Senior, Ex-Pilot Tells of Israel War

A year age Rudolph Augarten '49 was shooting down Egyptian-piloted spitfires and training new men for the larseli air corps.

The spring before that, some Zionist friends at Harvard had interested him in fighting for Israel and put him in touch with a clandestine organization in New York which was recruiting men and shipping them out to Palestine. His family did not want him to go, thinking he had seen enough of war after flying 101 missions over Germany and being listed as missing for two months.

Mr. Augarten finally took off after finals in 1948 without telling his family he was going. After landing in Italy he proceeded to Czechoslovakia and trained for several weeks. The Czechs, he explained, are helping Palestine, but realize that Communism can make no headway against Zionism, which in a nationalistic movement.

Into Action

By July 8th he was in Palestine. He went directly into action. Chief air opposition came from the Egyjtians flying Italian fighters and British Spitfires, and the single Arab group with a respectable air force. The Israelis flew planes bought through an agreement with the Czech government, procuring Messerschmits which were manufactured at a Scoda plant outside of Prague and flown in bigger planes to Palestine. The Israell also operated several Piper cubs, and increased their air power even further when a group of Beaufighters which were to provide the melodrama in an English movie disappeared from their British field and arrived in Israel.

Conditions in the Israeli air corps were technically primitive. At first the planes had no radios or oxygen. The fields were poor and the mechanics skilled only in automobile repairing. Besides a single fighter squadron which never had more than 11 planes or 16 pilots there were only a few bombers. Never were more than four planes were off the ground, and some days not even one could be put in the air.

Hot Pilots

But the pilots were top-notch Canadian, English, American and South African World War II veterans who used English as the official Air Corps language. Like the Israel Army, the air corps had no ranks but positions. Unlike the Army, the Air Corps depended heavily on outside volunteers and paid a higher wage to induce flyers to enter the country.

Mr. Augarten and some others did not accept this pay. Others were strictly mercenaries or adventurers who left whenever they felt like it. Any one was free to go home when he wanted.

In spite of these handicaps few men were killed; the Israell air corps did considerably better than the Egyptians, shooting down 24 of the enemy and executing several bombing raids on Damascus, Cairo, and El Arish, which lowered Arab moral. Mr. Augarten who found the Czoch Messerschmits an inferier successer to the Garman model destroyed four Egyptians, two better than his total score over Germany.

Israel and the IRA

Mr. Augarten says, that an a Jew he feels an allegiance to Israel similar to that an American-born Irishman would have felt towards the IRA in 1922. He would like to return to Palestine, but not to live, although he is very hopeful for the land. "They ought to be able to hold their present boundaries," he says. He has worked with a tent-housed agricultural group in the desert, and knows that if the country can support the population of three million the Jews are planning. The biggest problem today is handling the huge group of immigrants recently absorbed into the country.

As a veteran for the second time, Mr. Augarten does not find it hard to settle down in Eliot House. While finishing off his last term in International government he is writing a 25,000 word diary of his year abroad.