I've also read a lot about the air to ground IAF tactics during the 67 and 73 wars, and apparently they used the A4 with 30mm mounted guns to great affect against enemy tanks. I've always wondered about that, a slow firing single barrel x2 gun platform vs the heavy tanks of the era, and wondered how many the A4's actually killed, as some guys had written that a number of times flights of 4 A4's would beat the hell out of a company of tanks, some pilots killing 3, 4, even 5 tanks in a single sortie. I don't want to doubt them, it just seems like really good shooting, when you think about the A10 and its fire rate in comparison with the same caliber of round, those A4 pilots must have been very good shots and got in very close.
I've never heard of this, but I seriously doubt they destroyed the tanks with their 30 mm guns. Detracked them and caused lots of external damage to the equipment, likely. Often, this is all that you really need, but this is nothing that can't be repaired and not likely to kill the crew inside. Bombs and cluster mines were used against tanks and A-4 dropped lots of these in the Golan Heights in 1973 in an attempt to slow the massive armor charge of the Syrians.
Speaking of Tillman, he wrote a book about the F20 Tigershark, and I always thought it was the perfect fighter for Israel. It was probably the most efficient fighter of the time when it came to using fuel, it could hang with anything in the sky in visual range fights, and could be equipped with a good radar as well. It was also very small, and hard to see, and from the pilots I know who fly the CF18, when they used to fight vs the CF5's, they said it was a real PITA due to their size. They did have very good 20mm guns, mounted in a great position for good accuracy/trajectory as well, and like I said, due to the guns, size, and cheapness for the high performance given, I always figured Israel would be the one country that would have bought the F20.
The F-20 was overlooked by the IAF for several reasons. First, at the time Israel was developing its own fighter - the Lavi. Initially it was supposed to be a cheap modern fighter, something in the spirit of the F-20, but it ended up as a direct competitor to the F-16 at a higher price than initially intended. The US put a lot of pressure on Israel to cancel that project and eventually it was canceled (there were other reasons as well). Part of the pressure to cancel the project was a "carrot" - a very attractive arms deal that included the latest block of F-16s at an attractive price. These were brand new ,right off of the production line. Many of the fighters that Israel got from the US before that were used ones, handed down from the USAF. The IAF could not pass up such an offer and filled its ranks with shiny new F-16s. At the time, the Kfir filled the all purpose cheap fighter of the IAF and in combination with the A-4s on one side and F-16s, F-15s and Israeli-upgraded F-4 Phantoms on the other side, there was no need or room for the F-20.
Also, there is a lot of politics involved in such deals. I bet that the US administration had an interest in promoting the F-16s deal with the IAF over a hypothetical F-20 deal. Perhaps because the USAF was highly invested in the F-16 and more sales meant lower cost per unit overall.
The F-20 could have been a good IAF plane, but the timing was just wrong and conditions not right for this to happen.
