Gordon Levett

Gordon Levett (1921–2000) was a former Royal Air Force pilot in World War II who volunteered for a covert mission to fly supplies including dismantled fighter planes into the fledgling state of Israel in its War for Independence. Later Levett joined the first squadron of the newly created Israeli Air Force, helping establish a permanent Israeli military and aiding in the founding of the state of Israel. Levett was the only English gentile pilot in the Israeli Air Force, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Born into such poverty in London that his mother once placed him in an orphanage for eighteen months so he wouldn't starve,Levett joined the RAF in 1939 at age 17 when World War II broke out. Initially a groundcrewman, Levett applied for a pilot slot and in November 1940 was sent to flight school. He spent the rest of the war training other pilots and flying transport planes, becoming a Squadron Leader. But he was subsequently expelled from the RAF after taking unauthorized leave from his remote Burma base, and so after the War was unable to find work as an aviator.

Levett went to work in a Jewish-owned diaper laundry in London, where he learned about developments in the Middle East. When he read of attempts to found an Israeli state, he volunteered to join the Israeli Mahal unit, a group of 5,000-odd overseas volunteers in early 1948. The Mahal were established to assist what had been a largely underground Zionist force. After two meetings with Jewish agents in London, Levett was supplied with a ticket for Paris. From there he was sent to Czechoslovakia.

The Mahal pilots, mostly English Jews, began ferrying dismantled Avia S-199s (a modified Messerschmitt-109G with a bomber engine and gunpods) fighter aircraft from their base in Žatec, Czechoslovakia, where a group of mostly American Jewish volunteers had assembled a fleet of transport aircraft acquired in the United States, to Ekron airbase in an operation codenamed Operation Balak. Levett's job was shuttling the Avias and an enormous cache of arms bought from the Czechs, with Soviet approval, to Israel. The cargo included the disassembled fighter planes, bombs, firearms and even first aid equipment.

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