March 2012 Volume 3, Number 1 FLYING SPIRIT The Official National Newsletter of the SAAF Association NPO 083-072 SAAFA holds it’s first successful Fun Day Fund Raiser Contents On 17 March 2012 the first of the envisaged annual SAAFA Fun Day Events was held. This was a trial run to see if it can work and then to possibly extent the event to other parts of SAAFA Fun Day Fund Raiser 1 Syd Cohen 2 the country. Sunday Paper 4 Leonard Horatio Slatter 4 If we could only Heroes Remembered 5 draw 100 Our Readers say…… 6 participants for the SAAF/SAAFA Garden……….. 8 Ebo vier kom huis toe! 9 first event, we ‘Ek móés gaan veg het 10 would be grateful! Zwartkop Air Show 11 The next event SAAF Fund or SAAFA 11 Chappie Flemington 12 could draw more New leadership 12 participants and Timeline – SA Air Force 13 then increase with every similar event thereafter. Contact Us The start of the 5km walk. Some of these eager The Editors With the go-ahead in our pocket, a contract walkers were no longer so eager after the event! SAAFA NHQ was signed with an online registration P.O. Box 21223 company, sponsorships were sought, flyers were designed, printed and distributed, Valhalla 0137 medals were ordered, advertisements were emailed to as many running/walking and cycling clubs possible, details of volunteers to assist on the day were gathered, route Tel: 012 651 5921 or markers were made, refreshment stall owners were invited, T-shirts to be able to stand 012 351 2116 Fax: 086 218 4657 out from the participants were received for the volunteers, the base was put on alert and Email: [email protected] then…. We were ready for the “crowds”. Website: www.saafa.co.za The weather played the fool on us and days before the event we had constant rain and NOTE miserable weather. On Saturday 17 March, the day of the event, we had clear skies and a The editors extend their most beautiful sunny day. thanks for all contributions received. The participants started to arrive and soon it was clear that the 100 participant mark was Opinions expressed in this reached in minutes! The Mountain Bikers started the event, followed by the walkers and newsletter do not the runners. necessarily reflect those of the Editors or SAAFA The more eager walkers and runners no longer looked all that eager at the finish and some National Executive. of those who registered for the 5km walk and run couldn’t believe that they had to do The Editors reserves the another round after the first round was covered! “Vasbyt, almost done!” were the words right to amend or reject any editorial matter most heard during the last lap. submitted for publication. One very eager mountain biker that enrolled for the 7,5km ride but was so enthusiastic No part of this newsletter may be copied or that he kept going when the marshal showed reproduced in any form the 21km riders to carry on for the second without the consent of lap! After he almost completed the second the editors or lap, he realised that he should have stopped management of SAAFA. ages ago!! Now that is what I call “dedication”! Page 1 of 14 Our National President joined us for the event and we quickly gave him a choice, participate or hand out medals. You can see in the photo on the right which option he chose! While the athletes “struggled” along, Karl Jensen, our MC for the day, together with Jeff Earle, entertained the crowd with some aviation related tales, jokes and most interesting The National President, Neville Greyling, awaits the history lessons squeezed in first runners in to hand them their medals. between. Thank you guys, you created a great atmosphere! A very happy “customer” receiving his special SAAFA Medals were handed out as the athletes finished and a bottle of Medal. flavoured water, sponsored by aQuellé was available to every participant. Indeed refreshing after the strenuous events. Soon the day was over and after counting the beans, it was found that we had 420 participants and banked almost R10 000 profits for the day! Congratulations for a well organised event were received from all over and we were asked when the next event would be held. We thank our sponsors for the bottled water, prizes, cash donations and T-shirts received. Thank you to all the volunteers who assisted where needed the day and a very special thank you to everybody that assisted in planning and executing this event. Most importantly; thank you to AFB Zwartkop and in particular to Col Itel Zurich and his staff members who assisted in placing the barriers, dedicated place for the stalls, supplied the sound system and helped where ever hands were needed. SAAFA really appreciated the effort. He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying. - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900 Syd Cohen : 1921-2011 as described by Smoky Simon, chairman of the World Mahal. Sydney (Syd) Cohen was a mensch in the best sense of the word, and his name is engraved in the pantheon of the Israel Air Force. Syd Cohen grew up in a small village in South Africa called Bothaville, named after a famous Boer general. After school, he attended the School of Medicine at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and disrupted his first year of medical studies in 1940 to join the South African Air Force in World War II. He served in the South African Air Force right up until the end of the war in 1945, and was a member of a well-known squadron, Squadron No. 4. Initially they flew aircraft called Kitty Hawks, and afterward Spitfires. Even in those days, he was a colourful character. He had a tremendous beard and a handlebar moustache, and was known in the air force as “the flying rabbi”. He also had a wonderful sense of humour. I was on a bomber squadron, and they used to be protected by the fighter squadrons. On one of the flights, two ME 109s (German fighter planes) jumped him, and he couldn’t shake them off. He called his formation leader and asked him: “How did these Jerrys know that I’m the only Jewish boy in this formation?” After the war, he resumed his medical studies, and then disrupted them again in 1948 to come fly here as the war clouds were gathering over Palestine. Page 2 of 14 We started recruiting in South Africa when war looked inevitable. There were 4,800 Mahalniks (foreign volunteers) who eventually came from 58 countries to serve here. With 834 volunteers, South Africa had the largest single number of Mahalniks. Syd arrived in July 1948 to serve in the IAF, flying in the first combat aircraft, Avia S-199, which was a Czechoslovakian-built aircraft – a version of the ME 109, though it was very inferior. The pilots had tremendous trouble, but Syd was an experienced pilot and handled it extremely well. He was assigned to the now famous 101 Squadron. The officer commanding of the squadron was an Israeli by the name of Modi Alon. In October 1948, Alon was unfortunately killed in a crash, and Syd was appointed commanding officer of 101 Squadron. Then 101 Squadron was really building up its muscle, because it started getting the Spitfires, which were also bought from Czechoslovakia and had to be flown to Israel. Until then, we had the air transport command, which would fly that route. However, because of tremendous pressure on the Czech government from the US and British governments, this airline was cancelled. At the time there was a boycott of war materiel to the Middle East, and Israel was in a particularly difficult position because the British had supplied the Jordanians, the Egyptians and the Iraqis with aircraft, artillery and tanks. Israel was virtually defenceless when the War of Independence started, which was why America, Britain and the Arabs were convinced that the war would be over in 10 days. The 101 Squadron was getting Spitfires and the B-51 Mustang, but everything had to be smuggled into the country because of the United Nations arms embargo. When the air force acquired the Avia S-199, the planes were dismantled in Czechoslovakia, flown in crates to Israel and reassembled here, and then became operational once they were tested. But we couldn’t do this with the Spitfire, which, according to the British manufacturer, had a maximum flying time endurance of one-and-a half hours. So an American pilot engineer by the name of Sam Pomerantz took everything out of the Spitfire – the armoured plating, the guns, the radio and navigation equipment and the cameras – and fitted fuel tanks under the belly, under the wings and within the aircraft itself. The aircraft had to fly from Czechoslovakia to Yugoslavia, and then to Israel, which was a six-hour flight, and the first three that came over were flown by Pomerantz, Syd Cohen and Jack Cohen. (The Cohens had been in the same squadron in the South African Air Force, but were not related.) This was an epic event in aviation history. No one could believe it was feasible – including the manufacturer. When Syd was appointed commanding officer of 101 Squadron, the fighter pilots were an amazing bunch of guys – many of them aces in World War II – with strong personalities and from Anglo-Saxon countries such as South Africa, Canada, the USA and Britain.