Ben-Barak (Ben-Bassat), Chaim

Chaim, son of Albert and Paula Son of-Barak, was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1939. In 1948, the family immigrated to Israel and settled in the city of Ramle. During the summer holidays, he underwent aeronautics courses at the Air Force School, including a course in aviation. At the age of sixteen, he flew a single flight on the Piper plane. For the boy who immigrated to Israel upon the establishment of the State of Israel, the love of the Land of Israel was connected with his love for the Air Force in a connection that was not cut off until his death. His dream was to build a ‘Hebrew airplane’ and he believed in the possibility of realizing that dream back in the late 1950s, when many of his colleagues doubted the feasibility of aeronautics. In July 1960, at the age of twenty-one, he graduated from the Aeronautical Engineering Faculty as a qualified engineer. In December 1960 he was drafted into the Air Force. In March 1976 he was appointed commander of the Air Force’s experimental unit, and served for two and a half years until his sudden death on June 28, 1978.