War of attrition. Part of 1. Nasser starts, but does not win
As is known, Six Day War 10 ended on June 1967 of the year with the complete rout of the armies of a number of Arab countries and serious territorial additions for Israel. However, the first new clashes occurred in a month. Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser could not resign himself to defeat and undertook a series of military actions against Israel known to the general public, later named War of attrition.
Goal - return Sinai Peninsula. It lasted for about three years and ended with the signing of an agreement on a ceasefire in August 1970, without territorial changes from the parties to the conflict. It suffered losses not only from Egypt and Israel, but also from the USSR, which delivered to the banks of the Nile along with weapons their soldiers and officers. (Egypt didn’t learn the lesson from everything that happened and began to prepare for a new war with Israel. It didn’t take long to wait. But this is a completely different one story...)
If about the Arab-Israeli wars - Six day, Doomsday War and a number of others have written many sufficiently detailed and completely objective military-historical works available and known to the general reader, then about the period preceding wars, about the reasons for which they caused, as the experience of many years of network communication shows, much less is known. The information available in the network is mostly fragmented, often contradictory, and sometimes it is completely erroneous. Similarly, readers are not familiar with this long, but little noticeable against the background of world events, the "sluggishly ongoing" war.
I wanted to talk about those days in a bit more detail, mark the main events with milestones, give the names of at least some of the participants in the events and show at least a little of their role in the events of almost half a century ago. They (participants in the events) were not known to everyone then, today are forgotten, but by young people and not heard at all.
I offer to the lovers of military history a certain essay based on materials from a number of quite authoritative and trustworthy sources (the list is placed at the end of the text), provided with photographs that I selected, hyperlinks to encyclopedic articles, etc. Some of the above materials are in the public domain, and some are their property authors and placed here only for personal acquaintance of readers.
As the legendary warlord and strategist Sun Tzu (6th – 5th centuries BC) used to say in his treatise “The Art of War”: “The causes of future wars are always embedded in the results of previous wars” and was right.
On the day of the declaration of independence - May 15, 1948, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen declared war and attacked the newly created Israel with the aim of destroying the newborn Jewish state. Started war of independence of Israel. At the first stage of the invasion, the Israelis fought hard defensive battles. Since July, the Israel Defense Forces launched a counter-offensive and rejected the Arab armies. In the fall of 1949, the moment came when the Israelis could completely destroy the encircled Egyptian army, but the intervention of the British forced Israel to cancel the prepared operation. America also did not support the Israelis. Negotiations conducted at the initiative of the United Nations and the United States did not allow the matter to be completed. Israel’s victory led only to a temporary truce with the Arab countries that participated in the 1949 war. During Suez Crisis (1956) US President Dwight Eisenhower condemned the actions of his NATO allies, calling them “erroneous” and spoke on November 6 demanding the cessation of hostilities, thereby supporting the USSR’s ultimatum to Israel to cease hostilities immediately.
In the hard message of the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Bulganin, the question of the very existence of this state was raised altogether.
In short, the next ten years in the region were not calm ... Similarly, after the Six Day War, peace treaties were not concluded. The parties were satisfied with the cease-fire agreements. Well, and losers always think about revenge ...
Of all the Arab leaders, Ahmad Abdel Nasser was the only one for whom defeat in the war meant not only deep humiliation, but also a direct threat to personal prestige. True, the loss of Sinai, despite all its oil resources, was not such a heavy economic blow. However, forced closure Suez Canal it was much more painful. In a fit of reckless anger, the Egyptians sank all the ships in the canal waters and banned 14 ships from various countries from it, stuck in the Great Bitter Lake, located on the Suez Canal. This “blockade” lasted 8 years and cost Egypt Egypt 30 million dollars monthly, which was a significant part of the national income.
Militarily, Egypt could count on generous compensation. Moscow, firmly intending to revive its influence in the Middle East, buried on the fronts of the Six Day War, established an air bridge to Egypt and Syria. A few days after the end of the war, massive transfers of weapons, equipment and instructors to Egypt and Syria began from the USSR. Emergency economic assistance was allocated. 14 June 1967, a squadron of bombers arrived in Egypt Tu-16. Following it, Soviet military equipment and weapons began to be transferred over the air bridge to the UAR. In October, the 1967 of the year was delivered to Egypt: 110 fighters MiG-2180 - MiG-19The 40 Fighter-Bombers Su-7The xnumx bombers IL-28 and 10 - Tu-16. In 1968, the MiG-21 fighters continued to flow into service with the Egyptian and Syrian air forces, and the air defense forces launched anti-aircraft missile systems. C-75 и C-125. By the end of 1968, the Egyptian Air Force not only regained its pre-war potential, but also increased quantitatively, while at the same time modernizing itself qualitatively.
Western experts believed that all of Egypt received 400 new aircraft. Several new airfields were created at once, on which, remembering the crushing experience of the previous war, they constructed reinforced concrete caponier hangars that withstood a direct hit of a high-explosive bomb.
The Syrian air force, too, was significantly strengthened. Hundreds of Soviet military advisers, intelligence officers and military translators arrived in the country. By the end of 1968, the Syrian Arab Republic was armed with 60 fighters MiG-21, 20 fighter-bomber SU-7, there lived out their age 70 MiG-15 и MiG-17.
At the same time improved tank delivery. If before the USSR sold to Egypt and Syria for the most part its obsolete T-34 since the Second World War (new models Syria and Egypt have been buying), now they have sailed to Africa T-54, T-55 and later - T-62. Western experts believed that Egypt’s weapons had accumulated up to 470 tanks. The tank, however, was an offensive weapon, and on the counterattack, Nasser still had no strength ...
23 July 1967 Year Anniversary Colonel RevolutionsNasser proclaimed that he was preparing his army to resume the struggle against Israel. “We will never capitulate and will not agree to peace, which means surrender! "- he said.
29 August leaders of thirteen Arab countries gathered for a three-day meeting in Khartoum, where they vowed to continue the fight against Zionism. Under pressure from Nasser, they formulated their notorious triple no to Israel:
No to the world with Israel!
No - recognition of Israel!
No to negotiations with Israel!
It would seem that the victory in the Six-Day War should have led to the fact that the humiliated and defeated Arabs, realizing the futility of their efforts to destroy Israel, matured to the idea of reconciling with it, but the logic of the Arab inhabitants turned out to be diametrically opposite. If before the 1967 war, for the majority of ordinary citizens of Arab countries, Israel was an unpleasant, but not dangerous thorn, now that its borders have moved apart from the mountain Hermon in the north, before the Suez Canal in the south, Israel became a very tangible threat. Residents of Cairo and Damascus, capital cities, witnessed Israeli Israeli aircraft in the sky above their heads and shouted that they had to do something about it.
The result of this Arab irreconcilability and threats was the tightening of Israeli public opinion. More and more Israelis have come to the conclusion that the only means of ensuring security is to keep the territories conquered at the time of the cease-fire in June 1967.
Meanwhile, from the end of 1967, the group of Soviet advisers who were in Egypt and before the Six Day War began to be replaced in Egypt by whole military units of the Soviet Army. So in March 1968 between OAR, as Egypt continued to call itself, and the USSR signed an agreement about temporary the deployment on its territory of an air group of six Tu-16R bombers (a Long-range reconnaissance aircraft. It was distinguished by 7 cameras, an active jamming station, and electronic surveillance equipment SRS-3 in hanging containers under the wing.) aviation for aerial reconnaissance over The Mediterranean Sea in the interest of both countries. The size of the group was determined in 130 people, but later it began to grow.
Gradually, the Soviet military presence in Egypt became so significant that many Arab leaders scolded Nasser for turning his country into a “Soviet colony”. All this had its own explanation of the Egyptian and Israeli parts were separated by the Suez Canal, and offensive operations, it seemed, could not be carried out on this front. Feeling so confident, Nasser decided to use the Soviet weapons flowing to him to continue military operations. Strictly speaking, a complete cease-fire on the channel was not achieved. Skirmishes broke out from time to time. Now, by the middle of the 1968 of the year, Nasser put the fighting on a regular basis. There are guns, shells are, let them shoot, anyway, the Israelis will not float through the channel.
Artillery duels claimed the lives of both sides. Thousands of civilians left Egyptian canal towns such as Ismailia, Port Said and Suez. In 1948, in Egypt, 15 million people lived, but now there were already 30 million inhabitants, and Nasser believed that winning the “war of attrition” with 2,5 million Israel is just a matter of time.
On the Israeli side, the soldiers began to dig in. Since special trenches in the sand cannot be broken, they began to build concrete bunkers, from which they observed the other side. Then the bunkers began to connect to the system, and so it appeared "Bar-Lev Line"named after General Haim Bar-Lev, who served as the IDF General Staff Chief from 1968 to 1972 for a year and was engaged in front-line troops.
In total, the Bar-Lev line consisted of 30 advanced bunkers at the canal and 11 rear fortifications, located 8-12 km deep into the peninsula, where Egyptian artillery shells did not reach and where tank parks were provided.
Each of the advanced bunkers controlled about one kilometer of the front, and patrols moved between the bunkers and temporary observation posts were located. Construction of fortifications cost Israel a lot of money. (As the events of the war of the Doomsday Day showed, this money was thrown to the wind).
The Egyptians gathered artillery barrels near the canal up to 1000, which in March and April thundered 1969 without stopping. Satisfied, Nasser announced that the 60% fortifications of the Bar-Lev line had been destroyed. In fact, the fortifications survived the shelling and at that time paid off. It became clear that artillery could do little damage to a well-entrenched enemy, so gradually other armies — the navy, paratroopers, and especially aircraft — began to be drawn into this “war of attrition”.
The parties exchanged blows. On the sea off the coast of Sinai October 21 1967, the Egyptian rocket boat sank Israeli destroyer "Eilat".
Killed 47 sailors, 97 was injured.
Three days later, Israeli artillery practically leveled the oil installations in the city of Suez. After that, almost 11 months remained relatively calm on the line of confrontation.
In September, 1968, Egypt subjected the Israeli coast of the canal to massive artillery fire, during which 10 died and Israeli soldiers were injured and 18. The next shelling occurred on October 26. This time, the 13 Israelis died, the 34 were injured.
The Israeli army responded by firing on the cities of Suez and Ismailia and again struck the remnants of the oil refinery.
On the night of October 31 on November 1, a small detachment of Israeli paratroopers landed from helicopters in the depths of Egyptian territory, hundreds of kilometers from the Suez Canal. They blew up two important bridges across the Nile and a large, shortly before the Soviet-built transformer substation in Nag Hammadi. These actions by Israel proved to be very effective, as silence reigned at the front, which lasted until March 1969. At this time, the sides were strenuously building fortifications.
9 March 1969, the head of the Egyptian General Staff, General Abdul Riad and several officers who accompanied him, who came to the front line to get acquainted with the situation on the spot, were killed as a result of an Israeli projectile hit the dugout in the Ismailia region.
After this, artillery duels became regular. Israeli aviation attacked Egypt’s artillery and rocket air defense batteries. But Israel suffered regular losses, which were constantly increasing. In May, June and July, according to some sources, 47 Israeli soldiers died, and 157 was injured, according to other sources of losses in May - 51, June - 89 and July - 112.
21 May 1969, the Egyptian aviation launched several raids on Israeli positions, but the Israelis were ready for this. The 3 MiG-21 were shot down in air duels, and one MiG was the victim LAW "Hawk".
Since 20 July 1969, the Israeli Air Force launched regular raids on the African coast of the canal. Although the USSR delivered enough planes to Egypt to restore the country's air force, the Egyptian pilots were still weak and virtually every air battle ended in downed MiGs.
10 September 1969, the Israelis raided Egyptian positions along the Suez Canal using Soviet-made captured armored vehicles. During the operation, 150 was killed by Egyptian soldiers, including one general. On the Israeli side, one soldier was slightly wounded.
Then the Egyptians decided to launch a large-scale campaign from the air, using all their available aviation. September 11 Egyptian aviation dealt a massive blow to the Israeli positions in Sinai, from the 70 participating 11 aircraft was lost. In these battles, from May to November 1969, the Egyptian Air Force lost a combat aircraft to the 51. Of these, 34 was shot down in air battles, 9 - anti-aircraft guns and 8 - SAM "Hawk".
On the night of 15 on 16 on November 1969, Egyptian fighting swimmers blew up an Israeli transport ship 3 in the port of Eilat. Two ships received heavy damage, and one - sank.
In December, Israeli special forces successfully conducted 1969 53 Rooster Operation - delivery to Israel of the Soviet radar installation P-12. This early warning radar was able to detect aircraft at low altitudes, its characteristics were not known to Israel, and therefore there was no means of electronic warfare against it. The paratroopers landed in 6 km from the radar station, took the Egyptians by surprise, dismantled both parts of the radar station: a hardware and antenna mast device, and carried two heavy helicopters to Sinai on the external sling. Together with the station, her calculation was captured and abducted. After this operation, Nasser dismissed the commander of the military district.
Here is what he writes in the pages of the magazine "Aerospace Defense" (the press organ of the Independent Expert Council on the problems of aerospace defense)
in the article “Fights on the Suez Canal” Colonel, Senior Lecturer of the Air Force Department of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Viktor Tkachev:
In this situation, the President of the ARE, Gamal Abdel Nasser, secretly visited the Soviet Union and persuaded the Soviet leadership to cover the ARE objects with Soviet forces. Despite the fact that these actions could significantly exacerbate Soviet-American relations, the Soviet government decided to implement direct military assistance - the operation received the code name "Caucasus".
To be continued
Author: Alexander Privalov
Sources:
Wikipedia articles
Project Articles Cyclists
Victor Tkachev. Fighting on the Suez Canal. http://www.vko.ru/voyny-i-konflikty/boi-na-sueckom-kanale
Alexander Okorokov. Secret wars of the Soviet Union. https://www.e-reading.club/book.php?book=95319
N. Salmin. Internationalism in Action: Local Wars and Armed Conflicts with the Participation of the Soviet Component: Military, Military-Technical, Economic (1950-1989). - Ekaterinburg: University of Humanities Publishing House, 2001
M. Shterenshis. Israel. The history of the state. 3-e edition, supplemented and revised. - Herzliya: ISRADON, 2009
Goal - return Sinai Peninsula. It lasted for about three years and ended with the signing of an agreement on a ceasefire in August 1970, without territorial changes from the parties to the conflict. It suffered losses not only from Egypt and Israel, but also from the USSR, which delivered to the banks of the Nile along with weapons their soldiers and officers. (Egypt didn’t learn the lesson from everything that happened and began to prepare for a new war with Israel. It didn’t take long to wait. But this is a completely different one story...)
If about the Arab-Israeli wars - Six day, Doomsday War and a number of others have written many sufficiently detailed and completely objective military-historical works available and known to the general reader, then about the period preceding wars, about the reasons for which they caused, as the experience of many years of network communication shows, much less is known. The information available in the network is mostly fragmented, often contradictory, and sometimes it is completely erroneous. Similarly, readers are not familiar with this long, but little noticeable against the background of world events, the "sluggishly ongoing" war.
I wanted to talk about those days in a bit more detail, mark the main events with milestones, give the names of at least some of the participants in the events and show at least a little of their role in the events of almost half a century ago. They (participants in the events) were not known to everyone then, today are forgotten, but by young people and not heard at all.
I offer to the lovers of military history a certain essay based on materials from a number of quite authoritative and trustworthy sources (the list is placed at the end of the text), provided with photographs that I selected, hyperlinks to encyclopedic articles, etc. Some of the above materials are in the public domain, and some are their property authors and placed here only for personal acquaintance of readers.
As the legendary warlord and strategist Sun Tzu (6th – 5th centuries BC) used to say in his treatise “The Art of War”: “The causes of future wars are always embedded in the results of previous wars” and was right.
On the day of the declaration of independence - May 15, 1948, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen declared war and attacked the newly created Israel with the aim of destroying the newborn Jewish state. Started war of independence of Israel. At the first stage of the invasion, the Israelis fought hard defensive battles. Since July, the Israel Defense Forces launched a counter-offensive and rejected the Arab armies. In the fall of 1949, the moment came when the Israelis could completely destroy the encircled Egyptian army, but the intervention of the British forced Israel to cancel the prepared operation. America also did not support the Israelis. Negotiations conducted at the initiative of the United Nations and the United States did not allow the matter to be completed. Israel’s victory led only to a temporary truce with the Arab countries that participated in the 1949 war. During Suez Crisis (1956) US President Dwight Eisenhower condemned the actions of his NATO allies, calling them “erroneous” and spoke on November 6 demanding the cessation of hostilities, thereby supporting the USSR’s ultimatum to Israel to cease hostilities immediately.
In the hard message of the Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers Bulganin, the question of the very existence of this state was raised altogether.
In short, the next ten years in the region were not calm ... Similarly, after the Six Day War, peace treaties were not concluded. The parties were satisfied with the cease-fire agreements. Well, and losers always think about revenge ...
Of all the Arab leaders, Ahmad Abdel Nasser was the only one for whom defeat in the war meant not only deep humiliation, but also a direct threat to personal prestige. True, the loss of Sinai, despite all its oil resources, was not such a heavy economic blow. However, forced closure Suez Canal it was much more painful. In a fit of reckless anger, the Egyptians sank all the ships in the canal waters and banned 14 ships from various countries from it, stuck in the Great Bitter Lake, located on the Suez Canal. This “blockade” lasted 8 years and cost Egypt Egypt 30 million dollars monthly, which was a significant part of the national income.
Militarily, Egypt could count on generous compensation. Moscow, firmly intending to revive its influence in the Middle East, buried on the fronts of the Six Day War, established an air bridge to Egypt and Syria. A few days after the end of the war, massive transfers of weapons, equipment and instructors to Egypt and Syria began from the USSR. Emergency economic assistance was allocated. 14 June 1967, a squadron of bombers arrived in Egypt Tu-16. Following it, Soviet military equipment and weapons began to be transferred over the air bridge to the UAR. In October, the 1967 of the year was delivered to Egypt: 110 fighters MiG-2180 - MiG-19The 40 Fighter-Bombers Su-7The xnumx bombers IL-28 and 10 - Tu-16. In 1968, the MiG-21 fighters continued to flow into service with the Egyptian and Syrian air forces, and the air defense forces launched anti-aircraft missile systems. C-75 и C-125. By the end of 1968, the Egyptian Air Force not only regained its pre-war potential, but also increased quantitatively, while at the same time modernizing itself qualitatively.
Western experts believed that all of Egypt received 400 new aircraft. Several new airfields were created at once, on which, remembering the crushing experience of the previous war, they constructed reinforced concrete caponier hangars that withstood a direct hit of a high-explosive bomb.
The Syrian air force, too, was significantly strengthened. Hundreds of Soviet military advisers, intelligence officers and military translators arrived in the country. By the end of 1968, the Syrian Arab Republic was armed with 60 fighters MiG-21, 20 fighter-bomber SU-7, there lived out their age 70 MiG-15 и MiG-17.
At the same time improved tank delivery. If before the USSR sold to Egypt and Syria for the most part its obsolete T-34 since the Second World War (new models Syria and Egypt have been buying), now they have sailed to Africa T-54, T-55 and later - T-62. Western experts believed that Egypt’s weapons had accumulated up to 470 tanks. The tank, however, was an offensive weapon, and on the counterattack, Nasser still had no strength ...
23 July 1967 Year Anniversary Colonel RevolutionsNasser proclaimed that he was preparing his army to resume the struggle against Israel. “We will never capitulate and will not agree to peace, which means surrender! "- he said.
29 August leaders of thirteen Arab countries gathered for a three-day meeting in Khartoum, where they vowed to continue the fight against Zionism. Under pressure from Nasser, they formulated their notorious triple no to Israel:
No to the world with Israel!
No - recognition of Israel!
No to negotiations with Israel!
It would seem that the victory in the Six-Day War should have led to the fact that the humiliated and defeated Arabs, realizing the futility of their efforts to destroy Israel, matured to the idea of reconciling with it, but the logic of the Arab inhabitants turned out to be diametrically opposite. If before the 1967 war, for the majority of ordinary citizens of Arab countries, Israel was an unpleasant, but not dangerous thorn, now that its borders have moved apart from the mountain Hermon in the north, before the Suez Canal in the south, Israel became a very tangible threat. Residents of Cairo and Damascus, capital cities, witnessed Israeli Israeli aircraft in the sky above their heads and shouted that they had to do something about it.
The result of this Arab irreconcilability and threats was the tightening of Israeli public opinion. More and more Israelis have come to the conclusion that the only means of ensuring security is to keep the territories conquered at the time of the cease-fire in June 1967.
Meanwhile, from the end of 1967, the group of Soviet advisers who were in Egypt and before the Six Day War began to be replaced in Egypt by whole military units of the Soviet Army. So in March 1968 between OAR, as Egypt continued to call itself, and the USSR signed an agreement about temporary the deployment on its territory of an air group of six Tu-16R bombers (a Long-range reconnaissance aircraft. It was distinguished by 7 cameras, an active jamming station, and electronic surveillance equipment SRS-3 in hanging containers under the wing.) aviation for aerial reconnaissance over The Mediterranean Sea in the interest of both countries. The size of the group was determined in 130 people, but later it began to grow.
Gradually, the Soviet military presence in Egypt became so significant that many Arab leaders scolded Nasser for turning his country into a “Soviet colony”. All this had its own explanation of the Egyptian and Israeli parts were separated by the Suez Canal, and offensive operations, it seemed, could not be carried out on this front. Feeling so confident, Nasser decided to use the Soviet weapons flowing to him to continue military operations. Strictly speaking, a complete cease-fire on the channel was not achieved. Skirmishes broke out from time to time. Now, by the middle of the 1968 of the year, Nasser put the fighting on a regular basis. There are guns, shells are, let them shoot, anyway, the Israelis will not float through the channel.
Artillery duels claimed the lives of both sides. Thousands of civilians left Egyptian canal towns such as Ismailia, Port Said and Suez. In 1948, in Egypt, 15 million people lived, but now there were already 30 million inhabitants, and Nasser believed that winning the “war of attrition” with 2,5 million Israel is just a matter of time.
On the Israeli side, the soldiers began to dig in. Since special trenches in the sand cannot be broken, they began to build concrete bunkers, from which they observed the other side. Then the bunkers began to connect to the system, and so it appeared "Bar-Lev Line"named after General Haim Bar-Lev, who served as the IDF General Staff Chief from 1968 to 1972 for a year and was engaged in front-line troops.
In total, the Bar-Lev line consisted of 30 advanced bunkers at the canal and 11 rear fortifications, located 8-12 km deep into the peninsula, where Egyptian artillery shells did not reach and where tank parks were provided.
One of the Israeli fortifications on the Bar Lev Line
Each of the advanced bunkers controlled about one kilometer of the front, and patrols moved between the bunkers and temporary observation posts were located. Construction of fortifications cost Israel a lot of money. (As the events of the war of the Doomsday Day showed, this money was thrown to the wind).
The Egyptians gathered artillery barrels near the canal up to 1000, which in March and April thundered 1969 without stopping. Satisfied, Nasser announced that the 60% fortifications of the Bar-Lev line had been destroyed. In fact, the fortifications survived the shelling and at that time paid off. It became clear that artillery could do little damage to a well-entrenched enemy, so gradually other armies — the navy, paratroopers, and especially aircraft — began to be drawn into this “war of attrition”.
The parties exchanged blows. On the sea off the coast of Sinai October 21 1967, the Egyptian rocket boat sank Israeli destroyer "Eilat".
Killed 47 sailors, 97 was injured.
Three days later, Israeli artillery practically leveled the oil installations in the city of Suez. After that, almost 11 months remained relatively calm on the line of confrontation.
In September, 1968, Egypt subjected the Israeli coast of the canal to massive artillery fire, during which 10 died and Israeli soldiers were injured and 18. The next shelling occurred on October 26. This time, the 13 Israelis died, the 34 were injured.
The Israeli army responded by firing on the cities of Suez and Ismailia and again struck the remnants of the oil refinery.
On the night of October 31 on November 1, a small detachment of Israeli paratroopers landed from helicopters in the depths of Egyptian territory, hundreds of kilometers from the Suez Canal. They blew up two important bridges across the Nile and a large, shortly before the Soviet-built transformer substation in Nag Hammadi. These actions by Israel proved to be very effective, as silence reigned at the front, which lasted until March 1969. At this time, the sides were strenuously building fortifications.
9 March 1969, the head of the Egyptian General Staff, General Abdul Riad and several officers who accompanied him, who came to the front line to get acquainted with the situation on the spot, were killed as a result of an Israeli projectile hit the dugout in the Ismailia region.
Abdul Munim Riad
After this, artillery duels became regular. Israeli aviation attacked Egypt’s artillery and rocket air defense batteries. But Israel suffered regular losses, which were constantly increasing. In May, June and July, according to some sources, 47 Israeli soldiers died, and 157 was injured, according to other sources of losses in May - 51, June - 89 and July - 112.
21 May 1969, the Egyptian aviation launched several raids on Israeli positions, but the Israelis were ready for this. The 3 MiG-21 were shot down in air duels, and one MiG was the victim LAW "Hawk".
Since 20 July 1969, the Israeli Air Force launched regular raids on the African coast of the canal. Although the USSR delivered enough planes to Egypt to restore the country's air force, the Egyptian pilots were still weak and virtually every air battle ended in downed MiGs.
10 September 1969, the Israelis raided Egyptian positions along the Suez Canal using Soviet-made captured armored vehicles. During the operation, 150 was killed by Egyptian soldiers, including one general. On the Israeli side, one soldier was slightly wounded.
Then the Egyptians decided to launch a large-scale campaign from the air, using all their available aviation. September 11 Egyptian aviation dealt a massive blow to the Israeli positions in Sinai, from the 70 participating 11 aircraft was lost. In these battles, from May to November 1969, the Egyptian Air Force lost a combat aircraft to the 51. Of these, 34 was shot down in air battles, 9 - anti-aircraft guns and 8 - SAM "Hawk".
On the night of 15 on 16 on November 1969, Egyptian fighting swimmers blew up an Israeli transport ship 3 in the port of Eilat. Two ships received heavy damage, and one - sank.
In December, Israeli special forces successfully conducted 1969 53 Rooster Operation - delivery to Israel of the Soviet radar installation P-12. This early warning radar was able to detect aircraft at low altitudes, its characteristics were not known to Israel, and therefore there was no means of electronic warfare against it. The paratroopers landed in 6 km from the radar station, took the Egyptians by surprise, dismantled both parts of the radar station: a hardware and antenna mast device, and carried two heavy helicopters to Sinai on the external sling. Together with the station, her calculation was captured and abducted. After this operation, Nasser dismissed the commander of the military district.
Radar P-12 at the Israel Air Force Museum
Here is what he writes in the pages of the magazine "Aerospace Defense" (the press organ of the Independent Expert Council on the problems of aerospace defense)
in the article “Fights on the Suez Canal” Colonel, Senior Lecturer of the Air Force Department of the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Viktor Tkachev:
“In 1969, in the Suez Canal, two anti-aircraft missile brigades of the CA-75M (7 divisions) were deployed to cover ground forces and military facilities in the areas of Port Said, Ismailia and Suez.
The desire to cover a large number of objects with limited forces and means of ZRV led to their spraying and did not allow to organize anywhere reliable defense. The anti-aircraft missile divisions in the center of the zonal grouping were located at intervals of 25-30 km, and the flank divisions - at distances 65-75km.
With such a construction, mutual cover at low altitudes was not provided, and the flank divisions did not have any fire interaction with the central group. In addition, at four southern rivers located in mountainous terrain, fire capabilities were sharply limited at low altitudes due to large closing angles.
Engineering equipment positions did not provide protection for military equipment and personnel. Anti-aircraft missile battalions occupied a joint venture of field type with the embankment of cabs and PU. Position masking was absent.
Direct protection was carried out by platoons of anti-aircraft machine guns and only in two divisions did this task be carried out by anti-aircraft artillery batteries armed with 57-mm guns. The warning and target designation for the airborne warning system was carried out according to the scheme TsKP-KP of the division KP zrbr-KP zrdn The latter did not, as a rule, have direct connections with neighboring radar companies. In the divisions of their SRTS were absent. As a result, the flow of information about the air situation was late. Degree of combat readiness did not correspond to the flying time of targets at low altitudes.
Thus, the grouping of Egyptian anti-aircraft missiles on the Suez Canal in 1969 was not ready to repel massive Israeli air strikes, as it did not take into account the possibility of approaching enemy aircraft at low altitudes from different directions and high density of raids. The formations of the Egyptian anti-aircraft missile forces not only could not solve the task of covering the objects, but were even incapable of self-defense. The grouping itself demanded cover and, above all, from attacks from low altitudes. Due to the lack of proper concealment and a long stay of the divisions at the same positions, the Israeli Air Force command was able to reveal the Egyptian anti-aircraft missile defenses, determine its weak points, and then crush the launch positions of the air defense forces.
For five days (from 20 to 24 in July 1969), the enemy struck the SP of six anti-aircraft missile divisions. After that, the grouping of Egypt's ZRV in the canal zone was in fact destroyed ...
In total, from July 1969 of the Israel Air Force 1970 th to March 18 anti-aircraft missile divisions were out of order. ”
The desire to cover a large number of objects with limited forces and means of ZRV led to their spraying and did not allow to organize anywhere reliable defense. The anti-aircraft missile divisions in the center of the zonal grouping were located at intervals of 25-30 km, and the flank divisions - at distances 65-75km.
With such a construction, mutual cover at low altitudes was not provided, and the flank divisions did not have any fire interaction with the central group. In addition, at four southern rivers located in mountainous terrain, fire capabilities were sharply limited at low altitudes due to large closing angles.
Engineering equipment positions did not provide protection for military equipment and personnel. Anti-aircraft missile battalions occupied a joint venture of field type with the embankment of cabs and PU. Position masking was absent.
Direct protection was carried out by platoons of anti-aircraft machine guns and only in two divisions did this task be carried out by anti-aircraft artillery batteries armed with 57-mm guns. The warning and target designation for the airborne warning system was carried out according to the scheme TsKP-KP of the division KP zrbr-KP zrdn The latter did not, as a rule, have direct connections with neighboring radar companies. In the divisions of their SRTS were absent. As a result, the flow of information about the air situation was late. Degree of combat readiness did not correspond to the flying time of targets at low altitudes.
Thus, the grouping of Egyptian anti-aircraft missiles on the Suez Canal in 1969 was not ready to repel massive Israeli air strikes, as it did not take into account the possibility of approaching enemy aircraft at low altitudes from different directions and high density of raids. The formations of the Egyptian anti-aircraft missile forces not only could not solve the task of covering the objects, but were even incapable of self-defense. The grouping itself demanded cover and, above all, from attacks from low altitudes. Due to the lack of proper concealment and a long stay of the divisions at the same positions, the Israeli Air Force command was able to reveal the Egyptian anti-aircraft missile defenses, determine its weak points, and then crush the launch positions of the air defense forces.
For five days (from 20 to 24 in July 1969), the enemy struck the SP of six anti-aircraft missile divisions. After that, the grouping of Egypt's ZRV in the canal zone was in fact destroyed ...
In total, from July 1969 of the Israel Air Force 1970 th to March 18 anti-aircraft missile divisions were out of order. ”
In this situation, the President of the ARE, Gamal Abdel Nasser, secretly visited the Soviet Union and persuaded the Soviet leadership to cover the ARE objects with Soviet forces. Despite the fact that these actions could significantly exacerbate Soviet-American relations, the Soviet government decided to implement direct military assistance - the operation received the code name "Caucasus".
To be continued
Author: Alexander Privalov
Sources:
Wikipedia articles
Project Articles Cyclists
Victor Tkachev. Fighting on the Suez Canal. http://www.vko.ru/voyny-i-konflikty/boi-na-sueckom-kanale
Alexander Okorokov. Secret wars of the Soviet Union. https://www.e-reading.club/book.php?book=95319
N. Salmin. Internationalism in Action: Local Wars and Armed Conflicts with the Participation of the Soviet Component: Military, Military-Technical, Economic (1950-1989). - Ekaterinburg: University of Humanities Publishing House, 2001
M. Shterenshis. Israel. The history of the state. 3-e edition, supplemented and revised. - Herzliya: ISRADON, 2009
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