Spit/Hurr 1947 - 1948 (3)

We were due to leave Ramat David for Cyprus on 22 May and had arranged to carry out a final recce of all the trouble spots before we left. We awoke to hear aircraft engines and Tim McElhaw got up and looked out of the door, came back in rather fast and said we were being bombed!! (4)


Seconds later the first of them went off in the aircraft park and we all started running to the aircraft. As the attackers came back we all started looking for shelter but there was precious little!! We got two aircraft airborne from the few that were undamaged but the attackers were long gone and we didn’t know who they were or where they had come from. Two of us got airborne and set up a patrol line south of the airfield. We suddenly got a call from the tower telling us they were under attack so we raced back and picked up two Egyptian Spitfires over the airfield. We told the tower and the CO came on the RT and told us to shoot them down which we did!! As we landed back another three Spitfires appeared, one of whom got a direct hit on one of our Dakotas (4a). Our airfield patrol soon engaged them and Tim McElhaw accounted for two of them. The third was engaged by a Regiment gunner with a Bren gun and was seen leaving a stream of Glycol behind and crashed some distance south. We had to delay our departure for a day but made it to Cyprus without further alarms.  


We stayed in Cyprus to complete an APC (5) and were then sent to Fayid. The reason became apparent when in December a group of  Egyptian aircraft suddenly threw themselves on our airfield saying that the Israelis were coming. Much later that evening we had a  signal  ordering us to trail four Egyptian Spitfires who were going out at dawn to attack the Israelis.


The Foreign Office wanted to know if the Israelis had crossed the frontier as we had a defence agreement with Egypt. After a couple of delays we finally met up with them and set of over the Sinai. They dropped their bombs did a bit of ground strafing and cleared off We went down had a look and found nothing, so we carried on towards Beersheba and followed the road up to El Arish where we found the entire Israeli Army getting round behind the Egyptians. We got back with some great pictures but they were of little value as both sides were using the same vehicles and there were no markings visible and the desert was devoid of

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