At first glance, it is hard to connect the tall, blonde beauty with a helicopter gunship. But when Maj. Maya enters the cockpit of “her” Cobra and starts the ignition, it looks like the most natural thing in the world. A rare interview.
“The most important thing is the mission that I was given,” says Maya.
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She fired her first missile during the Second Lebanon War. Maj. Maya, the first woman pilot of a helicopter gunship in the Israel Air Force, hovered over a suspect vehicle deep inside enemy territory, and when the identification was confirmed, she fired directly at him from her Cobra. “I was excited. There was no time to be scared. I was focused on the mission. To tell the truth, the most exciting thing was going back to base. The technicians from the technical department, who had been welcoming pilots back from missions for 20 years, welcomed me there. They looked at the helicopter and saw that a missile was missing; and they are the sort who know very well what it means to come back for the first time without a missile. They embraced me with warmth and compliments. I thought to myself that if they, who saw me grow up in the fleet like a baby, were pleased, I’d done my job.”
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