Fight Like A Dove

"Fight like a Dove" is episode 7 of Airwolf season 1, which had all the best episodes and storylines. It was an extremely inspiring episode involving electronic technology, computers, and spy plots, and based around the real-life secret agents used after the war to bring Nazi war criminals to justice. I thought the storyline had a degree of realism.

The Dove was the codename of an Israeli agent Harry LeBow who was a Holocaust survivor in Dachau, played by the actor Peter Mamakos. He comes across as a Simon Wiesenthal type of figure who was a Nazi Hunter in real life. Peter Mamakos does a good job of playing the character of a kind old man who spends his life tracking war criminals. Unfortunately, he gets only the first scene of the episode to play, and then the character Sarah LeBow, played by Tovah Feldshuh, daughter of Harry LeBow, takes over for the rest of the episode.

Of all the episodes in Series 1, I thought this was the best one because the acting was exceptionally high standard. The success of this episode is partly due to the good production work of Alan J. Levi and partly because of the brilliant actors. Tovah Feldshuh, an accomplished and professional actor, brought realism to the episode.

The objective in the story was to catch a Nazi war criminal; a thoroughly disgusting man called Hans Dauber, played by the brilliant actor Walter Gotell. Poor Walter always gets these types of roles to play and he always does a very good job of them.

Hans Dauber, having changed his name to Helmut Kruger, was living in a heavily fortified wine storage complex in Paraguay. He had turned the complex into a munitions bunker and become an arms dealer. If I remember history correctly, I remember reading somewhere of Nazi criminals fleeing to South America, and therefore this storyline was believable.

Sarah LeBow tracks Airwolf, and finds it in "The Valley of the Gods". She enlists the help of Hawke and Mr Santini to fly to Paraguay in Airwolf to capture Kruger.

Storylines in Airwolf are never that straightforward and there are always hurdles to overcome. In this case, Airwolf has to go up against a new kind of missile system called "Thor", developed by the FIRM. How Kruger manages to acquire this highly classified piece of technology from the firm is another sub-plot that is an interesting surprise.

The "Thor System" consisted of four missiles; two that would track form a high altitude and two from a low altitude. The missiles would work together as an intelligent hive mind to drive their target exactly where they wished it to be in order to destroy it.

The missiles used a randomly changing communication frequency, hence it was impossible to jam them, and there was no way to escape all four once their respective radar systems had acquired lock. To make things worse there was no technology on-board Airwolf that could be used against this system. Hence, it was up to Hawke to perform some extreme flying manoeuvres on Airwolf.

He destroys two missiles by turning back around on them at close to mach 1 speed. At that speed, the radar systems on the missiles became confused, and they locked onto each other thereby destroying themselves.

He shoots down the third missile by firing a copperhead, whilst simultaneously performing the famous hammerhead stall, which he does in almost every episode.

He destroys the fourth missile by performing a steep dive towards Kruger’s munitions complex simultaneously firing two copperhead missiles at it. The intense heat from the burning arms complex masks Airwolf’s heat signature. At the very last moment, Airwolf pulls up, whilst the missiles continue with a new radar lock towards Kruger’s house...

In the last scene Kruger is left standing alone with flames all around him, his munitions bunker destroyed, and Sarah LeBow captures him, ready to be packed and shipped to Israel to stand trial.

The good guy, Hawke, gets the girl and they all live happily ever after in a cabin by the lake. What a life! When I was young, I always wanted my own cabin by the lake, and a secret helicopter of course... and work for a secret government agency...

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