Israeli Navy: A Tiny, but Hard-Hitting Battle Force

At the onset of the War of Independence, the Israeli Navy consisted of five large ships that could be considered in the category of “warships.” An American Annapolis graduate, Paul Shulman, was commander of the navy. Among the 65 to 95 crew members of each of the warships, about three dozen were Machalniks, most from the U.S. and Canada.

Three of the five warships had been built in the US and Canada for service in World War II, than retired at the end of the war. Those three and one other were purchased for use as Aliyah Bet ships. While bringing surviving holocaust Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine, they were intercepted by the British and impounded.

At the beginning of the War of Independence, those four ships were at anchor, rusting away along the water breaker inside the harbor area of the port of Haifa – and were known as part of the “Shadow Fleet.”

In addition to the warships, there were about two dozen small harbor craft known as the Small Fleet Crafts and a seagoing tugboat.

The four original Israeli Navy warships were:

Eilat/A-16, former Aliyah Bet Medinat-HaYehudim (The Jewish State), originally US Navy Icebreaker Northland.
Haganah/ K-20, former Aliyah Bet Hagana, originally Royal Canadian Navy Corvette Norsyd.
Wedgwood/ K-18, former Aliyah Bet Wedgwood, originally Royal Canadian Navy Corvette Beauharnois.
Maoz/ K-24, former Aliyah Bet Ben Hecht (Abril had been built in Hamburg Germany at the Krupp shipyard facilities as a passenger cruise ship named Citra and later on was sold to an American owner who operated her till the outbreak of WW II; at that time, the US Coast Guard took it over to become a coastal patrol gun boat until the end of World War II, when it was sold to a shipping company)
The four ships were refurbished by a newly- formed Israeli Naval ship repair facility with the assistance of the Kirshtein\Greenspan and Ogen private shipbuilding and repair companies in the Haifa Bay area. These four ships were joined in October 1948 by Noga/ K-26, the former Yucatan, originally US Navy PC.1265.

The five warships were manned by former merchant seamen, some of the Aliyah Bet ships crew members, Israelis who had served in the Royal Navy during World War II and Machal volunteers from all over the world. The total personnel of the Israeli Navy at the onset of the War of Independence was approximately 2,000 men and women. This number included the crews of the warships, the harbor craft, headquarters and hospitals. Most of the Machalniks were World War II veterans with various service experiences and qualifications. The newly refurbished and crewed warships served on coastal patrol duties in the Mediterranean and engaged in naval combat with the Egyptian warships and bombardment of enemy coastal installations in and around the Gaza area, all the way to Port Said in Egypt.

Many of the crew, especially the young Israelis, were trained on the job by members of the crew who had prior military and maritime experience or professional qualifications.

The Israeli Navy looked to the Machal volunteers for maritime experience and the ability to serve in responsible positions as deck officers, skippers, radar and radio operators, communications supervisors, gunnery officers, bosons, engineers, electricians and engine maintainers. Basically, everyone had to adapt to new or unfamiliar equipment and operating requirements in the five ships.

Although English was spoken by many of the crews, the official language was Hebrew and some Machalniks had problems learning it. Machal women only served on shore assignments as nurses in the Bat-Galim Base Hospital and in administrative positions in various bases and the headquarters in Stella-Maris on the Carmel in Haifa.

In addition to Paul Shulman, a number of Machalniks served as ships officers, as well as group leaders on shore installations and ships repairs facilities. The Israeli War of Independence was not one continual battle, neither on land nor sea. It was fought with sometime-long intervals of cease-fire. During the cease-fire periods, the five warships were routinely on patrol duty, safeguarding the Israeli shoreline and ranging as far as the islands of Cyprus and Crete, the Syrian border and Turkey to north and northwest, and to Ashkelon, Gaza, and the Egyptian port of Port Said to the south.

There were always several ships out on patrol duty on rotational basis, while some of the ships were on standby in or around the port of Haifa or Tel Aviv. The remainder would be in port for refueling, emergency repairs, provisioning and R&R for the ships’ crews.

On Aug. 24, 1948, Haganah/ K-20 and Wedgwood/ K-18 seized the Argiro, which had on board 8,000 Rifles and 10 million rounds of ammunition. These arms and ammunition were quickly delivered to the Israeli Armed Forces. This encounter was known as the Pirate’s Booty Operation. The Argiro had been sailing under the Italian Flag with an Italian crew. The war materiel was originally bought from Czechoslovakia by representatives of Arab countries who were buying arms from all over Europe. The cargo had previously been aboard another Italian ship, Lino, which was sunk in the port of Barrie Italy by Israeli Mossad operatives several months earlier. The cargo aboard the Lino had been well-packed and preserved. It was recovered and loaded onto the Argiro, which was then directed to Egypt. Two Mossad operatives boarded the vessel in a severe storm at sea near Crete, convinced the Italian crew that they had no chance to get to their designated port and arranged for the two Israeli Navy warships to board and confiscate the cargo and sink the Argiro.

On October 19, 1948 the Haganah/ K-20, Wedgwood/ K-18, Maoz /K-24 and Noga/ K-26 engaged an Egyptian corvette and three Egyptian spitfires. They downed one of the spitfires and damaged the corvette, which escaped back to its base at Port Said. On October 22, 1948, the same four warships encountered the Egyptian Navy flagship King Farouq. The King Farouq was sunk and an Egyptian minesweeper was damaged.

In this battle in the Ashkelon-Gaza coastal area, Israelis successfully deployed an underwater demolition commando unit and high speed torpedo boats.

Also in October fighting, all four warships participated in the bombardment of Egyptian shore installations in the Ashkelon area, and prevented the Egyptian Navy from evacuating its retreating Armies.

By the end of the war, the Machalniks from the US and Canada had provided a critical core for the fledgling Israeli Navy, and some of them became training personnel after the war for the navy that was growing in fighting ships and personnel.

- David Hanovice

U.S. Navy gets a Jewish chapel

Harvey Stein had a dream: Provide Jews at the United States Naval Academy with their own worship space. Nine years and almost $9 million later, his dream will become a reality, with the opening of the Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel. The academy estimates that some 1.5 million visitors will tour the facility during its first year, and is scheduled to open the weekend of Sept. 16-18. This high visibility is a prospect that pleases Stein no end. “This will become one of the most important Jewish buildings in the country,” said Stein, 69, the owner of a successful home-decor and personal accessories business. “Lives will be touched in ways that we will probably never fully know." Said Rabbi Irving Elson, the academy’s Jewish chaplain: “This is not just a building for Jews. It’s the next step for the academy in demonstrating how important faith is, any faith,” adding, “It’s a symbol of tolerance and inclusion and for understanding how important faith is in the toolbox of our future Navy and Marines officers. I want our officers to recognize that even if they don’t have a faith themselves, that faith is important to the men and women they command." A full weekend of events is planned for the building’s opening, beginning with the affixing of mezuzot and the dedication of a Torah scroll donated by the Israeli navy, and ending with a formal dedication attended by at least 2,500 guests. The Naval Academy, which educates officers for the Marine Corps as well as the Navy, is the last of America’s three main military academies to construct a worship space designed specifically for Jews. Until now, Jewish midshipmen shared a chapel with other minority religious groups. The academy has a separate chapel for Christians. All U.S. military worship facilities are called chapels, regardless of faith. The lack of a Jewish facility bothered Stein, one of a number of Annapolis Jews with no Navy or academy ties who come to the academy to attend regular Friday night services run by Jewish chaplains; Saturday services are only held on holidays and special occasions. One morning in 1996, while speaking in his kitchen with Rabbi Jonathan Panitz, then the academy’s Jewish chaplain, Stein announced that he wanted to help underwrite a Jewish chapel. Stein said the sound of the words popping out of his mouth took even him by surprise. “When I said that to Jonathan, I thought: ‘Whatever possessed me to say such a thing?’” Stein recalled. Panitz seized upon the idea immediately. “I said, ‘OK, Harvey, when do you want to start?’ And Harvey says, ‘Right away.’ And that was how it began,” said Panitz, now retired from the Navy and leading Congregation Beth Israel, a Conservative synagogue in Lebanon, Pa. The pair turned to Friends of the Jewish Chapel, a group that helped fund activities for Jewish midshipmen, including trips to Israel. But with less than 150 self-identified Jewish midshipmen in any given year, out of a student body of more than 4,000, getting permission proved tricky, despite lobbying that extended to the highest reaches of the Pentagon. The key to jump-starting the project was a pledge by the group to expand Stein’s idea to include raising additional funds to meet other unfulfilled academy construction needs. That led to creation of the Uriah P. Levy Center, which occupies the 35,000-square-foot structure’s south wing. It’s named after the first Jew to be elevated, in 1858, to the rank of commodore, then the Navy’s highest rank. Levy, who restored Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home, Monticello, after it fell into disrepair following the third president’s death, was descended from some of the first Sephardic Jews to settle in the American colonies. Howard Pinsky, a 1962 academy graduate and the president of the Jewish chapel group, said about $8.75 million has been raised for construction. Another $3 million was raised for maintenance and program endowment funds. Most of the money has come from private Jewish sources. The center will house the academy’s expanding courses in ethics and leadership and its Honor Court, where midshipmen charged with violating the academy’s strict honor code are judged by peers. It will also contain a library dedicated to religious and ethical themes; study, lounge and canteen areas, and displays relating to Jews in the American military and other subjects. The chapel takes up the three-story facility’s entire north wing. The interior of the 410-seat sanctuary is extensively faced with Jerusalem stone. The floor-to-ceiling section behind a free-standing Sephardic-style ark has been hand-crafted to evoke the Western Wall’s jumble of stones. Both the center and chapel have Stars of David incorporated into their exterior design. Architect Joseph Boggs said he believes this is the first instance of the Jewish symbol being a permanent part of a U.S. Navy building. (An academy spokeswoman could not confirm the claim because of the sheer number of Navy buildings worldwide.) The complex occupies a prominent spot on the 330-acre academy. Enclosed passages link the building to Bancroft Hall, the massive dormitory housing all midshipmen, and to Mitscher Hall, the academy’s primary building for social and cultural activities. Boggs said he sought to design the structure so as not to overwhelm non-Jews. “How do you incorporate inclusion without any negative implications? I want any midshipman of any denomination to be able to walk through this place and not just be comfortable, but get a chill down their spine,” said Boggs, who is not Jewish.

- Ira Rifkin