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Yom Kippur War 1973: The Sinai (Campaign 126)

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Osprey's The Yom Kippur War: The Sinai is the first in a two-volume study of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and a departure from the Campaign series normal aversion to modern topics (in the last 13 years and 126 volumes, the series has had only one other title on a post-1945 campaign). Armor aficionado and film maker Simon Dunstan provides a detailed summary of the dramatic events between 6-24 October 1973 on the Sinai front, where the war swung between initial Egyptian success, to stalemate, to Israeli triumph. Overall, most readers should find this volume excellent, if slightly biased toward Israel and armor issues (at the expense of air operations).

The Yom Kippur War: The Sinai begins with a short introduction that covers the results of the 1967 Six Day War, the construction of the Bar Lev line and the 1969-1970 War of Attrition. In the next section, the author covers the meticulous Egyptian planning for Operation "Badr" - the assault crossing of the Suez Canal - and the Israeli defensive plans. The only really weak section in the entire volume is that covering opposing armies, which is only four pages in length. Although there is considerable detailed data available on the Yom Kippur War, the author fails to incorporate it into this section. For example, the author only mentions that the Egyptians had about 1,700 tanks, without breaking out how many there were of each model (an odd omission for an armor expert). Both the Egyptian and Israeli air forces are fairly ignored, with no order of battle provided, or breakdown by type. The section on opposing commanders is overly weighted toward Israel, and there are too few photos of the principal military leaders (amazingly, none of Sharon). The Yom Kippur War: The Sinai also has too few maps to support the narrative; there are only five 2-D maps (Israel in 1973, the Bar-Lev Line, the Egyptian bridgeheads, Battle of Chinese Farm phase 1 and phase 2) and three 3-D Birds Eye View maps (the Egyptian assault, the Egyptian offensive on 14 October 1973, and the Israeli crossing of the canal). The 3-D maps were designed to cover tactical battlefields, not entire operational areas, and these BEVs are zoomed too far out to convey much detail. The initial Israeli counterattacks on 6-8 October and the crossing of the canal are particularly difficult to follow on these maps (critical items mentioned in the text, like the "Missouri" position are not depicted on any of the maps). On the other hand, the three battle scenes (the Egyptian crossing of the canal, the Israeli roller bridge and Israeli tanks SAM-hunting) are quite good and add value to this volume.

Dunstan's description of the Egyptian preparations for the canal crossing and the very successful deception operations are first-rate, and should be studied carefully by military readers. Indeed, Operation "Badr" was almost a model of how opposed river crossings should be conducted. While the author mentions the defeat of the initial Israeli armor counterattacks against the crossing, he fails to discuss the simultaneous shock when the initial Israeli air counterattacks ran into the SA-6 belt along the canal. Indeed, for an armor enthusiast, the author might have mentioned that these engagements between Egyptian commandos and Israeli armor on 6-7 October 1973 were one of the rare instances when light infantry defeated armor. The rest of the campaign narrative covers the political pressure that resulted in the abortive Egyptian offensive of 14 October and the Israeli counterstroke that decided the campaign. The emphasis in this account is primarily on armor operations, with little mention of the contributions of other branches and even air operations are overly neglected. The author's background as a filmmaker also betrays itself in one indiscretion where he notes in a photograph caption that an Israeli "squadron of Phantom [jets] was loaded with 13 20-kiloton nuclear weapons" when Israeli leaders feared defeat. Where is the source on this wild claim? While Israel's possession of nuclear weapons has been an open secret for some time, this claim seems unusually detailed and suspect. After the first few days of war, Israel had fewer than 90 F-4 Phantoms still operational and the author wants the reader to believe that the IAF would tie up 15% of its best strike asset to sit around on "nuclear strip alert." Such a preposterous claim certainly warrants a footnote or explanation.

The final sections on the outcome of the war and the battlefield today are brief but interesting. Indeed, Sadat's limited objective campaign is also a model for demonstrating Clausewitz's dictum of "war as an extension of politics." Unfortunately, the author's bibliography is not very impressive, consisting mostly of stock secondary sources, like Trevor Dupuy. There are also more Egyptian sources available in English than the author suggests, but the author seems but little interested in their viewpoint (even Sadat's book has considerable detail on planning for the attack). The photographs throughout the volume are good, but heavily weighted toward armor issues and Israel, with most of the Egyptian-source photos being those normally available in most other sources on the war.

Given the space constraints, this is a concise and well-balanced summary of the war, and synthesizes the usual sources quite well. The "Battlefield Today" section is especially nice. The big disappointment is the illustrations, which concentrate on Israeli forces. The few Egyptian photos are well-known and have been widely reprinted in the west, and are poorly reproduced here. The 3 two-page spread paintings are remarkable for their lack of detail. Given Osprey's extensive back catalog of Middle East titles, it's amazing they didn't reproduce any of the much better photos and paintings that graced earlier books. If you're looking to own a single book on the Sinai Front in the 1973 War, this could be it. If you already own standard works like Dupuy, Herzog, Shazly and Pollack, give this one a miss unless you're a completist.

We have to admit that the Egyptian Propaganda machine was indeed very fierce and offensive before and during the 1967 Six Days War.
Before the war, it was specialized in distributing subtle propaganda attacks against the Jordanian and Saudi Arabia monarchies. The Voice of the Arabs (VOA) beamed twelve hours a day directly to Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the more headway it made the bigger the cash they received from the Egyptian purses.
VOA employed the `best' writers and easy-to-learn articles broadcast live on the high frequencies Egyptian Radio station.
Ahmad Saeed - a literary agent -in happier times the mastermind behind the VOA, for some reason every thing he said and propagated imprinted itself on the Egyptian (and the Arab) people.
Even those who took a dislike of Ahmad Saeed were labelled reactionaries, a prelude to being accused of treason.

During the 1967 war, Saeed's influence had been sinister except on both Nasser and Mohamed Hassanein Heikal (a prominent Egyptian Journalist) in particular.
It is to be noted that VOA was indeed the nerve centre of Egypt at the time, trying with noticeable success to send the impulses of the battle to the rest of the Arab World.
But the manner in which the Egyptians fought the 1967 war was the inauspicious beginning for Saeed's `lies'.
The worse the ongoing of the battle had deteriorated the more Saeed's propaganda machine became flagrant and very few could then realize the increasing degeneration of the performance of the Egyptian command (Under Abdul Hakeem Amer).
Nasser was under no illusion that the tattered Egyptian Command (Amer) could hold for long and he felt that Saeed could not hold back `his tongue' in the middle of the `battle'.
And when Nasser finally decided to do something with Saeed, alas, it was too late, the die was cast and defeat was inevitable.

During the Yom Kippor War in 1973, Saeed had already been 'shelved'.