually hit the target. Each aircraft has different colour painted on the front of their rounds, and as they go through the target they leave a hole surrounded by the paint from the round, so that way they know who hit the target and how many times. Some pilots have been known to get as many as eight hits, and that’s for all four passes, so you can imagine now that very little of the rounds released hit the target. The rounds are also so big that just one hit is enough to bring down an opposing plane.
During aerial combat during the Six Day War, the Israelis got most aerial hits with their guns alone. This is what distinctly interested those US pilots, that and the fact they were one of the few pilots to go up against MiGs.

Unintended Consequences.

As I mentioned earlier, those Mirages the Israeli Air Force used were getting a little ‘long in the tooth’, the Mirage first flying in 1955, and these ones nearly 10, 12 years old. In the years prior to the conflict, the Israeli Air Force commissioned the manufacturer of the Mirages they had, a French Company, Avions Marcel Dassault to build them 50 replacement fighters, custom built to specifications they asked for. The 50 planes were built, (and paid for in advance) and all but waiting for delivery.
After the War, France was outraged, and embargoed the delivery of the planes. France had aligned itself with the Arab States and was outraged at the naked aggression of Israel in preemptively striking at Egypt and the other Countries. Israel tried to take legal action against France, because Dassault wanted to adhere to the sale. However France was intransigent, and all efforts failed to get the planes they had already paid for. The aircraft were then pressed into service for the French Air Force.
The Israelis seemed on the surface to just shrug their shoulders and to take it on the chin, but one thing the Israelis did not lack, and that was ingenuity.
They worked through a third Country, in this case Switzerland who also flew Mirages for their Air Force, and a sympathetic executive of Israeli extraction working in the aircraft industry in Switzerland surreptitiously obtained all the blueprints for the replacement fighter, and in a masterstroke of espionage supposedly in league with Israeli Intelligence Agency Mossad, these plans were then given to the Israelis. They promptly, and in secret, just built the aircraft they had already paid for and didn’t get.
The plane flew in its original form and the Israelis were suitably underwhelmed. It was underpowered with the original French Atar engine. So being the ingenious lot they were, they found another engine.
In the interim, the US had started to supply Israel with the formidable McDonnell Douglas F4 Phantom. This had for its engine the General Electric J79 engine, so the resourceful Israelis, just redesigned the new plane to take this engine. That way, the fighters could use the same engine in their arsenal.

Just saying that they would change the engine for another sounds so simple, but the design work involved in that is a highly technical thing. If the engine needs to be changed, all the fuel connections and electrical connections and the fixtures to connect the structure of the engine to the airframe itself need to all be disconnected internally, and then the engine rolls out the back of the aircraft, sliding along rails onto a specially designed stand. To fit a different engine, all those internal fittings then need to be totally redesigned and restructured for the new engine, so the task of then redesigning the inside of that engine bay is just no easy thing. The fuel and electrical systems then also need to be changed as well, along with subsequent strengthening of the airframe itself. So just pulling out one engine and putting in another entails an almost complete redesign of the internals of the aircraft that might still look the same from the outside.

There were some teething problems during initial flight testing, and the plane again went through some design modifications, mostly to do with overheating in the afterburner area, so they encased that area with titanium shielding, and put a new intake just forward of the aircraft tail to direct cooling air to this area, and further increased the size opening of the main front air intakes, and shortened the rear fuselage area. To further improve handling, long the bane of delta wing configured aircraft they also mounted small canard wings on the fuselage just forward and above the main wing leading edge just below and aft of the pilot’s cockpit.
The resultant fighter was called the Kfir. The French were further outraged, but it was a fait accompli now, and everything the Israelis did seemed to be ‘Teflon coated’, because nothing ever stuck.
The fighter was not the best plane ever built but it was superior in its class, and if truth be told, the French were probably envious, because it was a quantum level better than the one they had originally agreed to give the Israelis, who were comfortable with the fact that it was not a superior fighter,  but just adding to their already formidable arsenal, because in a short time they also started to take delivery of the McDonnell Douglas F15 Eagle, far and away the air superiority fighter of its age. In all, 100 Kfirs were built and they served the Israeli Air Force for many years.

The ‘Top Gun’ Link.

You’ll all remember the Tom Cruise movie ‘Top Gun’ where carrier borne aircrew train at Mirimar for the Top Gun status. In the movie, the USN guys flew the F14 Tomcat and the instructors flew dissimilar ‘aggressor’ aircraft, and in the movie these were the Douglas A4 Skyhawk.
Well, the Israeli Kfir was actually leased out by the USN and the USMC as dissimilar aggressor aircraft to give pilots training on different aircraft, one of the very few foreign designed aircraft the US has used in any capacity. They proved economical, well handling, forgiving aircraft that were cheap to run and maintain, and had excellent characteristics in simulated airborne combat.

The Israeli Air Force cut its teeth so admirably in that Six Day War, and from that point they adhered to that old adage first quoted by your great President Theodore Roosevelt, when he first said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Their sticks were big all right, and used to telling effect.