In the War of Independence, which lasted more than a year and a half, Israel fought against the armies of all 4 surrounding countries plus one more distant army – Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt. But few people know that we have come within striking distance of the intervention of a sixth and much more powerful army to the side fighting against us – and all because of a series of mistakes. We used Claude and ChatGPT to tell us how, exactly 75 years ago, we almost got into trouble with a world power before Israel's first Independence Day.
In the midst of the war, Israel found itself involved in an incident that raised tensions with the British, who had just left the country a few months earlier. The clash took place on January 7, 1949 over the Negev. On the last day of Operation Horev to drive the Egyptian army out of the Negev, two Israeli Air Force pilots noticed billowing smoke, which soon turned out to be an Israeli convoy being attacked. The pilots noticed two Spitfires – the standard plane in the area at the time, which they also flew in – unidentified nearby, and concluded that it was an attack by the Egyptian Air Force. They shot down one plane and damaged another, who tried to evade by soaring to altitude and revealed that two other planes of the same type were accompanying him. The Israelis shot down these two planes, and two of the pilots were taken prisoner.
Shortly thereafter, the British organized a flyover of 18 planes – 4 Spitfires and 14 Tempest Hawkers – to search for the four missing aircraft. Four Israeli Spitfires flew in front of them, led by Ezer Weizmann (later President of Israel). A fierce battle ensued between the two forces, with both sides exchanging fire, and the British Tempest pilots, who also had trouble distinguishing their own Spitfires from ours, decided to fire on every Spitfire they saw. Finally, when the British came up with the idea that their Spitfires would wiggle the wings of the planes in order to identify themselves, the Israeli pilots also realized that it was not the Egyptian Air Force, and withdrew. However, they had already shot down another British plane.
The two captured pilots, and the too late identification by Weizmann's force pilots of the "hostile" planes of the British Air Force, which was not a party to the war despite its base in Egypt, clarified the picture: the first planes shot down by the Israelis were on a reconnaissance mission as part of the British efforts to monitor the situation in the area, and attracted, just like the Israelis, to smoke from the Israeli convoy that had been bombed earlier by the Egyptians. All that happened next was an escalation that began from a combination of mistaken identification and a dispute over the location of the planes: the Israelis claimed that the planes had invaded Israeli airspace in violation of the agreements, while the British claimed that all the downed planes were located far beyond the Egyptian border. However, at least one of those planes is actually deep inside Israel, proving the Israeli claim that the British pilots invaded, apparently unintentionally, our airspace.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion feared the British reaction, but the British army reportedly forbade its pilots to launch a revenge attack. In a particularly tragic twist, it turned out that some of the Israeli pilots who participated in the incident participated in World War II in joint operations with the British Air Force, and one of them even served in it. After the British demanded compensation from Israel, the Israeli squadron sent a letter to the British, expressing regret, but also claiming responsibility for them and suggesting that the British pilots attend a reconciliation meeting, where they would meet "some familiar faces."
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