Sea Control - Sea Control 523 - The Boats of Cherbourg with Abraham Rabinovich (Part 1)

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Links1. The Boats of Cherbourg: The Navy That Stole Its Own Boats and Revolutionized Naval Warfare, by Abraham Rabinovich, Primary Publishing, April 24, 2013.   2. Abraham Rabinovich's website. 

Hey folks, it's Jared. This is part one of a two-part episode featuring Abra Binovich. We're going to discuss his book, The Boats of Cherbourg. If you've never heard of it, this is a story of how the Israeli Navy acquired its first missile boats and then employed them in the first sea battle to feature an exchange of anti-ship missiles. Sea combat, industrial espionage, innovation, and more, this has it all. This episode was edited and produced by Andrew Frame. Here at SimSec, we aim to further international maritime security through an exchange of ideas in the rigor of critical thought and writing. If you haven't already, please check out SimSec.org for new articles on the most important maritime

topics. If you'd like to contribute to the discussion, check out the Write for SimSec tab to learn how you can submit articles for publication. And now, Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, Shemates, and welcome back aboard Sea Control. My guest today is Abraham Rabinovich, author of The Boats of Cherbourg. The book describes how in the 1960s Israel developed the first missile boats in the West.

Vessels would engage in the first-level missile battles at sea with the Egyptian and Syrian navies. In the wake of the war, other navies, including the U.S. Navy, rushed to adjust to this new type of warfare, which involved far-reaching changes in infrastructure and tactics. Mr. Rabinovich is an American journalist and U.S. Army veteran who came to Israel to cover the Six-Day War in 1967. subsequently became a reporter for the Jerusalem Post. So, Abraham, welcome.

Did I miss anything in your bio? No, it looks about it. Thanks for having me. Great. And thank you for coming on today. As a reminder to the listeners, all opinions expressed today are our own and not reflective of any of the institutions with which we might be otherwise associated. Abe, how did you initially find out about this story?

It first came to my attention, not as a story, but as an event or experience, Shortly after I came to the Jerusalem coast, five small boats were recorded to have entered Haifa Harbor, and that they had escaped from France. An odd story, but a very interesting story. They were embarked, had been embargoed for political reasons, having more to do with France's relationship with the Arab world than with Israel. These five small patrol boats, as they were depicted, were unarmed, naked, nothing at all, as you can see over, unremarkable, but they drew a lot of attention just by virtue of having escaped and had run for whatever reason. We weren't quite sure what the rush was, why were they escaping embargo and traveling 3,000 or more miles to Israel. So that was in the back of my mind, and there it stayed. This is a story that revives every year, so it becomes a story. They arrived on New Year's Eve 1970. 1973 was the Yom Kippur War, big, big event, about which we knew little, as a matter of fact. The censor was very busy censoring things, and we heard very few reports from those on high about what actually happened, particularly of the Navy, to the point that I wondered, did the Navy participate at all in the war?

I read papers religiously and watched whatever was to be seen. There's nothing about them in the Navy. But in 1975, two years after the war, there was a large meeting in Jerusalem, Jerusalem Hotel, where the top officers, commanders, and all the services spoke individually in separate sessions, political leaders and analysts. And we at the Jerusalem Coast, we reporters, were all assigned some part of it. I no longer remember what I covered, but when I was there, I saw that the Navy commander's talk was still ahead of us. And I went down to hear it.

The question I was asking myself was, did the Navy participate in battles, or just what happened? It was an extraordinary call for the year. The Navy had participated, had fought in a number of battles, and performed extraordinarily. They were participating in the first ever missile battle at sea. And Israel, it turned out, was the first country in the West to have developed a missile, sea-to-sea missile. We learned sort of simultaneously that the Soviets had also, at about the same time, developed their own missile boats. And it was them boats, Soviet boats, that the Israelis went up against in the Egyptian and Syrian Navy, because the Soviets had given these soldiers to his proxies. They weren't manned by Soviet sailors. And yet, and also, there were twice as many Soviet, now Arab, missile boats than Israel had.

More importantly, the missile had twice the range of the Israeli Demrel missile. The Soviet missile was called the Styx, S-T-Y-X. The results were extraordinary. The Israelis lost no more than, say, six Soviet-made missile boats, and a number of other smaller non-missile boats. The Israelis suffered not a loss, and the other side lost big, and it was a world pace-setter, first-ever missile battle at sea, and opening the way to such battles in the future. That was the importance of it. Neither during the arrival of those five patrol boats, as it were, from Cherbourg in 1970, and at this point, in 1975, where the conference was held, I both occasionally said to myself,

What a story. I'd love to cover it, but I was not in a position to. I was covering City Hall and covering the police. I was not a military reporter, and there was a military correspondent at the Post and at all papers. A couple of years later, walking down downtown Jerusalem on a day off, for no reason, something triggered in my mind a recollection of the Navy commanders' talk, And for the first time, also simultaneously, the Schoenberg boats arriving in Haifa. And I said, I stopped stopping in the street and said, wait a minute, could it be that those unimpressive patrol boats that we saw in 1970 were given verbal rebirth as missile boats two years later and performed so spectacularly? And I said, this is a story I thought up, but there's no reporter who thought of it, and I'll try to pursue it.

So I wrote a letter to the Israeli Defense Ministry saying I'm a journalist and would like to write a book about the performance of the Navy in the war. And I think I mentioned Sherbrooke on consulates, as we say. And I got a reply, to my delight, from the defense minister, who is none other than Israel Weitzman, a former commander of the Israeli Air Force, a very flamboyant figure. It was a polite letter, a nice letter, but he said, regretfully, this isn't a story we can permit out yet. There's two sentences, typically about the Sherbrooke aspect. Okay, I'll wait. I've been waiting for a few years. I'll wait. Two years later, Weissman was out. New defense minister, Ariel Sparrow, the most famous general of the Israeli army, I wrote to his defense ministry, got a reply from the ministry, not from him, saying it was a failure.

Too bad we can't participate in the system. I can't make it available to you. Two years later, Charlotte is out. So who is the defense minister? Well, in fact, nobody. It took a while until they gave the portfolio to someone for political reasons. But the Prime Minister automatically Adopted any portfolio To lose So Prime Minister Begum Didn't know very much about military experience

He was now also Defense Minister And when his office got my letter They didn't quite know what to do with it They didn't know what else to say no Oh yes So they sent it to the Navy And it was the Navy that wrote to me

And I was delighted Finally a real response They went down to Tel Aviv. They had moved the naval headquarters from Haifa to Tel Aviv, and a nice interview with a captain sitting behind a big desk. It was a female officer taking notes inside. They asked questions. I brought down a book I'd written about the battles for Jerusalem in 1967, the Six-Day War, and I said, okay, we'll have to discuss it, and we'll be in touch with you in a couple of weeks. And in a couple of weeks, they weren't tested. They came down again, and there was no synagraph for presence. And he looked kind of serious, the same old sister, and he said, regretfully, we've decided that we can't go ahead with it. There had been a movie made of a book that they were cooperating with, a book written by the Israeli equivalent of a SEAL, Israeli Naval Command, no Navy officer. The Navy Command was unhappy and had decided, I think in the wake of my request, to stop cooperating with anyone outside the Navy. Well, I was very disappointed, and I began to put away all my stuff, tape recorder, the papers, pushed my chair back there to get up, and I said, well, if you decide to go ahead with this on your own, we won't get in your way. that we might even provide

the people who want to know that they're quite good at always. If there's somebody who wants to know, we can provide a telephone. I don't know where to ask for it. I don't know the story. I'm nowhere there. I'm starting from the top of the scratch.

He wrote something down in paper and wrote to me. I don't know where I can do the images and telephone them. Okay, I've got to turn left and check on that coffee somewhere trying to figure it out. What just happened?

Was it a clock right or not? and what I concluded was that they had this bad experience with being able to remove the movie and they made the decision not to cooperate again because they don't control what comes out the other end

but they really wanted the story out that was my impression and what was the trigger if they're serious and want the story out and will cooperate with me then I'll go with it but first I could see how serious they are

and called these two guys, his numbers I had. First one was a man named Kim Kring in Haifa, and I went up to him on a storm in February night from Jerusalem, which is a two-hour, two-hour ride more. I woke up in the air, and they had a fireplace going. I came at 8 o'clock, but I didn't leave until after midnight. He was like a fringe of things. He was the center of it.

He was the first missile boat, slow-tiller command. And he was a commander of the shipboard when the boats, when the Frenchmen just left. There were just these five boats that we knew about. Seven of those had left earlier. Most of them left legally. And so I left Kim Kree with also with wonderful boats, recording them, and a list of names of people he recommended my talking to. I also went to the second name of the captain given to me, who was Captain Kim Kree's deputy. he turned around and told me that Kim K hadn't sold me

and he also had his own list of names so the last problems that's all I did, a lot of names presumably to the point people who knew something who were involved and I started the trek of making and writing a book gathering testimony

everywhere in the country it was absolutely fascinating and at some point the day we got friendly we realized that I'm serious and I'm doing work and it's something they can handle. So they would climb there and open up things for me to see and even let me go on a training sail with one of the missile boats

and even press the fire button in the command room. There were no missiles attached to it. So that's my story. There are really three distinct stories within the book. The development of the missile boats, their escape from French custody, and then their performance in combat during the Yom Kippur War. So we'll start with the development piece. What was the Israeli Navy like in the years after 1948 and up through the Six-Day War in 1967? And what caused the Navy to pursue missile boats? until the 1860s,

12 years after Israel was established, 12 years after the Navy was established. But it was really a harking down Navy. Ships, they had picked up cheaply along the way. That's the Egyptian, two destroyers. One of them had been an Egyptian destroyer, which they captured. It's not seen, but they were very old.

And the odd collection of boats that had been ferrying Holocaust survivors is over, and they couldn't ground them on the horse, and an icebreaker was sent. They needed a bit of training. The powers that be understood that the next

war, and all those that will come after, would be won or lost by tension and air flight. And that was a reasonable conclusion. And so why waste money on ships when they're not going to matter there, even if they start to sink out of the area? The battle re-windows went to loss.

So the 1960 the commander of the Navy, who's a real personality, he invited his senior officers to a brainstorming session. As they were recording, it was actually two days. And he told them that

there's talk now of abolishing the Navy altogether, making do with the Coast Guard. The only serious effect could be the effect on the sea lanes, the high flow, which are very important, given that Israel was surrounded by hostile Arab countries. What they needed was an open sea. But this should be covered by the air force,

especially if they had been abolished in it. So Ben-Nur, Adro Ben-Nur, went around the table asking everybody if they had thoughts how to keep the Navy relevant so it doesn't get sacked without a starvation budget. And some of the suggestions were silly. They are the naval commando guys. So we'll make a navy just like naval commandos,

penetrating enemy harbors, sinking boats. They know some other incentives and so on and so forth. But there was a model of a naval lieutenant that was a naval architect. And one person had mentioned a missile developed by the foremost arms manufacturers of an actual government company called RANFAO.

The missile was called the Lewis, L-Falarin U-Z, Lewis missile, which showed the role of bringing three different versions of the Air Force and Ground Force and the Baton d'Or out of the Navy. But the thinking was to

develop a missile for the Navy, which would be a great input if it worked. I bought the Air Force and the Army, the artillery corps, the clone, because the missile, the LURES, could be brought or targeted only with some forward observer and a joystick. Now, the modern day is a bit of an anachronistic, using a joystick called the modern tech knowledge,

and they immediately rolled it out. The Navy hadn't seen any version yet to do what works or doesn't. But while we were waiting, there was a demonstration in the Canadian, in the Southern Desert, by Raphael, another demonstration, inter-service demonstration. And it was a low-ranking naval officer. He was an observer. And there he met

and had a shared tent with an engineer from Raphael, from the arms company. An engineer named Uri Eberton, who was an Israeli boy in Israel, fought in the war with the Germans. He went to the States

for his higher education. He was working of the French plant there. Benny came and worked in Russia L's here after he was there. He had a reputation on the show of time as brilliant,

but didn't broke a handle. He had his own ideas and didn't like to listen to direction. So he lettered and he splatted this officer and struck up a conversation with him.

He said, there will be an enabled version of World War I. How can you fight a battle when you try to hit an enemy ship in a rolling sea with a joist

But he said he had his own thoughts on the subject, which he thought would work. And some of the people who were interested are here. In the day, things were happening. Ben-Lulu was nearing retirement, and he elected this force of the misfile. But at this brainstorming session, someone had raised the subject of the missile that Raphael was speaking. But Xavier Platt could put it on a destroyer. But the naval architect said, no, that's not to bring a destroyer. It could be on a small ship that missiles don't have recoil.

You can't put a gun on a small ship, but you can put a missile with a big warrior on that suit and the navy is fine. Something that's not very expensive, if the missile can be shot on, it can be developed. So this matter came out of the brain session. But sometime afterwards, Admiral De Niro asked his deputy, Shlomo Erel, he was the co-sustaining to a crusty and old naval officer in the Israeli Navy. He joined the British Marshal, very beginning of the Second World War, was torpedoed twice on convoy rather than three war months in the Soviet Union, and participated in the rescue with Dunkirk. And after the war, and he spent a year at the Royal Naval College, I think it's called. So he was now effectively in charge of this idea of having a missile boat, small missile boat, small and expensive missile boat, and having this NATO, which they had.

had. But he pressed when the engineer event of his offer of coming to work or developing a missile filtered upwards in the Navy to the command of the Navy who was all of our officers.

He expected to reach the top, and it did. He was a solo ARL, a deputy commander of the Navy, decided to bring Rafael's main competitor into this, something called Israel Aircraft Industry, which

was mainly an aircraft, but did other military stuff too, and it got them to offer Evan Tove at Brantford Hill to come and work at their plant to work on a missile, which was his dream. And then he accepted it,

went over, he had a big office, and he said what he needed was a mathematician, a good mathematician, he said his text looks American, But missiles, air-to-air, air-to-ground missiles have a year to work on this plan. He completed his plan. His plan was to have a no-grind system.

One part of that would be something that keeps the missiles flying at a fixed height just above the waves. Then there would be a radar which would direct it at a target. You'd know no more zapper. They redesigned the Luz missile to incorporate this dual guidance system. There were two tests on the coast, putting targets out at sea, and both tests failed. And he was sitting at his desk, just after the second failure, trying to figure out a direction to take. He was in the door, and it was one of the technicians working there. But at this point, they had a large stack of people helping him.

And this is a lowly technician. All of the others were top engineers, scientists. This is a technician who had just graduated the vocationals, nothing more. But he had noted him working, so he had good hands, and he seemed to be a very sensible fellow. What the library comes in, it's not going to work, the missile, because it's a sonar altimeter. It isn't rugged enough to withstand the blast off and the flight. It has to be repackaged. Evans also said, well, is there something you can give suggestions for?

They didn't usually ask a technician that kind of question for this kind of project. They gave me a few days. A few days came back, and they showed what he was talking about to Evans. So it wasn't really a professional presentation, but it was an interesting idea. They summoned the two senior engineers from whom this technician, his name was Becker, worked and said, this is a good idea. I'd like you guys to wrestle with it, to develop it. Let's see what happens. And they both were in England. This can't work. You don't know if that's the reason or whether they just don't like being bypassed by a technician. I will resign if this goes ahead. Edmonton said, well, in their case, I accept

your resignations as of right now. They let an appointed becker to head this group for 30 years and years working for this. And he gave them seven months to figure it out. And again, they had his test done over the sea coast. At first, the missile

fired, went up, and like those previously, fell straight down into the sea. Everyone groaned. They started to pack their packages. The next missile went up, and Inspector Evan Tuller received a sky. He started to realize,

if you just level low, he was heading out to sea at the target. And all the missiles, we had a number of them, fired. They all worked. That's the first response to some reason that they had a missile. So that was one part which they would develop and perfect.

If they had a missile, they even had a name. They called it the Gabriel. Mr. Gabriel Missal, contrary to the sixth Missal of the show. I look forward to reading it. Thank you again for joining us. To listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Help me Bob-I, bully in the alley, bully down the shimbo now.

A porter robe and a porter gin oh, way hey, bully in the alley. A porter wine, both white and red oh, bully down the shimbo now. So help me Bob-I, bully in the alley, way hey, bully in the alley. Help me, mama, put it in the alley, put it out in Shemora.