18. One of History’s Most Successful Preemptive Strikes
When normal bombs strike runways, they create craters that could easily get filled in and paved over. The prototype penetrator bombs used by the Israelis against the Egyptian airfields at the start of the Six Day War created sinkholes beneath the craters. Repair required the complete removal of the damaged pavement segment in order to get at and fill in the sinkhole – a laborious process that took significant time. With the runways destroyed, the airplanes on the ground were stranded, sitting ducks for subsequent airstrikes. 197 Egyptian airplanes were destroyed in that first wave, and only eight planes managed to take to the air. After the raid devastated eleven airbases, the Israeli planes returned home, refueled and rearmed in under eight minutes, then headed back to strike fourteen more Egyptian airbases.
They flew back home to once again speedily refuel and rearm, then took for off in a third wave, divided between attacks against what was left of the Egyptian Air Force, and strikes at the smaller Syrian and Jordanian air forces. By noon on June 5th, 1967, the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces were largely destroyed. They had lost about 450 airplanes, while twenty Egyptian airbases and airfields were seriously damaged. The damaged airbases crippled what was left of the Egyptian Air Force and prevented it from any serious intervention in the rest of the conflict. Operation Focus was thus one of the most successful preemptive strikes in history and left the Israelis in complete control of the skies for the remainder of the war.