The war of attrition was coalescing as a struggle in which air power could help Israel compensate for its inferiority in artillery along the Suez Canal. To redress the ‘artillery gap,’ Skyhawks and Phantoms silenced Egyptian missile, antiaircraft and artillery batteries.

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To a nation under siege, fiercely proud of its plucky and undaunted air arm, the arrival of the $4 million F-4E Phantom was timely. In the hands of aggressive and spirited Israeli crews, the Phantom shook Egyptian leaders who watched their air defense network being systematically picked apart in low-level strikes. Other F-4Es ranged against targets deep inside Egypt.

On July 30, 1970, Soviet pilots helping the Egyptians tangled with Israeli Phantoms in a raging dogfight over the Gulf of Suez. It was the first test of the E model Phantom’s cannon in combat. The Israelis shot down five MiG-21s. Soon thereafter, on a marathon 2,000-mile strike mission to Ras Banas, Phantoms bombed and sank a Komar-class missile boat and a 2,500-ton Z-class destroyer.

A more controversial incident occurred in February 1973. Israeli Phantoms intercepted a Libyan Boeing 727 airliner when it penetrated the Israeli-occupied Sinai Desert on a heading which suggested an intelligence-gathering mission. ‘We tried desperately to force it down, not shoot it down,’ said Maj. Gen. Mordechai Hod, IDF/AF chief. Two Phantom pilots exchanged hand signals with the Libyan pilot but were unable to persuade him to follow them to Bir Gifgafa Air Base. A Phantom fired a warning burst of 20mm. The airliner lowered its wheels but raised them again and banked in an apparent attempt to escape. The Phantoms shot it down. One hundred five of the 112 people aboard died.

Even after Anwar Sadat booted out his Russian advisers on July 18, 1972, tension persisted. Many in Israel feared that a new conflict was near.

At least, it seemed, the situation was stable in the Persian Gulf where Iran, prospering from skyrocketing oil prices, was arming itself to the teeth. The Shah said openly that he wanted to be the decisive force in his region.

Like many Washington-Tehran dealings, Iran’s acquisition of the F-4E Phantom resulted from a one-on-one conversation between President Nixon and the Shah. Nixon appears to have ignored advice that his friend and ally was devoting too much to arms and too little to domestic needs. In 1968, Iran had acquired 32 F-4D Phantoms, which had no guns but could carry gun pods. In the early 1970s, the first of 177 gun-armed F-4Es and 16 RF-4Es followed.

The Imperial Iranian Air Force (IIAF), or Nirou Hayai Shahahanshahiye Iran, gradually built up to 11 Phantom squadrons (two F-4D, eight F-4D], one RF-4E) at Mehrabad, Shiraz and Tabriz. The Shah, accused by some of viewing frontline military weapons as new toys, even acquired 80 Grumman F-14 Tomcats. Iran, so the rationale went, would be able to defend itself against the Soviet threat to the north while maintaining a bastion of stability along the Persian Gulf. Easily dismissed were critics who argued that Iran was really defending itself from Saudi Arabia, not the Russians, and that the Shah’s hold on his own populace was weakening. It might not have been clear who the enemy was, but the air force was rapidly equipping itself with the newest and best aircraft.

Iran’s pilots and air force personnel were not as celebrated as Israel’s, but the Iranian Air Force enjoyed close ties to the United States and had some excellent pilots. The Persian state had been flying American fighters since the 1940s, and a considerable number of Iranian pilots had been trained at bases in the United States and at Furstenfeldbruck, Germany, under the auspices of the U.S. Military Advisory Group.

On March 13, 1973, State Department officials reported that, in addition to further F-4E Phantoms already committed, Washington would sell Israel four squadrons of fighter-bombers, a mix of A-4 Skyhawks and improved F- 4Es with leading-edge maneuvering slats, TISEO (target identification system, electro-optical), and ‘man-efficient’ to be delivered by January 1974. TISEO was a Northrop-built long-range television in a cylindrical extension from the Phantom’s port wing, and was untested in air-to-air battle, although the principle-use of a zoom lens to guide ordnance visually-had planted bombs squarely in the center of Hanoi’s Paul Doumer Bridge.

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