intelligence reportsep 01, 1975 · arab intentions. performance of troops. the arabs were tough on...

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Intelligence Report

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War.Overview and Analysis of the Conflict

.ererSR IR 75-16September 1975

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-The 1973 Arab-Israeli War:Overview and Analysis of the Conflict

This study examines the military operations of Egypt, Syria, and Israel duringthe 1973 Middle East war with a view to providing some indications of future forcedevelopments in the area. Key findings:

Strategy. The Arabs had different goals and, consequently, different strategies.The Syrians wanted to liberate the Golan Heights and attempted to do so in onestroke. The Egyptians' main goal was to achieve a political effect, and they thereforeplanned for a limited offensive.

The Israelis, because of overconfidence and because they failed to recognizethat their occupation of the Suez Canal's east bank deprived them of advancewarning of an Egyptian attack, did not react to mounting evidence of. Arabintentions.

Performance of Troops. The Arabs were tough on defense but ill trained andpoorly led on offense.

The Israelis showed a depth of training and flexibility that enabled small unitsto withstand the initial shock of the Arab attack without breaking, and to recoverquickly.

Antitank Weaponry. The most effective tank killer in this war was the tank-90percent of the Arab tanks and at least 75 percent of the Israeli tanks destroyedduring the war were hit by enemy tanks.

Antitank missiles such as the Sagger, RPG-7, LAW, and TOW could becountered by appropriate tactics, although they represented a new and dangerouspresence on the battlefield.

Air Defense. The Arab air defenses prevented the Israeli Air Force fromdamaging Arab ground forces on anything like the scale seen in1967. They achievedtheir primary aim by disrupting Israeli attacks rather than by shooting down ordamaging Israeli aircraft. Israeli loss rates were actually lower than they were in1967, when the Arabs had only rudimentary air defense systems.

The Syrians destroyed or damaged Israeli aircraft at a rate two to three timesgreater than the Egyptians because the tactical situation on the Golan front forcedthe Israelis to accept greater risks.

Mobilization. The Israeli mobilization was untidy and revealed many flaws andshortages. The situation was saved by the training of the troops and by standardizedprocedures that allowed crews to be scrambled without degrading performance.Despite the problems, the Israelis delivered more combat power to the front line inless time than the plans called for.

Naval Operations. Israel's talent for tailoring its strengths to Arab weaknesseswas especially evident in naval operations during the 1973 conflict. The Israelinavy's excellent performance was a sharp contrast to the prewar complacency andoverconfidence displayed by the ground and air forces.

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCYDirectorate of Intelligence

September 1975

INTELLIGENCE REPORT

The 1973 Arab-Israeli War:

Overview and Analysis of the Conflict

Introduction

This study examines the military operations ofthe major combatants--Egypt, Syria, and Israel--duringthe October 1973 Middle East war. It is intendedto uncover indications of future force developmentsand military performance in the area. Another pur-pose is to provide a basis for considering the appli-cability of the October war experiences to forceselsewhere in the world.

The arrangement of chapters or sections is de-signed to accommodate readers interested in onlycertain aspects of the war. The commentary has beengrouped into four major sections: The Air War, TheSyrian Front, The Egyptian Front, and Combat High-lights. Within each of these, the account has beenfurther divided into subsections intended to enableeach reader to find the topic of special interestto him. Readers of the whole report will find itrepetitive to some degree because of the effort toanalyze a particular event or situation in terms ofmore than one aspect of the war. All readers areurged to begin with the Comment on Sources (page 7)and the Background and Summary of the War (page 10).

Comments and queries r ardin t report are welcome. Theymay be directed to Strategic Evaluation Center,Office of Strategic Research,


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Contents

Page

Comment on Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Background and Summary of the War . . . . . . . 10

Prelude to Another War . . . . . . . . . . . 10Opening Arab Assaults . . . . . . . . . . . 11Israeli Counterattack . . . . . . . . . . . 18

The Air War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Arab Reaction to 1967 . ........ 26Israeli Reaction to 1967 . ........ 30Arab Air Defense Systems . . . . . . . . . . 31

Measuring Effectiveness . . . . . . . . 32Another Measure of Effectiveness 35Comparison of Syrian and EgyptianPerformance . . . . .. ....... 43

Performance of Israeli Air DefenseSystem . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . 47

The Syrian Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

The Syrian Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . 52The Israeli Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . .53The Syrian Attack . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54The Southern Penetration . . . . . . . . . . 56The Northern Penetration . . . . . . . . . . 60The High Water Mark . . . . . . . . . . . . 62The Hard Road to Sa'sa' . . . . . . . . . . 64

The Sinai Front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

Application of the Lessons of 1967 . . . . . 69On the Egyptian Side . . . . . . . . . . 69On the Israeli Side . . . . . . . . . . 72

Preparations and Deployment . . . . . . . . 74The Crossing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78The Bridges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Sitzkrieg: 8-14 October . . . . . . . . . . 88Into Africa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90

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Page

Combat Highlights . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 100

Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . 100Air Defense . . . . . . . . . . . -. -. . 103Performance of the Forces . . . .... . . -. 104Tank Versus Antitank . . . . . . . . . . . 108Mobilization . . . . . . .. . - . . .- . 109Navy . . . . . . . . . . . . . .- .-.-.- .111Electronic Warfare . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

Bibliographical Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Tables

1. Growth of Arab and Israeli Air DefenseInventories, 1967-1973 . . . . . . . . . . 28

2. Israeli Aircraft Losses, by Date, byBattlefront, and by Aircraft Type,16-24 October 1973, and Loss Ratesas a Percentage of Total Sorties .... 34

3. Israeli Aircraft Losses on the EgyptianFront, 14, 15, and 17-20 October 1973 . . . 40

4. Israeli Aircraft Damaged, by Date, byBattlefront, and by Aircraft Type,6-24 October 1973, and Damage Rates asa Percentage of Total Sorties . . . . . . . 42

5. Israeli Aircraft Losses on the SyrianFront, 6-13 October 1973 . . . . . . . . . 46

6. Arab and Israeli Aircraft Losses byCause, 16-24 October 1973 . . . . . . . .. 49

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Page

Photographs

Probable Sequence of Egyptian CanalCrossing . . . . . . . . .. . .. . . -. . 14-15

Earthen Ramparts on Egyptian Side ofSuez Canal, October 1973 . . . . . . . . ..-. 17

Damage Inflicted on Egyptian SAM Sites

by Israeli Air Force, October 1973 . . . . . . 37

Egyptian Military Traffic Jamming Approaches

to Bridge Over Suez Canal, 13 October1973 . . . . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - . 39

Syrian Tank Thwarted in Effort to CrossIsraeli Barrier Ditch, October 1973 . . . . . 56

Al Firdan Sector on West (Egyptian)Bank of Suez Canal, 1971 . . . .. . . . . . . 74-75

Contrasting Battlefield Positions of

Egyptian and Israeli Forces . . . . . . . .. 84

Maps . . . . . . . - - - - - - - - - - following 118

1. Arab-Israeli War, Initial Arab Attacks,6-9 October 1973: (a) The Sinai Front,(b) The Golan Front

2. The Golan Front: Israeli Counterattacks,10-16 October

3. The Sinai Front: Israeli Counterattacks,15-24 October

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Comment on Sources*

The October war was complex and the informationavailable to analyze it is flawed and incnnleto

Thesesources oen provi e unique information o greatvalue, but are limited in quantity and scope.

* See also Bibliographical Note beginning on page 116.

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Enough has been verified about tanklosses on both sides to establish the magnitude ofthe losses and their relative number--the number ofArab hulks counted is twice the Israeli number.

F Current newsaccounts can also be unreliable because of deliberatefalsification or propagandistic intent, and becausewhat was true for one newsman at a given instant andplace is seldom true for an entire action or campaign.London Times correspondents claimed, for example, tosee pinpoint air support given by the Israeli AirForce on the Golan front, whereas information

indicates that the IAF wasalmost invisible to the Israeli ground forces therebecause it tried to avoid confronting the Syrian airdefense system. These facts are not mutually ex-clusive, but do illustrate how perceptions have varied.

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Background and Summary of the War

The essentially unending Arab-Israeli conflictsince 1948 has been marked by major flareups in 1956,1967, and 1973. The 1956 war forced Egypt to denyuse of its territory to Palestinian resistance groups.Galling though it was, the 1956 defeat of the Arabsdid not leave the sting that the 1967 engagement andthe almost total collapse of their forces did. Fromthat point on, the Egyptians and Syrians were prepar-ing constantly for a war to recoup lost territoriesand self-esteem.

Prelude to Another War

The time between the 1967 and 1973 wars fallsinto fairly distinct periods. Through early 1969,Egypt and Syria concentrated on rebuilding theirarmed forces and retraining their troops. Egypt alsopursued diplomatic means of regaining its lost ter-ritories. Syria did not, choosing to encourage Arabguerrilla movements--as long as the guerrillas didnot attack Israel from Syria often enough to provoketoo great an Israeli reaction.

In mid-1969, Egypt initiated the War of Attritionalong the Suez Canal, designed to force the Israelis toreach an accommodation. Israel, however, respondedby raising its retaliation to a level unacceptable toEgypt. As the fighting mounted in cost and intensityin early 1970, the Soviets were drawn into providingnot only vastly increased arms and air defense equip-ment, but also some 30 Soviet-manned SA-3 battalionsand five squadrons of MIG-21- fighters with Sovietpilots. Only vigorous diplomatic action by the USbrought about the August 1970 cease-fire which sta-bilized the lines in the Sinai, but which Egypt usedto install the beginnings of its canal-side air de-fense system.

The situation was manifestly unacceptable toEgypt and other Arab states, but the Arabs had nomilitary leverage to alter matters. Hence the period

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from late 1970 through mid-1973 was characterized byArab diplomatic and Palestinian guerrilla activitydesigned to put Israel under as much pressure as pos-sible. The most stark illustrations of this activitywere the killings in August 1972 at the Olympic Gamesin Munich, and the July 1973 Security Council debateon the Middle East, which increased Israel's isola-tion on the international scene.

By early 1973 the level of Arab frustration andthe preparations for war had reached a peak thatseemed to presage war by April or May. Egypt's ap-parent hope that something would emerge from theSecurity Council debate and the US-USSR summit inJune seemed to stave off the outbreak. It was duringthe summer of 1973 that the "oil weapon" seems tohave been brought up in Arab councils as a real pos-sibility. The oil-producing Arab states apparentlywere to be given a chance to show how much influenbethey could wield with their oil.

Throughout the period between the wars, prepara-tions for the next one continued. The Arabs neverthought of diplomatic and military activity as mutu-ally exclusive, but rather as complementary aspectsof a policy designed, at a minimum, to regain lostterritory. Probably no single incident crystallizedthe Arabs' decision to go to war. Rather, the com-bination of increasing confidence in their militarycapability and frustration over the failure of dip-lomatic efforts to regain lost territory seems tohave tipped the scales in favor of war.

Opening Arab Assaults

Shortly before 1400 Israeli time on 6 October1973, Syrian and Egyptian armed forces simultaneouslylaunched artillery and air strikes across the cease-fire lines. On the Syrian front these attacks wereaccompanied by tank and infantry thrusts between theIsraeli strongpoints into the Israeli-occupied GolanHeights. Because there were so few men on duty atthe time, Israeli defenses in some areas were over-

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whelmed quickly, and Israeli forces withdrew to hill-top strongpoints from which they harassed the Syriancolumns.

The Syrians pressed their attacks along two axes.The first was directed north of Al Qunaytirah towardthe Jordan River. The second attacked south of AlQunaytirah and split into two main groups, one ofwhich headed north along the Trans-Arabian Pipeline(TAPLINE). The other column struck south downthe road leading around Lake Kinneret (Tiberias).(See foldout map 1b, appended.)

While dramatic, these were not viable militaryoperations largely because all these armor columnshad insufficient infantry support and poor commandand control. They were effectively blocked within24 hours and defeated in less than 72. Syria'sfarthest known penetration was in the central sectorto about 25 kilometers (15 miles). Only one of theIsraeli strongpoints along the 1967 cease-fire linefell, and the Israeli armor forces in the area, thoughsmall and badly damaged, did not yield. At daybreakon 7 October, the Israelis hit the Syrian columnswith air strikes and freshly mobilized armor units.By midday the Syrians apparently had been stoppedand by nightfall had been pushed back in many places.Early on the 8th, the Syrians had been pushed backto the 1967 cease-fire lines in some areas south ofAl Qunaytirah. By early on the 10th the Israelishad restored virtually all the prewar border.

On the Sinai front, the Egyptian crossing of thecanal was deliberately, almost calmly, executed incontrast to the Syrians' headlong rush to take ground.Preparations had been made years before to organizeand shelter crossing forces on the west side of thecanal; roads and bridges had been built to facilitatethe movement of assaulforces from apemh a, as tothe canal Egyp-tian Chie orstatt Sa'ad-l- Din Shazli has describedthe operation in great detail, and his account is inaccord with the facts as we know them. The followingdescription is drawn largely from his account.

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It was crucial for the Egyptians to move a largenumber of troops across the canal quickly and to givethose troops protection against Israeli armor and airforces. The initial crossing was made in hundreds ofsmall boats by troops heavily supplied with antitankweapons ranging from the shoulder-fired RPG-7 to so-phisticated Sagger wire-guided missiles carried bytwo-man teams or mounted on a few BRDM-2 light armoredvehicles. Egyptian troops were also given many SA-7(Strela) small antiaircraft missiles which could befired by individual soldiers. Large amounts of artil-lery were emplaced on the west side to give firesupport to the crossing force until bridges could bebuilt to get tanks and artillery onto the Israeli-occupied side.

Long before the war, the Egyptians had built aseries of earth mounds overlooking the Israeli sideof the canal. They were thought to be no more thanobservation posts. On the outbreak of war, however,these mounds sprouted tanks and antitank units, thelatter armed with Sagger missiles carried by men orBRDM vehicles. By this means the Egyptians addedstill more antitank and covering fire to their cross-ing force. At the same time, Egyptian artilleryspotters on the mounds could look over the 40- to50-foot sand wall the Israelis had built and call inartillery fire on Israeli installations and reinforce-ments as much as five kilometers from the canal (see

drawing on page 17).

The Egyptians had also built one of the densestand most diversified air defense systems ever erectedto provide protection against the Israeli Air Force.This system consisted of dozens of SA-2, SA-3, SA-6,and SA-7 SAM units, radar-guided antiaircraft artil-lery, and conventional AAA and heavy machine guns.

The first phase of the Egyptians' three-phaseoperations plan on the west bank of the canal wasessentially completed by the end of 6 October. (seefoldout map la.) Three firm bridgeheads had beenestablished, but by nightfall Egyptian troops hadpenetrated their planned eight to ten kilometers

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across the canal in only a few areas. To acceleratepreparations against a counterattack, they used heavyferries before bridges were complete to bring in tanksand still more antitank missile units. By early eve-ning several bridges were operating, and Egyptian armorand troops were crossing in strength.

Within the first hours, the Israelis made twocostly mistakes. Their experience in the 1967 warled them to believe they could use tanks alone tofight infantry. They did not take adequate accountof the effect of antitank missiles in the hands ofnow better trained, more highly motivated Egyptiantroops. The Israelis compounded this error by sendingunaccompanied tanks to rescue the isolated garrisonsof their canal-side defensive barrier called the BarLev Line. When the Israeli tanks attacked alone on6 and 7 October, they were badly mauled. The lowpoint came on the 8th when an Israeli armored bat-talion charged into an Egyptian ambush. The unit'stanks were nearly all destroyed or damaged, and thecommander was captured.

On 6 October Israel had 293 tanks in the wholeof Sinai. Approximately half were out of commissionwithin 36 hours. By the 9th the Israelis had pumpeda total of about 700 tanks into the Sinai, but only300 were operable. Many of the others were not de-stroyed but may have been down for essential main-tenance or repair of battle damage, but it is obviousthat the Israeli armor corps was badly dented inthe first three days of the war.

The Israelis realized quickly that events hadmade their tactics obsolete, and they adopted newones designed to overcome the Sagger antitank missile.One tactic was to designate one tank in each forma-tion to watch for the launch of these missiles andto warn the others. Often this would give them timeto take cover. The Israelis also found that, if theyfired at the point of launch, they could distractthe missile controller and cause the missile to goastray, because the Sagger is wire guided and hasto be controlled until it hits its target. Anothertechnique was to fire at places likely to conceal

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(driwinq is no! to scalJ1

2 Levels

- am- Parapet

Suez Canal

567046 9-75 C A

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missile launchers, but this wasted ammunition. Inthe end, the Israelis rediscovered that the best all-around results came from using a coordinated tank-infantry team: the infantry defended the tanks againstmissile-carrying enemy infantrymen, while the tanksdefended the Israeli infantrymen against enemy tanksand provided fire support.

Israeli Counterattack

First Syria... The Israelis decided--they hadlittle real choice--to stabilize the Sinai front whileseeking first to knock Syria out of the war. Havingforced the Syrians back to the 1967 cease-fire linesby 10 October, the Israelis began a concentratedattack along the road from Al Qunaytirah to Damascus.They halted their hard-fought advance on high groundnear Sa'sa' about 30 kilometers south of Damascus,only when Syrian resistance and counterattacks madeit clear that to go farther would cost more than Is-rael was prepared to pay. (See foldout map 2.) Itwas during this drive that the Israelis met Iraqiand Jordanian counterattacks at Al Harrah thatblunted their advance in this area. Israeli actionon the Syrian front from 13 October through thecease-fire on 24 October was confined to repulsingArab counterattacks.

...Then Sinai... While the Syrian front was spot-lighted, fighting in the Sinai went into what theEgyptian commander called an "operational pause" de-signed to accomplish two things. First, the Egyptiansanticipated needing several days after crossing thecanal to consolidate their position on the east bankand prepare for the next stage of their offensive.Second, because the Egyptians anticipated sizablecounterattacks, they planned to wear down the Israeliarmored forces as much as possible. In effect thepause was to be a short war of attrition aimed atmaking the breakout from the canal easier when thetime came.

After a few days, however, it became evident thatthe Israelis were not going to cooperate. They stoppedsending their tanks against the Egyptian positions

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in blind charges and began to adopt tactics thatreduced the effectiveness of Egyptian antitank mis-siles. According to some reports, the final phase ofthe Egyptian plan was to go into effect on 14 Octoberand would consist of a drive through the Sinai passesto a north-south line running through Bi'r Jifjafah.(see map la.) The drive was to be spearheaded bythe 4th and 21st Armored Divisions--which, in fact,only began to cross the canal in strength on 12 and13 October. When the Egyptian breakout attempt cameon 14 October, however, it does not appear to havebeen a well-planned or determined attempt. It lastedone day and reportedly cost the Egyptians 200 tanks.

Because the battle of 14 October lacked the plan-ning and enthusiasm of the canal crossing itself,there is some speculation that it was designed todivert Israeli resources from the Syrian front.* Ifthat was the case, the Egyptian tactic was too latebecause the Israelis had already accomplished theirpurpose in Syria and had begun diverting troops andequipment to the Sinai in preparation for the Israelicanal crossing scheduled for the night of 15 October.

The performance of the Egyptians in the few daysbefore 14 October and on that day itself was so lack-luster that they appeared to be waiting for thesuitable moment to call for a cease-fire--somethingthey could hardly do while the Syrians were beingsoundly beaten. The Egyptians first publicly men-tioned the possiblity of a cease-fire on 15 October.Their condition, however, was a return to the linesof prewar 1967. Since the Israelis were at that verymoment preparing to turn the tables on the Egyptians,Tel Aviv failed to acknowledge the offer. The factthat the offer was made just then, however, may indi-cate that an ending of the war with the gains up to14 October in hand is what the Egyptians had in mindfrom the start.

* There is considerable ambiguity surrounding the intentions ofthe Egyptians in crossing the canal. While their plan seemsambitious, it appears they were willing to settle for relativelymodest territorial gains. Their real victory lay in crossingthe canal and holding onto some ground. This they did wellenough to alter the Middle East equation.

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...Then Africa. Between sunset on 15 Octoberand sunrise on the 16th Israeli forces successfullycrossed the canal into Egypt proper--"Africa" in theIsraeli vernacular. The Israelis had been debatingthe timing of the crossing for some time. GeneralSharon, commander of the crossing force, has said heargued for a crossing much earlier in the war. Hewas overruled in favor of the scheme adopted--to takethe Arabs in turn, holding the Egyptians in Sinaiwhile defeating the Syrians on the Golan Heights.

The crossing was aided, according to Sharon, bypreparations he had made in the years when he wascommander of the Israeli forces deployed in the Sinai.He had marked a deliberately weakened section of theIsraeli defensive wall along the canal so that it couldbe knocked down quickly to make way for a crossing.He had also prepared a protected area some distancefrom the wall where the Israelis could assemble andorganize the crossing force. The Israeli operationwhen it got under way ran into many unanticipateddelays. The roads leading to the crossing site werenarrow, unpaved tracks. They were unmarked and dif-ficult to follow at night. Moreover, the Israeliswere trying to move elements of two divisions overthese roads, causing traffic jams and confusion.Finally, the bridging equipment the Israelis wereto use was too large for the roads. Some of it hadto be preceded by bulldozers to widen the road andclear obstructions. These noncombat factors delayedthe Israeli crossing force and slowed the developmentof the Israeli operation in Africa.

On the night of the crossing, Sharon launched his143rd Armored Division at the point where the canalenters the Great Bitter Lake. (See map 3). He countedon the lake to protect his left flank while marshesand half of his division protected his right. One tankbrigade drove to the canal and turned north to clearthe crossing site and push the Egyptians back from it.The battalion of this brigade nearest the canal wasordered to capture an Egyptian bridge if possible, butthe developing fight prevented this. An airborne in-fantry brigade followed to occupy the crossing siteand establish the first bridgehead on the west side.At the same time another tank brigade was attackingdue west into the Egyptian 21st Armored and 16th

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Mechanized Divisions on the east side in order topin them down as much as possible, and to tempt theEgyptians into deploying other forces on the eastbank away from the canal. Finally, a tank brigadefollowed the paratroopers, sending one battalion oftanks across the canal on rafts early on 16 October.For several days the remainder of this brigade wastied up in beating back Egyptian attempts to closeoff the Israeli corridor to the canal.

The Egyptians, victims of poor intelligence andcommunications, did not grasp the impact of theIsraeli crossing but did not need to understand allthe details to know that Sharon's was an operationthey had to stop. In addition to armored thrustsfrom north and south, the Egyptians launched a numberof commando raids on the Israeli salient. They alsocalled down intense, virtually continuous artilleryfire and--despite Israeli AAA and fighter cover--many air strikes, which killed at least 35 Israeliengineer troops and wounded 150 more at the crossingsite alone. While never able to sever the Israeliconnection, the Egyptians were able for a day or twoto interrupt nighttime traffic to the crossing site.After daybreak the Israelis were able to clear theroad and get traffic flowing again. Within two orthree days, the Israelis had secured their crossingsite against ground attack, although the Egyptianskept some pressure on them throughout the war. Artil-lery and air strikes were continuous problems.

During this time the few square kilometers of theeast bank north and east of the Israeli crossing sitewere the scene of some of the largest and fiercest tankbattles on record--centered on the misnamed "ChineseFarm," a pre-1967 Egyptian experimental agriculturalproject using Japanese irrigation equipment. So severewas the fighting and so great the losses, the Israeliswere still clearing the wreckage three weeks after thecease-fire. South of the crossing site, Egypt's 25thArmored Brigade was ambushed before it could reachthe area and was virtually destroyed.

The intensity of these battles was a result of sev-eral factors. The target area--the crossing site--was small, there was no cover or concealment in thesurrounding terrain, both sides appreciated the im-

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portance of the engagement, and both had plenty oftanks to throw into it. In the confused melee thatcharacterized the fighting, two factors took oncritical importance--the competence of small-unitcommanders and the quality of the gunnery. Therewas little room for maneuver, and combatants were tooclosely intermingled to give the air force of eitherside room to intervene. This was the kind of combatin which the Israelis held the advantage.

The Egyptian resistance to the crossing on theeast bank of the canal was matched on a much smallerscale by individual and isolated units on the western(Egyptian) side. The Egyptians had transported thebulk of their combat forces to the east bank. On15 October there were five infantry, two mechanized,and two armored divisions there, plus two independentarmored brigades--a force, at full strength, of 80,000to well over 100,000 men. This left only five widelyspaced mechanized infantry brigades and scattered airdefense, artillery, and local security troops to defendthe west bank. Whether this was the result of a blunder,miscalculation, or gamble is not known. Only one ofthose brigades was located in the Israeli crossing area.It apparently resisted to the best of its ability butwas overwhelmed and destroyed on 16 and 17 October.

The Israeli crossing was conceived as a large-scale operation to defeat the Egyptians. The de-struction of SAM and artillery sites was a secondaryaim designed to facilitate the achievement of themain goal. But, the crossing force was enlargedslowly and incrementally from not much more than anarmored battalion on 16 October to a force of 15,000to 20,000 men and some 500 tanks by 24 October.

Caution was in order, however. The Israelis hadthrown a large portion of their Sinai strength intocrossing the canal. If the crossing force were tobecome bogged down in heavy fighting and unable todisengage, the costs could have been immense. TheEgyptian mechanized brigade less than 16 kilometersfrom the crossing site had to be neutralized beforethe exploitation of the Israeli crossing could safelyproceed.

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The southward movement out of the Israeli bridge-head did not get under way until 17 or 18 Octoberand it was carried through by the armored divisionunder General Adan. His force crossed the canal on17 October after having disengaged in the Al Qantaraharea--undetected by the Egyptians--and came south tothe crossing site in time to participate in the am-bush of the Egyptian 25th Brigade. The full weightof the Israeli drive on Suez did not develop until21 October when General Magen's armored force joinedthe move south.

The propaganda from Radio Cairo beclouded thealready confused situation. One cannot say whetherCairo's false statements were the result of ignoranceor the dictates of propaganda. On the 16th theEgyptians again offered a cease-fire based on a with-drawal to the prewar 1967 lines. Of course, theIsraelis were not interested. Egypt deprecated theIsraeli crossing, saying that seven tanks had crossedand they were being eliminated. The following day theEgyptians claimed the Israeli crossing force had beendefeated and forced to withdraw. In fact, the cross-ing force had grown to nearly a division. On the18th, Egypt was still broadcasting the same storyabout seven tanks having been forced to withdrawwhile, in reality, a second Israeli armored divisionhad begun to cross into Egypt. The Egyptians' ex-planation for their confusion is that field commandersminimized the first Israeli crossing force and failedto pass timely information. Command and control werefurther disrupted when the Egyptian division or bri-gade commander responsible for the defense of thecrossing site died of a heart attack in the earlystages of the west bank fight.

On the 19th, the Israelis claimed in public that10,000 men and some 200 tanks were operating insideEgypt. The Egyptian radio was still saying that theIsraeli crossing force had been neutralized and wasno threat. The Israelis had by then erected at leasttwo bridges across the canal and installed an airdefense system to protect them. Moreover, as theIsraeli operation succeeded in disrupting the Egyp-tion rear and destroying SAM units, the Israeli Air

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Force had greater freedom to operate. Between 18and 22 October Israeli air activity reached a peakas the Israeli Air Force took advantage of the ex-posed Egyptian forces on both sides of the canal.

The Egyptians were faced with a painful dilemma.If they withdrew forces from the east side of thecanal to cope with the Israeli incursion, they wouldgive up the territory they had started the war toreclaim. If they did not withdraw forces, they ranthe risk of losing all the forces deployed on theeast side of the canal. In fact, from 19 October on,the political factor became more and more important.Rumors, later confirmed, circulated that Secretaryof State Kissinger was in communication with Sovietleaders on a cease-fire proposal. On the 19th,Premier Kosygin returned from several days of consul-tations in Cairo. On the 20th, Secretary Kissingerarrived in Moscow.

The Israelis obviously wished to encircle alarge part of the Egyptian Army. We do not know ifthe purpose was to gain a postwar bargaining leveror to accomplish the first stage of a general Egyp-tian defeat. Even as late as 21 October, however,some senior Israelis reportedly perceived no need tocomplete the encirclement quickly before rising po-litical pressure from the great powers forced acease-fire. When the joint US-USSR cease-fire reso-lution was voted in the UN on 22 October, the Israelishad advanced barely more than halfway to the city ofSuez at the south end of the canal. Claiming Egyptiancease-fire violations, the Israelis pressed aheadand cut off the Egyptian 3rd Army and the city of Suezbefore accepting the cease-fire called for 0700 on24 October. Violations by both sides continued forseveral days as the Israelis sought to solidifytheir hold on the west side of the canal and completethe encirclement of Suez and as Egyptian 3rd Armyunits made several attempts to break out.

The question of cease-fire violations aside, thefact is that the war ended on a militarily inconclu-sive note. The Israelis had managed to place theEgyptian forces in the Sinai in a bad position, but

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the Egyptians had not yet been defeated. The Egyptianarmies maintained their organization and were stillwell equipped and prepared to defend themselves.There is little doubt they would have fought for sometime and that an Israeli effort to destroy the Egyp-tian Army would have been a costly business. Never-theless the Israelis had the tactical advantage atthat point. On the west bank they had succeeded inopening up the kind of mobile attack at which theyexcel. The Israelis had destroyed or neutralizedmost of the Egyptian air defense system on the westside of the canal, thereby freeing their air force toattack the Egyptian armies in earnest. On the Syrianfront also, the Israelis had achieved their tacticalobjectives, but the Syrian Army remained undefeated.

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The Air War

Until June 1967 the Israeli Air Force had a repu-tation as an aggressive, highly competent lightweightamong world air forces although better by a wide mar-gin than any combination of Arab air forces. Then,between the hours of 0745 and 1200 local time on5 June 1967 this lightweight executed an air campaignof unprecedented power and precision in the courseof which it destroyed the two largest Arab air forces,those of Egypt and Syria. In the following five daysthe IAF destroyed Jordan's air force and demonstratedthe destructiveness of tactical airpower used againstunprotected ground forces. By the end of the war animpression of efficacy and power had been created bythe IAF that led both Arabs and Israelis to makemistakes in military planning and judgment that werenot exposed until October 1973.

These mistakes are easily summarized. In 1967the IAF had done so many things so well, the Israelicommand concluded that the IAF could simultaneouslyprovide air defense, tactical support to ground troops,support for the navy, and strategic attack, and stillmake up for shortages of ground-based artillery.

The Arabs were so impressed that they concludedthe IAF alone had caused their humiliating defeatin 1967. Hence, they believed, if they could butfind the means to neutralize the IAF, Arab groundforces with some expansion and further training coulddeal with Israeli ground forces on acceptable terms.

Arab Reaction to 1967

In 1967 the Arabs lost a total of about 450 air-craft of all types. Most of them were destroyed onthe ground in the first hours of the war. As forother equipment, no count is reliable, but the evi-dence of damage done and the accounts of those whounderwent the attacks indicate that the IAF destroyeda large percentage of the nonarmored vehicles andequipment the Arabs lost during the war. There is

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some question about how many armored vehicles theIAF was able to destroy, but the number certainlywas not significant in terms of the outcome of thewar. The psychological impact of unopposed IAF

attacks on Arab ground forces, however, made a

considerable contribution to the speed and extentof the Arab collapse.

Arab military activity for the first two yearsafter the war was heavily devoted to replacement oflost equipment, retraining of new troops, construc-tion of passive defense measures against air attack,and the deployment of new air defense weapons. (SeeTable 1..) By mid-1971 the number of SAM battalionsdeployed in Egypt had more than doubled. Moreover,SA-3s had been received, the first ever to leaveWarsaw Pact territory. Major radar facilities hadincreased in number and many of the preexisting siteshad been expanded and improved. The AAA inventoryalso more than doubled to 2,080 guns. The number ofEgyptian MIG-21s on hand at the time more than tripledfrom 61 in 1967 to 216 in July 1971. Syria followedroughly the same course as Egypt, in that its holdings

of MIG-21s had increased from 26 to 100 in the samefour-year span. In addition, Syria had just begunto receive SA-2 equipment to make up for the totallack of SAM protection until then.

The state of things in mid-1971 was a drasticchange from the situation a year earlier, whenIsraeli air attacks in retaliation for Nasir's Warof Attrition virtually destroyed the Egyptian airdefense system.* The system in existence in mid-1971was created with direct Soviet aid. It was not takenfully under Egyptian control again until late 1972

after Sadat expelled nearly all Soviet military ad-visers from the country. The period through September

* The 1967 experience as a motivating influence on the Arab de-

fense buildup was reinforced by the Israeli Air Force's success

in turning Egypt's War of Attrition (1969-1970) against the Egyp-

tions themselves. The fact that air defenses were being expanded

before the War of Attrition indicates, however, that the 1967

war clearly played the central role.

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0O

0

0O

Table 1

Growth of Arab and Israeli Air Defense Inventories, 1967-1973 M1-

Prewar 1967a,b Mid-1971c Prewar 1973Type of Weapon Israel Syria Egypt Israel Syria Egypt Israel Syria Egypt rn

Antiaircraft

guns 550 1,100 950 800 1,500 2,080 1,000 1,900 2,750

Air defense zradars 11 10 80 d d d 20 85 360 l

O0- SAM launchers EZ-o Hawk 50 -- -- 72 -- -- 75 -- -- 0o SA-2 -- -- 200 -- 70 360 -- 75 420CD SA-3 -- -- -- -- -- 200 -- 50 220 m aQ ~ SA-6 -- -- -- -- -- 32 -- 60 400o SA-7 -- -- -- -- -- a -- 165 600 o

ID Aircraft

MIG-21s -- 26 61 -- 100 216 -- 186 326rD *~ Other Soviet N

Scc attack planes -- 39 249 -- 128 320r -- 168 275fo I Bombers 5 4 68 2 1 52f -- -- 26 N) 0

Mirages 65 -- -- 46 -- -- 61 -- 1 6 9F-4s -- -- -- 78 -- -- 99 -- -- c0A-4s -- -- -- 120 -- -- 172 -- --Other aircraft 144 -- -- 91f -- -- 22 -- 16f

Total aircraft 214 69 378 337 229 588 354 354 659

a. Source: December 1974,

b. Source: - srae i an ook, September 1966,c. Source: Arab-Israeli Handbook, July 1971,d. No figures available.e. Egypt fired a few early models of the SA-7 (Strela) shoulder-launched missiles at Israeli aircraft in 1970.

We do not know how many were available in mid-1971 but it probably was few.f. Total includes obsolescent aircraft. The Egyptians are phasing out MIG-15s and MIG-17s. 'he Israelis have

phased out Ouragans and older model Mysteres. In 1973 the Egyptians had 16 Iraqi Hawker Hunters on loan.g. One squadron of Libyan Mirages was in Egypt before the war. The aircraft were flown by Egyptian pilots under

Egyptian Air Force command.


1973, nevertheless, saw continued rapid growth ofEgypt's air defense system.

While similar increases in facilities and equip-ment.were made in Syria, the deployment pattern re-mained centered on the cities of Hims, -Latakia, andDamascus. In effect, the air defense systems underwhose protection the Arabs launched the October 1973war were built and emplaced in late 1970 and early1971. The major exceptions were the acquisition byEgypt and Syria of 25 SA-6 battalions in 1972 and

1973 and the movement in the same period of SyrianSAM units. from protecting cities to their positionsalong the Golan cease-fire line.

Through all this the Arabs expanded their groundforce holdings and put their ground troops throughintense and nearly continuous training. Before the1967 war the Egyptians and Syrians held about 1,600tanks between them. By mid-1971 they had about 2,500.And, on the eve of the October war they had almost3,800. This is a substantial increase but hardlyof the same magnitude as the effort expended on airdefense. Throughout, the Arabs made no secret of thefact that their equipment acquisitions and trainingexercises were intended to build a capability todrive the Israelis out of territory occupied in 1967.

The entire pattern of Arab training, equipmentacquisitions, and deployments between 1967 and 1973can be seen as the gradual implementation of a planto overcome the two major assets of the Israeli armedforces--tactical air and armor. This plan was basedon lessons the Arabs learned from the 1967 war, andthe main lesson learned was that the IAF had to bestopped. The Arabs recognized problems in theirground forces. That was the reason for increasesin equipment inventory and training time. But themagnitude of the increases and effort never matchedthat put into air defense. Clearly, then, the Arabsbelieved that they had found the means to neutralizethe IAF by 6 October 1973, and it is in this lightthat the effectiveness of the Arab air defense sys-tems must be judged. The systems succeeded or failedto the extent that they were able to neutralize theeffects of the IAF on the Arab forces in the field.

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Israeli Reaction to 1967

From the Israeli point of view the 1967 war hadgone almost according to plan. It had not been easy--the fighting had been hard and the casualties rela-tively high. But it had been quick, and the mainlesson it imparted to the Israelis was that theirarmed forces needed little changing. Thus, theiractivity from 1967 through 1973 was confined to main-taining acceptable equipment ratios with the Arabs,and training to retain the qualitative superiorityof Israel's forces over those of its most likelyArab opponents.

While the Arabs increased their passive means ofaircraft protection, so did the Israelis--who hadalways used aircraft shelters and camouflage to a fargreater extent because they had so few fields. Radarcoverage was improved and extended, taking advantageof the territory occupied in 1967 which gave theIsraelis more warning time and provided high groundon which to site their advance surveillance radars.Their inventory of AAA pieces was almost half againas large by mid-1971 in response to increased Arabaircraft holdings, and by October 1973 was almostdouble the prewar 1967 level. The number of Hawkunits an4 missiles increased from 50 launchers and174 missiles before the 1967 war to 75 launchersby the time of the October war. This was a substan-tial, but clearly not a crash, effort. The Israeliground-based air defense system before 1967 wasmodest, and it remained so through the October war.

The Israeli thinking was that the IAF could pro-vide the bulk of what air defense might be needed.Between 1968 and 1973 the Israelis poured the bulkof their defense effort and their money into theirair force. Over 270 F-4 Phantom and A-4 Skyhawk air-craft were purchased from the US. With this acquisi-tion of a large number of US aircraft capable ofground attack, Israel's Mirage force--61 aircraft inOctober 1973--was released to concentrate on itsprimary role of air-to-air combat. But the Israelistook care to give the IAF the capabilities to do thewide variety of jobs assigned to it without unduly

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APPROVED FOR RELEASE - CIA INFOO DATE: 29-Aug-2012

increasing the number of aircraft involved. Whilethe Israeli Air Force increased from 214 to 354 air-craft, the bomb-carrying capacity of the force wasraised to four times the earlier level.* This ca-pacity was intended to enable the force to performclose support and strategic attack missions as wellas to provide "flying artillery." Nevertheless, theratio of Egyptian and Syrian fighters to Israeli waspermitted to rise from 1.8 : 1 in 1967 to 2.8 : 1 inSeptember 1973.

On the ground, too, the Israelis were content toride with a winner. The Israeli inventory of tanksincreased from 1,250 in 1967 to approximately 1,950in 1973--a hefty figure but one reflecting no greaturgency. In fact, here again Israel allowed, per-haps for unavoidable economic reasons, a criticalequipment ratio to worsen: the Arab advantage in tanksclimbed from 1.2 : 1 to 2.0 : 1.

Evidently the Israelis believed they had a win-ning combination in relatively small but very well-trained armored formations and an air force equippedwith aircraft to perform a variety of specializedmissions--Mirages for air defense, A-4s for groundsupport and flying artillery, and F-4s for deep pene-tration, strategic missions, and the flexibility toprovide ground support or air defense as well ifneed be.

Arab Air Defense Systems

The air defense system that covered the Egyptiancrossing of the Suez Canal was essentially completeby early 1971. Both the SAM units and many alternatesites for them were so placed as to extend EgyptianSAM coverage 15 nautical miles or more into Israeli-occupied Sinai. When the October war began, theEgyptians had deployed some 30 SA-2, 20 SA-3, and10 SA-6 firing units in a belt extending the lengthof the canal and some 30 to 40 nautical miles west

* Aircraft assigned to operational squadrons.

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Approved for Release: 2012/09/04APPROVED FOR RELEASE - CIA INFOQ DATE: 29-Aug-2012]

of it in the triangle formed by the cities of AlQantarah, Cairo, and Suez. This represented a changefrom the situation that had existed since 1971 onlyin that the SA-6 units were moved from positionsaround airfields some 45 nautical miles west of thecanal to positions within less than five miles of it.Interspersed among the SAMs were over 2,000 AAApieces, many of them organic to combat formations inthe area and many of them radar controlled. Alto-gether it was the most diversified air defense systemever constructed with the exception of that built inSyria.

Diversity is an important feature of the airdefense systems built in Egypt and Syria. The Arabshad weapons designed to provide overlapping coverageto altitudes over 60,000 feet (SA-2). This meantthere was no airspace over the battlefield withinwhich the IAF could operate free of threat. Theelectronic systems associated with these weapons op-erated in many different bands of the radio spectrum.This meant that no fighter could carry enough gearfor electronic countermeasures (ECM) to defend itselfagainst all threats. Moreover, the Israelis had noECM gear to cope with some Arab systems such as theSA-6. Thus, despite the fact that the IAF had learnedhow to cope with some air defense weapons rather well--the SA-2, for example, constituted little threat--theIAF had to recognize that the sheer size and varietyof weapons it would face over Arab territory wouldgreatly hinder the accomplishment of its ground sup-port mission and threaten high losses.

Measuring Effectiveness

In this and the following section the Egyptianand Syrian air defense systems are examined from twopoints of view--first, in the usual way, by countingthe number of aircraft they shot down; second, in amuch more general way, according to the amount ofdamage the systems were able to prevent the IAF frominflicting on the Arab ground forces. The firstmeasure concentrates on the attrition factor whilethe second attempts to reflect the degradation ineffectiveness a heavy air defense environment may

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cause in an attacking air force. The higher attri-tion rates the IAF suffered on the Syrian front seemto have resulted more from the differences in thetactical situation on the ground rather than fromany difference in capability between the Syrian andEgyptian air defense systems.

The coarsest measure of the effectiveness of anair defense system is the number of aircraft shotdown. On the Egyptian front, the IAF lost 51 air-craft during the October war. The Israelis flewabout 8,400* sorties against Egyptian targets, mean-ing that the Egyptians shot down 0.61 IAF aircraftout of each 100 sorties flown (see Table 2)--that is,0.61 percent of the total number of sorties endedwith the loss of the aircraft.** This is less thanhalf the loss rate the IAF suffered in the 1967 war,during which the Israelis lost 46 aircraft altogether,the great majority on the Egyptian front. A break-down of IAF losses by front is not available for thewhole 1967 war. On the first day of the 1967 war,however, the Egyptians downed 15 Israeli aircraft.On the first two days of the 1973 war, the Egyptians

* The IAF flew 75 percent of its ground attack sorties againstthe Egyptians and the remainder against the Syrians. Lackingbetter information, we assume that the IAF flew its air defense(aerial combat or patrol) sorties in the same proportion. Otherassumptions could be made, i.e., Israeli air defense sortiescould be distributed in the same proportion as Arab air forcesorties--58 percent Egyptian and 42 percent Syrian. The latterassumption was discarded both because the connection betweenArab ground attack sorties and Israeli air defense sortiesis tenuous at best and because the end result is not greatlydifferent. Given ambiguities in the data, however, the de-tails of the analysis which follows should be taken as illus-trative rather than precise. We believe nonetheless thatthe results accurately reflect the trend and yield usefulinsights.** Throughout this paper the loss rate is given as the numberof aircraft lost per 100 sorties flown--or, more convention-ally stated, in aircraft lost as a percent of the total numberof sorties.

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Approved for Release: 2012/09/04APPROVED FOR RELEASE - CIA INFOLI DATE: 29-Aug-2012

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downed 14 Israeli aircraft.* Bear in mind that theEgyptians had nearly three times the AAA and morethan six times the SAMs in 1973 and the advantage ofprior warning and deployment.

In the first four days of the war--through 9 Oc-tober--the Egyptians shot down 32 IAF aircraft andthe Israelis had flown only 1,897 sorties, a lossof 1.69 percent. The reason the loss rate was somuch higher in the first days of the war was thatthe IAF was preoccupied with trying to cut the Egyp-tian bridges across the canal. Since the Egyptiansanticipated this reaction, they sited heavy air de-fense protection within range of the bridges. On10 October the IAF gave up trying to hit the bridges,and its loss rate through the remainder of the war fellto a very low 0.29 percent. In those first days theIsraelis made virtually no attempt to suppress theair defense system, concentrating instead on tryingto halt the flow of Egyptian men and materiel acrossthe canal. Yet even on the worst day, 7 October,the IAF loss rate was 2.86 percent, considerablybelow the peak rate of the 1967 war, which was 3.9percent on the first day. In terms of aircraft shotdown, the performance of the Egyptian air defensesystem in October 1973 was dismal. Despite itsenormous increase in size, despite its advance warn-ing, despite its increased sophistication, and de-spite the fact that the IAF did not attack it in forcefor the first several days, the Egyptian defenderswere barely able to match the performance of their1967 predecessors.

Another Measure of Effectiveness

On the other hand, aircraft shot down--in eitherabsolute numbers or percentages--may not be the bestor most instructive measure of the performance ofthe Egyptians. The effectiveness of air defensecould also be measured by the extent of damage ahostile air force is prevented from inflicting onthe force the system is protecting. There is little

* The first two days--6 and 7 October--are used because halfthe first day had lapsed before fighting started.

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Approved for Release: 2012/09/04APPROVED FOR RELEASE - CIA INFOQ DATE: 29-Aug-2012|

direct information, but it seems clear that in pre-venting damage the 1973 Egyptian air defense systemattained considerable success. Evidence includes

the continued functioning of the bridges and changesin tactics and weapons that resulted in less accurate

and effective Israeli air support.

The heavy volume of AAA and SAM fire must have

considerably degraded the accuracy and effect of IAFstrikes.that the large volume of fire used by the Egyptians

when in contact with Israeli ground forces seemed to

double whenever an Israeli aircraft came into the area.

Evidence so far available from photography canbe misleading. Seldom do photographs obtained in

1973 reveal roadsides choked with burnt vehicles as

1967 photographs did. Such destruction as is evidenttends to be spread out and discrete. This is because

the Egyptians were neither retreating nor advancing,and the IAF had to hit them where they were deployed-- in battle order, spread across the landscape. In

scattered places, however, the weight of IAF strikeswas plain Most of Bur

Fu'ad, opposite Port Said, was destroyed. The Israelis

made a concentrated effort there apparently to sup-

port Fort Budapest, the northernmost strongpoint of

the Bar Lev Line and the only one to survive the war

intact. This strongpoint was located on a narrow

neck of land just a few miles east of Bur Fu'ad.The Egyptian forces attacking it moved through thecity and along constricted routes of advance toreach it. It appears that IAF support was important,if not vital, to the defense of this point.

The Israeli bombing of Port Said/Bur Fu'ad was

due partly to[ reports of Scudmissiles deployed in this vicinity, where they wouldhave been within range of Tel Aviv. In addition,certain point targets, such as SAM sites and thebridges, show considerable evidence of IAF strikes,indicating that the IAF was able to penetrate theair defense zone for particular purposes. Cer-tainly, however, the IAF pilots could not loiterover the battlefield looking for targets of oppor-tunity or spotting them for artillery units as they

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Aro

Approved for Release: 20 12/09/04


did in 1967. This represented a real advantage forEgypt due almost entirely to its ground-based airdefense system. As a result, targets inviting IAFstrikes--such as military convoys 'ammed at the ap-roaches to canal-crossing points

-often went unscathed.

Undoubtedly, the Egyptian ground forces werespared much damage because the Israelis were reluctantto operate over Egypt's main air defense zone. Thebulk of the IAF's strike sorties wer& flown along thebattle lines or against targets deeper inside Egyptbehind the main defended area. Strikes into the in-terior of the defended zone were concentrated in asingle week, late in the war. In the final few daysof the war a large number of air strikes were flownin support of the Israeli drive to encircle Suez andthe 3rd Army after many SAM units had been destroyedby Israeli ground forces. The IAF had to contendwith the variety of air defense systems deployedthroughout the area, but the number of 'air defenseunits--hence the degree of risk involved--was con-siderably higher in the interior of the defendedarea than it was along the periphery.

The IAF staged major raids inside the defendedarea only on 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, and 20 October. Inthe course of these raids the IAF lost seven F-4s,four A-4s, and two Mirages--a quarter of the aircraftlost in the whole war on the Egyptian front. Thefigures (see Table 3, page 40) indicate that Israelicaution was well advised. The F-4 was the primarystrike weapon against SAM sites because it could carryboth larger ordnance loads and more ECM than the A-4.The A-4s and Mysteres were used primarily for closesupport. Using their aircraft in this way the Israelisincurred losses much greater than average among theirF-4s. In the more permissive environment created bythe SAM strikes and the ground attacks on the airdefense system, however, the Israelis were able tomake greater use of their lower performance attackaircraft. Over 57 percent of the total Mysteresorties flown on the Egyptian front occurred duringthese six days. In addition the A-4 losses werebelow average for the war, and much lower than mighthave been expected.

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Approved for Release: 2012/09/04APPROVED FOR RELEASE - CIA INFO DATE: 29-Aug-2012]

Table 3

Israeli Aircraft Losses on the Egyptian Front,14, 15, and 17-20 October 1973

Loss rate (%) forStrike whole war on Expected

Aircraft Losses sorties Loss rate (%) Egyptian front lossesa

A-4 4 1,066 0.38 0 .8 5 1 9

'-4 7 449 1.56 0.67 3

Mirage 2 34 0 0.24 0

Mystere 0 335 0 0.42 at least i

Total 13 1,884 0.69 0.61 12

,a. Applying Egyptian front loss rate for whole war to sorties flown in this period.1. A-4s flew only strike sorties in the October war.:. F-4s flew defense and strategic attack as well as strike missions. All F-4s

lost on the Egyptian front after 11 October were engaged in strike sorties.

d. Mirage losses occurred only during air defense sorties. These were mostly in

the period 14-20 October, reflecting increased Egyptian Air Force reaction

late in the war as the air defenses along the canal were worn down.

-A 4 R -



Some days saw higher losses than others. On 18October six IAF aircraft were lost out of only 263strike sorties flown. The next day, however, noaircraft were lost out of 357 strike sorties flown.The contrast is probably due to differences in tar-gets attacked and tactics employed.

The Egyptian air defense system continued to bedangerous throughout the war despite IAF efforts toneutralize it. In the last three days of the war,for example, no Israeli aircraft were lost, but sixwere damaged (see Table 4). Throughout the war thepotential of the system to inflict losses forced theIAF' to use tactics and types of ordnance that wereless than optimal. The Israelis found that if theystayed above 10,000 feet they could cope with theEgyptian air defense weapons. At that height theywere above the effective range of AAA, their ECM andtactics against the SA-2 and SA-3 were effectiveenough to make the risks of operating at that alti-tude acceptable, and their pilots had sufficientwarning of-an SA-6 launch to take evasive action.However, the combination of altitude and evasivemaneuvering severely degraded the accuracy of IAFweapons delivery. The effect of the Arab air defensesystem on ordnance loads shows in the almost totalabsence from this war of napalm drops and strafing--tactics which require long, low, extremely vulnerableapproaches to the target for optimum effectiveness.They would have been extremely effective againstEgyptian troops and soft vehicles deployed in therelatively crowded areas of the Egyptian bridgeheadsin Sinai, especially in the first 24 to 36 hours.

The survival of the 3rd Army as a fighting forceis an indirect indication of the ability of theEgyptian air defense system to protect its groundforces. In the last four days of the war the Israelislost one aircraft and had six others damaged and theaverage daily level of strike sorties was higherthan almost any other four-day- period of the war.These Israeli strikes were concentrated almost ex-clusively on the 3rd Army area, including that partof it on the east side of the canal. When the warended that part of the army consisted of some ele-ments of one armored division (the 4th) and the

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Approved for Release: 2012/09/04APPROVED FOR RELEASE - CIA INFOL] DATE: 29-Aug-2012 ,-

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remnants of two infantry divisions, plus an armoredbrigade.* Though mauled in the fighting, these unitsretained their organization and ability to fight withsome 200 operable tanks and associated combat andsupport elements. It seems likely that the AAA heldby the units in the Sinai and the SAM coverage ex-tended over the area from the west side of the canalcombined to help prevent the IAF from inflicting thewidespread damage that characterized the 1967 war.

The story was quite different on the west sideof the canal over the area occupied by Israeli groundforces. In the final four days the IAF devoted con-siderable sorties to supporting the Israeli drive tosurround Suez, and it often used a tactic in which asmall Israeli ground unit would pin down an Egyptianunit with fire and call in an IAF air strike. Thisminimized Israeli casualties and allowed the bulk ofIsraeli forces to continue the drive south. The IAFwas able to make this tactic work, because the Israeliforce on the west bank had knocked out many SAM andother air defense units. In this lighter air defenseenvironment the IAF apparently was able to provideexcellent ground support over at least part of theIsraeli enclave west of the canal.**

Comparison of Syrian and Egyptian Performance

The Israelis lost the same number of aircraft (51)on each front, but the loss rate on the Syrian frontwas three times as high as on the Egyptian front,primarily because the situation facing Israeli groundforces on the Golan forced the IAF to take greaterrisks there. The Egyptians, moreover, had some 130SAM battalions and some 2,750 AAA guns, whereas theSyrians had only about 37 SAM battalions (11 SA-2,11 SA-3, and 15 SA-6) and 1,900 AAA guns. This indi-

* By 20 October most of the 4th Armored Division had withdrawnacross the canal, where it helped defend the city of Suez whenIsraeli forces surrounded, but did not occupy, it on 23 and24 October.** In this, the Israelis were helped by the weakness of theSAM deployment opposite their crossing point and west of theGreat Bitter Lake.

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cates that the air defense system on the Syrian frontwas much more effective than that along the SuezCanal. Of the possible explanations, equipment dif-ferences can be ruled out because both Arab statesused the same types of SAMs and AAA weapons. Dif-ferences in crew training are also unlikely becausethe Egyptian and Syrian systems both were essentiallydesigned and installed with Soviet advice and Soviet-trained manpower,* and other evidence indicates nosignificant difference between th'e two systems interms of training activity or competence in combat.

Two factors, however, do seem to have been verydifferent on the Golan front and could account forthe higher losses. First, the battlefield area de-Iended by the Syrian SAM system was smaller--about1,800 square nautical miles, as compared with 3,700sq nm for the Egyptian system. Second, and more im-portant, the tactical situation in the ground cam-paign was very different. Initially, the Syrianspushed harder and deeper into Israeli-occupied ter-ritory than Egypt did, and the Syrian attack wasmuch closer to Israeli population centers. TheIsraeli command, therefore, decided it had to givepriority to defeating the Syrians while the Egyptianswere only to be contained until forces could be freedfrom the Golan front to deal with them. Air powerwas a major element in this strategy, and the rolethe IAF had to play forced it to accept greater ca-sualties.

Until the Golan front was stabilized, the IAFconcentrated its strikes along the 1967 cease-fireline and SAM units immediately behind it. The over-all Israeli aims in the first days of the war wereto separate the Syrian tanks from their infantry andlogistic support and to interdict and harass lines ofcommunication deeper in Syria. While Syrian armor

* At the time of the war Syria had about 350 Soviet advisersworking with its air defense forces. The Egyptians had a total

of 200 advisers, most of them probably not involved in air de-fense. This may have made some contribution to Syrian effec-tiveness, though we cannot calculate how much.

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forced its way past the Israeli positions along thefrontier, the bulk of Syrian infantry and other sup-port units could not. According to Israeli accounts,the IAF figured importantly in maintaining the sepa-ration of the two. By so doing, the IAF helped theIsraeli ground forces in their effort to restore theprewar boundaries quickly and go into the offensive.In fact, the Syrian attack was blunted within 24 hours,and the initiative had passed to the Israelis within72 hours.

But the IAF paid. Its loss rates on the Syrianfront through 13 October were the highest of the war(see Table 5). After 13 October both the numberof strike sorties flown and the number of aircraftlost fell precipitously. By the end of 13 Octoberthe IAF had lost over 84 percent of the aircraft itwas going to lose on this front, had incurred over96 percent of the aircraft damage it was to experi-ence there, and flown over 84 percent of the strikesorties it was going to fly over Syria.

These figures show that the IAF could not breakdown the Syrian air defense systems. For all itsefforts the IAF could only provide the necessary mini-mum of support to its ground force without establish-ing a zone where it was relatively free to operate.In comparison, by the time the IAF had incurred 80percent of its losses and 81 percent of its aircraftdamage on the Egyptian front, it had flown only 54percent of its strike sorties, indicating a consid-erably eased air defense environment in the finalweek of the war.

The significant difference in the situationsfacing the IAF is shown by the fact that on the Egyp-tian front one SAM site was struck for every 116 strikesorties flown, while on the Syrian front one SAM sitewas struck for every 70 sorties flown. In Syriathere was much less chance to hit worthwhile targetswithout exposure to SAM fire. Hence, proportionatelymore SAM strike missions were flown. In strikes onEgypt the IAF could avoid the SAMs, but the IAF'smission in Syria forced it to operate in high riskareas.

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Table 5

Israeli Aircraft Losses on the Syrian Front,6-13 October 1973

Loss rate (%)Strike for whole war Expected

Aircraft Losses sorties Loss rate (%) on Syrian front lossesa

A-4 21- 916 2.29 2.35 21

N- 14 568 2.46 1.74 10

Mirage 6 15 0" 0 .8 5b 0

Mystere 2 42 4.76 3.41 at least i

Total 43 1,541 2.79 1.80 28

a. Applying Syrian front loss rate for whole war to sorties flown in this period.

b. No Mirages were lost during strike sorties.

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The Syrian air defense system was more effectivethan the Egyptian in terms of shooting down Israeliaircraft, so it probably was as effective in pre-venting IAF damage to Syrian forces. Isolated IAFsuccesses occurred when the IAF was able to show someof its 1967 style. One of its victims was a Syrianartillery convoy caught on the road and almost totallydestroyed. This was a rare exception. Though the IAFhelped maintain the separation between Syrian infantryand armor units in the first two days of the war, ithad no major impact on the subsequent ground fightingon the Golan front. Its major successes against Syriawere the raids on infrastructure targets such as oildepots and electrical generating plants. The stub-born survival of the Syrian air defense networkmirrors the. slow, grudging giving of ground beforesuperior force that characterized the retreat of theSyrian Army before the Israeli drive toward Damascus.Indeed, there probably was considerable interactionbetween the ground and air defense forces that madethe endurance of both possible.

Performance of Israeli Air Defense System

Primary responsibility for Israel's air defenselay with the IAF, which controls all air defenseunits. The Israelis deployed about 12 Hawk battalionsof six launchers each, as well as 900 to 1,000 AAApieces. The Israeli campaign against the Arab airforces took three forms: ground-based air defenseagainst Arab aircraft intruding into Israeli-con-trolled airspace, aggressive patrolling to seek air-to-air combat, and air attacks on Arab airfields.The air activity was limited and not successful toany significant extent because of the Arabs' hardshelters for their aircraft. Although the IAF didbomb the runways of a number of airfields, the dam-age was easily repaired. The IAF did not press acampaign to keep any airfield closed.

We do not have enough information to judge thesuccess of the Israeli Air Force in interceptingArab aircraft. The IAF claims to have shot down atleast 14 Egyptian helicopters as they attempted to

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carry commandos into the Sinai interior in the firstdays of the war. IAF aircraft were also heavily en-gaged in keeping Egyptian aircraft away from theIsraeli canal-crossing site.

The main burden of defense over Israeli-occupiedterritory fell on Hawk and AAA units. The Israelidata indicate that Hawks shot down 22 Arab aircraftin the course of 32 engagements during the war. Thisvery high success rate was due to the high state ofIsraeli crew training and maintenance and to the ab-sence of ECM and lack of skillful tactics on the partof the Arab attackers. Israeli AAA crews accountedfor 78 Arab aircraft losses (see 2able 6). An indi-cation of the intensity of the Egyptian air assaulton the Israeli canal crossing site is the claim that25 Egyptian aircraft were shot down while attackingit--nine by Israeli Major General Sharon's head-quarters group.

One cause of the relatively high Arab losses tothe Israeli ground-based air defense system appar-ently was that the Arab air forces flew their missionswithout taking as many precautions to avoid heavilydefended areas as the Israelis did. They also didnot seem to vary their tactics as much as the Israelisdid to take account of the capabilities of variousIsraeli weapon systems. While thir losses were highas a result, the Arab air forces were able to inflictsignificant casualties on the Israelis. At least twoHawk sites and two 175mm gun batteries were damagedby Egyptian air attacks--one of the gun batteriesquite heavily. The Egyptians were also able to dam-age an Israeli tank repair depot, disrupting thatvital work. In a survey of 2,900 out of the approx-imately 8,150 combat casualties suffered by theIsraelis during the war, 266 were caused by Arab airaction. This included 76 killed.

A peculiarity of the Israeli air defense systemis that the IAF controls all antiair units as wellas all aircraft. This makes for a very tight andresponsive control, but the burden on the IAF com-mand and control structure showed. One minor butillustrative example was an order to an IAF aircraft

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Table 6

Arab and Israeli Aircraft Losses by Cause,6-24 October 1 9 7 3 a

Cause of aircraft loss Israeli losses Arab losses

Air combatAir-to-air weapons 3 261Otherb 0 73

3 334

Ground-based systemSAM, crew-served 40c 22'SAM, man-portable 40AAA 31 78SAM/AAA 6 0

81 100

MiscellaneousTechnical failure 9 0Other 6 221Unknown 10 59

25 81

Total 109 515

a. Includes losses of noncombat aircraft.b. Such as flying into the qround, premature ejection, or other pilot error.c. Losses to SA-2, SA-3, or SA-6 missiles.d. Losses to Hawk missiles.e. Losses to sA-7.

f. Destroyed on the ground.

e

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to deliver a close support strike when it was loadedto drop propaganda leaflets. A more serious commandand control problem is revealed by a survey of 843Israeli tank commanders and crewmen: a total of 118men, 14 percent of them, stated they had been attackedby friendly aircraft.

The IAF's greatest advantage relative to the Arabair forces was, and still is, in air-to-air combat.Air-to-air combat destroyed 334 Arab aircraft of alltypes, Most of this com-bat occurred over Egypt. There is some conflict overIAF losses in aerial combat. One IAF F-4 was lost toEgyptian MIGs and two were lost over Syria. ThreeMirages were lost as a result of the subsequent fail-ure of repairs to damage incurred in aerial combat.Assuming the loss of six aircraft, the IAF's air-to-air kill ratio was almost 56 to 1--better than thekill ratio of 48 to l that obtained between the 1967and 1973 wars. The main reasons for the disparity inperformance between Arab and Israeli pilots are theexacting training of IAF air and ground crews andtheir higher levels of technical proficiency. Thetechnical advantage shows in the fact that 176 ofthe 261 Arab aircraft destroyed by air-to-air weaponswere shot down by missiles. This is in marked con-trast to the 1967 war, when few air-to-air missileswere used and none was credited with a kill. Of theapproximately 440 Arab aircraft destroyed in the 1967war, only 60 to 70 were lost in aerial combat. Overhalf of the AAM shoot-downs in 1973 were achievedwith an Israeli-built missile. The evidence andIsraeli assessments indicate that the performance ofthe Arab pilots in 1973 showed no improvement over1967. It is noteworthy, however, that the Arabsshowed no reluctance to engage in combat once air-borne as they had in 1967.

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The Syrian Front

Strategically, the Israelis gave first priorityto the Syrian front because Arab gains there wouldhave had an immediate adverse effect on Israel evenif the Syrians were prevented from occupying anyterritory inside Israel's pre-1967 borders. Theprospect of Syrian forces regaining the Golan Heightsfrom which they could resume shelling Israeli settle-ments was intolerable to Israel.

The somber Israeli reaction to what was a clearvictory is due to several factors whose full importis still--almost two years later--only slowly becomingclear. Israel's confidence in its warning system wasdemolished. Despite steps taken to reinforce theSyrian front in the week before the war, Israeli forcesthere were grossly inadequate considering the threat.The performance of the Syrian soldier came as a shock--though it should not have--driving home the pointthat Arabs could learn to fight and would do so. Moreimportant than these, however, are two nonmilitaryfactors in the Israeli reaction to the Syrian attack.The first is political. Wars are fought to obtainsome political end. Syria's purpose was to recapturethe Golan area if possible, but at least to forceIsrael to reconsider holding Syrian territory indef-initely, and, in this, Syria succeeded despite itsrelatively poor military performance. Secondly,in the first 24 hours of the war Israel had a glimpseof its mortality. It seemed that the Syrians weregoing to drive the Israeli Army off the Heights. Forthe first time in its national existence Israel wasconfronted with the real possibility that it couldlose a war, with all the terrors that this impliedand all the memories that were reawakened. No con-ceivable Israeli victory could have wiped out thememory of those first 24 hours.

The Golan fighting reconfirms the supreme impor-tance of good small-unit leadership, the value ofsolid command and control, the primacy of qualityover quantity, the great difficulty of managingmultiservice operations, and the even greater dif-ficulty of mounting multinational operations.

f

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Syrian Deployment

Since the 1967 war the Syrians had deployed thebulk of their army between the cease-fire line andDamascus. The orientation of some small units towardJordan was a relatively minor distraction, with theexception of the September 1970 invasion of Jordanprecipitated by King Husayn's repression of thePalestinian militants. In the years preceding the1973 war the normal case saw the cease-fire linemanned by battalion-size elements of three Syrianinfantry divisons--from north to south, the 7th,9th, and 5th (see foldout map 1b). Two armoreddivisions--the 1st and 3rd--and three indepen-dent armored brigades were deployed over a widecircle around Damascus. While this was the generaloutline there was a large degree of variation. Intimes of tension, which were common, the units alongthe border would be reinforced and routinely largeror smaller units would be rotated through trainingcycles at training areas in the desert east ofDamascus.

As the war drew nearer--from around 10 Septemberon--the Syrian deployment underwent a drastic changeas more and more troops were moved to the border posi-tions. Whereas each infantry division might normallyhave only a battalion or two in the front line posi-tions, by early October each division had two infantrybrigades up front with its mechanized and armor bri-gades close behind. Artillery and air defense forceswere also deployed to positions closer to the border.In addition, the 9th and 5th Divisions, south of AlQunaytirah, were each assigned one of the indepen-dent armored brigades to help in their intendedbreakthrough. The two armored divisions were movedout of their barracks, as was the other independentarmored brigade. This brigade, equipped with T-62tanks, was called the Assad Force.

The Syrian plan was to make two main attacks.The primary effort would be in the south, where the9th and 5th Divisions would attack simultaneouslyalong a six-kilometer front centered on Ar Rafid.This force would be backed by the 1st Armored Division

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and two independent armored brigades. The secondaryeffort would be made in the north by the 7th InfantryDivision backed up by the 3rd Armored Division andthe Assad Force brigade. The route of advance forthese units in the north would be through a smallgap between two hills four or five kilometers northof Al Qunaytirah. Altogether the Syrians assembledapproximately 950 tanks, some 600 to 700 major artil-lery pieces, and about 70,000 men for the initialassaults.

The Israeli Deployment

Against this force the Israelis would normallyhave had one infantry and one armored brigade--aforce of approximately 5,000 men, 100 tanks, and 50major artillery pieces. These forces, moreover,would have been spread thinly along the border in 15fortified, hilltop outposts, each with one to threetanks and a company or less of infantry, depending onthe local situation. The mobile reserve for thisline was provided by the remainder of the armoredbrigade based at Kafr Naffakh a few kilometers south-west of Al Qunaytirah. Times were obviously notnormal in late September so a hasty reinforcementwas ordered. The 7th Regular Armored Brigade, basedat Beersheba in the Negev Desert, was ordered to themountains of the Golan. Its personnel were flownnorth and took possession of Centurion tanks fromreserves in northern Israel. The first battalionarrived on the Golan on 3 October. The last bat-talion arrived two hours before the war started on

.6 October.

With the arrival of the 7th Brigade and its 105tanks, the Israelis had it, the 188th Regular ArmoredBrigade with 76 operating Centurions, and the Alexan-droni Regular Infantry Brigade--a total of 181 tanks,about 7,500 men, and 50 major artillery pieces. The7th was assigned responsibility for the area northof the road from Al Qunaytirah to the Benot Ya'aqovBridge, while the 188th took the area lying to thesouth. The Alexandroni Brigade was scattered alongthe outpost line and strongpoints over the whole

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territory. Because the 7th arrived late, it wasclustered close to Kafr Naffakh 13 kilometers orless from the point at which the Syrian 7th Divisionwas due to penetrate. The defensive system adoptedby the Israelis on the Golan was, conceptually, simi-lar to the system used along the Suez Canal--a stringof lightly manned fortified positions along the cease-fire line, with mobile armor concentrations in reserve.

The Syrian Attack

The Syrian attack got under way a little before140'0 local time. The hour was chosen in a compromisebetween the Egyptian and Syrian commands. The Egyp-tians wanted to attack in the late afternoon whilethey had enough daylight to get a substantial numberof men across but with a long night coming soonenough to build their brigades and cross heavy equip-ment in darkness. The Syrians would have preferreda morning attack with the sun in the Israelis' eyesand a long day in which to make their initial gainsand with nightfall before Israeli reserves could beginto arrive in strength. The compromise on 1400 savedthe Syrians from having to attack with the sun intheir eyes, while giving the Egyptians most of what

they wanted.

The attack was preceded and accompanied by aheavy Syrian artillery barrage and around 100 strikesorties by the Syrian Air Force. In both cases thetargets were preselected and were bombarded withoutregard to effect and other activity. Israeli troopssoon learned to avoid paved areas and the hard sur-faces of roads since the Syrians seemed to have pre-targeted these and could quickly bring fire to bearon them. On unanticipated targets, however, theSyrians had mixed luck. Via an extensive direction-finding and Comint network, the Syrians were able todetect and target Israeli units quickly and well.But the accuracy and effectiveness of the artillery:fire which followed were well below par. As a con-sequence, the Israelis were able to neutralize muchof Syria's offensive punch by frequently moving theirheadquarters and artillery units, and by curbing theirown communications.

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Approved for Release: 2012/09/04APPROVED FOR RELEASE - CIA INFOQ DATE: 29-Aug-2012)

The initial assault on the ground was carriedoff by the armored battalions of the infantry brigades.These units had been specially trained to overcomethe nearly continuous Israeli border barrier--a sand-wich composed of antitank minefields on both sides ofan antitank ditch five meters wide by two meters deep.The excavated soil was piled along the Israeli side ofthe ditch to make a berm more than two meters high.This was intended, of course, to hinder a crossingforce, but, ironically, it also provided some protec-tion for the force as it approached the barrier.

The Syrian tactic was to form barrier-crossinqunits, each consisting of a tank with a mine-clearingroller followed by a bridge-laying tank. These wereaccompanied by eight or ten tanks and a company or soof infantry in APCs. The roller would clear a paththrough the minefield to the edge of the ditch, thenreverse along its own tracks to allow the bridgelayer to come in and bridge the ditch. The layerwould then back out and the roller tank would re-trace the path, cross the bridge, and clear a paththrough the minefield on the other side. That wasthe plan, and it occasionally worked.

Not infrequently, however, the antimine rollerwould snap off when the tank hit the ground comingoff the far side of the bridge. In that case thetank would keep going until it was disabled andother tanks would just follow each other's tracksuntil a path was eventually cleared. Also, the loosesoil of the berm, and the fact that the resulting up-ward tilt of the assault bridges made for a slow andunstable crossing, often toppled a Syrian tank intothe ditch (see photograph, next page) . The Syrianswere further hindered by a minefield on the Israeliside of the ditch which had been installed onlyseveral days before the war. The Syrians' perfor-mance, nevertheless, shows the willingness of theirtank crews to take chances and make sacrifices.

According to information -__from captured documents, the Syrians planned tomake about 30 crossings of the ditch in the openingassault. In fact only about 11 were made. Eventhis limited success was made possible primarily bycontinuous artillery fire on Israeli positions and

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Syrian Tank Thwarted in Effort to Cross Israeli Barrier DitchOctober 1973

the covering fire of the tanks and infantry of theditch-crossing task force. Without these the Israeliswould have taken a much higher toll of the Syriantanks from their hilltop positions. During the night,however, the Syrians brought in additional equipment,including bulldozers, to clear and fill crossingsites along the ditch. By morning the Syrians hadexpanded the number of their crossing sites in alimited number of areas, and at first light on 7 Octo-ber the Israelis had to contend with large units ofSyrian armor operating behind their positions in thesouthern Golan and heavy pressure all along the line,especially north of Al Qunaytirah.

The Southern Penetration

One of the accepted principles of military tacticsis that concentration of superior force at a chosenpoint is the surest route to success. Of the Arabarmies the Syrians were the only ones to use this prin-

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ciple even some of the time. Their southern thrustwas their most successful one and the one in whichthey came closest to applying the principle. The 9thDivision north and the 5th Division just to the southattacked in concert as planned across the six-kilo-meter front centered on Ar Rafid. The leading ele-ments of both divisions quickly penetrated Israeli-occupied territory, bypassing the strongpoints intheir path. Before nightfall they had reached theroad paralleling the 1967 cease-fire line in the areaand had substantial numbers of troops behind theIsraeli defense line.

Once on this road, however, the divisions dis-sipated their momentum by spreading out. The 5thdrove straight ahead and also turned south along theroad, rapidly overrunning several Israeli settlements.By daybreak on 7 October the Syrians in this sectorhad advanced over 15 kilometers past Ramat Magshimimand some eight to ten kilometers westward toward theheights overlooking Lake Kinneret. The 9th Divisionturned north along two primary routes: one followedthe road toward Al Qunaytirah; the other followed thepath of the TAPLINE, which runs northwestward acrossIsraeli-occupied Golan.

This drive penetrated the weakest part of theIsraeli line. The main defense in the area wasmade up of the understrength and scattered tanks ofthe 188th Armored Brigade. Paradoxically, however,the scattering of its tanks may have saved both thebrigade and the Israeli hold on the Golan. If the188th had been deployed as a compact unit it mighthave been overrun or shattered by the initial Syrianrush. As it happened, small groups of Israeli tanksmaintained their organization and conducted a seriesof holding actions, each of which by constant re-sistance sapped the strength of the Syrian forces,which were also scattered by now. The bypassedIsraeli strongpoints harassed the Syrian units pass-ing by on the roads beneath them. The Syrians werelargely held to the roads by the poor trafficabilityof the Golan and by Israeli strongpoints on the highground. The strongpoints proved their worth by de-laying the infantry support that armor units need

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for staying power. Syrian logistics were also dis-rupted both by losses to Israeli fire and by delayscaused by traffic snarls on the roads, but the Syriansnever mounted a concerted effort to eliminate any ofthe Israeli hilltop positions.

The Israelis, in short, were constantly nibblingat the Syrians. In one case eight tanks of the Israeli188th hit the flank of the Syrian 43rd Armored Brigadeof the 9th Division as it tried to reach Al Qunaytirah.According to Israeli figures, 60 Syrian tanks weredestroyed or disabled in this one action. In another,five Israeli tanks met the Syrian thrust up the TAPLINE.Before four of the Israeli tanks were destroyed, some30 to 40 Syrian tanks were lost. The fifth Israelitank ran out of ammunition, so it climbed to a hilltop, and its commander directed Israeli artillery fireat the Syrians until it got too dark to see.

The Syrian 1st Armored Division moved down fromthe Damascus area and came into the action in the ArRafid area in the course of the first night, where itestablished a base area in the vicinity of Al Khushniyah.It turned north, reinforcing the drives along the roadto Al Qunaytirah and the TAPLINE. The Syrian 51stArmored Brigade made the deepest penetration of thewar, moving up the TAPLINE and reaching--about noon-on the 7th--Israeli Golan area headquarters at KafrNaffakh. Several tanks of the 51st actually droveinto the headquarters compound, apparently withoutrealizing the importance of the installation theywere in. After shooting at whatever seemed mostobviously important they moved on. They were almostimmediately overwhelmed, however. Other tanks of thisunit moved along the road until they looked down onthe Benot Ya'aqov Bridge. From this vantage pointthey picked off eight Israeli tanks trying to climbonto the Heights before they were themselves destroyedby a detachment from the Israeli 7th Brigade.

During the 7th the fighting continued, with theSyrians bringing in reinforcements and.maintainingconstant pressure on the Israelis. The Israeli 188thBrigade was down from 76 operable tanks at 1400 on6 October to 13 operable tanks 24 hours later. Withinthose 24 hours the Syrians had occupied nearly halfthe Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. There was noway of knowing what the precise status of any units

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on the Golan was--either Syrian or Israeli. But theIsraeli government and military command did know howthin they had been at the start and the reports theywere receiving during the first 12 to 24 hours seemedto tell of continual.Syrian advances. Moreover, theiroutposts reported constant efforts to reinforce. TheIsraeli Air Force was trying to disrupt Syrian supplylines and advancing units. The IAF's losses, as pre-viously noted, were very high. At that point theeffectiveness of the IAF attacks was still unknown.All these factors contributed to a profound pessimismon the part of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, whichwas, to some degree, shared by others in the Israelicommand and political leadership.

Even though neither side realized it at the time,however, by midmorning of 7 October the situation onthe Golan had stabilized and Israeli advantages werebeginning to surface. The 188th, although scatteredand decimated, continued to oppose the Syrians, exact-ing a high toll. By its continual opposition the188th had almost brought the Syrian thrust to a halt,and some Syrian units had begun to dig in. TheIsraeli reserves were beginning to arrive in strength.During the night the command elements and some smallunits of two Israeli reserve armored divisions hadarrived on the Heights. A unified field command hadbeen established to coordinate the fighting on thescene, and areas of responsibility had been laid outto facilitate the entrance into combat of the re-serves when they arrived. The Israeli outpost lineremained intact and continued to harass and hurtthe Syrian troops trying to pass through to reinforceand resupply Syrian units behind Israeli lines. TheIsraeli Air Force appears to have succeeded more thananyone knew at the time in interdicting Syrian supplylines.

On 6 October the IAF flew only 71 strike missionsover the Golan, but on the 7th it flew 284. The IAFwas accused of not supplying close air support inthe first days because the Israeli troops on theground saw very little IAF activity. There were tworeasons for that. Close air support requires closecooperation between the air and ground, and in thechaos of the first attacks this cooperation was lack-ing. The IAF could not acquire targets close to thefront line on its own because it had little idea of

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where the front line was and the Syrian air defense

prevented the IAF from loitering above the battlefield

long enough to find targets on its own.* Secondly,the Syrian air defense system, as noted, was denser

than the one in Sinai. The IAF lost more aircraft on

the Syrian front on 7 October than on any other dayor front of the war. Providing the kind of close

support sought by the Israeli infantryman would have

resulted in still greater losses. The fact is that,with minor exceptions, the IAF and the line of strong-points had effectively cut off the Syrian armor op-erating behind the Israeli lines from the infantryand logistic support it needed to hold its gains.

The Syrians cooperated in their destruction bydissipating their force rather than concentrating it..

Though they had occupied almost half the Golan, they

had consolidated their hold on none of it. Worst

of all, from their point of view, was the fact that

they had virtually no reserves. They committed all

their armor and nearly all their infantry. Conse-

quently when the Israeli counterattack came on10 October the Syrians had no fresh troops and vir-

tually no hope of redeploying other forces to meet

it. Within 24 hours the Syrian attack was contained,the situation stabilized, and the bulk of Israeli

reserves began arriving when the Syrians had alreadyused virtually all available resources in the south-ern sector.

The Northern Penetration

The Syrian attack in the north apparently wasdesigned to pin down Israeli forces and divert their

* The fact that the Israelis also lacked sufficient trained men

and communications to effectively coordinate became apparent later

in the war. The problem of acquiring targets and bringing effec-

tive strikes to bear on them is a difficult one in any case. On

both fronts, the Israelis suffered greatly from prewar lack of

training, the chaos of mobilization under unanticipated condi-

tions, and the debilitating effects of Arab air defense systems.

Though some of the problems were eased toward the end of the war,

none of them was satisfactorily solved.

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resources away from the main battle to the south.The attack was also to be the northern arm of a Syrianencirclement of Al Qunaytirah. The main route ofadvance lay a few kilometers to the north of Al Qunay-tirah up a gentle slope which crested between twohills occupied by the Israelis. Beyond those hillsthe ground sloped down to the Jordan River, withfew intervening hills. This route probably waschosen because the routes through Al Qunaytirah andsouth of it were constricted by hilly terrain andwere more heavily fortified. An additional con-sideration may have been that the area south ofAl Qunaytirah would become too crowded if all fiveSyrian divisions were trying to operate there.

The plan sounded good, but it quickly went sour.After making some progress crossing the cease-fireline, the Syrian 7th Division ran headlong into theIsraeli 7th Armored Brigade, which had occupied aline between the two hills directly across the Syrianroute. The Israelis had anticipated an attack in thisarea and had built dirt berms and firing positionsbetween the hills, from behind which their tanks andantitank units could fire and move with minimal ex-posure. The distance from hilltop to hilltop wasabout four kilometers, and the ground to the eastover which the Syrians were attacking was practicallylevel except for the boulders and cracks in the Golanibasalt.* The Syrians were stopped almost dead intheir tracks here. The battle went on, with theSyrians occasionally able to push the Israelis back100 meters or so, and the Israelis always being ableto recover their original position but not able topush the Syrians back. The Syrians committed firstthe armor of the 7th Infantry Division and then thewhole division against the Israeli brigade, one out-post, and scattered infantry troops. The fightingto the north and south was much lighter and largelyconfined to the immediate vicinity of the 1967 cease-fire line.

* As an area of extinct volcanoes, the basalt surface of theGolan Heights--although relatively flat--is marked by hugeboulders and cracks in the earth which restrict cross-countrymovement.

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The High Water Mark

As daylight came on 7 October the Syrians werestill advancing, although slowly. The Syrian 1stArmored Division had entered the fight during thenight and its leading elements entered Kafr Naffakhand were looking down on the Jordan around noon. Byabout noon the Syrians had made their deepest pene-trations: measuring from Ar Rafid the Syrians hadadvanced about 25 kilometers to the vicinity of El Al,about 20 kilometers to the area of Al Yahudiyah, about24 kilometers to Kafr Naffakh, and to within a fewkilometers of Al Qunaytirah. In the north, however,only small gains were ever achieved.

Though Israel's position was still precarious,three of its reserve armor divisions were arrivingon the Golan. First to arrive was Brigadier GeneralRafoul Eitan, in command of the 36th Reserve ArmoredDivision. He came in during the night of the 6thbefore any of his unit had arrived. He was placedin overall tactical command of forces on the Golan,and his division was made responsible for the areanorth of the Al Qunaytirah - Benot Ya'aqov Bridgeroad. Major General Dan Laner and the lead elementsof his 210th Reserve Armored Division also arrivedduring the night and took charge of the southern Golanarea. Finally, Brigadier General Moshe Peled's 146thReserve Armored Division began arriving during the 7th.By late in the day the Israeli position had solidifiedand some local counterattacks were undertaken.

The offensive to drive the Syrians back was laidout to begin with daylight on the 8th. The Israeli210th was positioned directly to the west of the Syriansouthern penetration and would press the Syrians backfrom there. The 146th was coming up from the southand would drive along the road paralleling the 1967cease-fire line to retake the border settlements. The36th would press the Syrians toward the south and re-inforce the area lying north of the Israeli 7th Brigade,which was to be left in the pit with the Syrian 7thDivision until the Israelis had accumulated enough forceto begin a drive in that sector (see foldout map 2).

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During the 8th of October the Israeli 146th Divi-sion regained some 17 kilometers lost to the Syrians.A few isolated units reached the TAPLINE, where theywere struck by Syrian aircraft and artillery. The210th, pushing eastward from Al Yahudiyah, squeezedthe Syrians back to the vicinity of Al Khushniyah, sothe Syrians at the end of the day occupied just asmall pocket about 15 kilometers long by five kilo-meters wide along the border from the TAPLINE to anarea south of Al Qunaytirah. In the north, the 36thDivision encountered much heavier resistance as ittried to make its way back to Al Qunaytirah. At theend of the day the Israelis claimed the recapture ofthe town, but UN observers saw Syrian troops therenear sunset.

During the night the Syrians committed theironly remaining major reserve force. The 3rd ArmoredDivision and the Assad Force brigade followed thebattered 7th Division into the "Vale of Tears", asthe Israelis came to call the battlefield in front oftheir own 7th Brigade. This brigade had been fightingvirtually without stop since 1400 on 6 October. Bythe morning of the 9th it was down to 40 operabletanks out of its original 105 and 10 replacements.More importantly, the brigade was very low on ammuni-tion. The battle in the Vale of Tears reached itsclimax at about 1000 on 9 October. At that point 13Israeli tanks, at least some of which were the lastremnants of the 188th Brigade, moved just to thenorth of Al Qunaytirah out into the buffer zone thathad separated Syrian and Israeli forces since the1967 war. Just past the abandoned village of Ahmad-iyah these 13 faced north and began shelling theSyrians. From their position the Israeli tanks werefiring on the left flank and rear of the Syrians inthe Vale. Apparently it was this attack from an un-expected quarter that broke the Syrian attack then inprogress. The Syrians pulled back at a moment whensome of the tanks of the Israeli 7th Brigade hadlittle or no ammunition left.

By the afternoon of the 9th, enough of the 36thDivision had arrived to relieve the 7th.Brigade. All

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day on the 10th the Israelis organized for the offen-sive into Syria and pushed the last Syrians backbehind the 1967 lines. One brigade of the 146th Di-vision continued northward after driving the Syriansout of the Golan and was subordinated to the 210thDivision during the Israeli drive into Syria. By theend of 10 October Israel's deployment to continueits counterattack was complete. The bulk of the146th Division had finished mopping up the Syriansremaining inside the 1967 border, had relieved theborder outposts, and had taken up defensive po-sitions. The 210th Division had closed on the borderin the area just south of Al Qunaytirah. The 36thDivision had retaken Al Qunaytirah and held the 1967line north of the city. In the far north the restedand reinforced 7th Brigade and the just-mobilizedGolani Infantry Brigade held the 1967 line extendingup Mount Hermon to just below the former Israelistrongpoint, Position 102, which was still in Syrianhands.

The Hard Road to Sa'sa'

Until 11 October the bouldered and cut-up face ofthe Golan had worked in Israel's favor as it defendedits hold on the Heights. From that point on theGolan's terrain favored the Syrians as they gave upground to the Israelis. Many Israeli and foreignobservers have expressed surprise at the tenaciousdefense of the Syrians as they fell back before theIsraeli attack. The Syrian soldier had been writtenoff after 1967 because of his flight before theIsraelis when the Syrians lost what was supposed tohave been a virtually unassailable position on theGolan Heights. The truer measure of the Syriansoldier's abilities in that war, however, especiallyon defense, was the experience at Tall Fakhr, wherein 1967 the first Israeli penetration into the Golanwas made. In these and nearby positions the Syriansstood and fought the Israelis with rocks and barehands before being overcome. This same spirit char-acterized the Syrian fallback in 1973.

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The Israeli offensive began at 1000 on 11 October,with elements of all three armored divisions movingacross the cease-fire line. After only a little morethan a day's rest, the 7th Brigade, as part of the36th Division, rolled along the lower slopes of MountHermon, where the ground was smoother than the brokenlava of the plain. The rest of the 36th Divisionmoved parallel to and north of the road to Damascus,and the 210th and part of the 146th moved parallelto and south of that road. Below Al Qunaytirah therest of the 146th Division held the line. On thisday the Israelis had things very much their way.Resistance on the ground was relatively light. TheIAF support on the Golan front reached its highpoint with over 400 strike sorties flown. All threedivisions made good progress, almost 20 kilometersin some cases. The Syrian Army did not break and run,however, but fell back in order from one set of pre-pared positions to another. Unable to stop theIsraelis, the Syrians slowed and bloodied them. TheIsraelis, moreover, advanced in a manner designed tominimize casualties by using heavy tank and artilleryfire to open the way rather than making costly armorcharges. This slowed them down and gave the Syriansa better chance to organize their defense.

The principal reason for the extent of the Israelisuccess on this day was probably the depletion ofSyrian armored units against the Israeli 7th Brigade.The Israelis estimate that the Syrians lost 650 tanksin the Vale of Tears alone.* The total Syrian lossup to 11 October might have been some 800 out of thetotal of 1,100 committed at the start of the war.While this left the Syrians with an inventory of ap-proximately 1,000 tanks, it would have taken sometime to redistribute and organize them for defense.

The Israelis were helped on the northern edge oftheir salient by an Arab command and control problemthat caused a gap to open between the northernmost

* At least 166 destroyed tanks were counted in the area E]after the Israelis had begun to clear

out the wreckage.

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Syrian unit and the 1,800-man Moroccan contingentholding the crest of Mount Hermon. The Syrian unitwas a brigade made up of members of the Druze sect,a Moslem minority. When ordered to move forward tomeet the Israelis, a number of the troops reportedlyrefused, causing the gap. When the Israelis becameaware of this they took advantage by moving into thegap and turning the flank of the Syrian 7th Infantryand 3rd Armored Divisions confronting the Israeli36th Division in the center of the salient. TheDruze commander is reported to have committed suicideas a result. The only hitch in the Israeli effort onthe 11th was caused by a Syrian "shower" of antitankmissiles that hit the first brigade of the 210th Di-vision to cross the cease-fire line into Syria. Thisstalled the brigade, but the next brigade in line wasable to pass through and overcome this opposition.It was the only time on the Syrian front that antitankmissiles had a significant impact on the Israelis.

On 11 October, the first day of their counter-offensive, the Israelis penetrated 10 to 20 kilometersinto Syria. The next day saw more of the same kindof fighting but the Syrian resistance stiffened some-what. In the late afternoon, the Israeli 36th Divi-sion captured Mazra'at Bayt Jinn, just a few kilometersfrom Israel's farthest penetration in that area.

On the southern flank of the salient, however,the Israelis had tougher going. By late afternoonLaner's advance troops arrived in the vicinity ofKafr Shams at just about the same time that the lead-ing armored brigade of the Iraqi 3rd Armored Divisionbegan to arrive in the same area. Feeling himselfoverextended, Laner pulled his troops back somewhat.Getting himself better organized Laner undertook oneof the few deliberate night actions on the Syrianfront, although fighting had gone on almost con-tinuously since 6 October. At 0300 on 13 Octoberone of Laner's brigades engaged, possibly from am-bush, the leading Iraqi armored brigade and, by itsown claim, destroyed 70 Iraqi tanks while losing noneof its own. During the afternoon of the 13th onebrigade of Israelis tried and failed to take a hill--Tall ash Shams--in the central portion of the salient.

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A Syrian battalion held the hill with a few tanks, BMPinfantry combat vehicles, and antitank weapons. TheIsraelis finally occupied the hill after a night groundattack launched by two battalions of airborne troops.

By early 14 October the Israelis had captured vir-tually all the territory that was to be theirs. Thatmorning all units were told to hold their gains and toadvance no farther. The advance halted on high groundnear Sa'sa', some 30 kilometers south of Damascus. Tohold ground was the major aim thereafter. Only two ma-jor actions occurred after the 14th--Israel's retakingof its former position on Mount Hermon and the combinedSyrian-Iraqi-Jordanian counterattack of 16 October.

One of Syria's first targets of the war had beenthe Israeli strongpoint on the slopes of Mount Hermoncalled Position 102, which had been used for visual ob-servation and Sigint collection since soon after the1967 war. The Syrian 82nd commando battalion took theposition on 6 October, killing 25 to 50 Israelitroops. On 8 October troops of the Israeli GolaniInfantry Brigade tried to recapture the position butfailed, losing 50 killed in the attempt. On 21 Octo-ber the Israelis tried again and succeeded--at thecost of about 70 more Israelis killed. In the sameoperation, the Israelis lifted troops by helicopter tothe highest peak of Mount Hermon, capturing it fromthe Syrians. The Israelis lost 145 to 170 men at Posi-tion 102, about 6 percent of all the fatalities suf-fered by Israel in the war. Among the plausiblereasons for the Israelis' accepting such casualtiesat this place, the two most persuasive are the worthof Position 102 as a visual and electronic observa-tion post and the Israelis' determination to salvetheir pride by not allowing the Syrians a victory there.

The largest Arab multinational operation of thewar ended in a tragic fiasco. The plan called for aJordanian and an Iraqi armor brigade to attack thesoutheast corner of the Israeli salient on 16 October.They would be supported by Syrian artillery and airstrikes. The Jordanian brigade got off on time, butthe Iraqis started late and contributed only a bat-talion. The Syrian artillery preparation was late

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and arrived just as the Jordanians reached the Israelilines, so the major damage inflicted by the Syrianswas to the Jordanians. Similarly the Syrian Air Forcearrived late and attacked the Iraqi battalion, ap-parently because they were the most easily visibletanks on the ground. At this point the Syrian oper-ations coordinator called off the whole thing beforestill more damage was self-inflicted.

The Arab forces continued to attack the Israelisfrom time to time but none of them made any signifi-cant gains. The only successful Arab effort at thistime was a small Jordanian gain on 19 October in theJabal al Harrah area. Because the Israelis soughtmerely to hold their gains and diverted the bulk oftheir air effort to the Sinai, the war on this frontappears to have simply petered out. The Syrians re-fused the first cease-fire on 22 October but finallyaccepted the second on 24 October.

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The Sinai Front

Application of the Lessons of 1967

On the Egyptian Side

From the 1967 debacle the Egyptian military au-thorities had learned three main lessons: that theyhad to overcome the Israeli advantage in long-rangetank gunnery with weapons that could be used by Egypt'sless competent troops; that the Israeli Air Force hadto be neutralized; and that Egyptian forces enjoyed arelative advantage when employed defensively. Theplanning and conduct of the 1973 war reveal how wellthe Egyptians applied these lessons.

Efforts to neutralize the IAF began in 1967 andproceeded along several avenues simultaneously. Ex-tensive steps were taken to prevent it from againdestroying the Egyptian Air Force on the ground.These measures included the construction of enoughhard aircraft shelters to protect Egyptian fighters.Camouflage and deception measures included the con-struction of dummy shelters, the deployment of dummyaircraft, disguising aircraft shelters as dwellings,and the construction of shelters in villages locatednear airfields. To keep the IAF from again immobil-izing the EAF by destroying runways, additional run-ways were built at every Egyptian airfield, andtaxiways were widened and improved to serve as emer-gency runways. The new runways and taxiways werebuilt at offset angles to make bombing more difficult.In some cases highways running near airfields wereimproved and connected via taxiways to the mainrunways so they could be used in an emergency. Thiswas a major feat on the part of the Egyptian construc-tion industry and began within six months after the1967 war. In 1973 this effort paid off. Only about20 EAF aircraft were destroyed on the ground, and

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no EAF airfield was closed down for more than a fewhours despite a dozen Israeli attacks.

Egyptian.success against Israeli armor was mixed.The major improvement was in the willingness of in-fantrymen to use a new weapon to stand up to attack-ing tanks. This weapon was the unguided RPG-7 ba-zooka-type antitank rocket, which filled a gap the1967 war had shown to exist. In 1967 the Israelishad used their armor, unsupported by infantry, indirect assaults on Egyptian positions. The lack ofweapons to defeat the Israeli armor at close rangeoften left the Egyptian infantryman with no choicebut to run. In 1973 the Egyptians deployed the RPG-7widely and the favored tactic was to set up RPG-7ambushes in advance of the main Egyptian positions.The Egyptians could thus bring antitank fire to bearon the more vulnerable sides and rear of the Israelis.The tactic worked quite well until the Israelis adoptedcountertactics.

In tank-to-tank combat there seemed to be littleor no improvement in Egyptian performance, althoughhere too the Egyptians showed a greater willingnessto fight. Adoption of the Sagger wire-guided missilewas also intended to remedy a flaw evident in 1967and showed Egyptian recognition of the superiorityof Israeli long-range tank gunnery. The Saggerbridged the gap between the several-hundred-meterreach of the RPG-7 and the 3,000-meter maximum effec-tive range of Israeli tank guns. The tactic here wasto open fire at maximum range and keep firing untilthe Israeli tanks were closer than the minimum effec-tive range of the missile, at which time the Israeliswould be taking RPG-7 fire. When the Sagger scoreda hit, it was an effective weapon. It suffered,however, the faults inherent in wire-guided missiles.It was relatively slow, requiring 20 to 30 secondsto reach maximum range. That often gave the targetenough time to see and avoid the missile by takingcover or firing on the launch point. Since the mis-sile had to be guided all the way to impact, firedirected at the launch point could, and often did,

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cause the controller to miss the target. The Saggercould be set up to be fired remotely via a cablerunning from the missile to the launch and guidancecontrols. When used, this capability somewhat offsetIsraeli tactics. The vehicle-mounted Sagger had acable for this purpose as much as 80 meters long,but was used less frequently than the remote cableof the man-packed Sagger, which was only about 10meters long. Finally, the Sagger was difficult tocontrol. Troops required continuous and intensivetraining, using a simulator designed for the purpose.

In the first two or three days of the war, theEgyptian antitank system inflicted heavy losses onthe Israelis when they tried to use their armor ac-cording to the 1967 pattern. The most effective useof the antitank missiles was made from fixed defen-sive positions. Subsequently, however, the Israelislearned to spot potential ambush sites, recognizedSagger firing signatures and likely launch points,and began operating in conjunction with infantryteams to defeat the antitank missile. By the end ofthe 1973 war, the Israelis' armored forces had learnedto operate effectively despite Egypt's antitankmissiles.

The capacity and willingness of Egyptian infantryto defend a prepared position but inability to copewith rapid change and lack of central direction--asdemonstrated in 1967--affected the fundamental strat-egy and organization of the Egyptian attack in 1973.The massive air defense buildup was designed to pro-tect a large Egyptian force deployed in relativelyfixed positions. The Egyptian canal-crossing forceswere rehearsed and drilled in the crossing operationmany times over. Motion pictures obtained by theIsraelis as long ago as 1971 show an Egyptian exer-cise rehearsing the crossing of the canal by troopsin small boats and the launching of a ponton bridge.Such training, conducted in full view of the Israelison their Bar Lev Line, was intended to ensure thata minimum of control from the top would be necessaryand that a maximum of surprise would be achieved.

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The evident guiding principle of the Egyptians wasto so thoroughly train the army to perform a fixedsequence of acts that the success of the crossingwould be virtually guaranteed, barring overwhelmingIsraeli force on the canal.

The concept made maximum use of Egypt's abundantresource--manpower--in a way which vitiated Israel'sadvantages in mobility and small-unit flexibility.However, the Egyptians had given themselves a limitedobjective. Once that objective had been achieved allthe old problems of unreliable command and control,overcentralization of direction, rigidity of tacticalthinking, and poor training reappeared. The Egyptianshad trained to win a battle, which by 8 October theyhad done. Sixteen days later, however, they were onthe brink of losing the war.

On the Israeli Side

The Israelis also learned lessons from the 1967war. They learned that their air force was an all-purpose instrument capable of simultaneously attack-ing the enemy's air force and rear areas, providingclose support to its troops and defending the air-space over Israel proper and the battlefield. Theyconcluded that the tactics and techniques that wonthe 1967 war would be appropriate for another war.The Israeli soldier had always distinguished himselfabove his Arab counterpart by being better educatedand trained, more highly motivated, and more willingand able to function in a rapidly changing situation.The Israeli military placed a high value on improvi-sation and creativity in military operations. Thesegeneral propositions continued to be reinforced inIsraeli training through 1973.

In one respect, however, the Israelis were hurtby their reliance on the IAF for ground support--so-

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called flying artillery. This tactic, which provedsuccessful in 1967, was nullified in 1973 by the un-precedented intensity of both Arab air defense sys-tems, which reduced both the amount and effectivenessof the ground support the IAF could provide, espe-cially in the first week or so of the war. In theface of this, the Israelis were left with inadequateartillery forces. While additional artillery almostcertainly could not have stopped the Egyptian cross-ing, it might have slowed it and allowed the Israelisto reduce their initial tank losses by providing analternative to unsupported armored sorties againstthe Egyptians. More artillery might also have al-lowed the IAF to avoid such great losses in futileattacks on Egyptian bridges across the canal.

What hurt the Israelis badly in 1973 was thatthey had learned to disdain and disparage the Egyp-tian soldier. That marvelous facility of the humanbrain to remember selectively allowed the Israelisto remember the Egyptian peasant soldiers who, in1967, had thrown away their shoes in order to runfaster in the sand, and to forget the Egyptian sol-diers .of the same peasant background who had re-turned again and again to the pass at Garadi tostall the Israeli drive along the Mediterraneancoast. Gradually the Israelis convinced themselvesthat the Egyptians could not win and therefore wouldnot attack; so the Israelis were, psychologically atleast, unprepared for an attack. But this must bedistinguished from the ability of the Israeli forcesto absorb an attack, defeat it, and go over to acounteroffensive. By war's end the IAF was in factsimultaneously providing close support, air defense,and strategic attack on two fronts and doing itrelatively well and with relatively small losses.Israeli armor did learn to cope with the antitankmissile and did lead the Israeli counterattack, whichwas successful. The Arabs taught the Israelis aharsh lesson on 6 October, but that should not ob-scure the fact that by war's end the Israelis haddemonstrated their generally predicted superiorities.

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Preparations and Deployment

The first Egyptian activity that can be clearlyassociated with an intent to cross the Suez Canal byforce was the emplacement of numbers of SAMs withinrange of the canal in the latter half of 1970. Hun-dreds of sites were constructed during the cease-fire,eventually to be occupied by real as well as dummymissile units. The dummies improved the survivabilityof the system by confusing and dissipating Israeliair strikes. The number of AAA pieces deployed inthe area doubled within a year. During 1971 hundredsof additional revetments were dug in areas wheretroops and equipment would be assembled just beforethe crossing. New and improved roads were built con-necting these areas with the canal. On the canalitself, the banks were cut and graded to allow thepassage of amphibious vehicles and ferries directlyinto the water. In numerousplaces along the canal, areas up to several hundredmeters long were leveled and graded to serve as

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launching ramps for the ponton bridges which wouldcarry heavy equipment across the canal. By the endof 1971, the mechanics. of the E tian crossin lanwere known to the Israelis

In the same period the Egyptians deployed theirforces as they would for a crossing (see foldout map la),dividing their army into three parts. The 1st Armywas headquartered in Cairo and consisted of the last-ditch reserves: the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division,the Presidential Guard Armored Brigade, and a mis-cellany of other combat units drawn from the largecamps in the area of the capital. The 2nd Army,headquartered at Ismailia, on the canal, includedthe 2nd, 16th, and 18th Infantry Divisions, the135th Independent Infantry Brigade, the 23rd Mech-anized Division, the 21st Armored Division, andthe 15th Independent Armored Brigade. The 3rd Army,headquartered at Suez, consisted of the 7th and 19thInfantry Divisions, the 6th Mechanized Infantry Di-

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vision, the 4th Armored Division, and the 25th Inde-pendent Armored Brigade. The only changes this de-ployment represented from the situation of a yearearlier was the movement of the 25th Armored Brigadefrom the 1st to the 3rd Army, the shift of the bulkof the 6th Mechanized Division from the Cairo areato join its detached brigade in the 3rd Army area,and the movement of the 24th Armored Brigade fromCairo to join its parent 23rd Mechanized Divisionin the 2nd Army area.

With one crucial exception, all supporting armswere deployed well forward in the year before theattack. During that year, artillerycin the canalzone was nearly doubled. Over the year or two pre-ceding the attack, the Egyptians went almost en-tirely .to landlines rather than radi f- communitions,and making the Egyptian command and control systemmore reliable up to the instant when the attack be-gan. All that was lacking from the canal area untila few days before the attack was the heavy ferry andbridging equipment that would carry Egypt's armoracross. This equipment was concentrated at two train-ing areas on the Nile River north and south of Cairo.Since 1971 training conducted at these areas haddemonstrated the ability of Egyptian engineers notonly to erect the bridges but to operate ferries andrafts designed to get heavy materiel across a waterobstacle even before the bridges could be built. Itwas probably the presence near the canal of theseferries, the heavy bridging, and a large increase inartillery of the Egyp-tian deploymen that causedIsraeli General sharon to conclude that war wouldbreak out within 48 hours.

The Israeli preparations for a crossing includedthe Bar Lev Line, which sheltered troops on the canal'sedge. The function of those forces was to observe andreport on any Egyptian crossing and to harass theEgyptians to the best of their ability. The Bar LevLine was not intended to be a desert Maginot Line.The Israelis also built a wall of sand some 50 feethigh along virtually the whole length of the canal.

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The Israelis' main defense force for the Sinai wasthe division-sized Armored Force Sinai (AFS), with250 tanks deployed in small mobile units along thelength of the canal and in a large mobile reserve atBi'r Jifjafah, east of the canal. In the canal areathe Israelis had built a series of roads parallel tothe canal and small strongpoints which added up to adefense in depth stretching from the canal bank to themore easily defended passes 30 to 50 kilometers eastof the canal across a relatively flat, open desert.

The Israeli defensive concepts did not envisionstopping the Egyptians at the canal's edge. Themain line on which a mobile defense would have beenbased, was a road parallel to and some 10 to 20 kilo-meters from the canal. Known as the Artillery Road,it was built to allow Israeli self-propelled guns tomove quickly along the canal to respond to Egyptianartillery fire during the 1969-1970 War of Attrition.Israel's 1973 main line of defense formed along thisroad in the first 24 to 48 hours after the 1973attack. The concept was sound as far as it went,but apparently the Israelis made the basic assump-tion that any Egyptian crossing would be sharply fo-cused at one or a few main points. If the troopsin the Bar Lev Line could pinpoint the crossings, theIsraeli armor and aircraft could be directed to thosepoints and hold the Egyptians in check until thereserves arrived.

The Israelis apparently did not plan on what todo if attacked by Egypt and Syria simultaneously,what to do if the Egyptians crossed the canal inmassive numbers and at many points, or what to do inthe event of a military surprise. These were allsymptoms of the arrogance and tunnel vision of whichthe Arabs, and not a few Israelis, accuse the pre-October Israeli military command. Another aspectof Israeli defensive preparations that failed was the50-foot sand wall. The wall was built as a delayingdevice the Egyptians would have to cut through inorder to land heavy weapons and equipment. The Egyp-tians, however, used high-pressure water hoses towash the wall away in only two or three hours ratherthan the six to eight hours the Israelis had allowed

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for in their plan.* The wall withstood Egyptianefforts longer in the southern sector because of itshigh clay content.

The Israeli deployment consisted of the normalAFS headquarters, one armored brigade, and most ofthe armor of three mechanized brigades at Bi'r Jif-jafah, and elements of three mechanized brigadesstrung along the canal. Near Rafah, on the coastjust inside the Gaza Strip, two additional armoredbrigades constituted the normal reserve and securityforces for the Strip. Because of the strung-outdeployment of the Israeli forces along the canal,the actual force facing the Egyptian crossing wassmall. The Bar Lev bunkers were manned by a totalof fewer than 600 troops deployed in garrisons rang-ing from 10 to 20 men each. The twin bunkers oppo-site the Al Firdan Bridge--a major Egyptian crossingsite--had a total of about 30 men in them. Backingup the bunkers were numerous armor positions mannedby tank platoons of four or five tanks each. Facingthe Egyptian artillery the Israelis had one artillerybrigade of 50 to 60 self-propelled 155mm and 175mm guns.

The Crossing

The actual crossing was accompanied by a 50- to55-minute artillery preparation which began 15 min-utes before the troops pushed off from the west bank.In the first 15 minutes.

the Egyptians fired 100,000rounds at 543 distinct Israeli targets using 2,000artillery pieces. The targets consisted of all theBar Lev bunkers and all known fortifications, militaryconcentrations, and command and control targets withinrange. The first troops used rubber boats to crossand carried rope ladders which they affixed to theIsrael sand wall to help subsequent troops to climb

* The Israelis observed an Egyptian exercise in which hoseswere used to cut through a simulated section of a sand wallin December 1971. They failed to determine that this methodof breaching their canal wall would be used in a real attack.

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the steep incline. They carried antitank missilesand many rifle grenades. The purpose of the riflegrenades was to keep the Bar Lev bunkers under firebetween the time the Egyptian barrage was lifted fromthe bunkers and the time when the troops landed andgot a foothold on the east bank. Subsequent wavesfollowed--12 in all--at 15-minute intervals untilfive to ten brigades of infantry had crossed thecanal. These troops had two missions. The firstgroups were heavily equipped with Sagger and RPG-7antitank missiles. They were to move farther inlandand set up ambushes to neutralize the Israeli armoredcounterattack the Egyptians were certain would come.Later arrivals were to isolate and assault the BarLev bunkers.

By the end of three hours the first ferries beganto operate and a start had been made on building thebridges. An example of the detailed planning thatwent into the operation is the fact that some bridgesections were towed across the canal so they couldbe assembled under protection of the Israeli sandwall.

From just before 1400, when the artillery barragestarted, until the middle of the night, the Egyptians'main effort focused on building up their presence onthe east side. Evidently little attention was paidto unit formations, and the crossing forces quicklybecame disorganized. Several Israeli witnesses de-scribe a mob scene as troops poured onto the Israeliside and milled around until they could get them-selves sorted out. It was a vulnerable time for theEgyptians, but they were covered by continuous artil-lery and heavy antiaircraft fire. Toward midafter-noon the first assaults on Bar Lev bunkers werestaged and several fell quickly. Others, however,held out stubbornly. One held out throughout the war.This was Fort Budapest located on a narrow strip of landeast of Port Said. Egypt's 135th Independent InfantryBrigade was unable, despite repeated efforts, to takeBudapest. At the Al Firdan Bridge, one of the twinbunkers held for three days, apparently taking a heavytoll of the attackers as the Egyptians tried to takethe fort by frontal assault. The other held for another

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few hours and its garrison escaped, apparentlywhile the Egyptians were preoccupied with the finalassault on the other bunker.

The firs Egyptian tanks landed on the east bankat about 1600 local time on 6 October. They werecarried by rafts and were seen unloading by Israeliarmored detachments fighting delaying actions. Raftsand ferries were the workhorses of Egypt's effortsin the first 24 hours and probably during daylighthours through most of the war. By 2100 on 6 OctoberEgypt had some 40 self-propelled heavy ferries workingand they had delivered 100 tanks to the east bank.During the day, at least someof the more vulnerable ponton bridges were swung par-allel to the shore and camouflaged.

The Israeli reaction to the Egyptian crossing washampered by the failure of the Israeli Sinai commanderto implement the existing contingency plan in time.Though General Gonen was warned of the impending warearly on 6 October when Israel ordered its mobiliza-tion, he did not redeploy his forces.* The normaldeployment scheme called for only a third of the AFSto be in the canal area, while the remainder was con-centrated at Bi'r Jifjafah. The plan called for themovement of another third of the AFS to the ArtilleryRoad vicinity on warning of an attack while the re-maining third was held in reserve to meet a breakthroughor to defeat the main attack. Gonen was censured forhis failure by the Agranat Commission of Inquiry intothe war. The criticism was based on the assertionthat if the Israelis had had more armor available,deployed in proper positions, they could have stoppedthe crossing or at least severely disrupted it at moreacceptable cost.

claim that Gonen'sfailure was really a blessing in disguise. The Egyp-tian artillery preparation, was so heavy

* In his defense, Gonen was told to expect an attack at 1800local time, but to do nothing which might be construed as pro-vocative. As a result, he ordered the AFS not to move forwarduntil 1500-1700 hours. As the day wore on, his own apprehen-sions and those of AFS commander General Mendler caused themto order the move minutes before the war started.

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that virtually anything exposed would have been de-stroyed. If the Egyptian plans were followed, nearly200,000 rounds of artillery fire were poured onto theIsraelis on the first day of- the war. Even fire thisheavy, however, almost certainly would not have de-stroyed substantial numbers of Israeli tanks deployedto oppose the crossing. Israeli data indicate thatIsrael's own artillery destroyed little Arab armor,although near misses did shear off radio antennas,lights, machine guns, and other external gear. More-over, the number of rounds ostensibly fired by theEgyptians seems large but, spread over 12 hours, over500 targets, and the 1,600 square kilometers of theIsraeli-occupied east bank of the canal, the densityof rounds was not great.

Israeli tank losses in the first 24 hours of thewar are hard to establish. The Israelis began thewar with 250 tanks in the Sinai. Within 24 hours,150 to 160 of these were out of action, although manywere repaired and returned to service within periodsof several hours to several days. Some units werealmost wiped out.' The brigade in the Al Qantarahsector was reduced from 50 tanks to 11 by early morn-ing of 7 October. The major cause of these lossesprobably was the Egyptian antitank missiles employedfrom ambush by troops who crossed early and moved five,to ten kilometers inland from the canal. Also effec-tive were antitank missiles fired from the mounds theEgyptians had built along the west bank (see illustra-tion on page 17). These mounds provided EgyptianSagger and tank crews with a broad field of fire ex-tending into the east bank area. Antitank missileswere the primary cause of Israeli losses in the firsttwo or three days of the war. The Israelis' use ofunsupported tanks made them vulnerable to Egyptianinfantrymen armed with portable antitank weapons.The Israelis had simply failed to recognize thatantitank missiles would require them to change theirtank tactics.

The Egyptian RPG-7 and Sagger antitank missilesundoubtedly took a heavy toll of Israeli armor inthe first several days of the war. Egypt's fore-sight in providing its infantry with large numbersof these weapons and Israel's mistake in not takingthese weapons into account in developing its armortactics before the war account for most of these

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losses. In accounts immediately after the war, how-ever, the effect of the antitank missiles was exag-gerated. Detailed information now available indicatesthat in the whole war the Israelis lost approximatel

-Ennank e mnnathee ae 119 disabled units

at least 6percent but no mr n :percen , were killed by Saggers.* No data are avail-able for RPG-7 effects; it appears that the RPG-7 didnot destroy many tanks but did enough damage to knocksome out of combat.

The sample of 119 Israeli tanks is notan unbiased one bled Israeli tanks are inEgyptian hands, Un-doubtedly a significant percentage of those weredamaged or destroyed by Saggers. The sample doesnot include damaged tanks that were repaired. It isprobable that Saggers damaged more tanks than theydestroyed, but we now have no way to measure thateffect. Most damaged tanks were repaired during thewar at field depots. The Israelis were often remissabout keeping records, so the relevant informationon cause of damage is probably not available even tothem. Moreover, the Syrians did not use antitankmissiles nearly as much as the Egyptians did.

One factor key to the Israelis' losses in thefirst days of the war was their failure to. give theEgyptian soldier due credit for his ability to fighton the defensive. This capability was the essenceof the Egyptian plan: to rapidly seize a limitedterritorial objective and then defend it. Tacticaldoctrine contributed further to the losses by lead-ing the Israelis to attempt to relieve the Bar Levbunkers that rapidly came under siege. Small tankforces trying to rescue the garrisons ran into anti-tank missile ambushes. It was not until the third

* The wide range in estimated Sagger destructions is due to thepresence of more than one potentially killing hit on the same

tank and uncertainties in identifying the weapon scoring a hit.In total, 8 tanks were definitely destroyed by Saggers, 11 hadmultiple hits, and 18 others were possibly destroyed by Saggers.

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or fourth day of the war that the Israelis authorizedthe remaining isolated garrisons to surrender iffurther resistance seemed pointless. The Israelishad always set great store by the morale-boostingdoctrine that no Israeli dead or wounded would everbe left behind and this idea had been fixed in Israelidoctrine. The Egyptian military command knew this,counted it an Israeli weakness, and used it to set theambushes which caused the worst of the Israeli losses.

The 7th and 8th of October were devoted largelyto consolidation by both Egyptian and Israeli forces.The separate bridgeheads established by each of thefive infantry divisions which crossed the canal werelinked together into a continuously defended stripthe length of the canal and roughly ten kilometerswide. It was up to 20 kilometers wide in the farnorth both because there were more Egyptian troopsthere and because the terrain was more open and theywere able to move more quickly. The Egyptians beganat once to fortify their holdings. Trenches and fox-holes were dug, wire strung, and minefields laid inthe pattern that has become familiar through use bythe Egyptians in their last three wars

F It was obvious that the Egyp-tians anticipated a furious Israeli reaction andhad chosen to meet it in the way that gave them theirbest advantage--defensively.

During the 7th of October the first Israeli re-serve forces began to arrive. Before the middle ofthe 8th of October the bulk of two reserve armoreddivisions--the 162nd under Major General Adan andthe 143rd under Major General Sharon--were deployedin the passes and along the Artillery Road. Untilthe war began Adan had been commander of the IsraeliArmor Corps. His appointment illustrates one methodthe Israelis use to mobilize quickly--convert admin-istrative and school commands to operational commands.One of Adan's brigades was formed around the staffand equipment of the Israeli armor school, and thebrigade commander was the commandant of the school.Sharon represents another method of rapidly mobil-izing units--recalling senior, experienced officerswho had recently retired. Sharon had a long and

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distinguished career in the IDF beginning during the1948 war of independence. In 1956 he had been a bri-gade commander and in 1967 the commander of a division-size task force. Until July 1973 he had been commanderof all Israeli forces in the Sinai. He had retired be-cause he believed his right-of-center conservative po-litical views would keep him from being appointed toChief of Staff, the senior Israeli military post.

On the second day of the war the Israeli deploy-ment had the 162nd Armored Division minus most of itsartillery opposite Al Qantarah, the 143rd Divisionopposite Ismailia, and an independent armored bri-gade opposite Suez. The remnants of the AFS wereregrouped into a brigade and placed under the 162ndDivision. The Egyptians continued to move the menand equipment of five infantry and three mechanizeddivisions across the canal. At least some of theponton bridges had been hit by Israeli air attacksand some others may have been dismantled during theday to protect them, but others continued in use tofacilitate the crossing of heavy equipment and sup-plies. Ferries played a large role in moving tanksacross. By the end of the second day the situationwas stable. There were still and there would con-tinue to be occasional hot firefights as the Israelisand Egyptians sought to improve their positions, andthe Israelis staged several strong thrusts towardthe canal, all of which ultimately failed. But themain lines that would hold until 15 October werereached by early on the 8th.

The Bridges

about half thebridges used were built in Egypt either under licensefrom the UK--Uniflote self-propelled bridge/ferryunits--or local copies of Soviet World War II pontons.According to some reports, some of these pontonswere filled with styrofoam to keep them afloat evenif damaged. They were assembled in either of twoways. The Soviet PMP bridge section is designed tobe launched off its truck carrier into the water.

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It then unfolds and automatically locks into a flat,floating section which can be connected quickly toothers to form either a bridge or raft. These wereprobably assembled using the long graded sectionsof the canal bank. The sections probably would behooked together parallel to the bank and then thecompleted bridge, or all but the last section or two,would be swung across the canal to connect with a gapin the Israeli sand wall. Other bridges were reportedlyassembled by dropping pontons into the water, attachingdecking to them and assembling a number of units into abridge, a slower process than the PMP. Some sectionswere towed across the canal where they could be assem-bled under the Israeli sand wall. Egyptian assaultforces and artillery prevented the Israelis in the BarLev bunkers from interfering effectively with these op-erations. The Israelis did not have sufficient long-range artillery to seriously impede the Egyptian crossingalthough they tried. Aircraft also tried to cut thebridges, with little effect and the loss of 32 aircraft.

Recognizing the vulnerability of supply viabridges and rafts, the Egyptians immediately beganbuilding pipelines across the canal. A doublepipeline was built in each army area and carriedwater and POL across.

The sand wall was pierced by high-pressure waterjets. The jets were powered by West German fireengine pumps installed in small barges floating inthe canal. The technique had.been used in the con-struction of the Aswan High Dam and was suggested tothe military by the Egyptian engineer who had per-fected the system. In their search for a way topenetrate the wall the Egyptians had tested explo-sives and earth-moving equipment and found high-pressure water to be the quickest. It took the Egyp-tians two to three hours to make a gap in the 2ndArmy sector of the wall, where it was composed ofloose sand. In the 3rd Army area, however, therewas a lot of clay mixed with the sand and it tooksomewhat longer to establish bridges across thesouthern sector of the canal. According to onereport, the Egyptians initially sent some armor and

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heavy equipment of the 3rd Army across the canal onthe northern bridges and moved it south on the Israeliside of the canal. Within the first day, however,the Egyptians had discovered or created gaps in thewall that permitted the 3rd Army to move supplies andsome heavy equipment across the canal via ferry.

The first priority in the Egyptian crossing,was to

neutralize an Israeli system for pumping inflammablefluids into the canal and setting them afire. Afrogman unit is alleged to have put the system outof operation during the night of 5-6 October. TheIsraelis.discovered this on the 6th and an engineersent to correct the blockage was one of the firstIsraelis captured in the war. From the Israeli sidethe story is somewhat different. Only two opera-tional systems to pump gasoline on the canal had beeninstalled when the war broke out. One failed towork when needed and the Egyptians did not cross inthe area where th other was installed.

the other systems thaT The Egyp-tons sanotaged were dummies. In any event, thecanal was not set ablaze.

The Israeli response to the bridges was rapid,massive, and ineffective. Aircraft attacked thebridges for the first four days of the war withoutseriously impeding the flow of men and suppliesacross them. With the bridges, ferries, rafts, andthe air defense system, the Egyptian supply linewas virtually invulnerable. The Israelis did hitbridges and rafts both from the air and with artil-lery, but.they had no weapon big enough to damageenough of a bridge to put it out of action for morethan a few hours. The Egyptians responded not onlywith antiaircraft fire but by frequently moving thebridges and actually dismantling some of them duringthe day. Camouflage was used to hide the dismantledbridges, and smokescreens were used to protect somebridges under attack.

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Sitzkrieg: 8-14 October

During the 6th and 7th the Egyptians had madetheir deepest penetrations into the Sinai in thenorthern area around Al Qantarah, gaining as muchas 20 kilometers. Consequently it was in this sec-tor that the Israelis staged their first majorcounterattacks and suffered their worst setbacks ofthe war. The Israeli 162nd Armored Division wasordered to attack early on 8 October with the ap-parent objective of capturing one or more Egyptianbridges in the vicinity of the Al Firdan Bridge.Two armored brigades made the attack and throughthe morning made good progress. Elements of onebrigade may even have reached the canal. In thelate afternoon, however, the tables were turned asthe Egyptians reacted to the attack and brought theheaviest antitank missile fire of the war to bear.By sunset the Israelis had been beaten back, withheavy losses in tanks and men.

In the course of this attack, the Israeli 190thRegular Armored Battalion, commanded by LieutenantColonel Yagouri, ran into a large Egyptian ambush inthe Al Qantarah area. His unit was virtually de-stroyed and he was taken prisoner. The main effectof the defeat was produced by the appearance ofColonel Yagouri on Egyptian television received inIsrael. His appearance drove home to the Israeliswhat a struggle they were in, while at the same timeraising Egyptian morale considerably.

After the costly lesson of the 190th, the Israelissettled in to hold their position while amassingtheir reserves, and things reached a standoff. Eachside was evidently waiting for the other to come toit. The Israelis were hoping the Egyptians would tryto penetrate deeper into the Sinai on the theorythat in so doing the Egyptians would move out oftheir air defense cover and cause their antitank de-fenses to thin out. Under these conditions theIsraelis could hope to administer a 1967-style beat-ing and send the Egyptians fleeing back across thecanal. On their side, the Egyptians knew what theIsraelis wanted and were determined not to give it

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to them. Their plan called for a period of severaldays--called an "operational pause"--during which theEgyptians hoped the Israelis would hurl themselves atthe Egyptian phalanx along the canal. The Egyptiancrossing plan called for the Egyptians to advanceonly after the Israelis had been considerably weak-ened in futile attempts to break the Egyptian fronton the canal.

If the battle lines were relatively static inthis period of the war, the fighting was not. TheEgyptians launched small-scale attacks several timesa day through the 13th. Most were directed at thepasses, but some headed south along the Gulf of Suezcoast. They were usually beaten off easily as theywere staged according to a stereotyped plan and movedvery slowly--that is, Egyptian tanks would advancefollowed by troops in armored personnel carriers. Ata distance of two kilometers or so the infantry woulddismount and advance on foot, accompanied by the tanks.Given the unvarying pattern of these attacks, thelack of cover and concealment along the canal, andthe high quality of Israeli tank gunnery at the rangesinvolved, these Egyptian forces were under almostcontinual accurate fire. The motive behind these at-tacks is unknown. Most likely they were designed toprod the.Israelis into rash counterattacks that wouldbe stopped by Egyptian antitank ambushes. After thefirst two or three days of the war, however, theIsraelis stopped playing the Egyptians' game. Forthe Israelis' part, they spent the time building uptheir defense, preparing for their counteroffensiveand improving their lines with localized counter-attacks. In this period the Egyptians were squeezedinto the final enclave, which averaged only 5 to 15kilometers wide.

This period drew to a close on 13 and 14 October.Beginning on the 12th and continuing during the13th the Egyptians brought their two armored divi-sions across the canal--the 21st in the north and the4th in the south. Their mission, apparently, waseither to initiate phase two and take the passes lead-ing into the interior of the Sinai, or to divert theIsraelis from their drive against Syria. We cannot

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conclusively choose between these alternatives be-cause, while the timetable called for phase two tobegin about the 14th, the conditions on which itwas to be launched had not been met. Rather thanhaving been seriously weakened in the first week ofthe war, the Israeli forces in the Sinai were growingstronger, and other Israeli forces were being divertedfrom the Syrian front by the 12th and 13th. If theEgyptian motive in bringing the armored divisionsover was to aid Syria, it was certainly a halfheartedeffort. The attacks by these divisions followed thesame basic pattern as the smaller attacks during thepreceding few days.

In the 2nd Army area, the 21st Armored Divisionsent two of its brigades in against Israeli GeneralSharon. Of the 200 to 210 tanks in these brigades,118 were lost--almost entirely to Israeli tank fire.In the 3rd Army area, one brigade of the 4th ArmoredDivision attacked the Mitla Pass area while thearmored brigade of the 6th Mechanized Infantry Divi-sion tried to break out to the south toward Ras as Sidr.Both attacks were stopped cold, but with fewer lossesthan the 21st Division suffered. The brigade of the6th Mechanized Division lost virtually an entirebattalion--30 tanks--when it was trapped in a wadi.Later that day the brigade of the 4th Armored Divi-sion was driven back, with the loss of about 50 tanks.By day's end the breakout attempt was over at thecost of more than 200 Egyptian tanks. The Israelishad lost very little, either because they had ambushedthe Egyptians or because they had fired on them atlong range.

Into Africa

The Israelis had first entertained thoughts ofcrossing the canal in 1967, as evidenced by the factthat some Israeli commanders later lamented the factthat Israel had not done so then. Certainly on 9 June1967 the only thing that could have stopped the Isra-elis was lack of bridging and ferry equipment. Theyhad tested their ability to cross significant waterobstacles by raiding the Red Sea coast of Egypt in

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September 1969 and in maneuvers conducted in theSinai in 1972. General Sharon claims that, whilehe was commander of Israeli forces in Sinai, hehad prepared for a crossing, probably in anticipa-tion of staging a large raid in the event of anotherwar of attrition. To this end he had marked a certainsection of the Israeli sand wall to be used for acrossing; the section had been built in a way intendedto make it easy to knock down during the operation.

The first crossing effort was the ill-fated at-tempt to seize an Egyptian bridge on 8 October. Nofurther effort was made until the successful crossinga week later. By then, operations against Syriahad been completed, and with the defeat of Egypt'sbreakout attempt, the consequent heavy Egyptian tanklosses, and the completion of the Israeli buildupin the Sinai, the time was opportune. The followingaccount of the crossing operations combines varioussources of information, mostly Israeli.

The initial crossing was carried out by GeneralSharon according to a plan which--typical of him--was both complicated and bold. Preparations beganabout 12 October when General Adan's 162nd Divisionwas ordered to slide leftward from its position op-posite Al Qantarah to a position just north of andbehind Sharon's 143rd Division opposite Ismailia.This move was completed by early 15 October and wasnot detected by the Egyptians. The gap left by themove of the 162nd Division was filled by a task forcecomposed of an infantry brigade and a mechanizedbrigade.

The crossing operation began late in the afternoonof 15 October with four of Sharon's brigades movingoff from Jabal Tasa toward the canal on a staggeredschedule, the mission of each dependent upon the suc-cessful completion of the others' missions. At 1700an armored brigade commanded by one Tuvia* attacked

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due west from Jabal Tasa into the 21st Armored and16th Mechanized Divisions of the Egyptians. Thiswas to divert Egyptian attention from the canal andto pin down a significant fraction of Egypt's armorin the area to prevent reinforcement of its forcesat Israel's chosen crossing site. At 1800 AmnonReshef's brigade (probably the 14th Regular Armored)struck out for the canal. Reshef gave at least twoof his battalions the mission to get behind the21st Division and drive it northward away from thecrossing site to open the way for the crossing.One battalion--the 79th--reached the crossing siteundetected. It then turned north and moved severalkilometers along the waterway hoping to capture anEgyptian bridge. Another battalion to the right ofthe 79th, however, ran into stiff opposition andwas stopped. The 79th was called back for fear theEgyptians would exploit its exposed right flank.

The remainder of Reshef's brigade secured thecrossing site itself. As soon as this was done theleading battalion of Dan Matt's airborne infantrybrigade moved to the canal side with support andengineer gear and crossed in rubber boats. Theparatroopers were to secure the bridgehead and probethe east (Egyptian) bank. As soon as the airbornebrigade had signaled its initial success, Chaim'sM-60 armored brigade moved a battalion (about 30tanks) to the canal. They crossed as quickly aspossible, reportedly using Uniflote bridge sectionsas ferries. The Israelis cut through their sand wallwith commercially available earthmoving equipment.

At no time did the Israelis consider this opera-tion anything but an all-out effort to turn the tableson the Egyptians and set them up for a major defeat.This is not to say, however, that the Israelis hadnot prepared contingency plans to withdraw quickly ifopposition proved much stiffer than expected or iftheir plans went seriously awry. The stories aboutthe Israelis exploiting the unexpected success of asmall commando raid was part of the Israeli attemptto confuse the Egyptians and minimize the true extentof the Israeli plan.

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The first paratroopers got across the canal atabout 0100 on 16 October and the first tanks wereoperating on the west bank by 0600. There remainssome confusion over the method of Israeli crossing.Reports from a number of sources on both sides re-late that the first crossing used captured amphibioustanks crewed by Arabic-speaking Israelis. The onlyevidence bearing on this point is a single photographof a captured PT-76 in Israeli service published ina paperback history of the war. The caption reads:"Tank breaking through to bridgehead receives fare-wells." (See photograph, above.) The Israelis deny

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the use of any such ploy and claim that on that firstday they used only the Uniflote sections to ferry theirtanks across. Some reports combine fragments of bothstories.

Regardless of the equipment and ploys involved,the Israeli method of operation was to maximize Egyp-tian confusion. The first tank battalion across splitup into columns of a few tanks each and a few infantry-men and fanned out to probe the Egyptian deployment.When the Egyptians characterized the Israeli force onthe west bank as being composed of seven tanks theymay well have thought that the multiple reports theywere receiving all referred to the same one or twogroups rather than ten or so different groups.

Egyptian reaction to this Israeli operation wasimmediate and furious though initially confused anduncoordinated. Tuvia's and Reshef's brigades weretied down in heavy fighting all night long. One bat-talion of Reshef's brigade pushed as far north as the"Chinese Farm"--an abandoned experimental farm set upas an aid project by the Japanese in early 1967--beforebeing stopped.* If the Egyptians had trouble decid-ing just what the Israelis were intending when theycrossed the canal, they had no trouble deciding thatstopping the operation should take priority in theiroperations. Consequently, the Egyptian 21st ArmoredDivision and 25th Armored Brigade were ordered turnedtoward the crossing site and pressed as hard as theycould to close the narrow corridor the Israelis hadcleared to the canal.

During the 16th the remainder of Chaim's brigadecrossed the canal, so the Israelis had two brigadesin Africa--one armored and one infantry. In additionGeneral Sharon brought his command group over so that

* When the Israelis first occupied the area they thought themarkings indicated a Chinese project, and the name stuck. Thearea was chosen for an irrigation project because it was reason-ably near fresh water piped from the west side of the canal andthe land was flat and open--characteristics which made for thekind of nose-to-nose tank battle which developed there.

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he could stay in close touch with the fighting. Gen-eral Adan's division was preparing to cross over aswell, but was temporarily diverted by an Egyptianeffort to close off the corridor frmtesouth-

As a result elementso two tank brigades from Adan's division and atleast part of Reshef's tank brigade broke off theirother activities and moved southwestward behind thewhole Israeli crossing force and set up an ambush.The Egyptian 25th Brigade was virtually destroyedwithin 15 minutes while the Israelis suffered no lossat all. Then the Israeli units returned to theirprevious positions. Another of Adan's brigades, thatof Gabbi Amir, was held in Sinai for several days tofight off a series of Egyptian counterattacks. Thisindicates the intensity of the Egyptian effort tostop the Israeli crossing.

The Battle of the Chinese Farm was a horror story.The Israelis claim to have destroyed about half of the300 or so tanks the Egyptians threw into the area.They lost 50 to 60 of their own tanks in the process.While tanks were the predominant force in the battle,artillery and mechanized infantry units got involved.The fighting was often at point blank range and, sincethere was no place to hide or maneuver, the affairturned on rapid accurate shooting and small-unit lead-ership. The fighting also involved an Israeli attemptto drive the Egyptians off a nearby hill codenamed Mis-souri. The battle lasted through the night of the15th and most of the 16th until the Egyptians werefinally beaten back far enough to leave the Israelicorridor relatively secure. Even so, at night Egyptiancommandos, infantry, and light artillery groups filteredinto the Israeli-controlled area to harass the Israelisupply route. At several points during the nights of16-19 October the traffic through the corridor had tostop until Egyptian infiltrators could be cleared out.While the supply line was out of the direct line offire of Egyptian tanks, Egyptian artillery could anddid harass the Israelis constantly. Never able to

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knock out any of the Israeli bridges completely, Egyp-tian artillery and rockets did score hits on them.

While the crossing could be called a bold stroke,the Israelis exploited it carefully. First, the sitewas chosen with an eye for local defense. Located.at the point where the canal enters the Great BitterLake, the site was protected on its left flank by thelake itself. Marshes along the lake shore and canalside helped protect it against armor assault from theright. Sharon had wanted to leap across the canalwith two divisions at the outset and head for Cairo,but he was overruled by the high command. His missionwas to secure the crossing and hold the northern endof the Israeli bridgehead west of the canal. Sharonoperated alone through the 16th. General Adan'sdivision began crossing during the 17th. Once acrossthe canal Adan found that at least one Egyptian mech-anized infantry brigade was based on the road toCairo, a few miles west of the crossing site. Pru-dence demanded that the elimination of this unit beaccorded first priority. On the 17th Amir's brigadecrossed the canal and took out the Egyptian brigade.We know little of the fight but it must have beentremendous, for scattered photography shows at leastone battalion virtually destroyed where it stood some15 to 20 kilometers northeast of the Israeli site.Israeli testimony holds, moreover, that the Israelifield hospital set up at Fayid (Fa'id) Airfield on17 October treated "hundreds of wounded" during thefirst 48 hours the hospital was open.

On top of and concurrent with these operationalconsiderations the Israelis were running into trafficproblems. They were trying to move two armored di-visions over narrow desert tracks or asphalt roadsto and through a narrow passage against severe, ifrather uncoordinated, opposition. The roads backedup as each interruption by Egyptian fire disruptedmovement. The Israelis also had trouble gettingtheir bridging equipment into line. The originalplan was to install a roller assault bridge (RAB)early on. The RAB was an Israeli invention consist-ing of floatable rollers supporting a roadbed. It

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was to be assembled on land and towed to the canalby a specially trained tank company. That company,however, got caught up in other aspects of the war,and the untrained tank company that did try to towthe RAB on the 15th and 16th ran into many delays.The first bridge, then, was improvised of Uniflotesections and a tank-launched assault bridge to crossa gap caused by the loss of one Uniflote section.

By 18 or 19 October the Israelis were beginningto benefit from the more fluid situation they hadcreated. They operated in a number of independentcolumns, either smashing through resistance as theymet. it or bypassing it. The town of Fa'id was takenon the 18th. It was the 19th before Adan's entire di-vision was across the canal. Adan's division was tohead south along the Great Bitter Lake with the object.of cutting off the 3rd Army--or that part of it in theSinai. On the 19th a third Israeli unit began crossingthe canal: a task force under General.Magen drawn fromthe 252nd Division at the south end of the canal.*Magen's force secured the west flank of the Israelienclave as Adan drove south. Despite this overwhelm-ing force the Israelis were making slow progress.

Information from the book bymilitary historian Chaim Herzog concurs that Magen commandedthe task force in the north but makes no mention of a divisionunder Meron. Herzog says that the southern sector was held bythe 252nd Division, commanded by Major General Avraham Mandler,until his death in an Egyptian artillery barrage near the GiddiPass on 14 October, when General Magen assumed command. Inthis report Herzog's account has been accepted because

Herzog's account iscomplete and convincinq in its details.

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Having taken Fa'id on 18 October--an advance ofsome 15 kilometers--the Israelis had only gainedanother 20 to 25 kilometers by midday on 22 Octoberjust before the first cease-fire took effect. Thisplaced the Israelis only about halfway to Suez fromtheir crossing point. In the next 27 hours theIsraelis occupied considerably more territory east-ward in the direction of the canal but made verylittle progress to the south toward Suez. It islikely that the Israelis were slowed by their takingthe time to destroy SAM and AAA sites in the area.The final encirclement of Suez, the taking of 'Adabiyahfarther south, and the cutting off of the 3rd Army alloccurred on the afternoon and night of 23-24 October.It is a fair guess, based on the speed of their movesand the fighting that continued after the secondcease-fire, that the Israelis were far from secure intheir.position even when the second cease-fire tookeffect at 0700 local time on 24 October and thatthey made considerable force changes and redeploy-ments to tidy up their positions after the cease-fire.By midday on 25 October the Israeli operation wascomplete. the Israelis ensconcedin an arc stretching from the Gulf of Suez at 'Adabiyahto the Suez Canal just south of Ismailia.

It had taken the Israelis about eight and one-half days to cover the approximately 110-kilometerperimeter of their enclave. This translates intoa rate of advance of approximately 13 kilometersa day. While this may not have been trench war-fare, neither was it blitzkrieg. Certainly it wasa lot slower than the 1967 war, when the Israeliscovered 160 to 175 kilometers in less than fivedays.

Many things combined to slow Israeli progressin the early stages of the crossing. First, theIsraeli political and top military leadership wascautious, especially for the first few days of theoperation. While the Israeli crossing offered thepossibility of turning the tables on the Egyptians,perhaps catastrophically, it also held the possibil-

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ity, if it failed, of turning into a disaster forIsrael. The battle at the Chinese Farm and continuedEgyptian attempts to choke off the corridor to thecrossing site could only have reinforced Israelicaution.

Secondly, the Egyptian mechanized brigade locatedopposite the Israeli crossing point represented aforce that had to be dealt with before the Israeliscould safely proceed. It appears that the Israelisheld up any significant movements to the south untilthat brigade had been eliminated during the 17th.

Finally--and, on this point we have little directevidence--it appears that the scattered Egyptianforces in the area put up firm resistance. Whilethese forces were unable to halt the Israelis, theycertainly slowed them and forced the Israelis toproceed perha s more cauti veotherwise.

By the last day or two ofe war, however, the Israelis apparently had the

ability to move quickly and did so by bypassing manyEgyptian units. Many of the cease-fire violationsin the few days following the end of the war probablyarose from Israeli attempts to eliminate bypassedpockets of Egyptian troops.

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Combat Highlights

Strategy

The contrast between the Syrian and Egyptianstrategies was striking. The Syrians attempted toliberate the whole of the Golan at a stroke; theEgyptians attempted a very limited operation. TheSyrians attempted to resolve their problem mili-tarily; the Egyptians viewed their military opera-tion as a complement and prod to the political/diplomatic process of regaining the Sinai. TheSyrians attacked with their armor in front in anattempt to wage an aggressive war of movement; theEgyptians attacked with their infantry in front withthe specific aim of going to the defensive immedi-ately after the initial penetration.

The campaigns of the two Arab combatants had cer-tain features in common, however. Most significant,both Egypt and Syria committed virtually their entireground force to the forward area. This left botharmies vulnerable to a concentrated counterattackfrom the Israelis. On both fronts, when the Israeliattack pierced the crust of the Arab line, neitherArab state had sufficient reserves available to meetthe Israelis. Both Egypt and Syria had apparentlydevoted considerable effort to planning and trainingfor the initial stages of their attacks. After theopening phases of the war, however, both Arab armiesexhibited the defects of command, control, training,and maintenance which US intelligence had estimatedwere present. In the final analysis, the Egyptianand Syrian armies showed they could be trained towin a battle but had yet to master the skills neededto win a war against the Israelis.

As for the Israelis, their 1973 strategy exhibiteda surprising measure of stagnation because of, or de-spite, 1967 experiences. For one thing, in the ini-

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tial days of the Sinai campaign the Israeli armored

forces were hurt badly in an attempt to apply a doc-

trine that had been used successfully in 1967--theuse of unsupported tanks against infantry. For an-other, the Israeli higher political and militaryleadership evidently lost sight of the crucial im-portance of time for Israeli war planning. In 1956and 1967 the Israeli military was acutely aware that

success had to be achieved within a very few daysbefore outside powers could intervene to Israel'sdetriment. In 1973 the Israelis appear to have

operated under the impression that, because the otherside started the war, they could pursue the war rela-tively free of time constraints imposed from without.The Israelis failed to allow adequately for the prob-ability that, once the war had turned against theArabs, both the Arabs and the Russians would bringpressure to bear to obtain a cease-fire to minimizeIsraeli gains and protect the greatest possible ad-

vantage for the Arabs. The desire to minimize casu-alties and end the war quickly--considerations of a

military character--operated to impose a sense of

urgency among field commanders and, presumably, manyothers at higher civilian and military levels. Theavailable evidence, however, fails to indicate the

heavy, omnipresent sense of time that pervaded the1956 and 1967 campaigns.

Further, the Israeli leaderhip appears to have

neglected to draw the implications of its decisionon 5 October, and again in the very early hours of6 October, not to preempt. If the Israelis werecertain enough of a war to consider preemption, whythen was the situation not serious enough to ordergeneral mobilization? To a considerable extent theanswer probably lies in their misperception of thebenefit accruing to them from the occupied territory.Their leadership operated on the assumption that, in

the event of an Egyptian attack, Israel could tradespace for the time necessary to mobilize. PrimeMinister Meir turned down Chief of Staff Elazar'spleas for mobilization because she had committedIsrael to avoid the appearance of provocation. Per-haps more fundamentally, she and her cabinet were

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inhibited because if Israel mobilized before an Egyp-tian attack it would appear to be an admission thatthe Sinai, the Bar Lev Line, and all the money andcasualties the Israelis had spent holding the bankof the canal had been wasted.* The rationalizationfor keeping the Sinai was that occupying it made itunnecessary for the Israelis to mobilize until anattack came.

Because of the inhospitable climate the Egyptianshad never based large forces permanently in the Sinai.The movement of large numbers of troops across thecanal had been one of the principal precipitatingacts of the 1967 war. By occupying the canal bank,the Israelis had deprived themselves of this indica-tor and were forced to rely for strategic warning ontheir intelligence appraisal of Egyptian intent. Toa large extent, loss of the canal-crossing indicatornullified the military and political value of thestrategic depth of the Sinai by allowing the Egyptianforces to close with the Israeli forces with virtu-ally no warning. This ensured that the Israelisfought the first major battles in a new war at theend of long lines of supply and communications.Egyptian security deprived the Israelis of. reliableintelligence as to the Egyptian intent.

The same considerations did not apply with suchforce on the Syrian front because the Israeli-heldGolan was only a little over 60 kilometers long by25 kilometers wide, at most, and close to Israelipopulation centers. Hence, the Israelis did takethe precaution of moving an armor brigade to rein-force this front several days before the war. Onceit started, however, the proximity of Syria forcedthe Israelis to give first priority to stabilizingthe Syrian front, thus giving the Egyptians time toconsolidate their hold on the Sinai. In the finalanalysis the strategy followed by the Israelis since1967 of maintaining the Bar Lev Line made it virtuallyimpossible for Israel to hold the east bank in theOctober war.

* Several accounts of the political/military interactions amongthe higher Israeli leadership exist. They differ on detail butagree overall with this interpretation.

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Air Defense

In the air defense area the Egyptian and Syriansystems had a good deal in common. Both systems wereequipped almost exclusively by the USSR, which hadalso supplied virtually all the training and advicenecessary to establish them. The Soviet air defenseinvolvement began in the early 1960s in Egypt, butnot until after 1967 in Syria. Since 1971 the So-viets' level of support, evidenced by their willing-ness to export relatively modern equipment, had in-creased greatly. As a result the Syrian and Egyptianair defense systems probably were the most diversi-fied and concentrated anywhere in the world. Diversi-fication is an important factor, because it vastlycomplicates the countermeasures problem for an attacker.

Despite the similarities, the differences weremore telling during the war. The Egyptians deployedtheir SAMs in the combat area to cover about 3,700square nm while the Syrians were covering only about1,800. Though the density of deployment was onlyslightly higher in Syria, the location of the mostsignificant targets in a small defended area made iteasier for the Syrians to anticipate IAF attacks.The Golan, however, offered many routes by which at-tacking aircraft could avoid detection by approachingtargets through valleys and in the-shadow of mountains.By contrast, the relatively flat terrain along thecanal provided little cover for attacking aircraft.

Each Arab system shot down 51 aircraft eventhough the Israelis flew three times as many sortiesagainst the Egyptians. Israel's daily loss rate wasalmost always higher on the Syrian front than on theEgyptian because of the different tactical situations.The Israeli Air Force had no choice but to fly overthe most heavily defended parts of Syria if it wasto play any part in stopping the Syrian penetrationor aiding the Israeli counterattack. Over the SuezCanal area the situation stabilized more quickly,the action was farther from Israel proper, Egyptianforces were more widely deployed, and there wereareas where the air defense system was thin. So

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the Israelis could exercise a certain amount ofchoice in risk taking.

The Arab air defense systems were designed tocompensate for the poor quality of Arab fighter pilotsby maximizing the use of ground-based technology. TheIsraeli situation was just the opposite. The qualityof Israeli pilots was so much higher than that of theArabs, the Israelis devoted virtually all their Mirageaircraft--15 to 20 percent of their total air force--to counter air operations. Israel succeeded in achiev-ing a kill ratio of some 56 to 1 in air-to-air combat.The majority of the 500 or more Arab aircraft (in-cluding helicopters) destroyed in 1973 were destroyedas a direct result of aerial combat.

It is easy to measure the number of aircraft anair defense system shoots down and to calculate lossrates, but the purpose of such a system is not toshoot down airplanes. Its purpose is to protect afriendly force on the ground against damage inflictedby a hostile air force. Shooting down enemy aircraftis merely a means to that end. While direct evidenceis scarce, it appears that the Arab air defense sys-tems achieved their greatest success in preventingthe IAF from inflicting as much damage on the Arabforces in 1973 as it had in 1967. At a minimum theIsraelis were forced to forgo certain weapons anddelivery techniques to minimize exposure to the Arabsystems. The Arab systems kept the IAF from loiter-ing over the battlefield, precluding its use as flyingartillery. The loss of this capability seriously de-graded the IAF's effectiveness.

Performance of the Forces

Many observers, including Israelis, were surprisedby the stiff defense put up by the Arab armies in 1973and by the apparent improvement in their level ofcompetence. An accurate and balanced appreciation ofthe differences in the performance of the troops inthe field between 1967 and 1973 depends upon puttingthe 1967 war in perspective.

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The experience of the 1967 war created a falseimpression of the willingness of Arab troops to standand fight. Because the war lasted only six days, theimpression took root that the Arabs fled at the mereapproach of the Israelis. Ever since, Israeli propa-gandists and psychological warfare experts have fos-tered that belief--too successfully. Not only didthey convince many in the Arab countries, but alsomany in Israel. A good deal of the stagnation inIsraeli armor tactics probably had its roots in thecomplacency abetted by Israeli-created attitudes.The reason for the Israeli campaign was straightfor-ward--if one could convince the Arab soldier that hewas hopelessly inferior to any Israeli soldier, theordinary Arab soldier would not be inclined to riskmuch in combat. The Israelis were psychologicallyunprepared for the steadfastness of the Syrians underfire or for the willingness of Egyptian infantrymento stand up to Israeli armor. Thus, 1967 tacticswere attempted in 1973 with very costly results.

A distinction can be drawn between the willingnessof soldiers to use their rifles, machine guns, orantitank weapons and the competence of troops to standtheir ground under unexpected or rapidly changing cir-cumstances. In 1967 the Arab collapse in the Sinaiwas brought about because the Israelis relied on mo-bility to carry them into the flanks and rear offixed Egyptian defensive positions. The Egyptiansoldier had not been trained sufficiently to copewith such attacks. The Syrians folded on the Golanin 1967 because their government bungled an attemptto force the UN to call a hasty cease-fire by pro-claiming the fall of Al Qunaytirah some eight totwelve hours before it fell in fact. The Syriansoldier, like his Egyptian counterpart, could notcope with a fluid battlefield. However, when theIsraelis were unable to use their mobility to upsetthe Arabs' carefully wrought defensive plans, theyfound the Egyptians and Syrians very tough fighters--as the 1967 battles at Garadi in the Sinai and TallFakhr on the Golan will testify.

The greatest weakness of the Arab armies hasalways been the officer corps. Through the 1967 war,

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SEGRET



this flaw could be largely ascribed to class differ-ences, deficient education, and a consequent set ofattitudes on the part of officers which denigratedthe ordinary soldier. As a result, there was littlereal contact between soldier and officer, less under-standing, and virtually no trust. One of the majorstrengths of the Israeli Army, in contrast, has beenthe close relationship between men and officers--arelationship so close that, in the eyes of some foreignobservers, it borders on the insubordinate. During theperiod between 1967 and 1973, both Egypt and Syria tooksteps to eliminate the worst officers of the old pat-tern and to recruit and keep younger, better educatedofficers and NCOs whose competence and more open at-titudes enabled them to be more effective leaders.The relative gap, in this respect, between Arab andIsraeli armies probably narrowed somewhat.

Still, certain weaknesses of the Arab officercorps were evident in 1973. This was especially soafter the carefully planned and rehearsed openingphases of the war ended. On both fronts, plans wererigidly adhered to long after it was clear that theywere no longer profitable. On the Syrian front thiswas manifested in the mindless march of the Syrian7th Infantry and 3rd Armored Divisions and the AssadBrigade into the dead end of the Vale of Tears. Inthe Sinai, the Egyptians crossed the canal and dugin according to their plan. In so doing they for-feited the chance to improve on their plan.

On the Sinai front, command and control problemsonce again bedeviled the Egyptian Army. It appearsto have taken the Egyptian high command several daysto grasp the magnitude of the Israeli force whichcrossed the canal. The Egyptians never did manageto bring any major force to' bear on it, but simplytried to block the roads leading from the canal areato Cairo. After the war the Egyptian 3rd Army madeone or two desultory attempts to break its encircle-ment, but these never amounted to a serious challengeto Israeli control.

The greatest mistake of the Arab armies in 1973,as in 1967, was their failure to train their troops

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adequately. The soldiers themselves seemed willingenough to do what they had been trained for, but oftentheir training was rigid or poor. For instance, boththe Syrian and Egyptian armored forces used theirtanks in rigid, stereotyped ways that crippled theirown effectiveness and made them relatively easy tar-gets for the Israelis. Perhaps the Arabs are con-strained by the inadequate capabilities of most oftheir recruits. The limited nature of the Egyptianplans seems to indicate this.

The Israeli Army once again showed that itssuperiority over the Arab armies was greatest in thequality of the training and initiative of the lowerranks--individual soldiers, NCOs, and platoon- andcompany-grade officers. In the first days of the warit was the tenacity and adaptability of small unitsand their immediate leaders that enabled the Israelisto stabilize the front and go over to the offensiveso quickly. This was especially evident on the Golan,where Israeli forces, though outnumbered five or sixto one in almost every category of equipment, wereable to stop the Syrian advance within 24 hours andeliminate it within 72 hours.

In terms of artillery, the Israelis were severelyslighted not only in terms of equipment, but also interms of trained spotters and forward observers. Ar-tillery liaison officers with forward units did nothave enough materiel and working space to direct properartillery support for these units. Some artilleryunits had to go to war without adequate spare parts,and some found their equipment so scattered that ittook several days to gather it together. As one con-sequence the divisions of Generals Adan and Sharonarrived at the Suez Canal on 7 and 8 October withoutartillery. Lack of artillery support on 9 Octoberprobably compounded the severity of the repulse theIsraelis suffered on that day.

In another instance, the Israeli mechanized in-fantry--those assigned to accompany armored units inhalf-tracks or APCs--had been trained by the ArmorCorps in anticipation of the use of 1967-style tactics.When it developed that those tactics could not be usedand the mechanized infantry had to fight on foot, their

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training was deficient. As a result, the Israelissuffered greater casualties than they might have.

Despite all the problems, however, the Israelisonce again proved the importance of flexibility inmaintaining their superiority. The most strikingexample of this is provided by the Israeli responseto the Arab--particularly Egyptian--antitank weapons.By 8 October the Israelis had recognized the flawsin their armor tactics and adopted a defensive pro-cedure under which they waited for the Arab armor toattack and then took the Arabs under fire from extremerange. This made it difficult for the Arabs to bringtheir antitank weapons forward. This change of tacticsby the Israelis took maximum advantage of the longerrange of most of their tank guns and the superiorityof their long-range tank gunnery.

The Israeli attack on 8 October appears to havebeen the last attempt to use tanks in the unsupported1967 style and even then the Israelis may have beendrawn in by their initial success. Within four orfive days after the beginning of the war, the Israeliswere adopting tactics which reduced the threat fromArab antitank weapons to manageable proportions. Thisadjustment in the midst of combat provides a fair mea-sure of the flexibility of Israeli leadership andthe thoroughness of low-level training.

Tank Versus Antitank

The effectivenes of the Sagger and RPG-7 was de-scribed in almost mythical proportions in the immedi-ate aftermath of the 1973 war. The evidence nowavailable supports a much more realistic appraisal.Antitank weapons like the Sagger and RPG-7 took aheavy toll of Israeli armor. But they did not renderthe tank obsolete. The initial impression created bythe Egyptian use of antitank missiles was artificiallyreinforced by the inappropriate tactics used by theIsraelis in the first few days of the war. It isprobably safe to say that no large, modern army willagain make the mistake of using unsupported tanksagainst massed infantry.

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The Israelis state that they did not use theFrench-built SS-ll antitank wire-guided missiles intheir possession before the war broke out. It appearsthe SS-11 had been phased out of the Israeli inven-tory before the war. We have no reasonable explana-tion why. The TOW missiles arrived from the US toolate to be used during the war proper, but did seesome action during the cease-fire violations thatpersisted for some weeks after 24 October. Theshoulder-fired LAW--the US answer to the RPG-7--wasused some. It was effective, but too light and shortranged to satisfy the Israelis.

The Israelis rediscovered some ancient priciplesin seeking a response to the antitank weapon threatposed at the beginning of the October war. Foremost,the Israelis found that no single weapon can longdominate the battlefield. Victory requires the useof a balanced force with many complementary offensiveand defensive elements. The battlefield, in short,is a complicated environment and no one weapon orarm of service can function effectively on it with-out the.active aid and cooperation of others. Thisis reassuring for the Israelis, since the effectiveand flexible use of mobile forces under difficultcircumstances is precisely the area in which theyhold the greatest comparative advantage over the Arabs.

Mobilization

The mainstay of Israeli military strength hasalways been the ability to mobilize rapidly. Thepopulation is too small and the economy too indus-trialized to permit Israel to have a large standingarmy. It is much more economical to maintain a small,highly trained cadre of regular forces together witha larger number of draftees on active duty. These aresupplemented by a number of reservists who are re-quired to serve as much as a month each year on activeduty. The net result is that Israel has a large num-ber of people with a high level of military skill fora relatively low cost. Rapid mobilization, however,is what makes it possible for Israel to use thisscheme. As a result the Israelis have always in the

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past taken great care to see to it that the necessarymaintenance and notification systems worked to sup-port a fast mobilization.

Superficially, these systems broke down in 1973.Stories are rife about the poor state of maintenancefound to exist in much Israeli equipment at the time.In any case, necessary supplies reportedly were miss-ing when mobilization-occurred, causing delays whilemisplaced equipment was rounded up. In several in-stances the binoculars had disappeared from tankunits--allegedly appropriated by status-seeking in-fantry. In another case antitank missiles could notbe located. Also, records were said to have beenneglected, causing the alerting system to malfunctionfrequently. Almost certainly there is some truth toall these stories, and many shortages and inconveni-ences are known to have been encountered.

What matters most, however, is how much combatpower was delivered to the fronts in how much time.By that bare criterion the Israeli mobilization systemworked very well indeed. Three armored divisionswere delivered to the Golan Heights in less than 72hours, mostly within 48. In the Sinai the major partof two armored divisions arrived along the canal with-in 24 to 36 hours. The first reserve units were inaction on both fronts within 12 hours. One couldhardly improve. The cause of the Israelis' frustrationis that, having been surprised, they could not with anyamount of speed repair the damage done by their failureto begin mobilization promptly when significant evi ceindicated the imminence of war.

major items of bridgingequipment being brought to the canal for the firsttime, as well as greatly increased artillery strengthson both fronts.

The fact that the major part of the mobilizationtook place after the war began caused all the normalproblems to become larger and harder to deal with.The overriding necessity then was to get troops tothe fronts as fast as humanly possible. In the north,that meant sending tanks forward individually without

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waiting to organize units. Individual tanks were putinto service as soon as a complete tank crew was madeup. Tanks on their way to the Golan were packagedinto units via radio as they drove along. The situ-ation was only relatively better in the Sinai, buteven there both Generals Adan and Sharon moved intobattle without their organizational artillery becauseequipment transporters were .lacking and because main-tenance flaws were found. For the first several daysthings were a tangled mess as units went to war intanks they had never seen with crewmates they hadnever met. Troops were formed into units under com-manders they had never heard of.

he situation in the rear areas andat major headquarters was chaotic.

The mobilization worked for two reasons. First,the level of training among Israeli reserve troopswas sufficient to cope, and the qualities of thosetroops and the situations in which they found them-selves were complementary--the times demanded flex-ibility, ,adaptability, and high motivation, and theseassets the Israeli troops had. Second, whether theIsraeli mobilization planners foresaw a situationsuch as the one they found on 6 October 1973, we donot know. Nevertheless, the Israeli stress on stan-dardization of equipment layout .and loadings op-erated well enough to enable any Centurion crewman,for instance, to operate with any Centurion tank.

Navy

The naval aspects of the October war have notbeen discussed up to now in this study because theyare well treated in at least two excellent publishedreports.* The subject is introduced here becausethe Israeli naval experience reinforces a point made

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earlier. While the Israeli Army had failed to tailor-its strengths to Arab weaknesses, the navy had doneso in painstaking detail. The Egyptian sinking ofthe Israeli destroyer Elath in September 1967 had atraumatic effect on the Israeli Navy. At the time,Israel had two destroyers and 11 patrol boats, noneof them missile equipped. The Egyptians had about12 Komar missile patrol boats and about six destroyers.Israel quickly decided that ships as large as a de-stroyer had no chance against the Komars, and so theacquisition of a suitable counter--small, fast missileboats--was accelerated.

The result was the Saar class of fast patrol boatarmed with an Israeli-developed antiship missile.The combination of the two systems represents one ofthe clearest cases of Israel's tailoring its forcesto those of the Arabs. Israel was unable to developa missile with a range more than half that of theStyx missile mounted on the Komars, so the Saars de-veloped tactics designed to ensure their ability toget close to the Komars--and to the larger Osa boatsreceived by the Arabs after the 1967 war.

These tactics were essentially quite simple.Each boat was equipped with a receiver capable of de-tecting the Styx search radar so the Israelis wouldknow when the Egyptians had detected them. The boat'sown radar was used to track the Styx missile, which wassimilar to a remotely piloted aircraft. When themissile came within 10 to 15 kilometers, the Israelislaunched chaff-dispensing rockets across its path andheaded toward the missile at maximum speed. Sincethe Styx is a homing missile, 'if its tracker couldbe diverted even momentarily by the chaff, the missilemight be unable to reacquire a real target in time tohit it. Also, since the Styx homed on the radar re-turn from the target, by heading toward the missilethe Israeli boat would be presenting a minimum tar-get to the missile. To reduce radar return evenfurther, a radar-absorbing coating was applied to theforward part of each Saar's superstructure. As finaldefensive measures the Israelis used a shorter rangedchaff dispenser fired slightly off to the side of theboat to draw the missile off course and automatic

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cannon and antiaircraft guns to shoot at the missileitself.

The Israelis received a lot of help from theEgyptians and Syrians in making their tactics work.First, the Arabs were very "noisy" about keepingtheir radars on and chattering on their radios, makingit easy for the Israelis to locate them. Secondly,the' Arabs launched their missiles at maximum range--24 nm--giving the Israelis maximum time to detect anddeflect the incoming missiles. Finally, the Arabswere remarkably unaggressive. Typically they wouldfire their missiles on first detecting the Israelisand then flee for their harbors.

The Arab losses included eight missile boats, aminesweeper, a landing craft, and two patrol boats.The Israeli losses were nil, with slight damage toone Saar. The Arabs achieved no hits by the 50 or somissiles they fired--a marked change from the threehits scored by four Styx missiles fired at the Elathand from the eight hits out of nine Styx missilesfired in the Indo-Pakistani war. The difference isaccounted for by the Israeli countermeasures andtactics as well as the maneuverability of the Saar.The outcome of the naval battle had little or noimpact on the outcome of the war as a whole, but itprovided a clear lesson to both Arabs and Israelis:tailor one's own strengths to take maximum advantageof the other side's weaknesses--complacency carries aheavy price.

Electronic Warfare

There is no indication that EW had a major im-pact on the war despite the occurrence of severalincidents seeming to show the potential of this brandof warfare. Early in the war Israeli Major GeneralMendler, commander of the Armored Force Sinai, waskilled in an Egyptian artillery barrage. There issome evidence to suggest that the barrage was firedin response to intercepted communications which pin-pointed Mendler's position. The Israelis had suffi-cient depth in personnel and resilience in the com-

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mand and control structure to absorb this loss withminimal disruption, but there could be circumstanceswhen such a loss could do great damage. Israelicommunications security was lax in 1973 for two mainreasons--the pressing emergency of the situation andthe lack of secure voice communications gear. MuchIsraeli communication at the tactical level was viaradio and almost entirely in the clear. The Arabs,particularly the Egyptians, made a great effort tointercept such communications and showed a consider-able ability to redirect artillery fire in responseto intercepted radio chatter.

A blunder on the part of the Egyptians, however,offers the best example of EW applied to tacticalcombat situations. On the afternoon of 16 Octoberthe 25th Armored Brigade of the Egyptian 3rd Armywas ordered to move north along the shore of theGreat Bitter Lake early on the 17th. The purpose ofthe move was to help pinch off the corridor to theIsraeli crossing site.

The trap was sprung and virtually theentire brigade, including all 60 of its tanks, wasdestroyed within 15 minutes. The Israelis claim tohave suffered no losses in this engagement. Beforethe war the Egyptians had made maximum use of land-lines to prevent Israeli interception of their sensi-tive communications traffic. Once .the war began,however, the Egyptians were forced to use radio, andtheir security was often poor.

On the Golan front, the Syrians took advantageof the Israeli laxity in radio communications securityby directing their artillery at unit headquarters whichwere located by radio direction finding. The Israelis,however, responded in kind, and neither side gained anydecisive or dramatic advantages through exploitation ofthe other's communications.

The Arab SA-2 and SA-3 systems were thought topose only a small threat to the Israelis because elec-tronic countermeasures directed at them had beendeveloped over a period of years. The SA-6 and SA-7,

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however, were quite different, and the Israelis didnot have ECM against them. Moreover, the air defensesystems of the Arabs were deployed more thickly thanany other system known. The Israelis used electronicmeasures heavily in an effort to hold down theirlosses. The drama of the war's outbreak and themaiden combat of the SA-6 focused attention on EW ina way that was unprecedented as far as the MiddleEast went. But, as. in the naval aspects of the war,EW made no major difference in the outcome of the waras a whole. EW tactics and techniques are well coveredin other reports* and will be covered in detail inforthcoming reports.

On the basis of very sketchy reporting, it ap-pears that the Israelis had again become complacentabout Arab developments in the field of EW and were,as a result, surprised both at the extent and compe-tence with which the Arabs used both passive and ac-tive techniques. That much said, it appears that theIsraelis retained a wide measure of superiority intheir use of highly refined electronic techniquesboth to counter Arab air defense weapons and to col-lect and exploit intelligence. In this new and stilllargely unexplored form of warfare, however, Israel'sperformance in 1973 does not leave it with the samerelative advantage still evident in other forms ofwarfare.

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Bibliographical Note

The sources used in the preparation of this reportare too numerous to list. The following representonly the most important and productive sources dis-covered in the period January 1974 through May 1975.

Three Israeli books are indispensable to under-standing Israeli policy, intelligence perceptions,and popular thinking just before and during the war.They are Kippur by Y. Ben Porat and six other Israelijournalists who covered the war both at rear head-quarters and in combat. The second is October Earth-quake by Ze'ev Schiff, an Israeli military writer andhistorian. Written by a member of the Israeli "estab-lishment" in late 1974, it is a more balanced, ana-lytical account which focuses more on the problemsof intelligence and strategy than does Kippur. Finally,Chaim Herzog's book The War of Atonement is probablythe best tactical summary. Herzog is a former Chiefof.Military Intelligence, is a military historian, andwas the principal government military commentatorduring the 1973 war.

On the Arab side, lamentably little literaturehas been translated into English. The only suchbook available at this writing is The October War byR. N. El Rayyes and D. Nahas, published by En NaharPress Service of Beirut in 1973. It reprints theofficial Egyptian and Syrian communiques and containsa rather brief account from the Arab point of view.Nevertheless, it contains some interesting materialand does make an effort to avoid bombast. The Journalof Palestine Studies, a quarterly published in the US,contains in numbers 10 and 11, January and March 1974,interesting interviews with Arab leaders and articleson Arab strategy before and after the war. The bibli-ographic notes section of the Journal always containsreferences to military articles and books written inArabic, most of which have never been translated.For anyone with the linguistic resources, many leadscould be developed there.

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intelligence reportsep 01, 1975 · arab intentions. performance of troops. the arabs were tough on...

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