62. For two accounts of this see Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, pp. 237ff, and Craven and Cate, Army Air Forces, Vol. 1, pp. 514–53; vol. 2 pp. 377–411.
63. This is captured quite nicely in C. S. Forester’s wartime novel about a brief action in a British light cruiser. See The Ship (Boston: Little, Brown, 1943).
64. CINCLANT Serial (053), January 21, 1941, “Subject: Exercise of Command—Excess of Detail in Orders and Instructions,” reprinted in Administrative History, COMINCH HQ, p. 8.
65. Ibid., pp. 27–29.
66. Memorandum of Conference Between Representatives of the Atlantic Fleet ASW Unit and Representatives of the Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet ASW Unit, April 28, 1942. Tenth Fleet Records, Anti-Submarine Measures Division, Box 24, U.S. Navy Operational Archives, Washington Navy Yard. This memorandum is interesting for its continual deference to local commanders. Thus, although COMINCH intends to publish an ASW manual, “This does not restrict the prerogative of any fleet commander to issue any manual, or instructions, as he may see fit.”
67. ESF War Diary, January 1942, p. 6.
68. Ibid., June 1942, chap. 4, p. 6 (emphasis added).
69. Statistics from Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, p. 414.
70. Ibid., p. 404.
71. The phrase is Nicholas Monsarrat’s, from The Cruel Sea (New York: Knopf, 1951), p. 397. This book captures the rhythm of the U-boat war better than any formal history.
72. The author of the ESF War Diary of May 1942, for example, notes abashedly that the British had one manual for the use of sonar and one manual for antisubmarine tactics—and that the United States Navy did not.
73. Of the twenty naval attaché reports from London in July 1941, for example, not one dealt with anything other than purely technical matters such as the ones listed here. Tenth Fleet Records, Anti-Submarine Measures, Box 2, U.S. Navy Operational Archives, Washington Navy Yard.
74. Ibid., Box 24. Morison, Battle of the Atlantic, pp. 211–16, gives an account of some of the devices copied from the British.
75. “Are We Ready—III” Report of the General Board to the Secretary of the Navy, July 14, 1941. SECNAV/CNO Files 40–41, Record Group 80, Box 243, National Archives.
76. “U.S.-British Naval Relations, 1939–1942,” COMNAVEU Historical Monograph, Volume I, pp. 227 ff. Memorandum of January 15, 1941. This unpublished two volume history is extremely useful for this entire period.
77. This matter is discussed at some length in Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, vol. 2, The Period of Reluctant Rearmament, 1930–1939 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1976), especially pp. 194–212, 392–415.
78. All of this is discussed at length in Roskill, The War at Sea, see in particular vol. 1, pp. 29–41; vol. 2, pp. 77–90.
79. For King’s account, see Fleet Admiral King, pp. 451–59.
80. Julius Augustus Furer, Administration of the Navy Department in World War //(Washington: Department of the Navy, 1959), p. 157.
81. See Dorwart, Conflict of Duty, pp. 157–59, 192. See also “U.S. Naval Administration in World War II: Office of Naval Intelligence,” 4 vols. (Washington: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1946), for an account of ONI in World War II.
82. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 826.
83. Farago, Tenth Fleet is a sensationalist and not entirely reliable account of that organization, redeemed in part by the author’s personal participation in the organization he describes and by one’s suspicion that he had access to official records in preparing it. The unpublished naval administrative history of COMINCH (who was nominal commander of Tenth Fleet) is drier but more reliable. See especially pp. 164–72.
84. Language from Admiral King’s paper to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, May 1, 1943. COMINCH History, p. 167. See Furer, Administration of the Navy Department, pp. 160–62 for a further elaboration of Tenth Fleet’s charter.
85. See Farago, Tenth Fleet, p. 169.
86. Chalmers, Horton and the Western Approaches, p. 290.
87. See Churchill, The Second World War, Volume 4, The Hinge of Fate, pp. 913–4.
88. See NDRC, Survey of Subsurface Warfare, pp. 92–94. The authors of this report note (p. 92), “By the end of 1942 it had become clear that improvement in the quantity and quality of antisubmarine equipment and personnel could not by itself win the battle of the Atlantic. A centralized planning and operational authority was needed.”
89. Ibid., p. 2. Tenth Fleet issued a monthly U.S. Fleet Anti-Submarine Bulletin that served as a standard authority on the entire antisubmarine situation.
90. Chalmers, Horton and the Western Approaches, p. 229. See also Cremer, U-Boat Commander, pp. 3, 163–64. Cremer served on Doenitz’s staff, being one of the lucky few German submariners who survived the war—approximately 80 percent did not.
91. On the use made by both the Germans and the Allies of communications intelligence see Operations Evaluation Group Report #68, Evaluation of the Role of Decryption Intelligence in the Operational Phase of the Battle of the Atlantic, 1952, SRH-368, Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency, National Archives.
92. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 4, p. 125; vol. 2, p. 598.
93. Padfield, Doenitz, p. 484, takes this point of view.
94. Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1898), p. 3.
95. NDRC, Survey of Subsurface Warfare, p. 1. Beesly recounts in Very Special Intelligence that the members of the OIC, particularly Rodger Winn, were anxious to the last about the prospect of a major resurgence of German submarine attacks.
96. Peter W. Gretton, “Why Don’t We Learn From History?” London: Naval Society, 1958 (reprinted from Naval Review 46); Arthur J. Marder, “The Influence of History on Sea Power: The Royal Navy and the Lessons of 1914–1918,” in From the Dardanelles to Oran: Studies of the Royal Navy in War and Peace, 1915–1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 33–63.
Chapter 5
FAILURE TO ANTICIPATE
Israel Defense Forces on the Suez Front and the Golan Heights, 1973
1. Figures taken from Zeev Schiff and Eitan Haber, eds., Lexikon l’bitachon yisroel [“Israel, Army and Defense: A Dictionary”] (Tel Aviv: Zmora, Bitan, Modan, 1976), p. 239. Avraham Adan, “Eichut v’kamut b’milchemet yom hakippurim,” [“Quality and Quantity in the Yom Kippur War”], in Zvi Offer and Avi Kober, eds., Eichut v’kamut: dilemmot b’binyan hakoach hatsva’i [“Quality and Quantity: Dilemmas in the Development of Military Forces”] (Tel Aviv: Ma’arachot, 1985), p. 287, gives lower figures, which are not, however, generally regarded as reliable. Trevor Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947–1974 (New York: Harper & Row, 1978), p. 609, records that Arab casualties totaled some 8,500 dead, 19,500 wounded, and 8,500 prisoners or missing, in rough proportions of 3:2, Egypt:Syria. For a general discussion of the prewar crisis and the surprise, see Janice Gross Stein, “Calculation, Miscalculation, and Conventional Deterrence,” in Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein, eds., Psychology and Deterrence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 34–88.
2. Avraham Tamir, A Soldier in Search of Peace, Joan Comay, ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 190. See pp. 190–202 as well. Golda Meir, Cbayay [“My Life”] (Tel Aviv: Ma’ariv Book Guild, 1975), pp. 305, 310. See also her account of a meeting with the distinguished British Labour party parliamentarian Richard Crossman in the winter of 1973–74, p. 328.
3. See Nadav Safran, From War to War: The Arab-Israeli Confrontation, 1948–1967 (New York: Pegasus, 1969), p. 383. See as well Dayan’s own account: Moshe Dayan, Avnei derekh (Jerusalem: Edanim, 1976; second edition 1982), vol. 2, pp. 487–92. An English version of these memoirs has been published as Story of My Life.
4. Sadat initiated secret contacts with the United States in October 1972, hoping to capitalize on the fact of the expulsion of the Soviets. See Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little Brown, 1982), pp. 202–6. Kissinger admitted later t
hat he found this a puzzling attempt to “get something for nothing” (see p. 482).
5. Useful sources on Egyptian planning for and conduct of the war are Anwar el-Sadat, In Search of Identity: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1977); Mohamed Heikal, The Road to Ramadan (New York: Quadrangle, 1975); Saad el Shazly, The Crossing of Suez (San Francisco: American Mideast Research, 1980); and Hassan el Badri, Taha el Magdoub, and Mohammed dia el din Zohdy, The Ramadan War, 1973 (1974; New York: Hippocrene Books, 1979). Heikal was Sadat’s confidant, although he later became a critic; Shazly became Chief of Staff in May 1973 and later broke completely with Sadat. Badri and Zohdy taught at the Nasser High Military Academy and served as advisers to the Egyptian high command. Magdoub headed GHQ Operations Department in 1973. An extremely interesting study, based largely on captured documents, is Avi Shai, (pseud.?) “Mitsrayim likrat milchemet yom hakippurim: matarot hamilchama v’tochnit hamatkafa,” Ma’arachot 250 (July 1976): 15–40. [“Egypt at the Onset of the Yom Kippur War: War Objectives and the Plan of Attack.”] Ma’arachot is the foremost journal of Israeli military thought, and is a valuable source for work on the Yom Kippur War.
6. Kissinger recalls one of Sadat’s conversations during the disengagement talks after the Yom Kippur War: “‘My army!’ he mused. ‘First I had trouble convincing them to go to war. Now I have trouble persuading them to make peace.’” Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, p. 836. According to several senior Israeli officers, Israeli Military Intelligence misread the dismissal of Sadek as an internal political maneuver, rather than as the reflection of a serious dispute over policy—that is, the decision for war.
7. Badri, Magdoub, and Zohdy, Ramadan War, pp. 26ff.
8. These preparations included accelerating the transition from a five ugda (armored division) force to seven, terrain preparation, and forward deployment of equipment. Hanoch Bar-Tov, Dado—48 sbana v’od 20 yom [“Dado—48 years and 20 days”], 2 vols. (Tel Aviv: Ma’ariv Book Guild, 1978), vol. 1, pp. 249–51. This biography/memoir, published after the death of David Elazar (nicknamed “Dado”), is a vital, albeit not fully reliable, source, based on the diary of Avner Shalev, the director of Elazar’s office. It appears that Bar-Tov also had access, either through the diary or other sources, to transcripts of discussions during the Yom Kippur war itself. See also Yehuda Wallach, Moshe Lissak, and Arieh Itzchaki, eds. Atlas karta l’toldot medinat yisroel: asor shlishi [“Carta Atlas of the History of the State of Israel: The Third Decade”] (Jerusalem: Carta, 1983), p. 43.
9. See Sadat’s instructions to War Minister Ali, October 5, 1973, reprinted in Sadat, In Search of Identity, p. 328.
10. Ibid., p. 312.
11. Ibid., p. 244.
12. Shai, “Mitsrayim likrat milchemet yom hakippurim,” p. 17. See also Ibrahim Fouad Nassar, “The Israeli Doctrine of National Security,” in Ahmed Ali Amer, ed., International Symposium on the 1973 October War (Cairo: Ministry of War, 1978), pp. 157–65. Lieutenant General Nassar was Egypt’s Director of Military Intelligence at the time of the symposium in 1975.
13. Sadat, In Search of Identity, p. 327.
14. Ibid. Emphasis in the original. “Our objective was to shatter Israel’s Doctrine of Security, to defeat the main enemy troop concentration in Sinai and inflict the heaviest losses possible to convince Israel that continuing to occupy our lands would entail a heavy price.” Statement by Field Army General Mohamad al Gamasy in Amer, ed., International Symposium, p. 41.
15. Shai, “Mitsrayim likrat milchemet yom hakippurim,” p. 16.
16. Shazly, Crossing, p. 208. Heikal, Road to Ramadan, p. 13, says that the Syrians required twenty days, including five to drain the Horns oil refineries to reduce their vulnerability to Israeli air attack.
17. Shazly, Crossing, p. 211.
18. Aharon Zeevi, “Tochnit hahona’a hamitsrit,” [“The Egyptian Deception Plan”], in Zvi Offer and Zvi Kober, eds., Modi’in v’bitachon leumi [“Intelligence and National Security”] (Tel Aviv: Ma’arachot, 1987), p. 434, says that the commander of at least one Egyptian division learned of the impending war the day before the attack. See also Chaim Herzog, The War of Atonement (Boston: Little, Brown, 1975), p. 39.
19. Thus Heikal, Road to Ramadan, p. 24, and Sadat, Search of Identity, p. 246.
20. Shai, “Mitsrayim likrat milchemet yom hakippurim,” p. 21.
21. So according to Heikal, Road to Ramadan, p. 14. Shazly, Crossing, p. 33, claims that it was estimated in early 1973 that the Israelis would know about the Arab intention to attack fifteen days before the event, which seems exaggerated.
22. Heikal, Road to Ramadan, p. 41. This would have been only half the staggering losses suffered by the British on the first day of the battle of the Somme in 1916.
23. Bar-Tov, Dado, vol. 1, pp. 274, 288.
24. Ibid., p. 287 summarizes Zeira’s assessment of the situation as of 17 September 1973.
25. Ibid., pp. 264–5.
26. Zvi Lanir, Hahafta’a’a habasisit [“Fundamental Surprise”] (Tel Aviv: Kibbutz Hameuchad, 1983), p. 28; Lanir claims that before October 1973 even the self-confident General Zeira warned divisional commanders in a conference in Sinai that they had to prepare to defend even with very little warning (p. 20). Furthermore, and in contradiction to Bar-Tov (Dado, vol. 1, p. 278), he argues on the basis of numerous interviews that no one in the General Staff thought of a warning shorter than forty eight hours as a “catastrophe” (p. 30). Among other pieces of evidence, he notes that the IDF conducted an exercise (ayil brazel, or “Iron Ram”) in August 1972 predicated on twenty-four hours warning: in it, the IDF repelled the Egyptian attack in two days, and began operating large forces on the other side of the canal in four (pp. 18–19). In fact, the Bar Tov book indirectly confirms this (vol. 1, p. 321) when it observes that Elazar expected as little as twelve or twenty-four hours’ warning on October 5.
27. This account is based largely on Zeev Eytan, “‘Shovach yonim’—tichnon u’bitsua b’mivchan ha’esh” [“‘Dovecote’—Plan and Implementation Under the Test of Fire”], Ma’arachot 276–77 (October-November 1980): 38–46. Eytan, who has a Ph.D. in political science, is a well-known Israeli armored commander and colonel in the reserves, where he has served as a divisional chief of staff. After the war he worked in the military history office of the IDF studying the battles on the southern front.
28. Thus, even on 21 May 1973, when the Minister of Defense said to the military “We in the government say to the General Staff—Gentlemen, please prepare for war” the resulting alert (kachol lavan or “Blue-White,” Israel’s national colors) was not chiefly a reserve mobilization but intensified preparation of the infrastructure for war. Bar-Tov, Dado, vol. 1, pp. 269–70 describes this meeting.
29. Adan, “Eichut v’kamut,” p. 260. Adan, a reserve major general, commanded an armored division in the Sinai in 1973, and had served as the head of the Israeli Armored Corps before then.
30. See Adan, “Eichut v’kamut,” p. 258, and Geoffrey G. Prosch, “Israeli Defense of the Golan: An Interview with Brigadier General Avigdor Kahalani,” Military Review 59:10 (October 1979): 3, as well as Kahalani’s own memoir, The Heights of Courage: A Tank Leader’s War on the Golan. Louis Williams, trans. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1984), p. 48.
31. See Shlomo Gazit, “Arab Forces Two Years After the Yom Kippur War,” in William Louis, ed., Military Aspects of the Israeli-Arab Conflict (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 1975), p. 188. Gazit was then head of AMAN, and discusses Arab strengths and losses in 1973 in some detail-based on captured documents and prisoner of war interrogation.
32. Eitan Haber, Hayom tifrotz milchama [“Today War Will Break Out—The Reminiscences of Brigadier General Israel Lior, Aide-de-Camp to Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir”] (Tel Aviv: Edanim, 1987), pp. 17–18.
33. Bar-Tov, Dado, vol. 1, p. 289.
34. Ibid., p. 294. Hofi also cancelled leaves for the tank crews on the heights.
35. Avraham Ayalon, “Muchanut leumit:
t’shuva ikarit l’matkafat petah,” [“National Preparedness: A Fundamental Answer to Surprise Attack”] in Offer and Kober, eds., Modi’in, p. 373.
36. Ibid., p. 297. Zeira repeated this phrase, svirut nimucha, until the day before the war. It has, not surprisingly, a particularly bitter connotation to Israeli students of the surprise.
37. Ibid., pp. 304, 323; Duach va’adat Agranat (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1975), p. 46; interviews with senior Israeli officers and officials. The importance of this latter source is discussed below.
38. Lanir, Habafta’a habasisit, p. 24.
39. Since Sunday, September 30, Israeli forces had begun emplacing mines in the Golan. Raphael Eitan with Dov Goldstein, Raful: sipuro shel chayal [“Raful: The Story of A Soldier”] (Tel Aviv: Ma’ariv Book Guild, 1985), pp. 127–8. Eitan, a paratrooper, commanded forces on the Golan Heights; once additional Israeli units began arriving on October 7 and 8 he commanded one of the three ugdot operating there. After the war he eventually became Chief of Staff of the IDF, and played a key role in the invasion of Lebanon in 1982.
40. Moshe Dayan, however, came close. See Zeev Schiff, October Earthquake: Yom Kippur 1973, Louis Williams, trans. (Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, Ltd., 1974), pp. 16–21. Schiff, who had unparalleled access to the decision makers, has one of the best accounts of the war.
41. Bar-Tov, Dado, vol. 1, p. 315.
42. Dayan, Avnei derekh vol. 2, p. 574.
43. Meir, Cbayay, p. 307.
44. Bar-Tov, Dado, vol. 1, p. 321. Meir’s military aide has said that on October 5 he still expected at least twenty-four hours warning before the beginning of a war. Haber, Hayom tifrotz milchama, p. 23.
45. The Syrians, who were attacking from east to west, on the other hand, wanted an early morning attack for precisely the same reason.
46. Herzog, War of Atonement, remains a good English account, as does Dupuy, Elusive Victory, pp. 387–618. An excellent short account, illustrated with superb maps and tables, is Wallach, Lissak and Itzchaki, eds., Atlas karta, pp. 43–99. Nonetheless, the war still awaits a historian fluent in Hebrew and Arabic yet reasonably detached from both sides.
Military Misfortunes Page 35