How the Yemenite Jews were airlifted to Israel

Read George Bryson's terrific profile in the Anchorage Daily News of Warren Metzger, the 87-year old Alaska Airlines pilot who helped transport 50,000 Yemenite Jews to Israel 'on the wings of eagles.'

The company planned to use C-46 transports to move what (company president James) Wooten initially thought was 1,000 refugees from Yemen on a mission underwritten by a Jewish American relief agency. Except the C-46 couldn't do the job, at least not by its manufacturer's specifications.

Normally a C-46 configured as a passenger plane could carry about 45 people, Metzger said. But Wooten wanted to carry twice that many, because the refugees weren't that heavy. Many of them were children and elderly, and even healthy adults weighed less than 100 pounds.

But the planes also needed to carry additional gas, since Egypt and Saudi Arabia -- the nations that bordered the flight zone up the center of the Red Sea -- wouldn't let them land and refuel. In fact, they wanted to shoot them down.

"They told us, 'If you go down in Arab land, you and your co-pilot -- since you aren't Jewish -- might survive, but all of the rest of the people won't,' " Metzger said.

So the range of the planes had to be extended to make the nine-hour flight from Aden to Tel Aviv.

The solution, Metzger said, was to tear out all the passenger seats and configure a new floor plan in which the passengers sat troop-style, with their backs to the side of the plane. That allowed room to install an auxiliary set of fuel tanks down the center of the fuselage.

The reconfigured planes could remain airborne about 10 hours, just a little longer than necessary, Metzger said. "But you had to stretch to make it."

First, however, they had to get the passengers on board.

As much as the Jewish refugees wanted to reach Israel, Metzger said, they still were reluctant to fly. A nomadic desert people who lived in tents, most of them had never seen a plane before, let alone gotten to ride in one.

Still, one of the refugees pointed out that the mode of their return to Palestine had already been foretold in a line from the Book of Isaiah: "They shall mount up with wings like eagles."

"So we were making their prophecy come true," Metzger said.

Just to make sure the point got across, crew members painted the image of an eagle with its wings outstretched on the door of each of the planes.

That got them inside, but once they were airborne, Metzger said, about half of the passengers got sick.

"They would vomit straight over the fuel tank."

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