NICKEL GRASS THE GREAT AIRLIFT

With the IDF suffering multiple setbacks in the first week of the war, Israel’s leadership faced a terrifying possibility. Was this the last great struggle in their country’s brief existence?

AIthough US President Richard Nixon and his cabinet supported Israeli PM Golda Meir's requests for more aid, by 8 October the Israeli government was begging for a torrent of armaments to replenish its overstretched ground forces. In the Sinai alone US intelligence estimated the IDF lost 432 tanks after just three days of fighting (the Soviets were not far off, estimating 500 Israeli tanks lost) and the aerial battles were taking a toll as well. Pre-war Israeli air power counted 358 modern fighter jets and as many as one-third were shot down by the enemy in the duration of the war. The US decision to send weapons and supplies for Israel was made on 9 October and organised by the White House, the State Department and the Department of Defense, with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger acting as liaison between Tel Aviv and the Oval Office. Kissinger remained divisive: the US foreign policy establishment saw him as too pro-Israel but public opinion in the Jewish state loathed him as an appeaser. Regardless, the first flights of C-5 Galaxy transports landed in Tel Aviv's Lod International Airport on 14 October with much needed 4in (105mm) howitzer ammunition. Over the next 13 days the US Air Force's Military Airlift Command (MAC) were off-loading tanks, howitzers, and even additional Phantom and Skyhawk jets. The 6,450mile (10,380km) distance was further complicated by the reluctance of NATO allies to share their own supplies. What became Operation Nickel Grass was a unilateral US effort.