Maj. Gen. (ret.) Dan Tolkowsky, the fifth commander of the Israeli Air Force and later a key figure in the development of Israel’s high-tech and venture capital sectors, died overnight Friday in his home in Tel Aviv at the age of 104.

Tolkowsky, who led the IAF from 1953 to 1958, was born to a venerable Zionist family in Tel Aviv in 1921. His father, Shmuel, was a pioneering Zionist agriculturalist, and his maternal grandfather, Isaac Leib Goldberg, helped found some of the earliest Zionist communes in Ottoman Palestine.

Tolkowsky joined the Haganah — the IDF’s paramilitary forerunner — when he was 15. He moved to London in 1938 to study mechanical engineering and volunteered for Britain’s Royal Air Force in 1942, during the Second World War. After training in Africa, he served as a Spitfire pilot in Italy, southern France, and Greece.

Tolkowsky continued to work as an engineer in Britain after the war and helped the Haganah acquire the aircraft that formed Israel’s air force. He joined the Israeli Air Force after it was established following Israel’s declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. That same year, he also married his wife Miriam.

During the War of Independence, Tolkowsky carried out IAF bombing campaigns on the Egyptian front.

He held several top roles in the force after the war, including head of its training division........

© The Times of Israel