2005-08-11—Book Review: Fire in the Sky |
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Book
Review Fire in the Sky by Israeli Brigadier-General Amos Amir; translated by Ruvik Danieli; Pen and Sword Books; 292 pages; 19.99 British pounds. Not so many years ago, the air force was
the glamour military service - of Israel, the United States, Great
Britain, or any major power. The life-or-death aerial dogfights, the pinpoint
bombing of vital targets and all the other difficult, challenging
missions aloft captivated the imagination of young and old around the
world. So it is as a bit of modern history - chronicling a time so recent yet bygone - that this autobiography of one of Israel's outstanding military pilots is most fascinating. From the standpoint of one who was in the heart of the action, General Amir describes how Israel's Air Force rose from a small ill-equipped outfit to become one of the world's two or three best, and tells of his role in making it so. Amir has written a meticulously detailed account of his key missions - from before he entered the cockpit to after his return to base - starting in the early 1960s and going through the Six-Day War of 1967, the subsequent War of Attrition against Egypt in 1969-70 and the Yom Kippur war of 1973. Interspersed with his stories of combat are chapters dealing with his growing-up years, going back to his childhood in Tel Aviv during and immediately after World War II. Blessed with what seems like boundless self-confidence and a big ego, Amir displays a can-do attitude throughout these pages - he expresses few if any doubts of his ability. Of course, these are qualities essential for any top-of-the-line military pilot. Still, he admits that the times were not
without their failures. He bemoans the failure to "achieve a clear
and unambiguous victory" in the 1969-70 War of Attrition, as
they were unable to destroy the large number of surface-to-air missile
sites the Egyptians, with Soviet help, had installed west of the Suez
Canal. This failure proved costly in the early stages of the Yom Kippur War.
And, he is quite critical of the high-level decision at the start of the
Yom Kippur War to divert virtually the entire Air Force to the Syrian
front. Finally, despite the destruction of Syrian missile sites at the
start of the Lebanon War in 1982 he admits the war subsequently became
bogged down for various reasons. The book is well-written, or at least well translated from the Hebrew. Published in Great Britain, it includes British spellings and expressions. Also, Amir's way of interspersing combat accounts with those of his younger days takes a little getting used to. Still, as an inside look at a heroic and often glorious era, it certainly deserves to be read.
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