Crossing of the Suez Canal (1973)

Background

The Six-Day War of 1967 left Israel on the east bank of the Suez Canal and the whole of Sinai in its hands. During the War of Attrition that followed, Israel built the Bar-Lev Line: a continuous sand rampart some 18–25 metres high along the water, with 22 forts holding 35 strongpoints, backed by roads for armour to counter-attack. The defence rested on two plans: Dovecote (Shovach Yonim), using only regular forces against a limited crossing, and Rock (Sela), adding the reserves. Both assumed that intelligence would give enough warning.

Anwar Sadat wanted at least part of Sinai back and, above all, to break the diplomatic stalemate. Gawrych describes his aim as a war of political movement (tahrik) through limited military action rather than a war of liberation (tahrir). His chief of staff from May 1971, Saad el-Shazly, favoured a limited operation, and the war minister Ahmad Ismail shared his doubts about going further. The plan called for five divisions to cross on a broad front and dig in 10–15 km deep, under the cover of the surface-to-air missile belt on the west bank, and to defeat the Israeli armour from there. Pushing on to the Sinai passes, outside that umbrella, was left vague; both Shazly and Ismail thought it a dangerous gamble.

Egypt and Syria agreed to attack together on 6 October, Yom Kippur and in Ramadan, and settled on 14:05 as a compromise hour for a combined offensive. Israel's leaders had discounted an attack in October; Golda Meir later wrote that the belief that Israel could prevent a crossing was among the assumptions proved wrong.

The armies

Egypt. The Second Field Army under Major-General Saad Mamoun held the canal from north of Qantara to south of Deversoir with the 18th, 2nd and 16th Infantry Divisions; the Third Field Army under Major-General Abdel Munim Wasel held from the Bitter Lakes to Port Tawfiq with the 7th and 19th. Each infantry division had an armoured brigade and extra anti-tank and anti-aircraft units attached. The 130th Amphibious Brigade, about 1,000 men with PT-76 light tanks, was to cross the Bitter Lakes, and Sa'iqa commandos were to be flown behind the lines. The infantry carried RPG-7s, wire-guided Sagger missiles and recoilless rifles, with thousands of hand-carts to haul ammunition before vehicles could cross. Fifteen thousand engineers, with only three modern PMP pontoon bridges and older types for the rest, were the key to the plan. Overhead, a dense belt of SAMs, including the new mobile SA-6, covered the canal.

Israel. Major-General Shmuel Gonen's Southern Command had about 18,000 men and 291 tanks in Sinai. Major-General Avraham (Albert) Mendler's 252nd Armoured Division held the front: Colonel Amnon Reshef's brigade of 110–120 tanks just behind the line, and Colonel Gabi Amir's and Colonel Dan Shomron's brigades 20–35 km back. The sixteen manned forts held some 450 reservists of the Jerusalem Brigade. The reserve divisions of Avraham Adan and Ariel Sharon were still mobilising. Gawrych calls Israeli doctrine too armour-heavy, with little self-propelled artillery and weak mechanised infantry; the plan counted on the air force, which the missiles now held at bay.

The battle

6 October: the assault. CDB90 splits the first afternoon and evening into Suez Canal Assault, North (569), the Second Army against Mendler, and Suez Canal Assault, South (570), the Third Army, both 14:05 to just after midnight. More than 200 Egyptian aircraft struck three air bases, ten Hawk batteries and command posts, and about 2,000 guns opened a 53-minute bombardment that dropped some 10,500 shells in the first minute. At about 14:20 the first wave went over in rubber and wooden boats: 4,000 men in 720 boats by Rabinovich's count, 8,000 in 1,000 rafts by Gawrych's. They climbed the rampart on rope ladders, bypassed the forts and set up anti-tank ambushes up to a kilometre inland. Waves followed every fifteen minutes; by 17:30 about 32,000 men were across. The amphibious brigade crossed the Bitter Lakes without loss, but its battalion heading for the Mitla Pass was badly mauled by M60s, and at dusk helicopters carried Sa'iqa teams deep into Sinai.

Mendler followed Dovecote. Reshef's tanks raced to the forts in small groups, without reconnaissance, and ran into Sagger and RPG teams; again and again small forces charged towards strongpoints such as Hizayon and were shot up. Rabinovich puts it bluntly: armour was being shocked by infantry. Fort Lahtzanit, south of Port Fouad, fell at 15:30.

Behind the infantry, seventy engineer teams turned high-pressure water hoses on the rampart. Rabinovich has the first breach at 18:30 and sixty by about 20:30; in the Third Army's south the clay turned to deep mud and the 19th Division's bridges had to be abandoned. The first bridge was ready at about 20:30 and the rest by 22:30 (Rabinovich), or between 22:30 and 01:30 (Wikipedia): eight heavy and four light bridges, with some 31–50 ferries and decoy bridges. Tanks began crossing about ten hours into the operation.

7 October: the build-up. CDB90's Second Army Build-up (571) and Third Army Build-up (572) run from 00:30 to 23:00. By dawn there were at least 50,000 Egyptians and 400 tanks on the east bank (Gawrych); Shazly claims 90,000 men by 08:00 and over 1,000 tanks by the afternoon. Each division held a bridgehead 6–8 km wide and 3–4 km deep. Mendler was down to about 100 tanks; Shomron's brigade had 23 of 100. At noon Gonen pulled back to the Lateral Road, 30 km east, and ordered the forts evacuated, too late: almost all were surrounded. Adan took the northern sector and Sharon the centre as their divisions arrived; a Sa'iqa company blocked Nir's brigade near Romani for hours. That evening at Umm Hashiba, Elazar ordered a limited attack: Adan to sweep south from Qantara, keeping well clear of the canal.

8 October: Kantara–Firdan. CDB90's Kantara–Firdan (573, 08:00–19:00) reverses the roles: Adan attacks the Second Army. Gonen changed Adan's orders overnight, to link up with Hizayon and Purkan and perhaps cross. At 07:53 Nir's brigade was held back at Qantara by an attack from the 18th Division, leaving Amir's two battalions of about 25 tanks each. Amir strayed along the Artillery Road and had to attack westwards, head-on, towards the Firdan bridge, held by Abu Saada's 2nd Division. At 11:00 Lieutenant-Colonel Haim Adini's battalion came within 800 metres of the canal and lost 18 of 25 tanks. At 13:30 Lieutenant-Colonel Asaf Yaguri's battalion charged into the division's killing zone; four of eighteen tanks came back, and Yaguri was taken prisoner. Meanwhile Gonen had sent Sharon south towards Suez City; Sharon refused to detach a battalion to cover Adan's flank. That afternoon the Egyptian divisions pushed out to widen their bridgeheads, and the 16th Division took Missouri, Televizia, Machshir and Hamutal. Keren's counter-attack on Hamutal failed and its battalion commander, Dan Sapir, was killed. Gonen recalled Sharon at 14:45, too late.

Aftermath

By the evening of 8 October Egypt held two army bridgeheads some 12–15 km deep, the operation's first aim. The Egyptian high command had prepared for 20,000 casualties in the crossing; its count of the dead to the morning of 7 October was 280. Israeli losses are harder to pin down. Of 441 men in the forts, 126 were killed and 161 captured; the Sinai Division lost about two-thirds of its tanks in the first day; Adan's lost perhaps 50–80 more on 8 October. Shazly put Israeli losses at 950 killed and 2,000 wounded, with 400–500 tanks. Only Fort Budapest, near Port Said, held out for the whole war; Fort Mezakh, the last of the others, surrendered a week in.

In Israel, analysts came to call 8 October one of the darkest days in the army's history, a frontal attack by tanks without infantry, artillery or air support. Gawrych and Rabinovich both blame Gonen's shifting orders; Adan wrote that 'we were prisoners of our own doctrine'. Elazar halted offensives in Sinai, Bar-Lev replaced Gonen at the front, and the Agranat Commission later examined the failures. For Egypt, 8 October was the decisive day of the crossing. But the army commanders wanted a pause to consolidate, and the argument over pushing towards the passes led to the failed attack of 14 October and the Israeli crossing at Deversoir. The success of the crossing gave Sadat the standing for the diplomacy that ended in the 1979 peace treaty.

Wargaming it

This is a set-piece assault river crossing against a thin defence, followed by an armoured counter-attack into a prepared infantry anti-tank screen. It suits two scales: company or platoon level for a single fort and the ambushes around it, or battalion-as-unit for an army sector over the three days.

The key terrain is narrow: the canal and its two ramparts (the Egyptian one used for direct fire onto the forts), the forts, the Lexicon, Artillery and Lateral Roads, and a few hills such as Hamutal and Missouri. The SAM umbrella should limit Israeli air support near the canal and fade away beyond about 10–15 km; the engineers' timetable is the Egyptian player's critical path, with mud in the south as a hazard.

The Israeli problem is doctrine and information. Dovecote pulls tanks forward in penny packets to rescue garrisons; a rule that rewards relieving the forts but punishes unsupported charges captures the dilemma. On 8 October command friction matters as much as firepower: changing orders, lost radio contact, units arriving piecemeal.

What ifs worth playing: Dovecote fully deployed, with two brigades forward and the forts properly manned, before 14:00; the forts evacuated at once; Adan attacking with his whole division and Sharon on his flank; or the Egyptians pressing on beyond the missile cover on 8 October.

Maps and pictures