IAF.

This is coolbert:

In the months prior to the outbreak of war between the Arabs and the Israelis in June 1967 [the Six Day War], the Israeli conducted a deception which proved to be very successful.

This deception plan, put in effect upon the ascendancy to the position of Israeli Chief of Staff by Yitzhak Rabin, was aimed at the Egyptian military. It must have been that the Israeli either felt intuitively or had secret intelligence that something big on the part of the Egyptians was going to happen. And the Israeli felt that from the onset of war, the initiative had to be theirs, even if this meant a pre-emptive strike. A pre-emptive strike against their most dangerous enemy, the Egyptian.

This deception plan was carried out by the massed forces of the Israeli Air Force. In the months leading up to the outbreak of war, simultaneous mass takeoffs of combat aircraft from airbases all over Israel would occur, and this on a regular basis. As many as two hundred aircraft would take off and fly out over the Mediterranean. Flying at high altitude, this mass of aircraft would be highly visible to the radars of the Egyptians, the American and Russian navies in the area, and the British radar sites on Cyprus. After venturing several hundred miles out over the Mediterranean, the massed formations would go down to the deck [sea-level] to escape radar detection, do a one hundred eighty degree turn [180 degree] , and return to Israel. Returning back over land, the combat aircraft would then simulate the bombing and strafing of Egyptian air fields before returning to base.

Deceptions of this type serve two purposes. One purpose is to keep your own people in a high state of readiness. You practice over and over what you will do in actual hostilities. The second purpose of course is to confuse your potential adversaries. Seeing these mass takeoffs over and over will lead your foe to think that what he is seeing is just routine behavior and not to be taken as a source of concern [a mass takeoff without any prior precedent would certainly be seen as a definite warning].

And this deception plan did work! On the day of the actual pre-emptive strike initiating hostilities in the Six Day War, the massed Israeli combat air formations, after going to the deck as they had done many times previously, rather than executing a hundred and eighty degree [180 degree] turn and returning to Israel, executed a ninety degree [90 degree] turn to the south and proceeded on course to their targets, the Egyptian airfields. And, as I have said, the deception plan worked! The Israeli arrived on target unopposed and undetected!! The rest is history.

coolbert.