THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973that Israel had already received did not complete the bill, and the request for two squad-
rons of F-4 Phantoms that Prime Minister Eshkol had submitted to President Johnson
in January 1968 had not been formally approved (though Israeli airmen were already
involved in technical preparations for their purchase). After the 8 September clash,
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon reiterated to Johnson that “agreement to
supply Phantoms might be a helpful reply to the Soviets.” With a Democratic loss in
the US November election increasingly likely, intense lobbying was under way to get
the deal signed before a presidential transition delayed it further.
The Times report was almost prophetic: the very next day, Eg ypt claimed with
great fanfare that its MiG-21s, after completing a sortie across the canal with impu-
nity, had shot down three Mirages, at least one of them over Sinai. Malashenko’s
comment that the Eg yptian success “obviated the need to send in our MiG-21s”
confirms that Soviet pilots were in readiness to do so, and may have done it in other
cases. Israel denied any plane losses, or indeed any contact with the intruding planes
(which did not prevent the IAF from also claiming that it had “beaten them off ”).
But Western media followed the Eg yptian line in calling this the first dogfight since
the Six-Day War.^17 The Eg yptians had already pulled off a similar incursion on
23 September, though without claiming any kills, and its recurrence confirmed that
using the forward airstrips permitted the Eg yptians to penetrate Sinai deeper and
longer than in previous attempts, without Israeli interceptors overtaking them even
by taking off from Refidim.^18
Israeli accounts admitted only that the Eg yptians’ air activity had been increasing
for several weeks and they were “willing to take somewhat greater risks than before.”^19
As to the claims of Mirages shot down, the Israelis asserted derisively that fuel tanks
jettisoned by their planes were presented by the Eg yptians as wreckage of downed
aircraft. But retrospective accounts of the next encounter—this time, undisputedly a
dogfight—that took place on 3 November 1968 illustrate that the Eg yptians’ claims,
while exaggerated, were not entirely fabricated. Two Israeli Mirages that were scram-
bled from Refidim to intercept an intrusion in the northern sector of the canal were
outnumbered and—as the lead pilot admitted—outmaneuvered by at least ten MiG-
21s. Both of the Israeli planes missed all their shots at the Eg yptians, though the
official IDF version hinted that one of the latter had been hit. It did not disclose at
the time that both Mirages were themselves damaged by the MiGs’ Atoll missiles,
which gave some basis to Eg yptian claims that one IAF plane was shot down and the
other possibly hit.^20 The disparity between Eg yptian claims and Soviet records as
against actual Israeli losses would recur frequently, as discussed below.
Yiftah Spector, the lead IAF pilot in this incident, glimpsed one of the MiG-21
pilots (who was wearing a leather cap rather than a helmet), and suspected that he
was Russian. Cairo identified by name and as Eg yptian only the first four pilots who
drew the Israelis into the fight, which does not exclude the possibility that Soviet
pilots joined the fray later. Both at the time and in retrospect, the engagements of