Peter and Dan Snow: Yom Kippur War: BBC2 21:00 Tonight

[Cpl Steiner]

Hi,

Probably too late to make a difference but anyone in the UK interested in seeing Syrian armed forces in action can watch this program on BBC2 tonight. Should be interesting (as all the programs have been, but especially as it involves Syria).

[Cpl Steiner]

For those who missed it, the program was quite interesting from a CM:SF point of view. Some highlights below:

1. Syria is still technically at war with Israel.

2. Egypt managed to hold the Suez Canal for many days because their SAM sites created a 15 mile wide umbrella under which their forces could operate. As soon as they ventured out of this zone they were mercilessly picked off by Israeli air power. What use SAMs will be for Syria in CM:SF is debatable.

3. Israeli counter-attacks against Egyptian positions holding the Suez Canal suffered massive losses due to the then new Sagger ATGM. Presumably Kornet could have the same effect in CM:SF if deployed in sufficient numbers.

4. Israel suffered something like 10K casualties (killed and wounded), a per capita casualty rate of something like 3 times that of the US in the entire Vietnam conflict!

[Sergei]

Is the per capita casualty rate of US in Vietnam then somehow meaningful for Yom Kippur? A case of 1st world army vs. 3rd world guerrilla army in an unpopular-in-America war. Sounds like that was only picked because USA is the yardstick in everything...

P.S. Did you know that Finnish President Risto Ryti lived for 67 years? Yes, that's four years longer than US President Roosevelt.

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by Sergei:

Is the per capita casualty rate of US in Vietnam then somehow meaningful for Yom Kippur?

Just illustrating the psychological impact of the war on Israel. I don't think you should read anything more into it than that.

[mav1]

I watched the programe. Nice to see battle history on the tv.

[Guinnessman]

Originally posted by Cpl Steiner:

3. Israeli counter-attacks against Egyptian positions holding the Suez Canal suffered massive losses due to the then new Sagger ATGM. Presumably Kornet could have the same effect in CM:SF if deployed in sufficient numbers.

IIRC this was partially due to the fact that the IDF concentrated on airpower instead of a decent quantity of tube artillery. So when their airpower was nullified over Egyptian positions by the air defences, they didn't have enough field artillery to adequately suppress the ATGM teams. It was a pretty smart move by the Egyptians right enough...

[John Kettler]

The Egyptians not only had lots of SA-2 and SA-3 covering the Canal, but the new to combat SA-6 and ZSU 23/4, together with hordes of 14.5mm-85/100mm AAA. The SA-6, ZSU-23/4 and normal mobile AAA didn't cut it in the face of IAF CAS once away from the static air defenses, but before that, the Egyptian defenses (including hordes of SA-7s; remember the C-5s full of A-4 rear fuselage assemblies?) shredded IAF CAS to such an extent it had to be abandoned. Took fast FACs, coordinated artillery strikes, etc., even so. The real restoration of a IAF freedom to operate, though, came when the IDF assaulted across the Canal and literally drove through the defensive belt, destroying every installation in sight.

The Egyptian gutting of the IDF armor in the initial counterattacks was facilitated by having stripped all the antitank assets from a second echelon Egyptian army and placing them with the force assaulting the Bar Lev Line. IOW, AT weapon density was twice what the OOB called for! Initially, the Israeli tankers though the AT teams were logs.

Regarding Syrians in the Yom Kippur War, their ability to operate at night at near daylight tempo put the West into a state of shock. ISTR, too, the Syrians in their T-62s showed tremendous courage and dash while assaulting over some sort of AVLB laid bridge against Israeli positions, to the point where even the IDF tankers were in awe.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Bigduke6]

Another factor in Israeli initial failure against the bridghead across the Suez was that the Israeli tankers used poor tactics in the initial days of the war. Basically, it was charge with whatever tank unit you have, and expect the Egyptians to get tank fright and run like in 1967. Initially the Israelis used companies, then battalions.

But the Egyptian infantry held, and the Sagger/RPG-7 net really cut up the Israeli armor. Supressing the AT teams was not so easy, first because the Israeli armored divisions were relatively light in infantry and artillery, and second because it was desert after all so the target density was low.

The solution the Israelis eventually came up with was, the moment you see a missile smoke cloud, every one and his brother opens up on the general area of the smoke cloud, hopefully to throw the Sagger operator off his aim. This was not a perfect solution but it enabled the Israelis to chew their way into the AT network once they got around to concentrating bridgades.

An interesting aspect of the fight was, that as long as the Egyptian posture was defensive (i.e., once they had grabbed the bridghead) they kept their armor well back, leaving the defense work to the infantry and missile operators.

Of course, when the Egyptians later decided to take the war to the Israelis, and fight it out in the Sinai out from underneath the SAM network, the Israeli air-tank teamwork advantage chopped up the Egyptians.

An excellent book on the war is No Victor No Vanquished by Edgar O'Ballance. Among the memoires out there in English Bren Adan (the main Israeli division commander besides Sharon) wrote a fine book, as did Shazli, the guy who planned the Egyptian offensive.

[John Kettler]

Bigduke6,

Nicely explained! Have you read THE HEIGHTS OF COURAGE: A Tank Leader's War on the Golan, by Avigdor Kahalani? If so, what did you think?

Kahalani was a tank battalion commander on the Golan in 1973. He was there from the initial Syrian attack all the way through to the counterattack to the doorstep of Damascus.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Sgt Joch]

I can also recommend THE YOM KIPPUR WAR by abraham rabinovitch, although it deals mostly with the Israeli side and, of course, ARABS AT WAR, for the Arab side.

A big reason for the Israeli debacle was their arrogance following their easy victory in 1967. Israel assumed that Mossad would give them at least one week's warning of any arab attack allowing them to mobilize their forces and they counted on their armored forces and the IAF to easily breakup any arab attack.

The egyptians and the syrians carried out a very effective deception operation which totally fooled the Israelis, who finally had only about six hours warning about the attack. The egyptian SAM wall was a total shock to the IAF which lost about 30% of their operational aircraft in the first 24 hours and to basically shut down operations over the canal.

The egyptians also had specially trained ATGM teams which bypassed the Israeli strongpoints along the canal and setup ambush positions 1-2 km from the canal. These teams completely broke up the Israeli counterattacks on oct. 8-9. One israeli tank unit lost 22 out of 25 tanks in a 5 minute period.

However, you have to give the Israelis credit for bouncing back. Many armies in their situation would have simply crumbled, instead they figured out what the problems were and found practical solutions. In oct. '73, there were no effective countermeasures to the Egyptian SAMs, however the IAF pilots figured out that if you did a radical turn at the right moment, you could defeat the missiles..most of the time, although it pretty much required nerves of steel. Furthermore, when the war became more mobile after the failed egyptian attacks of oct. 14, the IDF started to shine, since despite its improvement, the egyptian army simply did not have the skill to match the IDF in mobile warfare.