This is coolbert: In addition to perpetrating a deception on the Egyptian that allowed the Israeli Air Force to surprise and destroy the Egyptian Air Force on the ground in the Six Day War of 1967, the Israeli commander had determined that a certain specific time of day was the most propitious for the attack to commence. A time that would allow for maximum surprise.

Intelligence assessments by the Israeli had allowed them to conclude that the time from between 7:30 A.M. and 7:45 A.M. was that time that would allow for the greatest element of surprise to be obtained. Surprise that when combined with other circumstances would allow for the Israeli to inflict the maximum amount of damage on the Egyptian Air Force.

And this assessment was based upon the following observations:

Egyptian radar crews working the midnight shift [mids] got off duty at 8:00 A.M. In the hour just prior to them getting off duty, the radar crews would be at the lowest level of alertness and would be anticipating relief from the day crew.

Flight officers of the Egyptian air force would have finished their mess, which was open from 7:00 A.M till 7:30 A.M. After finishing morning mess, the pilots would have been enroute to their aircraft for morning flights, but would not have arrived at the flight line. Aircraft, in anticipation of the flight crew arrival, would have been rolled out and awaiting on the tarmac, fully fueled.

Senior officers of the Egyptian Air Force would be stuck in traffic enroute to their duty stations, which began duty each morning at 8 A.M. Senior leadership would not be able to make critical decisions in the minutes just prior to their arriving at work.

And this assessment of the Israeli proved to be correct in the extreme. When the Israeli aircraft arrived over their targets, they found fully fueled Egyptian aircraft on the ground, minus pilots, and no command staff to make decisions present. A sure recipe for disaster that the Israeli took full advantage of.

Now several other things contributed to the Egyptian disaster.

One was that the Egyptian did not mix different types of aircraft at the same base. At one base would be found only fighter aircraft. At another base would be found only bomber aircraft. And yet at another base would be found only transport aircraft. This made the Israeli task that much easier. Once the bases with fighter aircraft were attacked, and almost all the fighter aircraft wiped out in the first few minutes [which is what happened], the Egyptian had no possible response to defend the rest of their airspace. They were totally at the mercy of the Israeli. This was a crucial mistake.

The second mistake of the Egyptian was that their aircraft were on the tarmac, fully fueled, awaiting the arrival of the flight crews for morning flight exercise. And the MIG fighters in particular had a glaring weakness the Israeli took advantage of. The MIG was very susceptible to catching fire if hit in an exact certain spot from an incendiary round.  And the Israeli knew about this and their pilots, when strafing after dropping bombs, aimed for this exact spot. The result was that a whole lot of MIG's were later photographed on the ground having burned exactly where they had sat when the attack commenced. Israeli marksmanship in strafing, honed by all those deception flights mentioned in a previous blog, had allowed the Israeli straffers to hit this exact weak spot of the MIG's with ease. All those MIG's on the flight line just "brewed up". And the Egyptian said afterwards that the Israeli must have had some secret weapon, aided by treachery. This was not so. Superior Israeli marksmanship with 30 mm incendiary rounds was all that did the job, not treachery. Trevor De Puy comments on this and says that it is not reasonable that the Israeli could have been so good. But by their own account, they were!
 
coolbert.