Posted on 09/28/2017 8:32:01 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
On the first day of the Yom Kippur War, an Israeli photo reconnaissance plane, flying well inside Sinai to keep out of range of surface-to-air (SAM) missiles across the Suez Canal, scanned the Egyptian deployment on the far bank.
The Israel Air Force commander, Maj.-Gen. Benny Peled, would not see the photographs until days later. They showed Egyptian tanks, fuel and supply trucks, troop carriers, and other vehicles lined up for miles, packed together virtually bumper to bumper on narrow desert roads waiting to cross into Sinai on pontoon bridges being assembled in the water.
Had he known of this stationary target in real time, Peled would later say, he would have ordered an attack despite the profusion of SAMs in the area.
It might have meant the loss of two to four planes, he estimated, but it would have wrought greater destruction than the Egyptian army suffered in Sinai in the Six Day War.
A year earlier, Peled’s predecessor, Maj.-Gen. Mordecai “Motti” Hod, had seen almost identical photographs.
They had been taken during an Egyptian military exercise simulating a canal crossing.
Recognizing a prime target when he saw one, Hod ordered an attack plan prepared in case the Egyptians deployed like that for an actual crossing.
A detailed plan, labeled Srita (Scratch), was drawn up and rehearsed by the air force. When war came the next year, however, Srita was overlooked amid the intense confusion of the opening hours of the war, with surprise attacks unfolding on both the Syrian and Egyptian fronts.
In an interview three decades after the war, Hod was still lamenting the failure of his old friend and successor, Peled, to implement the plan. “He had only to say, ‘Srita, execute.’” If Peled had given the order, Hod believed, Israel’s most trying war would have been turned around at its very start.
To avoid the SAMs, Hod’s plan was based on so-called “toss bombing.” Planes coming in low over the Sinai desert, invisible to the SAM radars, would pull up sharply 2 miles from the waterway and release their bomb loads, as if from a sling shot, while looping to the rear to escape fire. Although toss bombing was of limited accuracy against small targets, a massive staging area was impossible to miss. Under the plan, each aircraft would carry 24 small bombs to make for a broader spread. A wave of 100 planes would thus carry 2,400 bombs.
The same planes would attack in two cycles, doubling the number of bombs. If 200 planes were used, the physical and psychological damage would be that much greater, with close to 10,000 bombs raining down on the trapped vehicles.
The attack would be simpler to carry out than the preemptive attack on Egypt in 1967 that Hod had commanded and the impact on the war could have been almost as great. It would have thrown the entire Egyptian attack off stride, taken the wind out of the Arabs’ psychological sails, and permitted Israel to recover swiftly from the shock of the surprise Arab attack Coming off the high of the Six Day War, the Yom Kippur War would prove a difficult challenge for the air force. It received more than half of Israel’s defense budget and its reputation was of mythic proportions. Yet it would be unable to carry out one of the basic missions it was expected to perform – to block an enemy incursion if the ground army was unable to hold.
Within the air force itself, there had been uneasiness about these expectations. The pilots well knew that the Soviet-made SAMs posed a serious problem for which there was no clear answer.
The Americans, who had encountered SAMs in Vietnam, offered only partial electronic solutions for the SAM-2 and SAM- 3, the first missile systems introduced by the Soviets; there was no known defense at all against the new SAM-6.
Israel began to lose planes to SAMS in worrisome numbers during the so-called War of Attrition along the Suez Canal in1969- 70. With the end of the fighting, the SAMs became even more formidable, when the Egyptians, with their Soviet advisers, linked the scattered batteries into a mutually supporting system.
For Israeli pilots, dogfights with enemy planes were virtually a recreational activity; but the SAMs were implacable, mysterious and deadly, filling their cockpits with raucous warnings of radar lock-on and approaching missiles.
Shortly after taking command of the air force in May 1973, Peled was visited by then defense minister Moshe Dayan and members of the General Staff, all eager to know whether the air force had an answer to the SAM threat.
Peled summoned the operational team working on the problem.
The best minds in the air force, they spelled out for the visitors their “Star Wars” plan, as Peled sardonically labeled it. The plan’s code name was Tagar, or challenge.
Since the SAM batteries could not be suppressed electronically, Tagar aimed at eliminating them by brute force.
The day-long operation would involve hundreds of aircraft in staggered waves, performing an intricate choreography with clockwork precision. Drones and helicopters dropping aluminum strips would clutter the enemy radar.
If the radars were activated, planes would drop American-made Shrike missiles that home in on radars. If the radars were kept inactive to foil the Shrikes, planes would undertake low-level attacks against them. The choreography would include a mix of low-level and high-level attacks.
Before Dayan and the others left, Peled brought them down to Earth. “You should know that these plans aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on unless there’s a preemptive strike,” he cautioned.
The surprise Arab attack on Yom Kippur afternoon, a Saturday, left no time to execute Tagar in the few hours of daylight remaining, but at dawn Sunday the first wave rose for a preliminary attack.
Dayan had meanwhile helicoptered up to the northern front and was appalled at what he found. The Syrians had broken through the thin Israeli defenses in strength and some units had reached the edge of the escarpment overlooking the Galilee. Israeli army engineers were already preparing the demolition of the Jordan River bridges.
The northern front commander told Dayan bluntly that he was not sure he could hold the heights.
Dayan had himself patched through to Peled and told him to halt Tagar and send the entire air force north. When Peled attempted to argue, Dayan snapped, “This is not a request. This is an order.”
Obliged to seek out the Syrian SAMs before their locations were verified by reconnaissance photos, six Phantoms were downed and only one missile battery hit. The air force, normally meticulous and decisive, had been jarred into sloppy haste. There would be no further attempt to implement Tagar.
Senior air force veterans of the war interviewed years later were unanimous in saying that, if Dayan had not interfered, Tagar and its Golan equivalent would have succeeded in destroying the SAM array on both fronts, enabling the air force to operate decisively in support of the ground forces. Israeli losses in the operation would have been high, some said, perhaps dozens of planes and pilots.
In an interview shortly before his death, Peled said that the air force had dominated the skies throughout the Middle East during the war except for two small rectangles – the spaces above the battlefields in Sinai and the Golan, where the SAMs ruled. On the ground, soldiers kept looking at the sky and asking “Where’s the air force?” The IAF, however, was far from passive. It shot down hundreds of aircraft over Syria and Egypt, prevented attacks by enemy planes on Israeli convoys bound for the fronts, kept the skies over Israel clean of enemy planes except for a few peripheral pinpricks in the north, and destroyed a substantial part of Egypt’s commando forces being helicoptered behind Israeli lines.
The IAF attacked strategic targets in Syria, such as power plants and oil depots. The pilots would also “go into the fire,” as Peled put it, to attack missile-intensive environments such as the bridges on the canal and military targets in the heart of Damascus.
The Arab attack on Yom Kippur caught Israel with its reserves – two-thirds of the army’s strength – still unmobilized. Initially staggered, the ground forces recovered brilliantly. After crossing the canal, Israeli tanks and artillery destroyed half the SAM batteries in the area, opening up patches of sky for the air force, which could now reciprocate with direct ground support.
The IAF paid a heavy price – 53 pilots killed, 44 captured and 102 planes downed. Pilots flew three or four sorties a day. When the war started, Israel had 317 serviceable aircraft and 82 in maintenance.
All 82 would be returned to service during the war, largely offsetting the number shot down.
After the war, the air force devoted itself to coming up with a technological answer to the SAMs. By 1978 it had it – a standoff weapon that could be launched from beyond the range of the SAMs and guided onto target with its own camera.
When the Lebanese War came in June 1982, the new weapon and new tactics were put to the test in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, where the Syrians deployed a missile array more formidable than the one they fielded in the Yom Kippur War – 19 SAM-6 batteries.
The IAF opened the battle remotely by dispatching drones to overfly the SAMs and the radar-controlled antiaircraft guns protecting them. The drones sent electronic signals activating the Syrian radars, which had been kept dormant to avoid being targeted.
When the radars came alive, their electronic parameters were recorded and instantly fed into airborne and ground-launched missiles that homed in on and destroyed the radars before they could be shut down.
With the Syrian radars blinded, Israeli warplanes swarmed over the valley, destroying 15 batteries and severely damaging three others.
When Syrian warplanes rose to challenge them, dozens were shot down, as Israeli air controllers in surveillance planes directed waiting fighter squadrons to the attack.
At this stage, with not a single Israeli plane downed, the air force commander, Maj.-Gen. David Ivri, Peled’s former deputy, recalled his planes to make it a perfect day.
Air battles would resume the next day. In all, 82 Syrian planes were downed in dogfights. Israeli losses were one Skyhawk and two helicopters downed by conventional antiaircraft fire.
The Israeli attack in the Bekaa involved an integration of technology and tactics which American military analyst Anthony Cordesman would call “uniquely efficient.” With this stunning display nine years after the frustrations of the Yom Kippur War, the IAF took back the technological and psychological high ground.
The revised edition of The Yom Kippur War by Abraham Rabinovich, published this month by Schocken (New York), includes previously censored material as well as information that has emerged from memoirs and other sources since the book was originally published in 2004.
A major new source is a 1,300-page compilation of transcripts of debates within the high command and other command levels during the war that offers a rare close-up of decision making amid seeming chaos.
Separately, we learn about two Egyptian informants for the Mossad who provided vital information that directly impacted the battlefield. A former Mossad leader offers new insights into the colossal failure of military intelligence on the eve of the war. Interviews with a former commando leader and others similarly add new layers to the story. There are also new maps.
SLAR?
Didn’t much matter seeing as how God fought that war for Israel . . . He is still on the throne and Israel is forever His chosen people.
If Israel were ever faced with defeat with conventional warfare they would have went nuclear.
Moscow was also on their list as the old Soviet Union was the main supplier of arms against Israel. Although it was in the sixties Israel did have the capability of hitting Moscow and other strategic centers. Israel was totally incapable of defeating the Soviet Union but did have the capability of extracting horrific damage on them and had nothing to lose as at that point they were a defeated nation and would take their enemies down with them.
The Mideast would have been burned in nuclear fire. The Soviet Union would have been grievously harmed but survived.
I have never understood the logic of that war.
Can't help but wonder: "Why the delay with the photointel?
Sadat knew that he would eventually lose much of the war but the damage that he did to the Israeli military and homefront morale would be enough to get concessions from Begin. It worked though Egypt lost about 10,000 men, lots of aircraft and weapons, etc.
The Soviets and the US stopped Sharon’s planned destruction of the surrounded Egyptian Army (9th?) on the Suez Canal.
I met one of the Israeli peace negotiators who talk a group of us about what happened.
No logic. Just hate. (And .. they believe allah is on their side, of course.)
I tell my kids that most problems arise due to poor communications. Some are minor, some can change history.
I would be interested in seeing this book. I don't see anything on Amazon or the publisher's website about this new edition.
How important was Operation Nickel Grass?
If you'd like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Well, I think executing Tagar, the bombing of Egyptian assembly areas, at the war’s outset would have been a disaster. The Israelis did not know the capabilities of the Egyptian weapons. Egyptian air cover and SAMs (mounted and ManPADs) would have inflicted high losses. Israel did not have air superiority or a tactical counter-measure to the SAMs until several days into the war.
Their bombers eventually switched to targeting SAM sites and found that if they came in low, popped up, then swung over and used direct targeting they could accurately destroy a SAM site before the missiles could elevate to obtain targeting lock on them. This was done to assist the Israeli fighter planes gain air superiority.
Sacrificing the bombers at the outset would have deprived the Israelis the bombers they would need for future strikes first within Israeli territory, then later in Arab territory after the SAMs were destroyed and air superiority was achieved. This is what eventually assured Israeli victory. The intense bombing of Egyptian and Syrian forces after they advanced beyond the range of their SAMs, then the destruction of the SAMs, and finally bombing the Arab forces during their retreat. The destruction of the Egyptian and Syrian forces was only possible after the Arabs first advanced beyond their SAM cover then after their SAMs and fighters had been destroyed. The Israeli air force was then able to isolate and fix Arab forces allowing the Israeli Army to destroy them.
This is why each branch of service isn’t allowed to choose what it’s going to do in a war.
Mr. GG2 was standing on the Golan Heights with IDF when the first rockets came across. They handed him an AK asked him if he knew how to use it. He said yes and they pointed to a nearby wire and a foxhole. Told him to kill anything that came across the wire and they would be back for him later. Much later.
He watched the battle unfold and later went down to the valley with the IDF and walked past the burnt out Syrian tanks with charred bodies hanging out of the tops.
He also said he saw quite a few “Israeli” pilots wearing Tony Llama boots. And a whole lot of other stuff he can’t talk about. Hella experience for a 22 year old California boy who was out on a self discovery trip about his ethnic roots.
...and let’s not forget that Israel had a female Prime Minister during that war, and as we are always told by the feminists, and likely the case here, female leaders are less likely to be belligerent than men...and so Israel sat on its butt and nearly got wiped out for it.
Operation Nickel Grass was essential; it shortened the war, for certain, and led to as favorable an outcome as could be expected. For the US, it showed the value of the C5; the US had a screwy flight path (thanks to the Europeans; Portugal alone helped, by giving permission to use that air field in the Azores) that was also much longer, yet out-airlifted the Soviets by a large measure (and that doesn’t even include the older Hercules transports, which were also active on a much smaller scale). The airlift was also closely coordinated with the Israelis, who would keep the US informed of what they were critically low on, and within 12 or so hours the parts would arrive. At the end of the operation, to test capability and to show off a little, a ready-to-roll M60 tank was delivered aboard a C5.
The1973 war is often held up as an Israeli defeat, but it was merely a very costly victory — Syria lost nearly 1000 tanks, which is mind-boggling, the USSR lost Egypt, and the rest of the Arab states saw Egypt and Israel (and much later, Jordan and Israel) sign a peace treaty, undermining and destroying the effectiveness of the Khartoum Declaration of 1967.
The Arabs did carry out a surprise attack, but it shouldn’t have been so surprising, considering they’d been carrying out maneuvers and had been staging the attack for weeks leading up to it. The Jordanians actually managed to inform the Israelis of the exact date of the attack, via an Israeli asset in London (a Jewish doctor that King Hussein relied on) — but the Labor Party-era morons running Israel’s intel had convinced themselves and their politicians that the Arabs feared yet another loss (the 1967 Six Day War is just the best known nowadays, the Israelis have been beating the asses of Arab forces since before the founding of the modern state), were incapable of concerted action, and didn’t have military parity.
The initial attack resulted in the destruction of the Bar-Lev line and the deaths of everyone stationed there, along the east side of the Canal (sitting duck fortifications have been a stupid idea for a long while before that one was built) and a massive bridgehead established within hours by the Egyptian army using multiple pontoon bridges, and protected by a SAM umbrella, using launchers located west of the canal. Sadat’s objectives were limited, which is why Egypt succeeded and one reason why Syria failed. Sadat intended that the bridgehead not exceed the range of the SAM umbrella, and that his army would dig in, armed with an abnormally high number of anti-tank weapons, and be too difficult and costly to dislodge, forcing Israel into a negotiated cease-fire, and eventual recovery of the entire Sinai. Also in his overall plan was the ejection of the USSR and a turning to the US as a big-power ally.
Syria used SAMs to negate Israel’s tactics of using close air support to knock out armor. In the early hours of the war, that was costly for the IAF, which knew it had to continue to use thost tactics until the reservists arrived on the ground, because the skeletal Israel tank forces available on the frontier wouldn’t be able to hold their ground, and Syrian tanks could be blanketing the most densely populated part of Israel within 24 hours as a worst-case scenario.
Syria also used Soviet-style massed attacks of armor, and of course both Syria and Egypt had been goaded into the war, and supplied with up-to-date anti-tank and SAM missile systems by the Soviet Union. The accounts of the Israeli tank forces’ first day or two of the 1973 war are awe-inspiring and poignant. There are a few different documentaries on YouTube (avast ye swabs!), and of course a number of books. Israel concentrated its available forces and early arriving reservists to the Syrian front, and used the mobility of its limited armored forces in the Sinai to prevent an Egyptian advance. They didn’t realize that the expected advance wasn’t planned.
Another thing that beat the Arabs was that Sadat didn’t share his objectives with his ally Syria, or anyone else (Kissinger figured it out, and had his suspicions confirmed during his famous shuttle diplomacy during the struggle), leading Assad to seriously over-reach on the one hand, and on the other not make sure his armor was pushing to its limits. Syria’s tank forces also had better night vision equipment than that of the Israelis. Israeli tank commanders however had the habit of riding halfway out of the hatch, so they could better surveil and direct fire. Syrian tanks by and large went all buttoned down.
Do I remember that the Egyptians used fire boats to wash away the Israeli fortifications in the Sinai?
I also seem to remember that Ariel Sharon was instrumental in saving them on the northern front.
I often muse at how funny it is that Nixon, that curmudgeonly anti-semite, probably did more to help Israel than any other president. He paid a price for this, as it could be argued that the recession triggered by the Arab oil embargo is what helped elect that hideous 1974 congress.
Nixon was confronted with the news, listened to the options, then asked whether an airlift would work. He was told the details about the Azores, and the flight path, and about the C5, its range, etc, and ordered it to go ahead. “To what limit?” “You will send everything that will fly.” Nothing wishy-washy about that. And he was supposedly hungover and unshaved. I don’t accept that he was an antisemite though. FDR may have been — during WWII he was meeting with, hmm, I think it was a group of armed services chaplains, and told the highest-ranking rabbi and highest-ranking priest that “The US is a Protestant nation. Roman Catholics and Jews are here by suffrance.” Yeah, that explains that huge Jewish cemetery that was dedicated in Newport, RI in 1677. OTOH, Truman, who probably said more stupid, bigoted, profane, and unbecoming things than any other President, ordered US recognition of the restored nation of Israel (the USSR actually beat the US by ten minutes) and made sure they received a great many things they needed in their first crises. There was actually an odd collaboration between the US and USSR (and Czechoslovakia?) to help create the IAF.
:^) Sharon operated in the Sinai. He and the command didn’t see eye to eye, but Sharon was fighting at the front and had powerful friends who, uh, had his rear. The most famous photo of him, probably of anyone or anything in the 1973 war, was him with the bandage wrapped around his head wound, as I recall in the hatch of his tank. As we would say today, it went viral. It wasn’t just showbiz, he’d really been seriously wounded, but he went back to the battle, because like every Israeli (including a couple that arrived in Nepal for their honeymoon, saw the news story upon their arrival, and immediately booked a flight back home), he knew this was a battle for existence. He wanted the cross-canal counterattack, and wanted to lead it, but didn’t get to do that (if memory serves). The Israelis had actually built a heavily-armored pontoon bridge for just such a contingency, and stashed it on top of a hill overlooking the canal, with a roadway right down to the water’s edge. A modified tank was used to push it down and deploy it; it was stiff enough to make the crossing as straight as a spear. Cutting one or more of the Egyptian pontoons to cut off supplies and reinforcements (and avenue of retreat) began the strategy; more forces were becoming available for the Sinai front, and that allowed for a more formidable attack on the Egyptian expeditionary forces.
This isn’t the famous shot, but it shows him with the bandage. That’s a fine group with him, btw:
http://www.thetower.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Web_F731017yg01.jpg
The Egyptians had used firefighting equipment, that’s probably what you meant. Sadat had bought high-pressure firefighting equipment designed for skyscrapers, despite the fact that the tallest building in Egypt in 1973 was probably still the Great Pyramid. And they bought a lot of it. The tactic used was to spray the hillsides behind and above the Bar Lev line bunkers, and the bunkers themselves. While the spray of water was coming in, the garrisons could do and see nothing, then the waterlogged hillsides gave away and buried them all. At the same time, the pontoon bridges (which had been observed by Israeli scouts, and the presence of those bridges were obviously diagnostic of a canal-crossing campaign; part of the intel failure) were assembled and deployed quickly, and the Egyptian forces swarmed across, rolling quickly to their maximum objectives for the most part, near the eastern edges of the SAM umbrella, I think it was about 10 km penetration. All of that was beautifully coordinated and executed, particularly considering it was the Egyptian army.
The fears about breakouts and breakthroughs in Israel mostly pertained to the northern front, against Syria, not merely because of the proximity — the above article notes how far Syrian forces penetrated. Had they not been getting such a beating despite their massive numerical superiority, they might have pressed it and been over the Jordan River not long after nightfall. They didn’t get a second chance to do that; the thug dictator Assad had the two generals “responsible” for the defeat dragged dead through the streets of Damascus, I guess they started the dragging trip dead, not sure.
Kissinger was trying to simmer everything down, get a ceasefire in place, but the ****ing Soviets didn’t want it, and didn’t want Egypt to accept it, because they were also smart enough to figure out what Sadat was up to (plus, the idea that they didn’t have moles in Egyptian and for that matter US gov’t is ludicrous). Syria’s Assad had pushed everything into the middle of the table at the outset, and claimed to be the one, the only redeemer of Arab dignity (y’know, the dignity that leads Syrian Arabs to murder POWs), got within an nth of a breakout, then saw it all turn to crap as the Israel reservists flooded in, and, using both US-made armor and repurposed tanks captured and/or reconditioned from tanks lost by the Arabs in the 1967 war, comprehensively defeated then annihilated the Syrian tank armada. The 1973 tank battle between Syria and Israel probably remains the largest fought since WWII (I’m not sure it isn’t second overall, after only the Battle of the Kursk Salient). Of the 1400 or so tanks Syria used in attack, a bit more than 300 were not destroyed or captured (captured after abandonment by their crews).
The Israelis weren’t going to accept a ceasefire until they’d regained the Hermon (they’d lost their observation post up there), driven the Syrians back out of Golan, and smashed the Syrian capability so it couldn’t be used a second time. They were also keen to push the Egyptians back over the Canal, but the Sinai was always regarded as an ideal natural barrier to buy time on the southern frontier while attacks nearer to the Israeli population could be repulsed. As the Syrians were being turned, Assad changed his tune and started demanding (just short of begging) Egypt to basically get off its duff and push on. Assad couldn’t figure out why the Egyptian forces had stopped dead when they could have reoccupied the entire Sinai. Had the ceasefire been accepted at that point, a lot of spilled blood would have been saved. But Sadat couldn’t be seen accepting a ceasefire when Syria was teetering on the brink of utter defeat, so he went off plan, contrary to the advice of all his general staff, and ordered a full-force assault. Turns out, without the advantage of surprise, and without a willingness (or plan) to move those SAM batteries across the Canal, having a lot of tank-killer teams didn’t amount to much.
Kissinger was still trying 24-7 to bring about a ceasefire. After the Egyptian assault turned into a rout, and the Israelis crossed the Canal and started destroying the SAM batteries with ground forces, and pushed as far as Ismailia, Sadat was screaming to Kissinger to get Israel to back off. The Russians were threatening world war three (I’ll love when that hell-hole is a smoking ruin), and the Syrians were trying to move their SAM batteries and triple-A to protect Damascus as the IAF began to hit them where they ain’t. As the article notes, the dogfights were costly for Israel, but were also heavily in their favor. Same pertained to the dogfights on the southern front. When the Israelis had recovered the entire Golan and crushed Syria, they agreed.
I take issue with the article’s characterization of Dayan’s approach — pulling the entire IAF into the north was a must, and helped save Israel. The advantage of having an experienced battlefield commander is that decisive and dynamic flexibility. There was only one way to help the initially small ground forces against a tank attack of that magnitude, and it meant the probable loss of aircraft and crews. Peled comes across as a carper and griper — and the use of air power alone doesn’t conquer cities and win battles, that takes ground forces. It’s reminiscent of Chennault’s loony idea that, with enough planes, he would be “retaking Hangkou”. For that matter, had Hitler not peed his cowardly little britches and denied the go-ahead for the Wehrmacht to close the bag, the whole BEF would have been taken at Dunkirk — instead, Goering requested the honor, strafing and bombing with very little impact, the British troops escaped to fight again (in North Africa, for example), and the Germans couldn’t even dream of a cross-channel invasion.
Great picture!
Yeah, “anti-Semite” is probably too strong a statement, although Nixon certainly used some crusty language.
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>> “What I have never understood about that war is why they attacked Israel.” <<
Yehova “put hooks in their jaws” and drew them into a war they couldn’t win.
The day of attonement for some; a day of judgment for others.
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Wow, nice account!
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