In the first days of October 1973, Israel was losing. Egyptian and Syrian armies had struck on Yom Kippur, and Israeli tanks and aircraft were being destroyed faster than the country could replace them. Then, out of the western sky, came the sound of salvation: the deep drone of American transports, one after another, all day and all night.
The airlift that saved Israel had a deliberately dull codename. It was called Operation Nickel Grass, and it remains one of the greatest feats of military logistics ever flown.
Quick Facts
- Operation: Nickel Grass, U.S. strategic airlift to Israel
- When: 14 October - 14 November 1973, during the Yom Kippur War
- Delivered: about 22,300 tons of tanks, artillery and ammunition
- Aircraft: C-141 Starlifters and C-5 Galaxies of Military Airlift Command
- Missions: roughly 567, staging through Lajes Field in the Azores
- Distance: about 6,450 nautical miles each way
Send everything that can fly
As Israeli losses mounted, Prime Minister Golda Meir pleaded with Washington for resupply. After days of hesitation, President Richard Nixon cut through the debate with a single order.
On 14 October, the U.S. Air Force’s Military Airlift Command began pouring supplies into Israel. Over the next 32 days, C-141 Starlifters and the enormous C-5 Galaxy flew roughly 567 missions, delivering some 22,300 tons of tanks, artillery, ammunition and spare parts straight into Lod airport outside Tel Aviv.
The problem of distance
The hard part was geography. Most European allies, fearing an Arab oil embargo, refused to let American aircraft carrying arms land or even overfly their territory. Only Portugal agreed, opening Lajes Field in the Azores as a mid-Atlantic staging post. Without it, the 6,450-nautical-mile haul from the United States to Israel would have been all but impossible.
Even with Lajes, the C-5 crews often flew the final leg into a war zone, sometimes landing as Israeli jets scrambled overhead. The airlift out-delivered the parallel Soviet effort resupplying Egypt and Syria, and it did so in full view of the world.
The miracle of the immense planes
The materiel arrived in time to matter. Resupplied and reinforced, Israel turned the war around, crossing the Suez Canal and encircling Egypt’s Third Army before a ceasefire took hold. Golda Meir never forgot what the transports had meant.
Nickel Grass reshaped how the world understood strategic airlift. It proved that a superpower could project tons of combat power across an ocean in days, not months — and that sometimes the decisive weapon in a war is a cargo plane.
Sources: Air Mobility Command Museum; Air & Space Forces Magazine; Richard Nixon Foundation; National Air and Space Museum; Wikipedia (Operation Nickel Grass).
I remember this quite well. In 1973 I was a 21 year old mechanic working on 141’s out of Charleston AFB S.C. they sent us to Lajes field where we worked 12 hour days from 7 P.M. till 7A.M. there were 10, 3 man crews, from all mac 141 bases, as you launched your Aircraft, you went to the bottom of the list usually you got about a hour break, sometime more or less time. Towards the end of the mission We recovered a 141 going east to Tel Aviv. The 141’s were just there to get fuel and a crew change. I was checking the engine oil and A Flight engineer was at the yellow line smoking a cigarette and watching us check the oil. When I got to #4 engine I could not see any oil in the screen, so I started opening cans and filling it to full. When I finished I looked at the engine cowling for leaks and didn’t find one. I walked to the yellow line where the flt. engineer was standing. He asked me how many quarts of oil I put in #4. Now a TF-33 only holds 24 quarts. I answered him 13. He looked at me and ask if there was oil on the cowling, I answered no. He said OK and we launched them about 10 minutes later.
Different times, different attitudes. Working together to save Israel
I was also sent to Guam for the pull out of Viet Nam. But that’s a story for another time.