ROUND ONE: THE INITIAL ONSLAUGHT OCT 6-7

The Cross-Canal Attack

The Egyptians attacked along the whole length of the Canal and initially attained many small lodgements. some of which were destroyed and others of which grew It is thought that the initial landings were made primarily by Commando battalions. The Egyptians sent several commando detachments into the Sinai on helicopter raids to disrupt Israeli mobilization and movement, but once they emerged from the shelter of the SAM belt. they were shot down by the Israeli Air Force and left stranded in the desert until Israeli reserve units found time to track them down and destroy them.

Much was made of the fall of the Bar-Lev Line. This was not a continuous line of fortifications intended to stop an attack, as some of the news media would have us believe, but a series of hedgehogs intended to: 1. Reduce casualties during the War of Attrition with Egypt. 2. Act as a trip-wire to alert the Israelis of any raids and crossings. 3. To impede the ememy and provide reaction time-to mobilize Zahal (The Israeli Defense Force).

In fact, no fortification can be designed which cannot be taken, but fortifications can and often are capable of inflicting delay and requiring disproportionate effort to reduce.

The Bar-Lev Line did buy Israel time and caused the Egyptians to end disproportionate effort to tk:xip t. Some hedgehogs actually held out until after the cease-fire. Both the Egyptian and Syrian Air Forces apparently tried to pull off a low-level blitz of the Israeli Air Force similar to the attacks of the Israelis in 1967, but with considerably less success. This and the Arab air activity towards the end of the War was to account for almost all of the Arab aircraft losses. After this abortive raid, the Arab Air Forces were largely content to hide in their bomb proof hangers and let the antiaircraft missiles attempt to do their job. Considering the vast advantage the Arabs enjoyed in both quantity and quality of aircraft, the total bankruptcy of their air forces is evident.

At this point. the Israelis made their one major tactical error. During the War of Attrition. they had developed the habit of responding to Egyptian commando raids with an immediate counter-attack by the nearest armored unit and a few aircraft. This pattern led to a dispersal of the available armor and a predictable pattern of piecemeal attacks. The Israelis had broken their own doctrine of (A) never do the same thing twice, and (B) concentration of strength. The Egyptians knew what to expect and had planned accordingly. The one available active armored brigade was effectively destroyed and its commander killed in a series of well-laid anti-tank missile ambushes reminiscent of Kursk. Between a fourth and a half of all Israel's tank losses occurred here.

The Israeli Air Force immediately attacked the Canal bridges and reduced them from 14 to 5, but at a high cost to itself due to the new SA-6 antiaircraft missile ambush.

At this point the first wave of the Egyptian assault died out. In accordance with their planning and Soviet doctrine they halted to consolidate their position. bring up supplies and reinforcements, lay siege to the remaining positions of the Bar-Lev Line. and make new plans.

At this time the Israelis had only partially mobilized their reserved and the one armored brigade (reinforced) in the Sinai had spent itself. There was nothing blocking the Sinai passes. The Egyptians threw away their best opportunity due to rigidity of doctrine and planning. The Egyptian Amy sat on its can near the canal until after Israel had mobilized and thus forfeitted any chance they had of victory. True, they weren't defeated yet. It would take another blunder on their part and an active effort on Israel's part to do that: but they could no longer win once Israel had finished her mobilization. By Sunday. October 7, 1973, the Sinai front had stabilized with the arrival of Israeli reserves including over 700 tanks, and the Egyptians were confined to a narrow band along the Suez Canal facing four passes each less than 100 yards wide.

THE SYRIAN LUNGE

The Syrians attacked with primarily three main spearheads along the entire length of the Golan Heights. The terrain In the Golan is rocky and mountainous, and the Syrians preferred to lead their attacks with masses of armor supported in the distance by infantry following behind. These two facts led to the Syrian advance being channeled into the few roads and tracks. The Syrians further insisted on keeping their armor and infantry too far apart to effectively support each other.

The Syrians also seemed to be advancing by a fixed tine schedule for they would often advance on both flanks while their center was held up, and thus expose fresh flanks to the Israelis to attack. Israel early decided to aim her initial effort at the Syrians, and immediately committed the majority of her air strength against them. In the Golan Heights, the Israelis had adopted a sort of rolling defense which minimized their casualties while maximizing those she inflicted on the Syrians. Further, the Syrians had considerable less antiaircraft defense capability than the Egyptians and suffered much more from the attention of the Israeli Air Force.

All of the above combined to make the cost of the Syrian advance very high. Estimates of Syrian tank losses range as high as 400 the first day. By Sunday night, October 7, the Syrian advance had ground to a halt after regaining most of the land she had lost in the 1967 War at an enormous cost to herself.

ROUND TWO: Get Syria Oct 8-14

At this point the Arabs should have approached the United Nations and demanded a cease fire to secure their conquests. They had reached the limits of their advance, and had inflicted significant casualties on Israel's regular units while the bulk of Israel's armed forced had yet to finish mobilization. But a little success is intoxicating. And after twenty-five years of constant total failure, any success, no matter how small or trumped-up is absolutely stupifying.

By now the Israeli high command had decided that they would use the advantage of their central location to first destroy the Syrians before shifting their weight against the Egyptians. Monday, (October 8), the Israelis started to apply their mobilized reserves in a series of small, methodical operations designed to grind the tips off the Syrian spearheads which had by then been arrested. The object of the initial Israeli action seems to have been to so reduce the Syrians that they would offer little resistance when the Israeli counter-attack came.

Throughout Israel's campaign against Syria, they would seem to prefer to take extra time to avoid unnecessary casualties, and thus save their strength for the upcoming main battle with Egypt.

By Monday night the Syrians committed the last of their reserves including their remaining armor. The Syrians put out the call for Arab unity and reinforcements. In response Iraqis, Moroccans, and Jordanians began to appear on the Syrian front, and Algerians and Kuwaitis on the Egyptian front. Tunisia, Libya, Algeria, Sudan, and Saudi Arabia also sent small token forces. Actually, except for the Iraqi reinforced division and a brigade each from Morocco and Jordan, all the Arab reinforecements were, in effect, token. The liaison between the various allied Arab forces was poor. At one point the Jordanian 47th Armored Brigade was being shelled by Syrian artillery which itself was under attack from Iraqi fighters.

About the middle of the week Israel started a general offensive using slow conventional tactics and maximum maneuvering to move forward into Syria By the end of the week the Israelis had settled down into defensive positions within artillery range of Damascus and near the Amman-Damascus road, after having roughly handled an Iraqi Division, sent to protect Damascus, and a Moroccan Brigade.

The Israelis stopped at this point primarily because:

(A) The Soviets were signaling quite forcefully and loudly that they wouldn't sit back and watch Damascus fall.
(B) Israel could press on to Damascus only with increased casualties.
(C) Egypt had yet to be neutralized and
(D) the amount of time left before a cease fire would be imposed was rapidly dwindling.

The Syrians had committed two major errors in their initial offensive which aided their collapse.

(A) They had committed too much of their available armor too soon in unfavorable territory with insufficient support.
(B) They had committed their reserves too fast and did not have sufficient forces available to meet the inevitable Israeli counter-attack.

The Syrians left behind almost 1000 of the 1250 tanks they brought into Israel, either captured or destroyed.

On October 13-14 the Egyptian Army launched a major attack to try to take the Sinai pass. This corresponded almost ideally with the Israel General Staff desire to wear down the Egyptian Army before going over to the offensive. By this time the Eqyptians had built up their strength on the Sinai side of the Canal to about 1200 tanks and had transferred almost all of their regular army formations to the Israeli side of the Canal.

The Egyptian attacks were hurriedly planned, hastily executed frontal attacks along predictable axis against known objectives of almost ideally defensible terrain.

The Egyptians never made it to the passes. They were met by Israeli armor and artillery in the rolling dunes before the passes and suffered grevious losses to Israeli tanks in defilade and SP artillery. The Israelis claim a 10:1 tank kill ratio for the entire war in tank versus-tank combat and a 25:1 ratio for the battle of October 14 in the Sinai.

At the end of this battle, the Egyptian Second and Third Armies had been seriously mauled, losing an estimated 300 tanks, and the Egyptian First Army, guarding Cairo and the African side of the Canal. had almost ceased to exist due to stripping to reinforce the Second and Third Armies.

During this time the Egyptian. Syrian and Israeli Navies had fought a series of battles (10?). Soviet Osa and Komar class boats of the two Arab Navies fought the Israeli Saar and Reshef missile boats in Arab territorial waters. Almost 50 Soviet Styx surface-to-surface missiles were fired by the Arabs and not one hit was scored. The Israelis sunk at least 8 Osa and Komar boats with their Gabriel missile and several others by gunfire. By the middle of the War, the Arab Navies refused to leave port, and the Israeli Navy roamed the coasts at will, shelling oil refineries and other military targets.

One Down and One to Go: Israel's Africa Korps

The Israelis organized an oversize division under Major General Ariel Sharon. It consisted of three armored brigades, two mechanized (airborne) brigades, and attached supporting artillery. One mechanized brigade was to act as a base of fire while two armored brigades forced a passage to the Suez at the Junction point of the Egyptian Second and Third Armies just north of the Great Bitter Lake. The initial units of this attack were ferried across in barges and pontoons on the fifteenth of October, and by 7:30 on the sixteenth two brigades were safely across.

On October 16 Israeli units trying to expand the corridor to the bridgehead met up with an armored brigade from the Egyptian Second Army and a mechanized brigade from the Third Army which were trying to close the corridor.

The resulting battle, called the battle of the Chinese Farm by the Israelis (it was fought mainly among the buildings and fields of an abandoned Japanese agricultural station), was one of the most confusing and bloody battles of the War. Both sides were trying to advance in opposite directions, but the Israelis sorted it out first and repulsed the Egyptians. The Egyptians at first tended to discount the Israeli canal crossing as a raid and didn't pay sufficient attention to it until things had become too serious to ignore any more.

By the time the Egyptians finally awoke to it, the Israelis had five brigades across the canal and had greatly enlarged and strengthened the corridor to the Israeli Afrika Korps. In the last few days of the War, the Egyptians committed their long-hoarded air force, only to see it lose about 200 aircraft for negligible gain and a reported Israeli loss of only three aircraft.

On October 22 a U.N.-sponsored ceasefire went into effect. The commander of the Egyptian Third Army used this opportunity to foolishly try to break out of his trap and the Israelis used this as an excuse to continue their sweep of the African side of the Suez Canal until they had completely cut off the Egyptian Third Army. Another U.N.-sponsored cease-fire went into effect on October 24. This one found the Egyptian Third Army significantly mauled and isolated and the only military force of any consequence on the African side of the Suez flew the Star of David.

On the Syrian front, the combined Arab Armies had launched a series of small counter-attacks between October 14-24 which had only resulted in several hundred Arab tank losses with insignificant gain in territory. Just prior to the cease fire the Israelis launched a large scale attack to take Mount Herman. The attack was costly as it was against rough terrain and forewarned defenders. But the Israelis captured it just before the cease fire went into effect.

More Yom Kippur War

Prologue
Starting Lineup: Egypt and Syria
Starting Lineup: Israel
Rounds One and Two
Weapons: SA-6 Gainful SAM, Israeli Soltam L-33, MiG 21, Egyptian Hangerette
The Naval Balance
Combat Aircraft
The Cost: The Butcher Bill
Results, Conclusions, and Myths