Schlomo Arel

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Schlomo Erell

Schlomo Er'el (also Shlomo Erell , anglophone also Arel ( / ˈɛʁəl / ), until after the foundation of Israel still Schlomo angel; Hebrew שְׁלֹמֹה אֶרְאֵל Schlomoh Er'el ; born on November 20, 1920 in Łódź ; died November 20, 2018 in Tel Aviv ) was a Rear Admiral (Aluf) of the Israel Defense Forces . From 1966 to 1968 he was in command of the Israeli Navy .

Life

Origin, youth and World War II

Schlomo Erell was born in Poland in 1920 as the son of Fryda and Chaim Engel . The family emigrated to Palestine in 1926 and initially lived in Petach Tikwa , where his father worked as a merchant and owner of citrus plantations . After his father was killed in a car accident, he and his mother moved to Tel Aviv at the age of ten, where he attended Ge'ula High School and joined the revisionist Zionist youth organization Betar . In 1936 he briefly joined an anti-British resistance movement in the area of ​​the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine . At the end of 1936 he completed a course at the Betar naval school in Civitavecchia, Italy, and then worked as a sailor on an Italian ship. After five months of activity, he returned to Palestine, where he was arrested by British security forces for his work in the anti-British resistance movement. After half a year in Acre Prison , he was released on condition that he leave the Mandate Area. He traveled via Paris to Antwerp , where he worked as a seaman and security guard in the port.

With the outbreak of World War II , Erell joined the Yishuv Volunteers in the Royal Navy's Merchant Navy and participated in convoy trips in the Atlantic Ocean . In January 1941, his ship was from a submarine of the navy of the German Wehrmacht torpedoed. He managed to save himself and spent nine days in a lifeboat. After his rescue, he sailed on various ships in the Mediterranean and was most recently the captain of a ship. In 1944 he became an employee of the Dead Sea Potash Company at the Dead Sea and joined the Israeli Navy (Cheil haJam haJisra'eli) during the war for Israel's independence . He commanded the 19th  Palmach squadron. In March 1949 he took part in Operation Uvda , the last operation during the war for Israel's independence near En Gedi in the north of the Negev desert and in the Judean desert .

Uses and Upgrades in the Israeli Navy

Lieutenant Colonel (Sgan Aluf) Schlomo Erel (2nd from right) with the Majors (Rav-Seren) Naftali Rosen (left) and Aryeh Shaanan (right) during the visit of the Governor of Maryland Theodore McKeldin after Operation Columbus (June 25, 1951)

After the war, Shlomo Erell was in the independent state of Israel Commander of Corvette K-20 Haganah and later to Asheville- / Tacoma class belonging to K-30 Misgav . In 1951 he was commissioned by the then Navy Commander Mordechai Limon commander of Operation Columbus , a trip to the K-30 Misgav and the K-20 Haganah in the United States to that of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion issued government bonds (Israel Bonds) to to hand over. In 1952 he was Colonel (Aluf Mischne) in command of the naval base and the command unit of the corvettes and frigates stationed there, with which he carried out numerous training trips in the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean. In August 1953, he was also in charge of a naval rescue operation after the earthquake in the Ionian islands of Kefalonia , Zakynthos and Ithaca on August 12, 1953. Two ships of the Israeli navy were the first rescue ships to reach the affected islands and transported hundreds over the next few days from seriously injured to the mainland.

After Erell was a military attaché at the embassy in Italy and a naval attaché for Western Europe between 1955 and 1956 , he completed a course at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich . After his return he was instrumental in setting up a similar general staff course for officers in the Israeli navy, which was then also set up for the air force in 1957 . In 1959 he became commodore of the destroyer squadron and then in 1960, as successor to Schmuel Yannai, head of the shipyard department in the naval command. As such, he was responsible for the development of the assault boats, which replaced the previous trapeze and destroyer squadrons in an assault boat flotilla in the following years after the Six Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. In addition, in 1965 he initiated the purchase of three T-class submarines of the Royal Navy, which were commissioned in 1945, for the Israeli Navy. The INS Dakar sank on April 25, 1968 with its entire crew while crossing the Mediterranean Sea, while the INS Dolphin and INS Leviathan were put into regular service in 1967. In contrast to its founder Jochai Ben-Nun , who was in command of the Navy from 1960 to 1966, he was critical of the development of the Aryeh torpedo boat program for the Schajetet 13 combat swimmer unit , but initially agreed.

Navy Commander 1966-1968 and the June 1967 Six Day War

Rear Admiral Schlomo Erell with Former Vice Secretary of Defense and Knesset MP Shimon Peres (August 1, 1967)

When Schlomo Erell succeeded Rear Admiral Jochai Ben-Nun as commander of the Navy in January 1966, however, he stopped the Aryeh torpedo boat program . In October 1966 he was promoted to Rear Admiral (Aluf) .

During the Six Day War (June 5 to 10, 1967) the navy was technically inferior to the Egyptian and Syrian navies, which were equipped with Soviet destroyers and missiles , so that there were only attacks with the combat swimmer unit Shayetet 13 with the submarine INS Tanin . The outbreak of war hit the Shayetet 13 relatively unprepared and with a rather mediocre level of training. As a result, a whole series of operations failed, most spectacularly on May 6, 1967, when six soldiers from the Shayetet 13 were captured by Egyptian forces during a covert operation in Egyptian-controlled territory. The soldiers were only released six months later, in January 1968. The INS Tanin dropped commandos at Alexandria to attack the city's port. She also attempted a torpedo attack on an Egyptian sloop , but was pushed off and damaged by depth charges. After the failures of the Navy in the Six Day War, the naval armament and the operational area were redesigned as well as new developments by the Israel Shipyards .

In addition to the failures in the Six Day War, Erell's tenure as Commander of the Navy was marked by two other catastrophes: the sinking of the destroyer INS Eilat on October 21, 1967 by an SS-N-2-Styx anti -ship missile of the Egyptian Navy off Port Said and the one without a trace Sinking of the submarine INS Dakar on April 25, 1968 with its entire crew while crossing the Mediterranean Sea. In September 1968 he retired from active military service and was replaced by Rear Admiral Avraham Botzer , who was in command of the fleet in the Red Sea that captured Sharm El Sheikh during the Six Day War .

Later activities

Schlomo Erell (in civilian clothes) on a visit to the missile speedboat Reshef with the then First Officer and later Naval Commander Alex Tal during the Yom Kippur War (October 10, 1973)

After retiring from the military, Erell completed postgraduate studies in management at Columbia University , which he completed in 1969 with a Master of Business Administration (MBA). On his return he became manager of a shipping company in Haifa . During the Yom Kippur War (October 6 to 25, 1973), Shlomo Erell was an advisor to Navy Commander Benjamin Telem and also took part in troop visits , such as on October 10, 1973 the missile speedboat Reshef , the name given to Sa'ar 4 Reshef class. In 1973 he became a member of Likkud and founded the association together with Michael Eitan and Jigal Cohen-Orgad . He was also one of the founders of the renewal circle, which was one of the opponents of Menachem Begin within the Likud .

In 1976 Erell founded the shipping association and became its chairman. During his tenure, he led a campaign against wildcat strikes and initiated a major reform of labor relations in the merchant navy. He also represented the shipping industry in negotiations with ministries and Knesset committees. In 1978 he also became a member of the Haifa City Council, but turned down a candidacy for the office of mayor. In the 1980s he was the armed forces ombudsman and between 1984 and 1989 he also acted as an advisor to the then Defense Ministers Moshe Arens and Yitzchak Rabin . He then became chairman of the shipping association again and held this position until his retirement in 1999. He died in November 2018 on his 98th birthday.

publication

  • Diplomacy in the Depths of the Sea , 2000, Ma'ariv-Verlag

literature

Web links

Commons : Schlomoh Er'ell  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Ehud Er'el (אֶהוּד אֶרְאֵל), פְּרֵדָה מֵאַבָּא (Farewell to Papa), November 20, 2018, printed in: "פְּרֵדָה מֵאַלּוּף שְׁלֹמֹה אֶרְאֵל 20 בְּנוֹבֶמְבֶּר 2018" , In: מִשְׁמַר הַמּוֹרֶשֶׁת הַיַּמִּית / Maritime Heritage Watch , accessed September 1, 2019.
  2. ^ Abraham Rabinovich: From 'Futuristic Whimsy' to Naval Reality. In: Naval History Magazine 28/3. June 2014, accessed November 20, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Col. Shlomo Erell Appointed New Commander of Israel's Navy. (pdf, 3.5 MB) In: Jewish Telegraphic Agency . January 4, 1966, p. 2 , accessed November 20, 2018 (English).
  4. ^ Myths & Facts Online - The 1967 Six-Day War. In: Jewish Virtual Library. Accessed November 20, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Joshua Davidovich: Israel feared Soviets sunk sub in 1968, papers Reveals. In: The Times of Israel . March 10, 2013, accessed November 20, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Ofer Aderet: Shlomo Erell, Israel's Navy Chief During the Six-Day War, this at 98. In: Haaretz.com . November 21, 2018, accessed November 22, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Arel, Shlomo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Erell, Schlomo; Er'el, Schlomo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli Rear Admiral, 7th Commander of the Israel Navy
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Łódź , Poland
DATE OF DEATH 20th November 2018
Place of death Tel Aviv