THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973planes.”^40 But within a week, Israel had lost an alarming chunk of its Phantom fleet. It
had received a total of forty-four, one had already been shot down on 2 April in a dog-
fight over Syria, and at least one was lost in a training accident.^41 According to a former
squadron commander, an average of only thirty were serviceable at any given time
during the War of Attrition.^42 Worse, even a greater part of the IAF’s few airmen quali-
fied for the F-4 were lost to a markedly effective and proactive Soviet air defense effort.^43
IAF chief Hod admitted there were only twelve F-4 crews, and the effort demanded of
them was “sublime.”^44 Col. Rafi Harlev, who joined the first F-4 squadron on 4 June,
recalled that “the feeling was we didn’t know what to do. ... Pilots felt they were being
sent to die for no purpose.”^45 Henceforth the casualty rate among Phantom-trained
crewmen became an even greater concern for the IAF than aircraft losses, as the person-
nel would take longer to replace even if more planes were readily available.
But the decision whether to supply additional Phantoms was still pending—indeed,
on 19 June Donald Bergus had delivered in Cairo a US commitment that no more
would be sold.^46 On 12 July, Newsweek reported that Nixon authorized the resumption
of Phantom supply at the rate of two per month, including two from the original con-
tract and six more. Together, this would not bring the total up to the fifty specified in
the original 1968 agreement and so could not be held to constitute an additional sale.
But as US officials hinted, the rate of supply would in any case be “flexible” and pegged
to the military balance. Still, as the magazine reported, the order had been kept secret
to avoid inflaming Arab opinion. When the news broke, Rogers confirmed that the
announcement had been “purposely withheld” and Sisco declined any comment. The
decision was now presented as compensating for Israel’s losses, but the extra six
Phantoms, to be taken from “US production quotas,” were still on the assembly line,
and the first two would be delivered only in August. By then, Israel would already lose
two more, and only the ceasefire would stop this unsustainable attrition.
A more tangible compensation was the disclosure, in the same Newsweek story, that
Nixon had approved the dispatch of advanced, active electronic-warfare systems for
Israel’s existing Phantoms.^47 Israeli pilots felt that “the SAM-3s had caught us with
our pants down as low as they could go,” and American solutions were sought for lack
of anything else.^48 US concern about the field-security risks that supplying the EW
(electronic warfare) gear entailed was soon confirmed by “American military and
civilian sources” when they dismissed a report by Al-Ahram that “Eg yptian military
experts had discovered some of the Phantom’s secrets while examining the fragments
of the planes that were shot down.” Dozens of fully-equipped F-4s had been shot
down in Vietnam, the Americans pointed out, whereas the Israelis had not received
the latest, secret USAF systems—so the Eg yptians could not find out anything new
for the Soviets.^49 Events would soon prove the opposite.
Neither of these US decisions had yet emerged when the back-channel partners
had another long talk on 9 July. Dobrynin was now convinced that “Kissinger has a
predominant, or at any rate much greater, influence on Nixon ... than Rogers does. ...