The Sinai Air Strike: An Echo from 1967

The air hung heavy with a suffocating tension in the early hours of June 5, 1967. For weeks, the Middle East had been a tinderbox, and the Sinai Peninsula, a vast expanse of desert separating Israel and Egypt, was the fuse. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's brazen movements – mobilizing a formidable army of 100,000 men and 900 tanks into the Sinai, expelling UN peacekeepers, and blockading the Straits of Tiran – had pushed Israel to the brink. The unspoken question was not if war would come, but when and how.

The answer arrived with the rising sun.

As Egyptian pilots and ground crews, lulled by a routine of daily dawn alerts that always ended in nothing, were sitting down to breakfast, a swarm of steel eagles was already slicing through the pre-dawn sky. This was "Operation Focus," a meticulously planned, audacious gamble by the Israeli Air Force (IAF). Instead of striking immediately at dawn, as conventional wisdom dictated, the Israelis had waited. They had observed the Egyptian patrol patterns, the changing of the guard, the moments of complacent calm.

At precisely 07:45 AM, the Israeli jets, a force of nearly 200 combat aircraft – Mirage IIIs, Mystère IVs, Super Mystères, Ouragans, and Vautours – executed a chilling maneuver. They had flown westward, out over the neutral vastness of the Mediterranean, deliberately disappearing from Egyptian radar screens. Then, with terrifying precision, they turned.

Suddenly, the desert morning erupted into a cacophony of thunder and fire. The first wave of Israeli jets screamed low over 11 Egyptian airfields across the Sinai, the Suez Canal, and around Cairo. They weren't just dropping bombs; they were unleashing specialized anti-runway munitions, designed to explode upon impact and then again, creating devastating sinkholes that rendered runways useless.

Chaos reigned supreme. Egyptian airmen, caught utterly by surprise, scrambled for their aircraft, but it was too late. Before their jets could even lift off, they were obliterated on the tarmac. Fuel tanks exploded in blossoming infernos, hangars disintegrated, and the very ground shuddered under the relentless onslaught.

Before the first wave had even finished its deadly work, another was on its heels. The Israeli pilots, having unleashed their fury, raced back to their bases, where ground crews performed miracles of efficiency, "quick-turning" aircraft in under eight minutes – refueling, rearming, and sending them back into the fray. This relentless, almost robotic efficiency magnified their relatively smaller force.

Wave after wave descended. Egyptian radar operators, initially dismissing the disappearing blips as routine, soon realized the horrific truth as their airfields, one by one, went silent. Radio communications crackled with desperate, then fading, reports. Within three hours, the backbone of the Egyptian Air Force – nearly 500 combat aircraft – lay twisted and burning on the ground. It was an annihilation of staggering proportions.

By noon, the devastation had spread. Following desperate calls for assistance and retaliatory attacks from Jordan and Syria, the Israeli Air Force turned its sights on their airfields as well. The Jordanian Air Force was virtually wiped out in a mere 25 minutes, followed by crushing blows to the Syrian and Iraqi air forces.

The "Sinai Air Strike," as it came to be known, was not just an attack; it was a masterclass in aerial warfare, a pre-emptive strike that reshaped the entire conflict. It delivered a knockout blow before the ground war had even truly begun, securing absolute air supremacy for Israel. With the skies cleared, the path was open for the ground forces to advance, and the fate of the Six-Day War, and indeed the future of the Middle East, was irrevocably altered in those few, devastating hours.

Modern warfare is defined by stealth, military intel and technology, not hordes of men or hardware. With the advent of artificial intelligence, we are entering a new phase. Only those who master the technology will prevail.