Combat operations

In the Sinai

The Egyptian units would not advance beyond a shallow strip for fear of losing protection of their SAM missile batteries. In the Six-Day War, the Israeli Air Force had pummelled the defenseless Arab armies. Egypt (and Syria) had heavily fortified their side of the cease-fire lines with SAM batteries, against which the Israeli Air Force had no effective countermeasures. Israel, which had invested much of its defense budget building the region's strongest air force, would see its air force rendered almost useless by the presence of the SAM batteries.

Anticipating a swift Israeli armored counterattack, the Egyptians had armed their first wave with unprecedented numbers of man-portable anti-tank weapons—Rocket propelled grenades and the more devastating Sagger missiles. One in every three Egyptian soldiers had an anti-tank weapon. "Never before had such intensive anti-tank fire been brought to bear on the battlefield" (Rabinovich, 108). In addition, the ramp on the Egyptian side of the canal had been increased to twice the height of the Israeli ramp, giving them an excellent vantage point from which to fire down on the Israelis, as well as any approaching tanks.

The Egyptian army surprised many by breaching the Israeli defenses (which were undermanned due to Yom-Kippur). The large barricades were built primarily from sand, and the Egyptian forces used water-cannons loaded with water from the Suez Canal. These water-cannons effectively blasted away the Israeli barricades. Troops then crossed the Suez Canal in small personnel-carrier boats and inflatable rafts, in what became known as The Crossing, capturing or destroying all but one of the Bar-Lev forts. In a meticulously rehearsed operation, the Egyptian forces advanced approximately 15 km into the Sinai desert with the combined forces of two army corps. The Israeli battalion garrisoning the Bar-Lev forts was vastly outnumbered, and was overwhelmed. Only one fortification, code named Budapest (the northernmost Bar-Lev fort), would remain in Israeli control through the end of the war.

The Egyptian forces consolidated their initial positions. On October 8, Shmuel Gonen, commander of the Israeli Southern front—who had only taken the position 3 months before at the retirement of Ariel Sharon—ordered a counterattack by Gabi Amir's brigade against entrenched Egyptian forces at Hizayon, where approaching tanks could be easily destroyed by Saggers fired from the Egyptian ramp. Despite Amir's reluctance, the attack proceeded, and the result was a disaster for the Israelis. Towards nightfall, a counterattack by the Egyptians was stopped by Ariel Sharon's division—Sharon had been reinstated as a division commander at the outset of the war. The fighting lulled, with neither side wanting to mount a large attack against the other.

Following the disastrous Israeli attack on the 8th, both sides settled into defensive postures and hoped for the other side to attack (Rabinovich, 353). Elazar replaced Gonen, who had proven out of his league, with Haim Bar-Lev, who had come out of retirement. Because it was considered dangerous to morale to replace the front commander during the middle of a battle, rather than being sacked Gonen was made chief-of-staff to the newly appointed Bar-Lev.

After several days of waiting, Sadat, wanting to ease pressure on the Syrians, ordered his chief generals (Saad El Shazly and Ahmad Ismail Ali chief among them) to attack. The Egyptian forces brought across their reserves and began their counterattack on 14 October. "The attack, the most massive since the initial Egyptian assault on Yom Kippur, was a total failure, the first major Egyptian reversal of the war. Instead of concentrating forces of maneuvering, except for the wadi thrust, they had expended them in head-on attack against the waiting Israeli brigades. Egyptian losses for the day were estimated at between 150 and 250 tanks." (Rabinovich, 355)

The following day, October 15, the Israelis launched Operation Stouthearted Men—the counterattack against the Egyptians and crossing of the Suez Canal. The attack was a tremendous change of tactics for the Israelis, who had previously relied on air and tank support—support that had been decimated by the well-prepared Egyptian forces. Instead, the Israelis used infantry to infiltrate the positions of the Egyptian SAM and anti-tank batteries, which were unable to cope as well with forces on foot. A division led by Major General Ariel Sharon attacked the Egyptian line just north of Bitter Lake, in the vicinity of Ismailiya. The Israelis struck at a weak point in the Egyptian line, the "seam" between the Egyptian second Army in the north and the Egyptian third Army in the south. In some of the most brutal fighting of the war in and around the Chinese Farm (an irrigation project east of the canal and north of the crossing point), the Israelis opened a hole in the Egyptian line and reached the Suez Canal. A small force crossed the canal and created a bridgehead on the other side. For over 24 hours, troops were ferried across the canal in light inflatable boats, with no armor support of their own. They were well supplied with American-made M72 LAW rockets, negating the threat of Egyptian armor. Once the anti-aircraft and anti-tank defences of the Egyptians had been neutralized, the infantry once again was able to rely on overwhelming tank and air support.

Prior to the war, fearing an Israeli crossing of the canal, no Western nation would supply the Israelis with bridging equipment. They were able to purchase and repair modular, pontoon bridging equipment from a French WWII scrap lot. The Israelis also constructed a rather sophisticated indigenous "roller bridge" but logistical delays involving heavy congestion on the roads leading to the crossing point delayed its arrival to the canal for several days. Deploying the pontoon bridge on the night of October 16/17, Avraham "Bren" Adan's division crossed and raced south, intent on cutting off the Egyptian third Army before it could retreat west back into Egypt. At the same time, it sent out raiding forces to destroy Egyptian SAM missile batteries east of the canal. By October 19 the Israelis managed to construct four separate bridges just north of the Great Bitter Lake under heavy Egyptian bombardment. By the end of the war the Israelis were well within Egypt, reaching a point 101 kilometers from its capital, Cairo.

On the Golan Heights

In the Golan Heights, the Syrians attacked the Israeli defenses of two brigades and eleven artillery batteries with five divisions and 188 batteries. At the onset of the battle, 188 Israeli tanks faced off against approximately 2,000 Syrian tanks. Every Israeli tank deployed on the Golan Heights was engaged during the initial attacks. Syrian commandos dropped by helicopter also took the most important Israeli stronghold at Jabal al Shaikh (Mount Hermon), which had a variety of surveillance equipment.

Fighting in the Golan Heights was given priority by the Israeli High Command. The fighting in the Sinai was sufficiently far away that Israel was not immediately threatened; should the Golan Heights fall, the Syrians could easily advance into Israel proper. Reservists were directed to the Golan as quickly as possible. They were assigned to tanks and sent to the front as soon as they arrived at army depots, without waiting for the crews they trained with to arrive, without waiting for machine guns to be installed on their tanks, and without taking the time to calibrate their tank guns (a time-consuming process known as bore-sighting).

As the Egyptians had in the Sinai, the Syrians on the Golan Heights took care to stay under cover of their SAM missile batteries. Also as in the Sinai, the Syrians made use of Soviet anti-tank weapons (which, because of the uneven terrain, were not as effective as in the flat Sinai desert).

The Syrians had expected it would take at least 24 hours for Israeli reserves to reach the front lines; in fact, Israeli reserve units began reaching the battle lines only fifteen hours after the war began.

By the end of the first day of battle, the Syrians (who at the start outnumbered the Israelis in the Golan 9 to 1) had achieved moderate success. Towards the end of the day, "A Syrian tank brigade passing through the Rafid Gap turned northwest up a little-used route known as the Tapline Road, which cut diagonally across the Golan. This roadway would prove one of the main strategic hinges of the battle. It led straight from the main Syrian breakthrough points to Nafah, which was not only the location of Israeli divisional headquarters but the most important crossroads on the Heights."[7] During the night, Lieutenant Zvika Greengold, who had just arrived to the battle unattached to any unit, fought them off with his single tank until help arrived. "For the next 20 hours, Zvika Force, as he came to be known on the radio net, fought running battles with Syrian tanks—sometimes alone, sometimes as part of a larger unit, changing tanks half a dozen times as they were knocked out. He was wounded and burned but stayed in action and repeatedly showed up at critical moments from an unexpected direction to change the course of a skirmish."[7] . For his actions, Zvika became a national hero in Israel.

During over four days of fighting, the Israeli 7th Armored Brigade in the north (commanded by Yanush Ben Gal) managed to hold the rocky hill line defending the northern flank of their headquarters in Nafah. For some as-yet-unexplained reason, the Syrians were close to conquering Nafah, yet they stopped the advance on Nafah's fences, letting Israel assemble a defensive line. The most reasonable explanation for this is that the Syrians had calculated estimated advances, and the commanders in the field didn't want to digress from the plan. To the south, however, the Barak Armored Brigade, bereft of any natural defenses, began to take on heavy casualties. Brigade Commander Colonel Shoham was killed during the second day of fighting, along with his Second in Command and their Operations Officer (each in a separate tank) as the Syrians desperately tried to push inwards towards the Sea of Galilee and towards Nafah. At this point the Brigade stopped functioning as a cohesive force, although the remaining tanks and crewmen continued fighting independently.

The tide in the Golan turned as the arriving Israeli reserve forces were able to contain and, starting 8 October, push back the Syrian offensive. The tiny Golan Heights were too small to act as an effective territorial buffer, unlike the Sinai Peninsula in the south, but it proved to be a strategic geographical stronghold and was a crucial key in preventing the Syrian army from bombing the cities below. By Wednesday, October 10, the last Syrian unit in the Central sector had been pushed back across the purple line, that is, the pre-war border (Rabinovich, 302).

A decision now had to be made—whether to ease the fighting down and end the war at the 1967 border, or to continue the war into Syrian territory. Israeli High Command spent the entire October 10 debating this, well into the night. Some favored disengagement, which would allow soldiers to be redeployed to the Sinai (Shmuel Gonen's ignominious defeat at Hizayon in the Sinai had happened two days earlier). Others favored continuing the attack into Syria, towards Damascus, which would knock Syria out of the war; it would also restore Israel's image as the supreme military power in the Middle East and would give them a valuable bargaining chip once the war ended. Others countered that Syria had strong defenses—antitank ditches, minefields, and strongpoints—and that it would be better to fight from defensive positions in the Golan Heights (rather than the flat terrain of Syria) in the event of another war with Syria. However, Prime Minister Meir realized the most crucial point of the whole debate—"It would take four days to shift a division to the Sinai. If the war ended during this period, the war would end with a territorial loss for Israel in the Sinai and no gain in the north—an unmitigated defeat. This was a political matter and her decision was unmitigating—to cross the purple line… The attack would be launched tomorrow, Thursday, October 11" (Rabinovich, 304).

From 11 October to 14 October, the Israeli forces pushed into Syria, conquering a further twenty-square-mile box of territory in the Bashan. From there they were able to shell the outskirts of Damascus, only 40 km away, using heavy artillery.

"As Arab position on the battlefields deteriorated, pressure mounted on King Hussein to send his Army into action. He found a way to meet these demands without opening his kingdom to Israeli air attack. Instead of attacking Israel from their common border, he sent an expeditionary force into Syria. He let Israel know of his intentions, through US intermediaries, in the hope that it [Israel] would accept that this was not a casus belli justifying an attack into Jordan… Dayan declined to offer any such assurance, but Israel had no intention of opening another front" (Rabinovich, 433).

Iraq also sent an expeditionary force to the Golan, consisting of some 30,000 men, 500 tanks, and 700 APCs (Rabinovich, 314). The Iraqi divisions were actually a strategic surprise for the IDF, which expected a 24-hour-plus advance intelligence of such moves. This turned into an operational surprise, as the Iraqis attacked the exposed southern flank of the advancing Israeli armor, forcing its advance units to retreat a few kilometers, in order to prevent encirclement.

Combined Syrian, Iraqi and Jordanian counterattacks prevented any further Israeli gains. However, they were also unable to push the Israelis back from their Bashan salient.

On 22 October, the Golani Brigade and Sayeret Matkal commandos recaptured the outpost on Mount Hermon, after sustaining very heavy casualties from entrenched Syrian snipers strategically positioned on the mountain. An attack two weeks before had cost 25 dead and 67 wounded, while this second attack cost an additional 55 dead and 79 wounded (Rabinovich, 450). An Israeli D9 bulldozer with Israeli infantry breached a way to the peak, preventing the peak from falling into Syrian hands after the war. A paratrooper brigade took the corresponding Syrian outposts on the mountain.

At sea

The Battle of Latakia, a revolutionary naval battle between the Syrians and the Israelis, took place on October 7, the second day of the war, resulting in a resounding Israeli victory that proved the potency of small, fast missile boats equipped with advanced ECM packages. This battle was the world's first battle between missile boats equipped with surface-to-surface missiles. The battle also established the Israeli Navy, long derided as the "black sheep" of the Israeli services, as a formidable and effective force in its own right. Following this and other smaller naval battles, the Syrian and Egyptian navies stayed at their Mediterranean Sea ports throughout most of the war, enabling the Mediterranean sea lanes to Israel to remain open. This enabled uninterrupted resupply of the IDF by American ships (96% of all resupply tonnage was shipborne, not airlifted, contrary to public perception).

However, the Israeli navy was less successful in breaking the Egyptian Navy's blockade of the Red Sea for Israeli or Israel-bound shipping, thus hampering Israel's oil resupply via the port of Eilat. Israel did not possess enough missile boats in Red Sea ports to enable breaking the blockade, a fact it regretted in hindsight.

Several other times during the war, the Israeli navy mounted small assault raids on Egyptian ports. Both Fast Attack Craft and Shayetet 13 naval commandos were active in these assaults. Their purpose was to destroy boats that were to be used by the Egyptians to ferry their own commandos behind Israeli lines. The overall effect of these raids on the war was relatively minor.

Participation by other states

Besides Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Iraq, several other Arab nations were involved in this war, providing additional weapons and financing. The amount of support is uncertain.

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait gave financial aid and sent some token forces to join in the battle. Morocco sent three brigades to the front lines; the Palestinians sent troops as well (Rabinovich, 464). Pakistan sent sixteen pilots.

From 1971 to 1973, Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya sent Mirage fighters and gave Egypt around $1 billion to arm for war. Algeria sent squadrons of fighters and bombers, armored brigades, and dozens of tanks. Tunisia sent over 1,000 soldiers, who worked with Egyptian forces in the Nile delta, and Sudan sent 3,500 soldiers.

Uganda radio reported that Idi Amin sent Ugandan soldiers to fight against Israel. Cuba also sent approximately 1,500 troops including tank and helicopter crews who reportedly also engaged in combat operations against the IDF.[8]