Forty years after first landing in Israel, the F-15 Eagle, or Baz (falcon in Hebrew), is still regarded as the Israeli Air Force’s premier air superiority fighter, as Yissachar Ruas explains.
AFTER A decade of planning, and five years of significant upgrades, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) is shaping up for the future, most obviously with the arrival of its first F-35 Adir fighters. But it will be some time before the F-35 is ready to fill the shoes of the F-15 Baz. The arrival of the MiG-25 in the Syrian Arab Air Force (SyAAF) in the mid-1970s provided a platform that was virtually untouchable to the IAF at the time. The Foxbat repeatedly entered Israeli airspace with impunity and was a cause of extreme concern for the IAF Command. Israel’s most advanced fighter at the time, the F-4 Kurnass was unable to intercept the MiG-25, which boasted a much higher ceiling. The F-15 was meant to solve this pressing issue and allow Israel to take control of its airspace again.
Israel was the first country outside the United States to receive the Eagle, and the first F-15A landed in Israel on the afternoon of December 10, 1976. Due to a delay en route to Israel, the aircraft landed on the Sha…
