Sea Control - Sea Control 524 - The Boats of Cherbourg with Abraham Rabinovich (Part 2)

Episode Date: June 1, 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 two of a two-part episode featuring Abram Benavich. We're discussing his book, The Boats of Cherbourg. If you've never heard of it, this is the 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. I recommend going back and listening to part one if you haven't. There's sea combat, industrial espionage, innovation, 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 and 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, Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Hello, Hashemates, 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 ever 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. We talked a lot about the missile developments at this point. Can we explain how the boats went from concept to construction?

It's still a concept. It's a construction. They can't go much further until they had a missile, a CDC missile, where the ceasefire it worked, Captain La Heddele formed a planning group which grew and grew how to design a boat for the platform

from the science. They had sent two senior officers to Europe to look at visual boats, to look at patrol boats, and torpedo boats to see what might be suitable. They went out on the German Jaguar

torpedo boat, which had served in the Second World War, the guest boat, He came back and said, this is a ship of war, highly recommend it. Ariel, when he heard from his plumber that all these systems they were planning to put into the boat, besides the missile, sonar, what have you, and the aircraft gun, the Jaguar was not big enough. Ariel asked permission to go to Bremen, where the shipbuilding company was, and the Germans wouldn't give it to her for more than a year.

They feared that it would be leaked, that the president of Israel would be leaked, that if the Arab countries found out that Germany was giving assistance to Israel and all of us, they were in great relations with Western, as we know it, and strong relations with Eastern. And then Chauvet asked, well, is this exactly what happened? They finally gave him permission and took with him the naval architects who initially recommended, suggested, a missile placed on a small boat. Once they got to the shipbuilders in the river, the naval architect there, recolized immediately what the Israelis needed. He didn't know either of those were missiles. The Germans' company didn't know they were doing missile boats. They thought they were a fancy, complicated patrol boat. But he had a good relation with the Israeli army. They could trust each other. And the Israelis suggested extending the length of the boat by two and a half meters. The Germans slapped it up. And other suggestions, changing compartmentalization.

so that was going on the missile was getting done it was in effect done the boat was going to be done once the Germans started building it depending on the Germans the boat's funding was needed

where's all this money going to come from it was so broke that they didn't want to give maybe anything but the defense minister Sherman Harris who would become my prime minister in the future had to make feelers to germinate and with to Germany, to the home of the German Defense Minister for a long time, in which the German

Defense Minister, Franz Josef Strauss, whose country had just murdered six million Jews in the Second World War, would do what it cared to help a Jewish state defend itself, and was secretly providing money, a large amount of money, for other ones, going off to Schultz, Most of it in the States, but not from Germany itself. The boats would be the first thing, the only thing, that Germany would be inputting here directly. So although Errol's visit to the shipyards was very effective from Israel's planet, they were getting the boat longer and stouter, that may have been the reason that there was a leak. And the Arabs found out about it, and Germany was obliged to send a separatist to Jerusalem to say that it cannot go through with the Jaguar.

It would continue paying money for all the other objects, half-tracks, what have you. And it would continue to pay money for remotes, like the boat being designed for the Jaguar, as an improved Jaguar, but it couldn't be built in Germany. And another ship called Audacity saw that one was in France, in Cherbourg, a company that had relations with Germany as it was, so it was easier. So now there was a missile pre-rolled down, running, sufficient, and this planning group, which in the whole book, you're right, it's a book that tells three parts. I found the most exciting, in this middle part, when there's no action at all, just stink time. These guys, they trickled a number of officers, sent officers out to foreign defense plants to learn how to do things in foreign institutes, for your life's sake, and had their own expertise. So they were providing real-time influence and living it day-to-day around the clock. No one left there until midnight. They worked for a long stretch, seven days a week, and most tellingly, worked on Yom Kippur, which Jews don't do. I didn't go on a funeral with these Jews. It was a sense of virtuosity. It set that next war as round the corner, which it was, by the way, and we'll see.

This was the most complex industrial enterprise ever undertaken by Israel. The lady was learning as it went. The team leaders of various teams on this 20-body met regularly to report on progress and threshold differences. Sitting around the table at headquarters, each became an advocate for the system. Search radar, which scanned the sea for enemy ships, and fire control radar, which guided the missile off the target, guided with each other for higher position of a mass. Gun and torpedo tubes elbowed each other for choice position on deck. Sonar argued against being thrown overboard in order to save weight.

When no compromise could be reached, the head of this planning group called Falling Leaves would go to the Navy commander, as I said, for it to be the biggest adventure of their lives for most of the participants. And slowly, after the boats reached Israel, they reached Haifa, they were taken off to the Israel shipyards, which was out of sight of Haifa. Everyone sees the Navy at Haifa, but the Israel shipyards are around the corner somewhere, and out of there, the real work was done, bombing these boats, particularly building this under deck control room. How did the Israeli Navy get the boats out of France? The Germans couldn't do it. We couldn't do it. The company in Cherbourg agreed to do it. They didn't know either.

This is a missile. All they knew was a warboat. One kind went out. They pulled them one at a time. Their rail had expanded the order to 12 loads. The division was six. They would come off the waves every three or four months, one load. And I could do a very tough test at sea.

And then our crew would come over and sail it to Haifa, 2,300 miles away. The next one would come and do the same. Things proceeded easily for the first time. Then President Charles de Gaulle, French president, he was shifting his policies. It was a very pro-Israel, and he was shifting it more to the Arab world. He was looking for an excuse to move it even further. And when the Israeli commandos raided Beirut Airport on the television or something or other, they declared an embargo on Israeli war material, which people knew to be Mirage airplanes. And what the Israeli Air Force is mostly Mirage aircraft.

And they did an effective job in the Six-Day War, certainly. Within two or three days, they ramped up to the Asia-Pacific Arab Air Force. But the boats were not medicine at first. But here we have to introduce another major character that's an integral part of the show's story. Former Navy Commander Lee Warren. What is Lee Warren? He was no longer in the Navy, but he was the head of the Israeli Purchasing Unit, permanently stationed in Paris. He had diplomatic immunity, had as long as a clinical job meeting, getting to know French elite, French politicians, and he knew enough. And he was also in contact, of course, with the Israeli crew at Enchambl, semi-permanent delegation mission. And he picked up word in Paris that they're planning to extend a thinking, extending the embargo, not just to the bronze airplanes, but to the boats. The boss who I knew and friends said it was just a commercial enterprise, a small shipyard building, seemingly innocuous patrol boats, giving good economic rates for Chevrolet, but no one paid attention to it except Chevrolet.

He called the head of the mission in Chevrolet, who told him there's one boat in the water that has completed its trunks and is ready to go, so we're going to complete it. So everything's been done. So obliquely, LeMoyne says, well, it might be that I did or got out as early as I can. And Timothy, I stopped him.

I understood that he was, what I was telling him, he had to go out that day. And he did. He kept the food together and the fuel and off he went. So that was November 6th.

This was Wednesday. On Friday, LeMoyne picked up the sending out for this day, this Friday. notices to all the customs offices around France, including Cherbourg, to block any attempt to send war material to Israel.

The one who was inside the French bureaucracy at last couldn't lure enough people to get the notice that was supposed to be sent to Cherbourg, sent by mistake, as it was, true as it were, to another address, another office of customs, late on Friday so that it wouldn't

be delivered to Sherbrooke until Monday. And he called the only remaining officer in Sherbrooke and also dropped and says that vacation you were talking about in Israel, they want you to take it now. And again, the captain

understood that he had no intention of going to Israel vacation. That is, we were told to get out this day. And he rushed to the crew and left this and two in a row

that I heard the French and they ousted the Israelis from the naval base where they had been staying which turned out to be a good thing

for the Israelis but although they the embargo was still in place and in fact now for the first time had official standing

official notice there was no order to stop construction of the boats the last fire boats

still had to be built Down came what had been made on them, and they continued to be built very few words. They couldn't sail, so they were tied up to a dock and tied up to each other. The Iranians calculated that by December, all fire should be in the water. And he was pressing Tel Aviv to permit a breakout, because few people understood the importance of the votes. And Golda Meir, who was prime minister, when she heard of this, was asked about this, she forbade it. She didn't want to endanger relations with France, since she was extremely important to Israel.

So actually then, France was the principal arms supplier, and she forbade it. Finally, when the army came over, Russia, the island, and others there, came around to understanding why votes were needed. that it was something revolutionary. She was persuaded to agree as long as nothing illegal was done. So it fell on me more now to do something that wasn't illegal. That's just to break up, but to do it

at least on the surface, not illegally. I thought of a scheme. Someone he knew knew the head of a shipyard in New Orleans. Someone who had been a comrade of the resistance during the war. He was called Topher by the initial

acquaintance. And Ted Israel happened to ask him something important for Israel. Would he agree to meet and talk about it? He agrees. I'll come. I'm going to come out here. I'll meet you halfway. I'll meet you at the airport in Copenhagen, Denmark. So the lawyer slew

to Copenhagen with this mutual acquaintance and put it to this Norwegian industrialist. He was being asked a lot. He was asked to be complicit in a made-up store that could affect his business badly. But in the end, after talking to his people, he agreed.

So he agreed on a meeting in Paris in mid-December of the Norwegian shipbuilder, the head of the Cherbourg shipbuilding company, and Lee Ward, representing the Israeli Navy, and they all signed contracts. One was waiving Israeli claim on the boat, and selling them at face value to the shipyard, the Sherbrooke ship. Sherbrooke shipyard was selling them at profit to the Oslo shipyard owner.

And the Oslo shipyard owner was saying he's going to make from these fast, powerful boats something to serve as oil rigs in the old city. The day after, the old side were able to decide. They came back to the office, signed new contracts, and doing everything they had signed, but they'd be short. That, to cover Gola's complaint of worry about doing something illegally. That was just, not illegal, but it wasn't quite legal. I agree with me more on this. So I thought the best time to do it was Christmas Eve.

The shipyard was complicit in the sense of getting the Los Alamos. They would be paid the rest of what they were owed when the boats left. And the managing anchor manager of the boat yards, Christmas Eve, he went to the big cathedral over at Sherbrooke and prayed for safe sailing for the boats at midnight mass. And the weather was terrible. It was gale. Gale forces are flowing in the south side of Sherbrooke. And all the captains of the five boats gathered in Kim Cree's command boat are drinking coffee originally to the weathered force, BBC, Fred's, whatever it was. It was declared to leave before midnight, but it was still going on.

Only after one or two in the morning, we were caught on one of the BBC stations that the winds were shifting to the north. And Kim Cree said, okay, we go. everywhere back to your boat, to your castle to your castle. A few days before, at Heidler, they needed sailors to sail these boats. There was a private representation of crewmen and officers

in the shipboard, but it was only 30 or 40. They needed 18 more men to sail these boats, 2,000 models. So there were new Navy recruits, we had that at high school. They were fitted out with civilian clothing. They were all marched to the interior of the industry

that night, early in the week. Christmas week, and given passports, these young people, and most of them didn't have passports there, had haircuts, and they flew to various places in Europe, where each group, led by an officer, had traveled on their own, over orders not to speak Hebrew, to Paris, from which, from where they took a train, to Sherbrooke, the last carers, not knowing each other, talking to each other, just a little sisal over. When they reached Cerberus, people were waiting for them on the train station. Their hustle launched to the court. This is after dark. They took over the boats, the five boats, and took them below deck, not to come up until they were ready to sail. Meanwhile, unlike the previous two boats, which they got down at the last minute,

there would be trouble, they were worried about. As a result of the escape of the two, both number six and number seven, There would now be a police presence twice a day. Police cars stopping at the front of the dock to see if the bus was still there. That didn't run out. So when they got word the weather was changing, they invented a police visit a little earlier. And what wasn't expected, the bus set sail. I wouldn't have took it.

It was chattel, and it was the teeth of this horse-like gale. You know what that means. It's better than what I know. Yeah, so I did the remainder of the heavy weather testing with the vessel that I commanded, and foresight is extremely unpleasant for everyone involved. It goes through the Bay of Biscay, which is awful, and they made it out there. As part of the preparation for this breakout, unless earlier, the Navy people at Heifel had fitted out two boats, merchant boats, one was a team-going ferry, and one was a merchant boat, as fuel tankers would pump on their deck to fuel these five boats. because they were afraid that if they stopped in any designation along the way, they'd be impaled at Trent's request.

So the fireboats that had skipped Christmas Eve reached Portugal, the bottom of Portugal, the next day. It was a field of the boat that was waiting for them. And then continued on their way past Jabrosa, out into the open Mediterranean, staying at the first in the middle. But I forgot how Spain, they veered off towards the North African coasts by being out of country. They were afraid, as the French police at Toulouse might venture out. As it happened, it being Christmas, the Christmas season, the escape was not discovered until two days later.

No official has come down to the port. The police have come down to the port. But when they learned of it, there was a new president, now President Plunkett, who was pretty cool, who was a defense minister, who was outraged. And Israel Reynolds, again, empowered with embargo votes, said, let us interdict them. There's never been clarified what interdict would mean. It could mean, well, me flying well, or whatever. But Hopper, home to me now, said if anything we do, it would be worse than bearing nothing. And we do what we do. So after five days, or a week, actually, from Christmas Eve,

we get bears in arrival at Highford, Sirens, Solomon. This is bears 1870. So let me interrupt here with the final question. How did the Navy prepare itself for combat after the Six-Day War? And then what happened? What was the outcome for the Navy during the Yom Kippur War? when it had been formulating

and practicing brand new tactics spent in a special corps armed missile fleet which had never existed.

The last boat had arrived just in time for the first Sotelo-wide manilard. The boats

returned to High Fork the day before Yom Kippur and because there was tension

normally they'd be released in the holiday they were kept on the boats.

About the night Israel was informed by an Egyptian informant that war would start the next day. And in the afternoon, it did. The commander of the flotilla, Gershom Wormant, and their captain, Bakari Keflogar, he set some boats down to take the coast down south against the Egyptian recursion. And he led five boats up towards the Syrian port of Latakia. These boats, the Syrian and Egyptian boats and missiles, were twice the range of Israel's.

After they got off their volley, their first volleys, the Arab boats, it would be half an hour before the Israelis, if they could sugar, would reach the range of the Gabriels. One other thing I forgot to mention, one of the national preparations for the war, a very important preparation, was when Israel learned that the Soviets had developed missile boats and were distributing them to the Arab, then commanding the Arab, called on his chief, a Chinese officer, and said, do we have a problem? And if so, what do we do about it? A Chinese officer who was winning Israel's top prize on the top-series prize. The neighbors came through to Shemox, an aerial rave. First of all, he knew there were ways of diverting radar, and thereby diverting the missile. But also, he wanted to know how he thought about how he had opposite members in Leningrad, the Russian Admiralty of Leningrad, Poland. He looked through all that was known about Soviet electronics and Soviet missiles.

He came back and told Aero, we have a problem, and this would be a solution, an electronic counter-attempt to the Soviet missiles, also use of chaff and maneuver to make it difficult for the radar to lock out. This was a theoretical proposal until, in the 19th, just after the Six-Day War, the Israeli flagship Bayrat was sunk by an Egyptian missile boat. First vessel ever to be sunk, ironically, sunk by a Soviet missile. Four missiles fired, all four hit the target. That was scary. So the only thing that would protect the Israeli boat going up against the Soviet missile array would be an effective counter-missile plan. And they were going to try to prove this, and this proved this in action. Now, on the way to Latakia, they passed the torpedo boat, which was too small to waste a missile on, and they sunk it with a cannon.

They came on a mysore. These were scouts out to the west to shoot the Israelis who were coming. But now the Syrians knew they were coming. Bahrain said their main mission was to get to the Syrian missile boats in Latakia. If they don't come out, where do they get to harbor to deck them? As they first went to care, they saw the sea boats leaving where to care. The Israeli radar lost them for a while. Then they picked them up, and they saw, at some point, dots coming at them.

The Israeli radars in the command center saw dots meaning missiles being fired. and people on deck above could see the missiles coming up over their island terrifying as some would describe it big ball of fire coming right between their eyes

this was it nothing better to do it takes two minutes for the missiles to reach them but as they got closer those on deck could see something seemingly telling at them

they seemed to be shifting and the naval headquarters and tell the original, but listening in to Woe of Zero Moon, to Barclay's look, they heard him announce missiles fired, Syrian missiles fired, then the sailors, and after two minutes

in the water, they missed. And zero relation. And now in real life, these guys on the boats, the sports warboats heading for Atakia, saw the missiles coming, and they missed. And they kept going.

And when they reached, they closed on a call of missile depth. They've got it close enough to the Syrian boats for the Gibraltar to be effective. At the back of the race, at some point, they said, we're leaving

one dead flyer. I don't think they believed them. They had to calculate that it takes two minutes for the missile to fly to reach the target. At that time, the enemy would have traveled a distance, so they had to wait a while

when they conspire. But then they did. Several of the Azrogidors fired their gear grills. And you look aside, you see a white streak of the sky and they're gone. And the people on deck

are watching the trails disappear, watching the radar image. And some quiet guys over there see Blair on the horizon. After he looks at his radar and sees only one boat, not Z, he has seen Z boats before.

There was only one boat. Calls his executive officer. What happened to the boats? The executive officer says, Son, you're not expecting that to happen. Just like that. They pursued the one remaining boat, who at this point decided to go home.

He dashed for the coast and beached his boat and escaped that way. They barely sent a fire and headed home. Barclay, the thrash, told his captains they can put up the brooms on the mess, which is a symbolic of a very clean sweep. But as they got closer to Hypo, Hayden's executive officer was sitting drinking from Bob Long's table. He decided to get in the bed. He wrote to the captains and said, take the brooms down. If they put them up, they're the rats and syrians of the bottom of the sea now.

He doesn't respect them and doesn't respect us. and they sailed into the Diver. Here the war is from my account, but a few days later, a replay, as it were, with the Egyptian artillery, missile artillery. The Israelis

sank three of them, were in escape. No Israeli boats were lost. So six Arab missile boats, Arab Soviet missile boats were sunk. No Israeli boats lost, no castle. And there we are. And then, all the other enemies in the world

we have looking for missile boats and the the shipyard is trading out these missile boat platforms for this abe thank you so much for the listeners so i received the book i finished the book in three days couldn't put it down and that's even with two small children in my house i somehow burned that quickly i mean it's it is everything there is subterfuge there is uh industrial espionage there's acquisitions policy ship design uh it's small small ship tactics small boat tactics in there, so everything that you would want in a naval tale is contained within the book. Abe, where can we find

you online, and what are you, what if anything are you working on next? I'm just finished writing after a very spiral touching on the close Six-Day War Jerusalem. The decades of Jews and Arabs now abiding in the same city, how that has been working out.

I'm trying to keep away from politics, making it lighter. The school Jerusalem on the earth, that's Jerusalem. We're there. I look forward to reading it. Thank you again for joining us. To listeners, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time. Put it on the shimbo now A pot of rum and a pot of gin Oh, way, hey, put it in the alley

A pot of wine, both white and red Oh, put it on the shimbo now So help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley Way, hey, put it in the alley Help me, Bob, I'm putting it in the alley Put it on the shimbo now Thank you.