Gordon Levett

Gordon Levett (21 March 1921–2000) was a former Royal Air Force pilot in World War II who volunteered for a covert mission to fly supplies including dismantled fighter planes into the fledgling state of Israel in its 1948 Arab–Israeli War as part of Operation Balak. Later Levett joined the first squadron of the newly created Israeli Air Force, helping establish a permanent Israeli military and aiding in the founding of the state of Israel. Levett was the only English gentile pilot in the Israeli Air Force, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He is the father of Blythe Masters.

Biography

Background Born into such poverty in London that his mother once placed him in an orphanage for eighteen months so he wouldn't starve, Levett joined the RAF in 1939 at age 17 when World War II broke out. Initially a groundcrewman, Levett applied for a pilot slot and in November 1940 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 subsequently court-martialled and dismissed from the RAF after taking unauthorized leave from his remote Burma base, and so after the war was unable to find work as an aviator.

Levett went to work in a Jewish-owned diaper laundry in London, where he learned about developments in the Middle East. When he read of attempts to found an Israeli state, he volunteered to join the Israeli Mahal unit, a group of 5,000-odd overseas volunteers in early 1948. The Mahal were established to assist what had been a largely underground Zionist force. After two meetings with Jewish agents in London, Levett was supplied with a ticket for Paris. From there he was sent to Czechoslovakia.

With the Israeli Air Force The Mahal pilots, mostly English Jews, began ferrying dismantled Avia S-199s (a modified Messerschmitt-109G with a bomber engine and gunpods) fighter aircraft from their base in Žatec, Czechoslovakia, where a group of mostly American Jewish volunteers had assembled a fleet of transport aircraft acquired in the United States, to Ekron airbase in an operation codenamed Operation Balak. Levett's job was shuttling the Avias and an enormous cache of arms bought from the Czechs, with Soviet approval, to Israel. The cargo included the disassembled fighter planes, bombs, firearms and even first aid equipment.

Located on an out-of-the-way road in a rural area some 20 miles from the East German border, the Czech base was a primitive facility with a small control tower, a few huts and a single concrete runway used by the Luftwaffe during World War II. The scene at the tiny facility startled Levett and other volunteers: they were greeted by a jarring jumble of American transport aircraft and several Messerschmitt 109 fighters, 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 Balak airlift, operating under Israel's Air Transport Command, lasted three months. Operating under cover of darkness, Levett transported tons of arms, ammunition and personnel, as well as the disassembled Avias. The airlift was instrumental in Israel's success in the war. The hazardous trips, recounted by Levett in his memoir Flying Under Two Flags: An RAF Pilot in Israel's War of Independence, skirted enemy groundfire and hostile fighter planes in making their deliveries.

Some 5,000 foreigners from Mahal volunteered to help Israel in the fight for independence. Levett was one of the few non-Jews, and his role as the primary pilot in the Balak airlift proved pivotal. The Avia fighters, dismantled and flown in pieces from the Czech base, were reassembled and painted in new colors when they arrived in Israel. The fighters Levett transported became the backbone of the new Jewish state's first air force.

Following the airlift, Levett joined Squadron 101 in November 1948. The squadron, which included Ezer Weizman (later commander of the Israeli Air Force, Minister of Defense and President of Israel), was instrumental in the war. During its first eight months, the fighter squadron shot down 20 Arab aircraft, including a few former RAF fighter planes piloted by the enemy during a January 1949 engagement. In that unlikely dogfight, Israeli pilots flying Nazi-designed Avias downed several English-made Spitfires flown by the Egyptians.

Being a non-Jew wasn't the only thing that made Levett unusual. Some of the fledgling nation's new pilots were strictly mercenaries, paid far more than volunteers like Levett. Levett was scornful of the motives of the mercenaries. "One American fighter pilot," he wrote, "was getting 2,000 dollars-a-month and a 500-dollar bonus for every enemy aircraft he shot down," Levett recalled in his memoir. "They did their job well, but I did not care for them. At the toss of a shekel they would have been on the other side."

Levett turned out to be no spy. Decades later, in May 1998, he and several hundred Mahal volunteers were invited by Israel to be honored for their service at celebrations of the country's 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."

The operation in which Levett had taken part succeeded in supplying arms to the Israelis, but it was controversial and hazardous: The airlift violated a United Nations embargo on arms shipments to the Middle Eastern combatants.

Some flights by the neophyte fighter pilot Levett involved actual bombing raids using transport planes jury rigged into bombers. The modified transports made bombing runs from the Sinai Peninsula to Damascus, Syria. The modified bombers had no bomb racks. Instead, the few bombs they carried were pushed out the aircraft's belly by a human 'bomb-chucker' who was tied to the aircraft's frame with rope.

Levett survived the nerve-jangling raids. In his memoir decades later, Levett recalled his enthusiasm for the Israeli cause and his frustration with the British Government's position. England's refusal to cooperate with a 1947 plan to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, and the British threat to remove its stabilizing forces from the region, compelled Levett to volunteer for the Israeli forces. Soon he felt comfortable in their ranks. He felt more at home walking down Ben-Gurion Street in Tel Aviv, Levett said later, than he did strolling in Piccadilly.