After the Six Day War, the United States became interested in Israel as an ally not just as the one democracy in the Middle East, but now that it had won some strategic depth and other factors such as the Arabs flocking to the Soviet Union as their arms suppliers. This was fortuitous, for as just discussed, France had decided its interest lay with appeasing the Arabs and had embargoed arms sales to Israel.
This meant a significant shift in the Israeli Air Force's composition.
The first plane the US agreed to sell to Israel was the A-4 Skyhawk.
Both an F model and an H model are in the museum. The H model was made specifically for Israel.
The F Model:
Here's an example of the H model.
The Skyhawks served as the IAF's main ground attack aircraft for the War of Attrition and the Yom Kippur war.
They suffered heavy losses to Egyptian and Syrian SAMs in the opening days of the Yom Kippur War. The Skyhawks flew 1,000 sorties on the Egyptian front alone in that war.
After 1990 the Skyhawks were removed from tactical service and converted to trainers as lead-in-fighter aircraft to train pilots before transitioning to the F-16 and F-15, the Skyhawks were only retired from the IAF in 2015.
The Skyhawk in Israeli service was called the "Ayit", meaning Eagle. As such the F-15 Eagle is not called the Eagle in Israeli service.
1 comment:
Those were truly fun birds to fly. One helluva roll rate, still has not been exceeded by any other combat airplane. Light and quick, they were as adept at low level as they were at altitude. They didn't have good ESM, which contributed to the high numbers of shoot downs.
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