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Messerschmitt 109, like those later flown by Israeli Air Force

Gordon Levett (1921-2000) was a former Royal Air Force pilot, born into poverty in Sussex, who used his pilot's training in the Second World War to aid the nascent Israeli Air Force in establishing an armed force and in founding the state of Israel. He was the only gentile pilot in the Israeli Air Force.

Born into such grinding poverty in Sussex that his mother had to place him in an orphanage so he could eat, Levett joined the RAF at age 17 as World War II broke out in 1939. Initially a groundcrewman, Levett soon applied for a pilot slot, and in November 1940 he was sent to flight school. He spent the rest of the war training other pilots and flying transport planes, becoming a Squadron Leader. But he was drummed out of the RAF after taking an unauthorized leave from his remote Burma posting, and so after the War was unable to find work as a pilot.

Eventually, Levett went to work in a Jewish-owned diaper laundry in London. He soon began paying attention to developments in the Middle East. Having grown up in poverty, Levett said he felt an affinity for the underdog. When he read of the attempts to found an Israeli state, he volunteered to join the Israeli Mahal unit, a group of overseas volunteers in early 1948. After two meetings with Jewish agents in London, Levett was supplied with a ticket for Paris. From there he was shipped to Czechoslovakia.

The Mahal pilots, mostly English Jews, were charged with ferrying dismantled Messerschmidt 109 fighter planes from the base in Zatec, Czechoslovakia, to the Negev in an operation dubbed Operation Balak. Levett recalled his first glimpse of the unusual operation:

Bombed-out synagogue in Zatec, Czechoslovakia, site of Operation Balak

"In an isolated and rural area about 20 miles from the East German border we turned onto a minor road leading to a military aerodrome.... The aerodrome was primitive with a control tower, a few huts and a single concrete runway. It had been used by the Luftwaffe as a fighter base during the Second World War. When the tarmac came into view I saw an astonishing collection of American transport aircraft and several Messerschmitt 109 fighters parked neatly along the tarmac. There were six or seven Curtiss Commando C-46s, a Douglas Skymaster DC-4 and several smaller aircraft.... Even more astonishing, the ground staff wore baseball caps and were speaking with American accents."

The airlift, code-named Balak, lasted three months. During that time, Levett managed to transport tons of arms, ammunition and personnel, and was instrumental in Israel's success in the War for Independence. The hazardous trips, recounted by Levett in his book Flying Under Two Flags: An RAF Pilot in Israel's War of Independence, were essential in building up an armed force in Palestine. Levett's squadron, which included later Israel president Ezer Weizman, was seen as crucial in the War for Independence. During its first eight months, aside from transporting tons of supplies, the squardon shot down 20 Arab aircraft, as well as a few RAF fighter planes during a January 1949 engagment. (In a bit of historical irony, the Israeli pilots at the controls of Messerschmitt fighters downed several old RAF Spitfires flown by Egyptian pilots.)

When he began flying the hazardous sorties, Levett had kept a secret from his Israeli handlers. He had never flown an actual combat mission as a fighter pilot. So when he first encountered ground fire and hostile fighters, he was cruising in unknown territory. Levett recalled the morning of December 28, 1948, when he and fellow pilot Syd Cohen prepared for their first sortie:

"It was still dark. Syd and I were the only people in the mess apart from the cook. We were wearing casual mufti, without wings or badges of rank. We did not look like fighter pilots breakfasting before dawn patrol. I could hear our two Merlins being tested distantly in the darkness. Dawn Patrol! I felt a bit like David Niven or Errol Flynn. I promised myself I would buy a white silk scarf. Syd was the calm, reassuring Spencer Tracy type. I felt confident he would not lead me into undue trouble. Nevertheless my ashtray was full by the time we left the table to go to our Spitfires."

Nor was Levett's inexperience the only trouble. When he joined the Israeli forces, the agents believed that because he was an Englishman and a former RAF pilot (and non-Jew) that he was probably a spy. The former RAF pilot was regarded with deep suspicion.

"Not only was he not a Jew, but Mr. Levett was particularly notable because he was British," said The New York Times. "To most Israelis at that time, the recently lapsed British mandate in Palestine had been decidedly pro-Arab, and British Government policy was seen as anti-Zionist. Recruited in March 1948 by emissaries in Europe of the Haganah, the Jewish fighting force in Palestine, Mr. Levett was viewed with a healthy dose of suspicion," noted the Times.

"'In my last interview," Levett told The New York Times, 'I was told, 'We're quite convinced that you are a British spy, but we're going to take you to see what you're up to,' he recalled."

Levett turned out to be no spy. In May 1998 he and a couple hundred other early volunteers were invited to return to the country they had helped found to be honored on its 50th anniversary. "Their expertise was critical," noted The Times "in helping what was previously an underground Zionist force win the war against the Arab armies."

Sussex, England, birthplace of RAF pilot Gordon Levett

The operation of which Levett had been a part was successful in supplying arms to the Israelis, especially because the airlift was carried out in defiance of a United Nations arms embargo on the Middle Eastern combatants. But the flights by Levett, a neophyte fighter pilot, also involved actual bombing raids, some from transport planes that had been jerry-rigged into bombers. The modified transport planes made bombing runs from the Sinai Peninsula to Damascus, Syria.

"There were no bomb racks," recalled Levett, "so the bombs were rolled out by a 'bomb-chucker' who was tied into the plan with rope."

Levett survived the nerve-jangling raids. Later he recalled his nascent enthusiasm for the Israeli cause, which he had begun reading about shortly after World War II. "I felt anger and shame," said Levett of the British government's position, in which it refused to cooperate with a 1947 plan to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, threatening to withdraw its forces from the country.

"To continue that policy after the Holocaust was a bloody outrage and evil," said Levett. "There comes a time when morality overrides politics. After 2,000 years of persecution of the Jews, the establishment of Israel was one of the greatest humanitarian causes in all of human history."

The conflict did provide some unusual moments, recalled the former RAF pilot. "'At our base I saw the Messerschmitts not with a swastika but with the Star of David,'"' Levett remembered. "'What a lovely moment. This notorious Nazi fighter was now serving the Jews.'"

For Levett, his involvement in the Israeli cause proved the seminal event of his life. For an Englishman born in Sussex, he got an unexpected sense of belonging and purpose from his involvement in the Israeli operation. "'The day I returned to England it was raining,' he recalled. 'It felt like a balloon deflating. I had fought a moral war and was associated with a great cause. I still feel more at home here walking down Ben-Gurion Street than I do in England walking down Piccadilly. I know why: In a tiny way, I helped build this country.

"Looking back," Levett reflected in his autobiography recounting his service in the Mahal, "I have neither failed nor succeeded, the fate of most of us. But I shall leave the world a better than when I entered it because I helped found the State of Israel."

Eventually, on his return home to England, the former orphan and diaper laundry worker found work again as a pilot. He began ferrying planes for aircraft companies. Gordon Levett died in England in 2000 at age 79.

Further reading

• Flying Under Two Flags: An Ex-RAF Pilot in Israel's War of Independence, Gordon Levett, Frank Cass, 1994
• See also Operation Balak and Mahal (Israel)