14, Egypt moved up reserves to the Sinai and pushed ahead of its own air defenses. The air support helped turn the tide in huge battles east of the canal. The IAF was undertaking very high-risk missions and, ultimately, Israel reaped the reward. Egypt’s air defenses stymied the IAF’s attempt to support Israel’s early counterattacks. Some of the battle damage was light and some serious, but the air defenses were finding their mark and making it difficult for the IAF to provide emergency close air support to Israeli ground forces. The losses tapered off, but the SA-6s, SA-7s, and ZSU-24 guns scored hits on 53 of Israel’s prewar total of 170 A-4 Skyhawks and 33 of its 177 F-4 Phantoms. This was an unsustainable loss rate of four percent, rivaling the loss rate of the early US bomber offensives over Germany in World War II. In the first three days, the IAF lost 50 aircraft in about 1,220 sorties. Ivry, a fighter pilot who flew in the 1967 war (and who recently served as Israel’s ambassador to the United States), recalls that the surprise nature of the attack meant “we didn’t have any time to eliminate the air defense, and we had to fight within very dense air defenses, to participate in the land forces campaign, and we lost a lot of airplanes.” “Israeli fighters and Arab missile sites engaged in mutual bloodletting,” said one official Israeli report.ĭuring this dangerous time, the IAF’s second in command was David Ivry. IAF pilots had to fight for air superiority while making frantic efforts to deliver close support to Israel’s embattled ground forces east of the Suez Canal. 6, 1973, the IAF faced a formidable air defense environment–“denser than anything in North Vietnam,” according to a 1978 Air University report.Įgypt had only 20 mobile SA-6 SAM systems, but these were backed up by 70 SA-2s, 65 SA-3s, and upward of 2,500 anti-aircraft batteries and perhaps as many as 3,000 shoulder-fired SA-7s. When Egypt and Syria mounted their coordinated surprise attack on Oct. Major changes were on display during the October 1973 war. It was only too apparent that the Arab states were shifting from fighters to SAMS for air defense. One historian of these events, retired RAF Air Vice Marshal Tony Mason, observed, “Squadron attrition exchange ratios had changed from 1-to-40 in the air to 2-to-4 against missiles” during the peak of the War of Attrition. Worse, the SAMs were taking a toll on the small Israeli Air Force. As a result, the IAF was the first air force that had to contend with advanced Soviet-made SAMs.ĭuring these years, IAF raids destroyed some Egyptian SAM batteries, but sporadic action was not enough. Egypt’s campaign to harass Israeli forces in the Sinai was backed by a massive infusion of Soviet weapons, including modern aircraft and missiles. However, the IAF’s dominance in the air was successfully challenged in the War of Attrition which officially started in March 1969 and ended in mid-1970. Thereafter, the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian armies were routed in the Sinai, Golan Heights, and West Bank. The three Arab nations, taken together, lost around 400 aircraft on the ground and in the air. Flying about 3,300 sorties, the IAF smashed the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. Israel’s small but elite air force dominated the Six Day War of June 1967, pulling off one of the most successful surprise attacks of all time. The Bekaa Valley success was long in the making. So startling was the IAF success in that Bekaa Valley air war 20 years ago this month that it ever since has stood out as a critical turning point in the deadly duel of fighters and SAMs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |