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Between June 1947 and October 31, 1949, the Jewish agency (later to become the Israeli government) seeking weapons for Operation Balak, made several purchases of weapons in Czechoslovakia, some of them of former German army weapons, captured by the Czechoslovak army on its national territory, or newly produced German weapons from Czechoslovakia's post-war production. In this deal, sale activities of Czechoslovak arms factories were coordinated by a special-purpose department of the Československé závody strojírenské a kovodělné, n.p. (Czechoslovak Metal-Working and Engineering Works, Nat.Ent.) Holding, called Sekretariát D (Secretariat D), headed by Gen. Jan Heřman (ret.).
The deliveries from Czechoslovakia proved important for the establishment of Israel.
The first contract was signed on January 14, 1948, by Jan Masaryk, the Czech foreign minister. Ideology played no role in these initial transaction. They were exclusively commercial. [1] The contract included 200 MG 34 machine guns, 4,500 P 18 rifles and 50,400,000 rounds of ammunition.
Syria bought from Czechoslovakia a quantity of arms for the Arab Liberation Army but the shipment arrived in Israel due to Haganah intervention. [2]
The first shipment of two hundred rifles, forty MG-34 machine guns, and bullets, secretly landed during the night of 31 March–1 April at a makeshift airfield at Beit Daras in a chartered American Skymaster cargo plane. The second larger shipment, covered with onions and potatoes— of forty-five hundred rifles and two hundred machine guns, with bullets, arrived at Tel Aviv port aboard the Nora on 2 April. (A third shipment of ten thousand rifles, 1,415 machine guns, and bullets, reached the Yishuv by sea on 28 April.) At last, the Haganah command had at hand a stockpile of thousands of weapons that it could freely deploy. The two shipments proved decisive. Without doubt, of all the shipments that subsequently reached the Yishuv, none was to have greater immediate impact or historical significance." [3]
Some of the aircraft were lost en route to Israel. The delivery of aircraft began on May 20, 1948, and was conducted from the Czech airfield near the town of Žatec. Some of Avia fighters were dismantled and flown to Israel in transport airplanes. [4]
Some of the deliveries were not finished until after cessation of hostilities. Only eighteen Spitfires reached Israel prior to end of war by direct flight from Czechoslovakia during operations Velvetta 1 in September (6 planes) and Velvetta 2 in December 1948 (12 planes), both operations with a refueling stop in Yugoslavia. During operation Velvetta 2 Spitfires were repainted in Yugoslav Air Force markings for the flight from Kunovice to Nikšić. [5] The rest were shipped in crates, officially declared as scrap iron, along with 12 Merlin 66 engines, and deliveries lasted until the end of April 1950.
Czechoslovakia also trained 81 pilots and 69 ground crew specialists, some of them later forming the first fighter unit of the Israeli Air Force, and on Czechoslovakian soil a group of Jewish volunteers the size of approximately a brigade (about 1,300 men and women) were also trained, from August 20 until November 4, 1948. [6] The Czechoslovak Armed Force's codename of the training (mainly) was «DI» (an abbreviation from "Důvěrné Israel", literally meaning "Classified, Israel"). A Moto-Mechanized Brigade Group of Jewish volunteers trained in Czechoslovakia didn't take part in the 1948 war.
The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war became a war of separate states with the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948, the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight, and the entry of a military coalition of Arab states into the territory of Mandatory Palestine the following morning. The war formally ended with the 1949 Armistice Agreements which established the Green Line.
Haganah was the main Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the region, and was formally disbanded in 1948, when it became the core force integrated into the Israel Defense Forces shortly after the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
The Karabiner 98 kurz, often abbreviated Karabiner 98k, Kar98k or K98k and also sometimes incorrectly referred to as a K98, is a bolt-action rifle chambered for the 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridge. It was adopted on 21 June 1935 as the standard service rifle by the German Wehrmacht. It was one of the final developments in the long line of Mauser military rifles.
The Avia S-199 is a propeller-driven Messerschmitt Bf 109G-based fighter aircraft built after World War II using the Bf 109G airframe and a Junkers Jumo 211F engine in place of the original and unavailable Daimler-Benz DB 605 engine. It is notable as the first fighter obtained by the Israeli Air Force, and used during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
Operation Balak was a smuggling operation, during the founding of Israel in 1948, that purchased arms in Europe to avoid various embargoes and boycotts transferring them to the Yishuv. Of particular note was the delivery of 23 Czechoslovakia-made Avia S-199 fighters, the post-war version of the German Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf 109.
The vz. 52 rifle is a self-loading rifle developed shortly after the Second World War in Czechoslovakia. Its full name is 7,62mm samonabíjecí puška vzor 52. Vz. 52 is an abbreviation for vzor 52, meaning "model 52". It fires the unique 7.62×45mm cartridge. It is considered both reliable and accurate. The first 5000 vz. 52 rifles were made by Považské strojárne in Považská Bystrica, but due to production difficulties, its manufacture was taken over by Česká zbrojovka Uherský Brod.
Česká zbrojovka a.s., is a Czech armament manufacturer based in Uherský Brod. The company is famous for producing service, hunting and sporting firearms. It is owned by the Czech holding company Colt CZ Group SE, which also owns other brands with related production programs.
The Škorpion vz. 61 is a Czechoslovak machine pistol developed in 1959 by Miroslav Rybář (1924–1970) and produced under the official designation Samopal vzor 61 by the Česká zbrojovka arms factory in Uherský Brod from 1963 to 1979. The standard version uses .32 ACP ammunition.
The vz. 24 rifle is a bolt-action carbine designed and produced in Czechoslovakia from 1924 to 1942. It was developed from the German Mauser Gewehr 98 line, and features a similar bolt design. The rifle was designed in Czechoslovakia shortly after World War I, to replace the Vz. 98/22, also a Czech derivative of the Gewehr 98. The vz. 24 featured a 590 mm (23.2 in) barrel which was shorter and considered more manageable than the 740 mm (29.1 in) Gewehr 98 barrel. The vz. 24 was chambered in 7.92×57mm Mauser like its predecessors.
The Maschinengewehr (Schwarzlose) M. 7, also known as the Schwarzlose MG, is a medium machine-gun, used as a standard issue firearm in the Austro-Hungarian Army throughout World War I. It was utilized by the Dutch, Greek and Hungarian armies during World War II. It was routinely issued to Italian colonial troops, alongside the Mannlicher M1895 rifle.
The 7.92×57mm Mauser is a rimless bottlenecked rifle cartridge. The 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridge was adopted by the German Empire in 1903–1905, and was the German service cartridge in both World Wars. In its prime, the 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridge was one of the world's most popular military cartridges. In the 21st century it is still a popular sport and hunting cartridge that is factory-produced in Europe and the United States.
The ZB vz. 26 was a Czechoslovak light machine gun developed in the 1920s, which went on to enter service with several countries. It saw its major use during World War II, and spawned the related ZB vz. 27, vz. 30, and vz. 33. The ZB vz. 26 influenced many other light machine gun designs including the British Bren light machine gun and the Japanese Type 97 heavy tank machine gun. The ZB-26 is famous for its reliability, simple components, quick-change barrel and ease of manufacturing. This light machine gun in the Czechoslovak army was marked as the LK vz. 26. ZB vz. 26 is incorrect nomenclature because "ZB-26" is a factory designation, while "vzor 26" or "vz. 26" is an army designation.
The Besa machine gun was a British version of the Czechoslovak ZB-53 air-cooled, belt-fed machine gun.
The 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine was the first phase of the 1947–1949 Palestine war. It broke out after the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution on 29 November 1947 recommending the adoption of the Partition Plan for Palestine.
The vz. 52 is a Czechoslovak light machine gun developed after the Second World War for the Czechoslovak Armed Forces.
Gordon Levett (1921–2000) was a former Royal Air Force pilot in World War II who volunteered for a covert mission to fly supplies including dismantled fighter planes into the fledgling state of Israel in its 1948 Arab–Israeli War as part of Operation Balak. Later Levett joined the first squadron of the newly created Israeli Air Force, helping establish a permanent Israeli military and aiding in the founding of the state of Israel. Levett was the only English gentile pilot in the Israeli Air Force, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
The Tančík vz. 33 was a Czechoslovak-designed tankette used mainly by Slovakia during World War II. Seventy-four were built. The Germans seized forty when they occupied Bohemia-Moravia in March 1939; there is no record of their use. The Slovak Republic inherited thirty at the same time when it declared independence from Czechoslovakia. In Slovak service it only saw combat during the Slovak National Uprising.
The ZB-53 was a Czechoslovak machine gun. A versatile weapon, it was used both as a squad support weapon, as a mounted machine gun for tanks and other armoured vehicles, and on fixed positions inside Czechoslovak border fortifications. Adopted before World War II by the armies of Czechoslovakia (as Těžký kulomet vz. 37, heavy machine gun model 37) and Romania, it was also license-built in the United Kingdom as the Besa machine gun. Following the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, large quantities of the weapon were captured by the Wehrmacht and used during the war under the designation of MG 37(t).
Operation Velvetta was a 1948 Israeli Air Force operation to ferry Supermarine Spitfires purchased in Czechoslovakia to Israel.
The Vz.53 is an anti-aircraft weapon system produced in Czechoslovakia during the 1950s. It combines four Vz.38/46 (DShK) 12.7 mm Machineguns on a wheeled mount with a 360° traverse. Its full Czech designation was 12.7 mm PL štvorguľomet vz.53.
Early in 1947...Czech weaponry might be available...personally approved by...Jan Masarik. Ideology played no role in these initial transaction. They were exclusively commercial
In December 1947 Syria bought a quantity of small arms from the Skoda plant in Czechoslovakia for the ALA. Jewish saboteurs blew up the ship that carried the cargo to the Middle East and sank it in the Italian port of Bari. The arms were later salvaged and reshipped in August 1948 to Syria — this time for arming Palestinian combatants — but the Israeli navy intercepted the freight and seized the weapons.