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Forgotten Heroes
Forgotten Her es Ace Pilot Ran Ronen
By Avi Heiligman
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Flying a fighter jet is the dream of many young pilots who enter flight training. In the early years of the Israeli Air Force, many of the planes were remnants from World War II that were not nearly as good as some of the planes that their adversaries were flying. Many of the aircraft were propeller planes but that started to change in the 1950s. Once the pilots transitioned to fighter jets, the use of cannons gave way to missiles which, in many cases, were known to malfunction. Shooting down an enemy plane with cannons was considered an amazing feat. Ace pilot Ran Ronen-Pekker was one of the best IAF pilots in using cannons during aerial combat. His career saw him in the cockpit of many different types of planes in the Israeli inventory.
Ran Ronen was born in 1936 in Kfar Vitkin near Netanya. In 1954, at just 18 years old, Ronen enlisted in the IAF’s pilot course and graduated a year later. His first assignment was flying British-made Spitfire fighter propeller planes, although he soon switched to Meteor fighter jets with the 117th Squadron.
At the time, French aircraft were making their ways into the arsenal of the IAF. The Dassault Ouragan was introduced in the 1950s as an answer for the MiG-15 that the Arab countries were flying. Ronen, with the 113th Squadron, was soon in the cockpit behind the new jet plane. During the 1956 Sinai Campaign, Ronen flew the new French Dassault Mystere fighter. This wasn’t the end of the French aircraft in the IAF because in the early 1960s the Mirage III was to play a major part in the upcoming Middle East conflicts.
Ronen had been a senior commander with a Mystere squadron and in 1962 became the deputy commander of the 101st Squadron who were flying Mirage III jets. A year later, he was flying a test flight when the engine suddenly lost power. To make matters worse, he was flying over a densely populated area. He remembered that
the French manufacturers had told him if he attempted to land without power from the engine, the nose would penetrate the ground at such a force that the pilot would be killed. To avoid these issues, he guided the jet to a field and ejected at the dangerously low altitude of 500 feet. Somehow, the Mirage landed intact, and Ronen was unhurt. Upon reviewing the incident, the IAF determined that the loss of power was due to a weak fuel pump which could now explain the previous losses of 23 Mirage IIIs, seven of which were Israeli. Ronen was soon back in the air, flying the same plane, and was commended for actions by his superior officers.
In 1964, Ronen trained at the IDF Command and Staff College and was assigned as a deputy commander at Hatzor Airbase. Following that assignment, he was appointed commander of the 119th Bat Squadron. On August 16, 1966, Ronen was one of the pilots who escorted an Iraqi pilot who defected in his MiG-21. This mission was the culmination of months of efforts by the Mossad to convince the Christian pilot, Munir Redfa, to defect to Israel. Ronen was not fully briefed on the
mission and was told over the radio by the commander of the IAF, “Ran, in a few minutes, you will see something that you are not authorized to shoot down.” That MiG-21 helped Israel and the United States learn of the strengths and weaknesses of the Russian-built fighter that had been giving them problems during combat.
On November 13, 1966, Ronen fi-
nally got his chance to shoot at an enemy plane. It was a Jordanian Hawker Hunter flown by their seasoned commander. It turned out to be the longest aerial dogfight in Israeli history. For eight minutes, they twisted and turned at very low altitudes and high speeds through a ravine. Ronen was chasing the Jordanian but couldn’t get a good angle to shoot until finally an opportunity presented itself as the enemy had to adjust to the terrain beneath. This was all Ronen needed, and he peppered the Hawker Hunter with 30mm cannon fire and recorded his first kill. During a massive air battle in the Golan Height in April 1967, Ronen shot down a Mig-21 with cannon from his Mirage. Two months later, the Six Day War broke out and Ronen achieved the status of an ace as he shot down three more enemy planes. All three were Egyptian and took place on June 5. His fifth kill was a Mig-21 that he shot down with a Shafrir-2 missile over the Nile Delta.
The 119th Squadron shot down 19 planes during the war and suffered no losses of their own.
Fighting between Israel and Egypt and other Arab countries continued after the conclusion of the Six Day War. Known as the War of Attrition, it lasted from 1967 to 1970 and took place in the Sinai Peninsula on the Sothern Front. Records show that Ronen shot down at least two MiG-21 jets, while some sources have the number at four enemy planes shot down. In any case, he became the commander of an F-4 Phantom squadron in 1970. The Squadron pilots were suffering from low morale as their previous commander had been killed during an attack on Egyptian Surface-to-Air Missile (SAM) batteries. Ronen restored morale in the squadron by leading intense assault raids on the SAM sites.
After completing a command course at the Marine Base in Quantico, Virginia, Ronen returned to Israel, spent time as the head of the IAF training department, and was promoted to colonel. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he was the commander of the Tel Nof Air Base.
Ran Ronen retired in 1981 with the rank of brigadier general and flew more than 350 combat and intelligence sorties during his career. He flew most planes in the IAF arsenal – from the Spitfire to the F-15 Eagle as well as transport planes and even helicopters. The next three decades, he spent in various potions at companies both in Israel and in the U.S.
Ronen passed away in 2016 and left a legacy as one of the best pilots in the history of the Israeli Air Force.
Avi Heiligman is a weekly contributor to The Jewish Home. He welcomes your comments and suggestions for future columns and can be reached at aviheiligman@gmail.com.
