It was in the hungry 1930s when Pussy, then a teenager, joined Habonim in his native New York. By the time he enlisted in the U.S.A. Army early in 1942, he was a committed Zionist. After earning his pilot’s wings, he served as a DC-3 pilot in the South Pacific. Upon completion of his tour of duty, he was sent back to the U.S.A. where his “war-hero” status, good looks and congenial personality were put to good use for the U.S. War Bonds drive.
Soon after his army discharge in late 1945, he began preparing for aliyah. A letter from the regional airline Aviron Ltd. In Tel Aviv, offering him a job as a pilot, helped him obtain a U.S. passport “valid for travel to Egypt and Palestine.” But faced with British restrictions on Jewish immigration, getting here was anything but routine.
He reached Alexandria, Egypt, as a crewman on a Swedish cargo ship and promptly jumped ship. He sought out Eretz-Israelis of the Jewish Brigade in the certainty they’d help him into Palestine, but instead encountered suspicions that he was a British agent. After gaining their confidence, they soon got Pussy to Tel Aviv by train in the guise of a returning Jewish Brigade soldier. Several months after joining his Habonim garin of Americans and Canadians at Kfar Blum, he met and married Amalia from the neighboring Kibbutz Kfar Giladi.
Pussy’s IAF career began early in 1948 with the Haganah’s “Aleph” Squadron, flying its mixture of light planes on varied missions considered too risky for the less-experienced pilots. For a while he was with Aleph Squadron’s sub-unit at Yavniel in the Galilee, flying Austers in support of the Golani Brigade. When a DC-3 was added to the fleet in May, he was among the first to fly it.
On 15th May he and Cyril Katz, a Machalnik from South Africa, were in the cockpit of the DC-3 at Tel Aviv’s Sde Dov airfield, getting ready to fly to Ekron, when they realized that they were under attack by Egyptian Spitfires. They scrambled out to safety, and when the all-clear was sounded they took off for Ekron despite bullet holes in the DC-3’s tail and wing.
Some 48 hours later, after the DC-3 had been repaired, Pussy flew it to besieged Beit Ha’arava, on the Dead Sea’s northern shore, to evacuate the remaining women and children. Co-piloting was Flight Engineer “Freddy” Ish-Shalom, a Machalnik from the UK. While on final approach he spotted some Arab Legion tanks a few miles off heading towards the kibbutz. He landed his plane and kept the engines running while some 60 passengers scrambled aboard. He barely managed to get the overloaded airplane airborne, and had to descend slightly towards the Dead Sea in order to reach safe flying speed before climbing away.
A short time later, Pussy was transferred to Air Transport Command and for several months flew as C-46 co-pilot on the airlift from Czechoslovakia to Israel, in October’s “Operation Yoav,” also known as “Ten Plagues,” and later in “Operation Horev,” he flew bombing missions in the C-46s.
Only after my transfer in late January 1949 from disbanded 35 Flight to 106 Squadron, Air Transport Command’s successor at Ekron, did I get to know Pussy. By then he had qualified as a C-46 captain.
On 17th March I sat in for his regular co-pilot on an ill-fated supply run to Sde Avraham, a crude strip 20 miles north of today’s Eilat. The other crew members were my fellow Canadians, Ben Sturrey, navigator, and Jack Smith, radio operator. Our cargo included drinking water and nine VIP passengers form IAF HQ.
For the return flight, some five tons of surplus land mines had been loaded aboard. Just after take-off, the left engine suddenly lost its power as it backfired loudly. All we could do was to stay in the air, a few feet above rocky hillocks, while shutting down the bad engine. Some five endless minutes later, we crashed into the ground and caught fire close to Avraham airstrip. Thanks to a chance sand dune at the point of impact, crew and passengers escaped certain death.
Pussy spent his remaining years at Kfar Giladi. His fellow “first fliers” worldwide will always remember Pussy as a level-headed pilot blessed with the proverbial “nine lives” of a cat.
Author: Eddy Kaplansky, American Veterans of Israel Newsletter: Summer 2002