To defend against the three-division Syrian attack the IDF initially deployed just one armored brigade, the “Barak Brigade.” Whether because of its previous experience or because of some misunderstanding with the CIC Northern Command, Barak’s commander, Col. Benyamin Shoham, initially assumed that the “war” about which he had been warned that morning was just another border clash.47 Accordingly, instead of keeping his forces together for a counterattack, he sent them forward to their dispersed firing positions all along the line. During the afternoon he was reinforced by 7th Armored Brigade, previously standing in reserve but now moved to take over the northern sector. This move came too late to save the Barak, whose tanks had come under antitank missile fire and then were bypassed by the advancing enemy columns (unlike the Syrians, the Israelis did not have proper night-fighting equipment). By the afternoon of October 7 Shoham had been killed and his brigade all but annihilated.
MAP 13.2 THE 1973 WAR, SYRIAN FRONT
With 7th Armored Brigade now opposing it in the north, the Syrian offensive was most successful in the south. On the morning of October 7 the Syrians recognized this fact, sending in the armored division standing in reserve for precisely that eventuality. Advancing under a heavy artillery barrage it drove on Nafeq, where the Israeli forces on the Golan had their headquarters, forcing their commander—Major General Eytan—to evacuate. 48 By afternoon the only force facing the Syrians was the IAF, its Skyhawks heroically throwing themselves at the enemy and being shot down in significant numbers.49 CO Northern Command, Gen. Yitschak Choffi, had left the Golan Heights during the afternoon of October 6; now he ordered that the Jordan bridges be prepared for demolition.50 At that point the first reserve units began to arrive. They belonged to a division under Maj. Gen. Moshe Peled that had previously been facing Jordan. Relations with King Hussein, however, were tolerably good, and Elazar was gambling that he would not intervene.51 This enabled Peled to make his way to the southern part of the Golan Heights, and by morning on October 8 he took over the main burden of the defense in that sector.
Meanwhile Eytan’s other brigade, 7th Armored, was fighting for its life in the north. Its men, though highly trained, were untested in combat; carefully maneuvering their fifty-ton Centurions to skirt the irrigation pipes that laced the terrain, they took up positions. Minutes later they found themselves fighting for their lives as tungsten bolts smashed into them in a hail of artillery fire. Col. Avigdor Ben Gal’s men had the advantage of the terrain, which slopes gently downward from west to east, enabling them to bear down with their guns on the advancing Syrians. Still, as they came under attack by two divisions, by the evening of October 8 the situation looked bad enough—the more so because they did not have night-vision equipment and on occasion were reduced to silencing their engines to discover who was who in the dark.52
On the morning of October 9 the situation of 7th Armored Brigade became desperate when the Syrians committed their other reserve armored division in an effort to break through to the Jordan bridges. Unlike the remaining Syrian forces this division was equipped with T-62 tanks, the most powerful in the Arab arsenal and the only ones with guns matching the Israeli 105mm guns. As the Syrians also started landing commandos in the Israeli rear, around noon that day everything appeared to be lost. In particular, the tanks of one battalion—Col. Avigdor Kahalani’s 77th—were down to their last few rounds of ammunition and being pushed back step by step toward the escarpment in their rear.53 Then suddenly the Syrian rear echelons turned around and retreated, followed by the tanks in the forward line.
The reasons for the Syrian retreat, which, judging from the way it proceeded, must have been ordered from above, have never been made clear. It could be that their forces were being threatened on their left (south) flank, but even the Israelis seem unable to agree as to which of their units could have been responsible for the critical move. One source identifies an improvised task force numbering fifteen tanks from the defeated Barak Brigade; another identifies the advance units of a second reserve division under Maj. Gen. Dan Lanner that had climbed up the center of the Golan Heights and was turning north.54 In view of this confusion, a second and perhaps more credible explanation is that Israel, which on the evening of October 8 felt that the battle was being lost, had threatened Syria by rattling its nuclear saber (or so claimed a Time story published several years after these events).55
Whatever the reason for the decision, from this point on, the situation was stabilized. In the north the enemy in front of 7th Armored Brigade melted away, leaving the so-called Valley of Tears strewn with hundreds of burned-out tanks and combat vehicles. Farther south, the two divisions that had formed part of the Syrian left-wing drive were caught between Peled driving along the purple cease-fire line and Lanner. Once they had been annihilated—which took place on October 9 and 10—the time had come to mount a counterattack. It started on October 11 and consisted of 7th Armored Brigade, the three brigades of Lanner’s division, and an additional brigade transferred from Peled.
Before the war the IDF’s planning branch under Brig. Gen. Avraham Tamir had warned that the Arabs possessed thousands of antitank missiles. 56 Yet somehow the significance of this fact had failed to sink in, leading to the futile counterattacks of the first few days. Now, however, the Israelis proved able to learn from experience—perhaps their single greatest advantage in the entire war. No longer did the tanks charge on their own; instead they moved inside an artillery “box” formed by thousands of exploding shells while they and their accompanying APCs raked every rock capable of offering shelter with machine-gun fire. Early on October 13 they met a thrust by the advance brigade of a 60,000-man Iraqi expeditionary force. Coming from the south, the brigade’s tanks were driving with their hatches closed when they entered a killing ground and were all but annihilated by Lanner’s tanks.57 Still, this distraction, plus fierce Syrian resistance, sufficed to slow down the advance until it petered out twenty miles short of Damascus.
According to Elazar’s biographer, the chief of staff’s real objective in mounting this offensive had been to make the Syrians scurry to Cairo and, by pressing the Egyptians to send their forces across the canal, facilitate an IDF offensive on that front too.58 If so—and hindsight may well be involved—the trick worked, since Syrian appeals for help did reach Egypt and became ever sharper in tone.59 Whether or not the original Egyptian plan also included an advance to the passes is moot; if so, it is not clear why they allowed the days between October 10 and 14 to be wasted.60 In any case the two armored divisions crossed the canal on Saturday, October 13. This was precisely the kind of battle the IDF liked best. For the first time in the war it was not they who had to rush forward into waiting antitank weapons; instead it was their tanks, constituting the best antitank weapons of all, that shot up the advancing enemy while themselves moving from one shelter to another to evade the Egyptian artillery. By late afternoon Adan’s and Sharon’s men were looking over a sight as unbelievable as it was welcome. The entire plain at their feet was dotted by hundreds of “bonfires,” with Egyptian tank losses alone numbering around 250.61 They themselves claimed to have lost no more than four tanks—though this does not include several dozen more that were hit but proved capable of being repaired.
October 14 also marked a change in the role played by the IAF. On the morning of October 6, hoping to obtain permission for a preemptive strike, Elazar had kept his aircraft armed and ready for that purpose; thus, when hostilities started and the Golan front in particular appeared under threat, many planes carried the wrong armaments and had to be rearmed before going into action. Once the war got under way they successfully maintained air superiority over Israel proper, a vitally important feat that enabled mobilization to proceed swiftly and without interruption. That accomplished, however, they divided their efforts between attacks on the canal bridges and a desperate attempt to stop the Syrian columns on the Golan—causing their commander, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Peled, to complain that his forces were being frittered a
way.62
In spite of command-and-control problems and faulty coordination with the ground forces,63 the sorties flown in the north played a critical role in halting the Syrian columns. Not so over the Suez Canal, where the IAF achieved little, as the Egyptians quickly repaired whatever bridges were hit. On both fronts losses were extremely heavy. Between October 6 and 9 they amounted to almost one hundred aircraft destroyed or damaged, 64 a rate that, had it been sustained, would quickly have brought the force to the point where it could no longer guarantee air superiority over Israel.65 Therefore, on the next day the IAF changed its tactics. Instead of trying to cover the entire country, it was effectively divided in two, with Maj. Gen. (ret.) Mordechai Hod commanding the northern front. Instead of trying to provide close support to the forces on the Golan Heights, it now concentrated on targets in the Syrian rear, including bridges (to interdict the approaching Iraqi expeditionary force), fuel farms, power plants, and the ports and airports where Soviet equipment was being unloaded. After Syrian surface-to-surface missiles missed their target, an airfield in northern Israel, and landed on a nearby kibbuts, the IAF even attacked Broadcasting House in Damascus (with the gratifying result that the announcer could be heard screaming with fear in the middle of a transmission). Still, its effect on the ground operations remained limited.
Then came the Egyptian offensive of October 14, which for the first time took the Egyptians out of the range of their antiaircraft missiles.66 In particular, a column of vehicles tried to make its way south along the Gulf of Suez toward Sharm al-Sheikh but was caught on the way and massacred in a scene reminiscent of Mitla Pass in 1967. The day’s events thus served to demonstrate the limits of Arab power. As Sharon supposedly put it to Bar Lev, “They were no different than in 1967: they came, they got killed, they ran.”67
With the Syrians repulsed if not beaten, it became possible to shift forces from the Golan front to the Sinai. Southern Command hastily scraped together another division to take over the northern sector of the canal, thereby freeing two divisions—the ones commanded by Adan and Sharon—for the crossing. On the night of October 15-16 the operation started. As some of Sharon’s forces held 3rd Egyptian Army in check by mounting demonstrations against it in the south, others were sent to secure a corridor in the seam between the two Egyptian armies that had been discovered a few days before. The corridor in turn was used by a brigade of paratroopers under Col. Danny Matt who brought along rubber boats. The crossing proceeded in absolute silence and went undetected by the Egyptians. By morning, a small foothold had been established.
This, however, was only the beginning. On October 16 the paratroopers were followed by a battalion of tanks that were transported on motorized rafts known as timsachim (crocodiles). After crossing they fanned out, shooting up the first Egyptian antiaircraft missile batteries and preparing for a more massive operation to come. While Sharon and Dayan—of all the senior commanders Dayan alone visited the front—pressed for as many forces as possible to be ferried across immediately, Elazar and Bar Lev hesitated. Rafts and rubber boats are totally inadequate to maintain armored divisions, which when going full-blast need hundreds of tons of supplies every day; whereas the Egyptians had been provided with Soviet-made river-crossing gear, the Israelis, to economize, had manufactured their own. Once again the man in charge was the technically minded General Tal. His efforts resulted in a monstrous contraption known as gesher ha-glilim (the roller bridge). Supported by Styrofoam-filled rollers—hence the name—it was more than 150 yards long and weighed about four hundred tons. It could be dragged forward only by tanks, and then only under specially trained crews over suitable terrain.
Initially the Egyptians had been slow to react to the creation of the Israeli bridgehead. By the night of October 16-17 they had woken up, however, and the two southernmost brigades of 2nd Egyptian Army were bearing down on Sharon’s corridor. In the area known as “Chinese Farm” some of the heaviest battles of the war developed as first Adan’s armor and then a battalion of paratroopers fought off the Egyptian attack; meanwhile, in their earthen “yard” along the canal, Sharon along with the forward troops of his division were being subjected to the artillery bombardment of their lives. As two divisions converged on the crossing site, the tank company that had been specially trained for dragging the roller bridge disappeared, and the work had to be carried out by another, unprepared unit. Next it was caught in a huge traffic jam. As a result of these mishaps, the bridge was not in place until the evening of October 17.
As Sharon’s division took over the task of holding the corridor, it was Adan’s turn to cross. With his forces decimated and blackened by previous fighting, he crossed during the night of October 17-18; on his right-rear fierce battles were still ongoing near Chinese Farm. Next, Sharon was relieved by the IDF’s division to his left, now commanded by Brigadier General Magen after its original commander, Mandler, had been killed. This permitted the IDF on the west bank—known as “Africa”—to operate in two directions, north and south. As on the Golan Heights, the Israelis proved able to learn from their experiences, perhaps their greatest strength in the entire war. Instead of charging blindly forward with tanks, they used them to probe for Egyptian infantry with antitank weapons in the dense vegetation along the so-called freshwater canal that ran west of the main canal. Once that infantry had revealed its position, it was subjected to heavy artillery fire.
On the night of October 19, Egyptian General Shazly, who had been pressing for the return of the Egyptian armor from the east bank to the west bank in order to meet the Israeli threat, was relieved by Sadat.68 Politically the decision to stick to the east bank was probably correct; it meant that, when the cease-fire came, Egypt was still holding on to its conquests in the Sinai and was thus able to claim a victory of sorts. Militarily it left the west bank forces open to the offensive by Sharon, Adan, and Magen (who had also crossed, leaving only one improvised division on the east bank). But while Sharon met with fierce resistance and made little progress on the right, Adan and Magen did much better on the left, driving south in several columns toward Suez in an all-out effort to encircle 3rd Egyptian Army. By this time the Egyptian antiaircraft defenses, which throughout the crossing operation had prevented the IAF from providing effective assistance, were finally coming under ground attack by artillery and tanks and beginning to crack. This in turn compelled the Egyptians to send up their own air force to provide cover, resulting in heavy air-to-air battles with (the Israelis claim) the usual bad results for the Egyptians.
When a UN Security Council-mandated cease-fire went into effect on the evening of October 22, the IDF had not yet completed its drive to surround 3rd Egyptian Army. However, both sides accused the other of resuming hostilities, and the cease-fire was broken. This gave the southern prong an extra two days to complete encirclement, albeit at heavy cost, as one battalion of paratroopers, operating with the habitual lack of reconnaissance, entered the town of Suez at the mouth of the gulf, ran into a trap, and had to be extricated after fierce fighting. By way of grand finale, on the last day of the war the Israelis also set out to recapture the “Eyes of the State” on Mount Chermon. This was done by means of a very costly combined assault by infantry and heliborne paratroopers.
It remains to provide a brief outline of naval operations in this, the most difficult of the major campaigns fought by the IDF and—as it turned out—almost certainly the last.69 Since 1967 the Israeli navy had been completely renovated; instead of World War II-vintage destroyers its main strength now consisted of twelve 250-ton Saar-class missile boats, to which were added two of the newer and somewhat larger Reshef class. All were armed with the Israeli-designed and -produced Gavriel sea-to-sea missile. With a range of approximately fifteen miles, more importantly they possessed electronic countermeasures that enabled them to evade the salvos of Soviet-made Styx missiles of longer range carried by the Komar- and Ossa-class missile boats of the Egyptian and Syrian navies. In the event there were no major clashes with the
Egyptians (at least none that have been reported). Not so in the north, where clashes took place on October 6, 10, 11, 14, and 19. In each case the Israelis rushed the Syrian boats before firing their Gavriels. They claimed several Syrian vessels sunk at no loss of their own. With their 76mm and 40mm guns, the Israeli missile boats also shelled Syrian installations along the coast, probably only inflicting minor damage.
When the guns finally fell silent the IDF on the Golan Heights had recaptured all the territory lost to the Syrians during the first days of the war and then some, enabling its long-range artillery to shell Damascus. In the south, though the Egyptians were still holding on to a narrow strip of land in the Sinai, the 3rd Egyptian Army—still a major fighting formation with two small divisions—had been encircled and was saved only by the timely imposition of a cease-fire. Though the Egyptian air defense system had not been annihilated, it had been weakened; had hostilities resumed, this would have enabled the IAF to operate effectively against the remaining ground forces, as it had in 1967. Yet their achievements in gaining territory had been limited, and on both fronts the Arabs had fought considerably better than during any previous conflict. The Egyptian and Syrian armies were not broken by the IDF, nor did they panic or selfdisintegrate.
These facts were reflected in the separation of forces agreements signed in January and May 1974. The agreement with Egypt provided for the evacuation of “Africa” and the withdrawal of the IDF to a line twenty miles east of the canal. In return the Egyptians undertook to reopen the canal and resettle the towns alongside it—thus gaining a very strong incentive to refrain from reopening hostilities. By contrast, in the north, Israel surrendered only a very narrow and strategically insignificant strip of land along the previous cease-fire line but retained the critically important hills of Booster and Chermonit as well as its outpost atop Mount Chermon (two outposts higher up, captured by the IDF during the winter, had to be exchanged for Israeli POWs). The Syrians were now Israel’s most dangerous enemy, although over the last twenty-something years the Syrians have given few signs of wanting a fresh conventional war.
The Sword And The Olive Page 32