The Machalniks: Birth Of An Air Force (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780998716442)

In 1948, when Israel declares itself a State, five surrounding Arab counties publically vow to "finish what Hitler started", and annihilate the Jews living there. Will this be a second holocaust?

Not if Mike Kaplan and Paul Shatz have anything to say about it. With a fleet of surplus cargo planes, and a volunteer crew to fly them. Risking fines, imprisonment, and loss of their U.S. citizenship for doing so, they will defy a U.S. arms embargo, and smuggle weapons to the Jews to defend themselves. In the process, these Jewish American World War II airmen create the Israeli Air Force.

At times, the obstacles seem insurmountable.

Told through the eyes of these two fictional characters, this fact based, action packed story, takes you from the United States, where they have to outmaneuver an anti-Semitic State Department official who tries to sabotage, then impound the planes, to Czechoslovakia, as they fly dangerous smuggling operations, where planes crash, and pilots die in the process.

You'll be in the cockpit as these unsung heroes fly heart pounding, life and death combat missions over Israel, where the fate of the newborn State literally lays beneath their wings. Without them, there arguably, might not be an Israel.

And it doesn't end for them after the War. When Shatz and Kaplan return to America, they are put on trial by the government who wants to punish them for what they did. The outcome, something no one could have predicted.

The Machalniks tells you all of this, and a lot more.