Early on the afternoon of 6 October 1973, two Israeli F-4E Phantoms sat on alert at Ofira, the air base at Sharm el-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai. The sirens went off. The controller did not scramble them. On the radar screens, a formation of Egyptian jets was heading straight for the base.

Amir Nachumi decided not to wait for permission. Within minutes he and his wingman, Daniel Shaki, were in the air against 28 Egyptian aircraft. By Israeli accounts, six minutes later seven of those aircraft had been shot down. By Egyptian accounts, the air battle never took place at all. That gap is what makes the Ofira air battle one of the most debated fights of the Yom Kippur War.

Two Phantoms on the Ground

Israel had held the Sinai since the Six-Day War of 1967, and Ofira guarded the Straits of Tiran. On 6 October the base was on red alert from 9:00 in the morning. The two Phantoms of 107 Squadron on hand that day were crewed by airmen that Wikipedia's account describes as relatively inexperienced at the time. When the sirens sounded at about 13:50, the controller failed to scramble them.

Nachumi started his engines anyway and told Shaki to do the same. Getting airborne was everything: two Phantoms caught on the ground by 20 attacking MiG-17s would have been destroyed without firing a shot.

The two Phantoms left the ground as the Egyptian formation arrived. The MiG-17s were there to bomb the base; the eight MiG-21s were there to protect them. Two heavy, fast, missile-armed fighters were suddenly in the middle of the attack.

Six Minutes Over Sharm el-Sheikh

What followed was a close-range brawl. The F-4E carried AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles and, unlike earlier Phantoms, an internal M61 20 mm cannon. Nachumi used both. At one point, according to AvGeekery's account of the battle, an engine stalled after ingesting gun gases and had to be relit in the middle of the fight. The Phantom has two engines, and the crew got the stalled one running again.

Israel credited Nachumi and Yavin with four kills and Shaki and Regev with three: seven in total, six MiG-17s and one MiG-21. Both Phantoms were running low on fuel by the end, which is why they did not chase the retreating Egyptians. They landed on the parallel runway. All four airmen were later awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

The Operations Room reconstructs the Ofira battle, minute by minute, from the Israeli accounts. Video: The Operations Room

The Battle Egypt Says Never Happened

Here the story splits. Egyptian commanders have said that five aircraft were lost in the whole opening airstrike of the war, not just at Ofira, and Egyptian pilots on the mission said they encountered no aerial opposition at all. Official Egyptian figures for losses that day range from five to seven aircraft in total. The Israeli claim of seven kills in one engagement and the Egyptian account of none cannot both be right, and no independent record has settled it.

This is not unusual. Wartime claims are made in the heat of combat, often by crews who saw a missile hit or a jet go down without knowing whether it crashed. Both sides in the Arab-Israeli wars had reasons to inflate their own successes and play down their losses. What is not disputed is that Ofira was attacked, that two Phantoms got airborne against a much larger force, and that the base survived.

For Nachumi it was the start of a remarkable career. He went on to score 14 confirmed aerial victories, seven in the Phantom and seven in the F-16, making him one of the Israeli Air Force's top aces. He later commanded 107 Squadron and 110 Squadron, then Ramat David air base, and rose to brigadier general.

A detailed analysis of the Ofira engagement and the competing claims. Video: Not A Pound For Air To Ground

The longer the debate runs, the more Ofira becomes a lesson about claims as much as about combat. Two crews broke the rules, got airborne and fought. Exactly how many MiGs they brought down is something the two sides are unlikely ever to agree on.

Another popular retelling of the Ofira air battle. Video: Dark Docs

Sources: Wikipedia (Ofira Air Battle, Amir Nachumi), AvGeekery