2015 Hartoch Noam 1068300

This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ A History of the Syrian Air Force 1947-1967 Hartoch, Noam Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 KING’S COLLEGE LONDON FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES Dissertation A History of the Syrian Air Force 1947-1967 By Noam Hartoch Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 2015 1 Abstract Shortly after gaining independence in the summer of 1945, the Syrian government set about to form the Syrian Air Force (SAF). Though devoid of personnel and aircraft and lacking experience and tradition since France, the mandatory power in Syria in 1920-45, had been reluctant to train Syrians in the art of air warfare, the nascent SAF scored some limited successes in the 1948 war but lost its momentum after a mere three months of fighting. A lengthy period of restructuring followed, during which Syria underwent countless military coups which profoundly destabilized the country and had a marked effect on the SAF. In tandem with the internal upheavals, the ascent of the Pan-Arab Baath party brought about a gradual severance of political and military relations with the west, particularly Britain, and a shift to the Soviet sphere of influence, something that not only ensured a massive flow of modern arms but also brought about close cooperation and coordination with the Egyptian military establishment, particularly the Egyptian Air Force (EAF), culminating in the establishment of the ill-fated United Arab Republic (UAR). With the entrenchment of the Baath’s pan-Arab ideology in Syrian political and military life, anti-Israel rhetoric and activities increased to the extent that by the early 1960s the Jewish state had become Damascus’s major security concern and bitter foe. Border skirmishes gradually reached a climax that saw Syria and Israel locked in the second full-scale war in two decades. Despite better equipment and training, the SAF failed to achieve any success, however minor. Drawing on a wealth of hitherto untapped archival sources, this dissertation is the first academic attempt to offer an in-depth review of the history and development of the SAF from its inception to the aftermath of the 1967 war. The work’s main insight is that the SAF’s professional decline was a direct outcome of the pervasive political intervention in military affairs, something a modern air arm, as a highly professional and technologically advanced body of people and material, cannot tolerate. As a result, it found itself in the impossible position of being expected to act as the defender of the nation while being deprived of the necessary means to confront Syria’s most formidable military foe. 2 Table of Contents Abstract 2 Introduction 4 1 Aviation in Syria during the French Mandate 1920-45 14 2 First Challenges, 1946-48 34 3 The 1948 Palestine War 64 4 Recovery and Buildup, 1949-58 86 5 Continuity and Change, 1958-63 156 6 The Road to War, 1963-67 180 7 The June 1967 War 227 Abbreviations 265 Bibliography 268 3 Introduction The string of upheavals that rocked the Middle-East since December 2010 reached Syria in March 2011. The declared intent of the various rebel factions has been to overthrow the Baath regime and its current leader Bashar Assad, son of Hafez Assad, SAF commander (1963-66), defence minister (1966-70) and head of state (1970-2000). The Assad dynasty has not only ruled Syria under the facade of the Baath Party but has also been the protector of the Alawite minority (about 10 per cent of the population), to which it belongs. Like Hafez Assad, many Alawites viewed the military as the best vehicle for social mobility and political power. This ‘investment’ paid massive dividends by allowing the tiny community to dominate the country’s predominantly Sunni population for decades. This enabled Bashar to ride the tidal revolutionary wave for nearly four years (with a little help from Tehran and Moscow) despite initial predictions to the contrary. Almost from its inception, the Syrian Air Force (SAF) was widely used by the regime to protect its interest, though it was never intended to carry out counterinsurgency operations being primarily aimed at confronting the Israeli Air Force (IAF). Consequently, when the 2011 civil war erupted the SAF could initially field only very limited resources, mainly helicopters, which dropped ammunition on rebel formations and the civilian population. The SAF’s intervention in the civil war, according to a Turkish military source, was the ‘biggest morale booster for the struggling ground forces’.1 However, the force suffered heavy losses in these operations as its limited resources against shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles were quickly exposed.2 This dissertation describes the history of the SAF from its inception in 1947 to the June 1967 war. It argues that the SAF’s initial role as ‘defender of the nation’, maintained during its formative years, was gradually transformed into what can be best described as ‘defender of the regime’. This was particularly true following the Baath Party’s ascent to power in 1961. The SAF accumulated considerable power over the years due to the fact that its former commander rose to the position of a national ruler, and this had a marked effect on its development and the 1 ‘Syria retains deep-strike capability’, Janes Defence Weekly, 1 January 2014, p. 20. 2 In 2011-13 the SAF lost over 100 aircraft, mostly due to ground fire. Some aircraft were captured intact in air bases overrun by rebel forces. Ibid, 5 September 2012, p. 23 4 identity of its senior officer corps whose working synergy with the regime’s interests became increasingly evident. Literature Review Despite the rich literature about various conflicts and wars in the modern Middle East, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Gulf wars, and the Lebanese civil war, there is a paucity of scholarly writing on Arab military establishments and armed forces in general and Arab air forces in particular (in glaring contrast to the extensive study of the Israeli armed forces and air force). Col. Eliezer (‘Lassya’) Galili, editor of the IDF publishing house (Maarachot), published in Hebrew in late 1948 the first known book on the Arab armies after Israel gained independence. It reviews, among other things, the development of the Syrian army, albeit providing little information on the SAF itself. The book is largely based on IDF intelligence, and as a result, in order not to associate the writer with his sources (the majority classified at the time of writing), the author used the nickname ‘Agra’.3 In 1966 Avigdor Shahan published the book ‘Wings of Victory’ in Hebrew.4 This was an expanded version of his MA thesis. The book provides a potted history of the SAF and describes in detail for the first time its involvement in the 1948 Palestine War. Shahan was given partial access to documents at the IDFA, and his account of SAF operations during the war was the most comprehensive and accurate published at the time. In 1969, the noted scholar of Middle-Eastern history, Eliezer Be'eri, published his important book in Hebrew, Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society, with an English version following a year later.5 The book provides an in-depth review of Arab officers' struggles for power within their respective armies, their social background, and their involvement in the numerous military coups. Be'eri briefly mentions SAF officers who took part in the political turmoil in that country during the numerous coups that took place after the Palestine War and 3 ‘Agra’ (Eliezer Galili), The Arab armies in our Times (Tel Aviv: Maarachot, 1948). 4 Avigdor Shahan, Wings of Victory (Tel Aviv: Am-Hassefer, 1966). 5 Eliezer Be'eri, Army Officers in Arab Politics and Society (London: Praeger/Pall-Mall, 1970). 5 during the UAR period. The book's shortcoming is in the lack of primary sources, with most references made to books and daily newspapers. Twenty years after the 1967 war, a Jordanian scholar published what is considered by many to be the best account of that war on the Jordanian front.6 It naturally focused on describing the Royal Jordanian Air Force (RJAF) operations during the war but also related to the SAF and its abstention from coming to the RJAF's assistance. This was despite being five times larger, and a signee to the Unified Arab Command (UAC) agreement to combine forces against Israel.

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