A native of Winnipeg, Canada, Ben was brought up in a traditional Jewish home and took a keen interest in Jewish studies. His family and friends were sure that he’d be a rabbi one day. But when the moment of truth came, he turned down a Bronfman Scholarship fund grant that would have allowed him to study at Yeshiva University.
Ben was promptly assigned to the IAF’s Air Transport Command when he got to Israel in May 1948. He participated in every phase of ATC’s activities, mainly as a navigator on C-46 aircraft. He was deeply involved in the crucial Operation “Balak” airlift from Czechoslovakia and in the Operation “Dust” airlift to Ruchama. He flew bombing raids in October’s “Yoav” and “Hiram” campaigns as well as during the “Horev” campaign December 22nd – January 7th 1949. At that time, every C-46 crew included “bomb-chuckers” to manually heave the bombs out of the airplane.
In mid-December 1948, Ben was on the crew of a C-46 piloted by Ted Applebaum and Blackie Bradshaw to Nicsic, Yugoslavia, bearing a freshly painted Red Star to conceal its true identity. They returned with a dismantled Spitfire that had been damaged in landing as it arrived from Zatec, Czechoslovakia, on the first leg of its Velvetta II ferry flight. Barely a week later, he navigated a C-46 again flown by Applebaum and Bradshaw, which shepherded the remaining Velvetta II Spitfires from Nicsic to Israel.
Ben and his fellow crew members had a dangerously close call on March 17th 1949, when their C-46 crashed and burned soon after taking off from Avraham air strip near present-day Eilat. After that, St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated as a sort of second birthday by the four fliers – three Canadians and one American.
Red was a very competent navigator who kept his cool under fire or in dangerous situations. His self-confidence and ever-ready good humor was a constant inspiration to his fellow crew members whom he always brought home safely.
Following his IAF discharge in late 1949, Ben flew with Alaska Airlines on the Operation Magic Carpet airlift from Aden that brought thousands of Yemenite Jews to Israel.
Link to Operation Magic Carpet
Ben acquired his air navigation skills in the Royal Canadian Air Force and went on to fly 35 bombing raids with the Halifax squadron based in England. Most of the raids were against targets in the heavily protected Ruhr Valley – which was popularly known as “Flak Alley” – from where countless allied bombers never returned.
Source: American Veterans of Israel Newsletter: Spring 2000