The Yom Kippur War 1973 (2) by Simon Dunstan

Author:Simon Dunstan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Yom Kippur War 1973 (2)
ISBN: 9781782006916
Publisher: Osprey Publishing

As the war progressed, the Israelis pressed into service all their tanks held in strategic reserve including the elderly World War II-vintage Shermans. Over the years, these Shermans had been heavily modified and were now armed with an innovative French 105mm gun firing HEAT ammunition. Despite their age, the Shermans proved effective both in the Sinai and on the Golan Heights against the Syrians and Iraqis.

The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom was the Israeli Air Force’s primary fighter-bomber during the October War. It was capable of carrying seven tons of external ordnance including air-to-air missiles, bombs and ECM pods. The Phantom was used extensively against the Egyptian bridges across the Suez Canal in the first days of the war, when they suffered severe losses; 33 Israeli Phantoms were downed during the war. As Israel faced the prospect of defeat in the opening days of the October War, a squadron of Phantoms was loaded with 13 20-kiloton nuclear weapons as the final arbiter of the fate of the Third Temple.

There was confusion and a loss of morale in the units engaged in the opening phase of fighting. On his arrival at Tasa Base, situated on the Lateral Road 40km (25 miles) east of the Canal, Major General Ariel Sharon, a senior reserve officer soon to be thrown into the thick of the fighting, was dismayed at the apparent bewilderment of Israeli troops: ‘Suddenly something was happening to them that had never happened before. These were soldiers who had been brought up on victories … It was a generation that had never lost. Now they were in a state of shock … How was it that [the Egyptians] were moving forward and we were defeated?’

In the late afternoon of 6 October the IAF had flown dozens of ground-support missions against the Egyptian bridgeheads. As darkness fell, it resorted to flares to locate and destroy the bridges. However, the IAF had only a limited ability to mount night operations, and these attacks did little to slow down the Egyptian timetable. Early on the morning of Sunday 7 October, the General Staff decided to disregard the Syrian offensive on the Golan Heights, where the IDF was believed to be holding, and throw the weight of the IAF against the Egyptians. Its Phantom and Mirage squadrons were given the task of destroying the anti-aircraft missile network between the Canal and Cairo, clearing the sky over the Suez Canal for ground-attack missions.

The Israeli jets took off at 0700hrs on the first stage of their mission, flew through the missile screen and hit a number of radar sites and airfields near the Canal and in the Nile Valley. They returned to their bases to refuel and rearm before launching massed attacks on the Egyptian missile umbrella in the Suez Canal zone. At this point they were abruptly switched back to the Golan front by Moshe Dayan, who, bypassing normal channels, told the commander of the IAF, General Benjamin Peled, that ‘The Third Temple’ (code for Israel) was in

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