page_title: Ezer Weizman
section_title: Military career
hierarchical_section_title: Ezer Weizman / Military career
caption_attribution_description: English: Ezer Weizman in 1948 with a Avia of the 101st Squadron.
context_page_description: Ezer Weizman was the seventh President of Israel, first elected in 1993 and re-elected in 1998. Before the presidency, Weizman was commander of the Israeli Air Force and Minister of Defense.
context_section_description: After the establishment of the State of Israel, Weizman was a pilot for the Haganah in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He was the commander of the Negev Air Squadron near Nir-Am. In May 1948, he learned to fly the Avia S-199 (Messerschmitt Bf 109) at the České Budějovice air base in Czechoslovakia (Operation Balak) and participated in Israel's first fighter mission (executed by its "first fighter squadron"), a ground attack on an Egyptian column advancing toward Ad Halom near the Arab town of Isdud south of Tel Aviv. In a battle between Israeli and British RAF aircraft on 7 January 1949, he flew one of four Israeli Spitfire fighters that attacked 19 British fighters, which were on a rescue mission in Egypt searching for four aircraft that had been destroyed in an earlier IAF attack. An RAF Hawker Tempest was shot down by the IAF, resulting in the death of the pilot. Due to a failure by ground crewmen, most of the RAF aircraft were not armed.
  Weizman joined the Israel Defense Forces and served as the Chief of Operations on the General Staff. In 1951 he attended the RAF Staff College, Andover in England. Upon his return he became commander of Ramat David.
  Weizman served as the commander of the Israeli Air Force between 1958 and 1966, and later served as deputy Chief of the General Staff. In 1966, he oversaw the defection of an Iraqi fighter pilot and his MiG fighter which gave Israel vital intelligence information.
  In 1967, he directed the early morning surprise air attacks against the Egyptian air bases, which resulted in giving the Israelis total air superiority over the Sinai battlefields by totally destroying the Egyptian Air Force in 3 hours. A total of 400 enemy planes were destroyed by the Israeli Air Force on the first day of the Six-Day War.
  Although he became the IDF's Deputy Chief of Staff in 1966, he retired from military service in 1969.
caption: Weizman sits upon the wing root of an Avia S-199, a Czechoslovak-built version of the Bf 109.
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