syscom3
Pacific Historian
The story of the "stealing" of the five Israeli missile boats - which had already been paid for - from the French shipyard of Cherbourg at the end of 1969 is one of great daring, resourcefulness, drama, and ingenuity. Few condemned Israel in the world arena at that time - the massive condemnation Israel was to endure in the world arena came mainly in the wake of Israel's victory in the 1973 War.
The Cherbourg boats were, in Israeli military thinking, essential for the modernization of her navy and the security of the state. The point was vividly brought home one day in October 1967 - a few months after Israel's lightning victory in June.
It was a Saturday, at 5:20 p.m., and the War of Attrition was already in full gear (although the worst fighting occurred in 1969-70). Israeli Brigadier-General Alex Argov was captain of an Israeli-converted vintage World War II British Destroyer, formerly known by the British as HMS Zealous. During World War II the ship "had accompanied British convoys to Russia bearing vital wartime supplies over one of the stretches of water in the war to assist Russia" to survive their common enemy after June 1941, Hitler's Germany. In the 1940's HMS Zealous was a formidable ship. The Israelis had purchased her and renamed the ship the Eilat.
If the Israeli Navy had been debating whether to upgrade her fleet or not, the events of October 21, 1967 definitely influenced her thinking. On that day, as the Eilat was 14 miles off of Egypt's Port Said, two Russian-built Egyptian missile boats lay in wait armed with Styx missiles. The Egyptians had been tracking the Eilat all day with Russian advisers aboard. Only when the Russians were convinced that they could hit the Eilat did they permit the Egyptian seamen to fire on the Israeli ship.
Brigadier-General Argov had to make a quick decision as "Something in the sky caught his eye and he looked up. Two balls of fire hung momentarily at their zenith high on the horizon before making what appeared to be a slow descent down into the Mediterranean." Captain Argov knew he was looking at incoming missiles and with "a sickening sense of dread pressed the general alarm." There were 191 Israeli officers and men aboard the ship, and they began firing at will. It was useless. The two missiles struck the Eilat and nearly split the ship in two. The men struggled to keep the ship seaworthy for the next two hours, increasingly to little avail. Two hours later another missile hit the ship.
Captain Argov gave the order to abandon ship. A fourth and last missile fired at the ship hit the water, and the underwater shock waves injured many of the survivors.
Somehow, of the 190 sailors aboard the Eilat, 152 survived. Of them, 41 were wounded. Forty-seven Israeli sailors were killed.
The sinking of the Eilat was not highly publicized at the time, for reasons of prestige, but its impact was enormous. It galvanized the Israeli Navy into seeking out more and better naval craft, more suited to the modern conditions of missile combat. The day of the great warship - for the Israelis at least (but not for the Great Powers) - was over. Israel would be looking for small and efficient ships able to patrol her shores and undertake offshore operations at high speed, while at the same time able to evade enemy tracking and missiles as much as possible. The new ships would also have to have more offensive capabilities than they previously had - namely, the new generation of ships would need to be equipped with missiles.
The West had few boats of the kind Israel was looking for, "so the Israelis began designing their own boats. These were to be fast and maneuverable, and packed full of on-board instrumentation." The boats were originally supposed to be built in Germany, and indeed production did begin. The Germans were already building the most advanced missile craft until then, called the Jaguar, and the Israelis thought it could be a good match. Israel was also developing her Gabriel missile, which would be perfect for the fast-moving Jaguar missile boats. "The Gabriel missile had an advantage over its Soviet counterparts in its ability to fly low over the sea after launching, and thus avoid detection by radar."
Accordingly, in late 1962 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sent Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres to Germany, "where he met Chancellor Adenauer. Adenauer had agreed to supply Israel with arms as part of an attempt to make reparations for Germany's crimes against world Jewry, and now he signed an agreement as requested to supply Israel with twelve of the Jaguar vessels" They were to be built in German shipyards but Adenauer asked that the deal remain secret, so as not to incur the wrath of Arab countries should they find out.
By the end of 1964 three of the twelve missile boats had been built and delivered from Germany to Israel. But a German member of the government leaked news of the deal to the New York Times at that time. He apparently still harbored Nazi sympathies and did not wish to help Israel.
When the news appeared the Arabs were enraged, and Germany caved in to Arab threats of economic sanctions, and even a boycott, of German goods.
The Germans, however, agreed that the boats could be constructed elsewhere. The Israelis gave the work to Cherbourg shipyards in the southern coast of France. Thus there was little damage incurred by the German renunciation of their agreement to build the boats, other than a lingering feeling that the Germans should have been more considerate of Israeli sensibilities than Arab ones.
In the mid 1960s the French were supplying Israel with perhaps three quarters of Israel's arms. It made good sense to work with the French, and it also gave a boost to Cherbourg's under-employed work force. For the time being everyone was happy.
The Cherbourg shipyard workers had little experience of building ships of this kind, but with the German designs and the Israelis on hand, they were able to begin construction of the ships. The Gabriel missiles were being built simultaneously in Israel - and they would cost more than the ships themselves.
Within a few months "over 200 Israelis were living and working in the port town of Cherbourg." Many of them were French speakers - often Israelis who were born in and emigrated from the French provinces of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The Israelis, with linguistic and cultural affinity with their French hosts, fitted into their surroundings smoothly.
Brigadier General Mordecai Limon oversaw the Cherbourg Project. Limon had served in the Palmach during World War II, and later served in the British Army, where both Palestinian Jews and the British temporarily found a confluence of interests. After the war ended in 1945, Limon participated in the Haganah's naval group running the British blockade of Palestine. He was involved in many daring and courageous operations, and by 1950, when he was only 26, he was "made commander-in-chief of Israel's…navy." Four years later he left the navy in order to study for a Business Degree at Columbia University in New York. With a business background now under his belt, he "played a vital role in Israel's attempts to modernize its armed forces in the late 50s and early 60s."
The first boat to leave Cherbourg did so in April 1967 (it was the fourth ship overall to arrive in Israel, including the three ships delivered from Germany already), and the second left about a month later.
These boats arrived too late to be armed and of use during the Six-Day War of June 1967. But that was inconsequential. An event was to occur soon after with much greater implications. On June 2, 1967, just a few days before Israel's preemptive strike on Egyptian airfields on June 5, 1967, French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle declared that France would no longer supply weapons of "offensive nature" to the Middle East - which basically meant Israel. On the eve of war, Israel was cut suddenly cut off from her major source of arms.
This event may have hastened Israel's decision to make a preemptive strike, in that a hoped-for quick end to the war would not obviate the need for spare parts and a resupply of weapons from the French - which would not be forthcoming.
The Cherbourg boats were, in Israeli military thinking, essential for the modernization of her navy and the security of the state. The point was vividly brought home one day in October 1967 - a few months after Israel's lightning victory in June.
It was a Saturday, at 5:20 p.m., and the War of Attrition was already in full gear (although the worst fighting occurred in 1969-70). Israeli Brigadier-General Alex Argov was captain of an Israeli-converted vintage World War II British Destroyer, formerly known by the British as HMS Zealous. During World War II the ship "had accompanied British convoys to Russia bearing vital wartime supplies over one of the stretches of water in the war to assist Russia" to survive their common enemy after June 1941, Hitler's Germany. In the 1940's HMS Zealous was a formidable ship. The Israelis had purchased her and renamed the ship the Eilat.
If the Israeli Navy had been debating whether to upgrade her fleet or not, the events of October 21, 1967 definitely influenced her thinking. On that day, as the Eilat was 14 miles off of Egypt's Port Said, two Russian-built Egyptian missile boats lay in wait armed with Styx missiles. The Egyptians had been tracking the Eilat all day with Russian advisers aboard. Only when the Russians were convinced that they could hit the Eilat did they permit the Egyptian seamen to fire on the Israeli ship.
Brigadier-General Argov had to make a quick decision as "Something in the sky caught his eye and he looked up. Two balls of fire hung momentarily at their zenith high on the horizon before making what appeared to be a slow descent down into the Mediterranean." Captain Argov knew he was looking at incoming missiles and with "a sickening sense of dread pressed the general alarm." There were 191 Israeli officers and men aboard the ship, and they began firing at will. It was useless. The two missiles struck the Eilat and nearly split the ship in two. The men struggled to keep the ship seaworthy for the next two hours, increasingly to little avail. Two hours later another missile hit the ship.
Captain Argov gave the order to abandon ship. A fourth and last missile fired at the ship hit the water, and the underwater shock waves injured many of the survivors.
Somehow, of the 190 sailors aboard the Eilat, 152 survived. Of them, 41 were wounded. Forty-seven Israeli sailors were killed.
The sinking of the Eilat was not highly publicized at the time, for reasons of prestige, but its impact was enormous. It galvanized the Israeli Navy into seeking out more and better naval craft, more suited to the modern conditions of missile combat. The day of the great warship - for the Israelis at least (but not for the Great Powers) - was over. Israel would be looking for small and efficient ships able to patrol her shores and undertake offshore operations at high speed, while at the same time able to evade enemy tracking and missiles as much as possible. The new ships would also have to have more offensive capabilities than they previously had - namely, the new generation of ships would need to be equipped with missiles.
The West had few boats of the kind Israel was looking for, "so the Israelis began designing their own boats. These were to be fast and maneuverable, and packed full of on-board instrumentation." The boats were originally supposed to be built in Germany, and indeed production did begin. The Germans were already building the most advanced missile craft until then, called the Jaguar, and the Israelis thought it could be a good match. Israel was also developing her Gabriel missile, which would be perfect for the fast-moving Jaguar missile boats. "The Gabriel missile had an advantage over its Soviet counterparts in its ability to fly low over the sea after launching, and thus avoid detection by radar."
Accordingly, in late 1962 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sent Deputy Defense Minister Shimon Peres to Germany, "where he met Chancellor Adenauer. Adenauer had agreed to supply Israel with arms as part of an attempt to make reparations for Germany's crimes against world Jewry, and now he signed an agreement as requested to supply Israel with twelve of the Jaguar vessels" They were to be built in German shipyards but Adenauer asked that the deal remain secret, so as not to incur the wrath of Arab countries should they find out.
By the end of 1964 three of the twelve missile boats had been built and delivered from Germany to Israel. But a German member of the government leaked news of the deal to the New York Times at that time. He apparently still harbored Nazi sympathies and did not wish to help Israel.
When the news appeared the Arabs were enraged, and Germany caved in to Arab threats of economic sanctions, and even a boycott, of German goods.
The Germans, however, agreed that the boats could be constructed elsewhere. The Israelis gave the work to Cherbourg shipyards in the southern coast of France. Thus there was little damage incurred by the German renunciation of their agreement to build the boats, other than a lingering feeling that the Germans should have been more considerate of Israeli sensibilities than Arab ones.
In the mid 1960s the French were supplying Israel with perhaps three quarters of Israel's arms. It made good sense to work with the French, and it also gave a boost to Cherbourg's under-employed work force. For the time being everyone was happy.
The Cherbourg shipyard workers had little experience of building ships of this kind, but with the German designs and the Israelis on hand, they were able to begin construction of the ships. The Gabriel missiles were being built simultaneously in Israel - and they would cost more than the ships themselves.
Within a few months "over 200 Israelis were living and working in the port town of Cherbourg." Many of them were French speakers - often Israelis who were born in and emigrated from the French provinces of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. The Israelis, with linguistic and cultural affinity with their French hosts, fitted into their surroundings smoothly.
Brigadier General Mordecai Limon oversaw the Cherbourg Project. Limon had served in the Palmach during World War II, and later served in the British Army, where both Palestinian Jews and the British temporarily found a confluence of interests. After the war ended in 1945, Limon participated in the Haganah's naval group running the British blockade of Palestine. He was involved in many daring and courageous operations, and by 1950, when he was only 26, he was "made commander-in-chief of Israel's…navy." Four years later he left the navy in order to study for a Business Degree at Columbia University in New York. With a business background now under his belt, he "played a vital role in Israel's attempts to modernize its armed forces in the late 50s and early 60s."
The first boat to leave Cherbourg did so in April 1967 (it was the fourth ship overall to arrive in Israel, including the three ships delivered from Germany already), and the second left about a month later.
These boats arrived too late to be armed and of use during the Six-Day War of June 1967. But that was inconsequential. An event was to occur soon after with much greater implications. On June 2, 1967, just a few days before Israel's preemptive strike on Egyptian airfields on June 5, 1967, French Prime Minister Charles de Gaulle declared that France would no longer supply weapons of "offensive nature" to the Middle East - which basically meant Israel. On the eve of war, Israel was cut suddenly cut off from her major source of arms.
This event may have hastened Israel's decision to make a preemptive strike, in that a hoped-for quick end to the war would not obviate the need for spare parts and a resupply of weapons from the French - which would not be forthcoming.
