"Magic Carpet" Pilot Dead at 94

[Mycroft]

No, this doesn't have anything to do with the drug culture of the 60's or 70's.

Robert F. Maguire Jr., the chief pilot of an airlift operation that brought well over 40,000 Jews from Yemen to Israel in the early years of the state, died earlier this month at the age of 94.

Maguire was a chief pilot for Operation Magic Carpet between late 1948 and early 1950. He died on June 10 at his home in Northridge, Cal., of natural causes.

Pogroms against the Jews of Yemen followed soon after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in November 1947. In the worst incident, Muslim rioters, joined by the local police force, engaged in a bloody pogrom in Aden that killed 82 Jews and destroyed hundreds of Jewish homes. The Imam of Yemen agreed to let most of Yemen's Jews leave, though the operation was kept secret and was released to the media only several months after its completion.

Read it all. (http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=84273#responses)

It's such an awesome story. Not many people are blessed to have an accomplishment of that magnitude in their lives.

[webfusion]

Hal 'Pappy' Greene, Lou Lenart, Bill Gerson, Glenn King, Rudy Augarten, Eddy Kaplansky, Al Schwimmer and others were among the brave North Americans (and South Africans & British) who helped the Jews in Palestine defend themselves from annihilation by the vastly superior Arab Armies in the years following WWII.

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/IsraelVets/airforce2.htm

and

http://www.israelvets.com/af_hist.asp

and

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/48iaf.html

Thanks Mycroft, for recalling a chapter in Israeli history that is often overlooked. We take for granted the Israel of today which is well-armed and prepared for anything.
As it needs to be.