Al Schwimmer

Al Schwimmer was born in 1917 in New York City

Schwimmer was born in New York City in 1917 to immigrants from Eastern Europe. His family later moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut. As a teenager he worked as an assistant to an aircraft technician near his home.

He studied aeronautics and qualified as an aircraft mechanic and flight engineer. In 1939 he began working at Lockheed as an engineer and received a pilot license. During World War II he worked for TWA and served as a flight engineer with the U.S. Air Transport Command.

In 1948 he bought surplus planes and recruited air crews, then moved the planes to Israel despite a U.S. arms embargo. In 1950 a U.S. court convicted him of violating the Neutrality Acts. He was fined and lost his voting rights but was not jailed, and President Bill Clinton pardoned him in 2001.

In the early 1950s he was asked to set up an aircraft maintenance facility in Israel. In 1953 he founded it in Lod, and it grew into Israel Aerospace Industries. He retired in 1988.

In the mid-1980s he advised Prime Minister Shimon Peres on technology and industry and was an intermediary in contacts between the U.S. and Iran. He married Rina in 1955 and had 2 children. He died in Ramat Gan in 2011.