I suspect the Israeli's much better training, proficiency, and well maintained aircraft had a lot to do with it. It would be interesting to see a nose to nose comparison with equally trained and proficient pilots, and maintained aircraft.
On an exercise deployment to Cairo West Air Base in the F-4, I had opportunity to fly a combined four ship low level and dry ground attack with the Egyptian Wing Commander. I graciously and stubbornly agreed to him leading the four ship. Low level was normally flown at 480 knots in the F-4. As we followed in a tactical formation the airspeed was anywhere from 250 to 540 knots. There was never a stabilized airspeed during the 200+ mile low level, not to mention altitude deviations. There was a whole list of others less glaring debriefable items but, you get the picture. We also had opportunity to examine the Egyptian Rhinos. They were in horrible condition, sand blasted from being in the elements, didn't have engine inlet and exhaust covers installed while parked, etc.
Later, at home, a tasker came to send to crews to Cairo West to ferry two Egyptian F-4s to Hill AFB, Utah for PDM. A couple of our younger crews jumped on the opportunity for all that XC time. They're first stop out of Cairo was Torrejon, Spain. Both jets landed with multiple red X write ups (groundable maintenance issues) and were stuck there for two weeks waiting for parts to arrive. They finally arrive at Hill nearly a month later. PDM personnel told our guys they hated seeing Egyptian F-4s show up because of the incredibly poor maintenance or lack there of. Apparently, it was typical for the Egyptian jets to have upwards of 2,000 pounds of sand in the bottom of the engine bays.
Months later, another tasker came down to ferry two more F-4s from Cairo to Hill. Our same two crews jumped on the opportunity. They had the same first stop at Torrejon, multiple red Xs, and were stuck there for a full months because of the severity of maintenance issues. When our guys finally got home, we asked what that did for a whole month in Torrejon. They just grinned.
There was an interesting story making the rounds at Moody just when I got
there in 82. We sent over 24 birds to Bright Star to play with the Egyptians.
They had birds that were 5 years younger than ours, but we had to drop our
surge sortie rates from 70-80 flights a day down to 25.
The reason we had to slow down was that the Egyptians with the same
number of birds could only generate 5! flights a day. Now I wasn't there so
I got this 2nd hand. Evidently the mechs over there would work a bird for
2 hours, then pray to Allah and go home. Apparently Allah was not a very
good aircraft mechanic
