Al Schwimmer: Smuggling Warplanes to Israel

✈️🛠️ He defied US neutrality, smuggled warplanes to Israel, and built one of the world’s top aerospace industries from sand.

Al Schwimmer wasn’t Israeli. He was born in New York, raised in a Jewish-American family, and was an accomplished aerospace engineer for Lockheed.

But when the Jews of pre-state Israel faced annihilation in 1948, he did something extraordinary.

Schwimmer secretly bought surplus US military aircraft, recruited volunteer pilots and mechanics, and organized a covert operation to fly planes across the Atlantic to the nascent Israeli Air Force. These were the first aircraft Israel ever had, vital to defending the new state against five invading armies.

For this, the US government convicted him of violating the Neutrality Act. He lost his voting rights and had to pay a fine but otherwise was not harshly punished.

He never once apologized. “I had a moral obligation to prevent another Holocaust.”

But that was only the beginning.

In the 1950s, Schwimmer immigrated to Israel and founded what would become Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), starting with almost nothing but desert and vision. Under his leadership, IAI would go on to develop:

• Fighter jets (the IAI Lavi)

• Reconnaissance drones

• Satellite launch vehicles (the only one in the world that flies in reverse!)

• Missile defense systems that can shoot down ballistic missiles in outer space

• and more..

Today, IAI is one of the world’s top aerospace and defense companies, exporting cutting-edge technology to over 90 countries.

Al Schwimmer died in 2011. President Bill Clinton pardoned him, recognizing the his activity during Israel's war of independence was fundamentally just. And in 2001, he received Israel’s highest honor, the Israel Prize, in recognition of a lifetime of service to the Jewish people and the state of Israel.

He gave up everything for a country that didn’t yet exist and helped ensure it would never be destroyed.