Fifty years ago, on October 6, 1973, Egypt launched a surprise attack against Israel from the south on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people. In a coordinated strike, the Syrian army simultaneously attacked from the north. The Arabs sought revenge and the recovery of territory lost to Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel's army took control of the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Yom Kippur War, which lasted until October 24, was not the rout Egypt and Syria had hoped for. Instead, after many initial missteps, Israel was able to repulse the invading armies. One key to Israel's advance in the south was getting across the Suez Canal into Egypt.
The excerpt below from Uri Kaufman's book Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War and How it Created the Modern Middle East (St. Martin's Press) details how amphibious boats—the least likely of Israel's options to bring troops and artillery across the canal—moved 120 vehicles in 30 hours and made the ceasefire which ended the conflict possible.
Israel's victory in 1973 resulted in a series of "Separation Agreements" that forced its Arab neighbors to withdraw their armies far from any future battlefield. Thus deprived of any military option, the Arabs were faced with a stark choice: make peace with losing the 1967 lands or make peace with Israel. Egypt's Anwar Sadat made peace with Israel in 1979 and received the Sinai Peninsula in return. Syria's leaders—Hafez el-Assad and his son Bashar el-Assad—refused to make peace, and the Golan Heights remains under Israeli control today. As Kaufman says in his book, "the surrounding of the Egyptian Third Army, the early end of the war, the signing of the Camp David peace treaty five years later were all made possible by discarded, secondhand vehicles bought for $5,000 a copy. Military history contains few examples of such a good return on such a trivial investment."
On the morning of October 14, 1973, the Egyptians launched what would be recorded as one of the largest tank battles in world history. The Egyptian main effort was the conquest of the Israeli military base at Tasa. At first light they fired 5,000 shells and then sent hundreds of tanks straight down the Talisman Road. Waiting for them on the other side were hundreds of Israeli tanks that were locked, loaded and under the command of General Ariel Sharon, Israel's most daring field commander.
The tally taken at the end of the day's carnage was the most lopsided of any battle of the war. The Egyptians lost 250 tanks. The Israelis lost 6.
For the first time, there was finally agreement among the Israeli leadership, on one point. The following day, the Israeli army would cross the Suez Canal.
At 3:30 in the afternoon, just moments after the guns fell silent from the failed Egyptian offensive—and while the desert blue skies over Sinai were darkened by pillars of black smoke—Israel's 14th Armored Brigade's commander, Colonel Amnon Reshef, was handed orders. He opened them and his mood instantly shifted from the euphoria of victory. For his orders contained something that all soldiers dread: the objective that had to be taken at all costs.
The details were sketchy. But the upshot was that he and the men of the 14th had to plow a path to the canal so that others could cross into "Africa," the territory west of the Suez Canal.
Narrowing Options
Israeli military planners had prepared three ways to get men and material over the canal.
The centerpiece was the "rolling bridge," a steel monster on wheels that was practically impervious to enemy fire. General Jackie Even, Sharon's assistant, wrote in his memoir that the long-shot mission to cross the canal was only approved because senior commanders placed great faith in the rolling bridge. So firm was that faith, the bridge's creators were awarded the coveted Israel Defense Prize before it was tested in battle. The bridge won accolades, General Even wrote, because no one understood just how flawed it really was.
Before the war, the logic behind the rolling bridge seemed sound enough. Every military bridge going back to Napoleon was premised on the idea of bringing numerous pieces to shore and then assembling them in the water under fire. It was dangerous work for the combat engineers and resulted in a vulnerable bridge. Any bridge is only as strong as its weakest point. To solve this problem, a legendary Israeli engineer named Colonel David Laskov designed something revolutionary: a single-piece, already-assembled bridge that was rolled into action and then floated directly onto the water.
Of course, there are no free lunches in engineering. What was gained in durability was lost in mobility. It took up to 17 tanks to move the 450-ton monstrosity, with a bulldozer in front clearing every obstacle great and small. The tank crews that had been trained to move the bridge were all fighting on the Golan Heights in Syria, so new tank crews had to be trained on the fly. Worst of all, the bridge had no turning capability whatsoever. The steel behemoth—which was almost 600 feet long—had to move in a straight line from its staging area 12 miles east of the canal all the way to the shores of Africa. That is why the cash-starved IDF had laid the straight-as-a-ruler Tirtur Road in the first place. The bridge could not be moved via the Akavish Road, or any other road, because it could not make the hard right turn at the Lexicon Road intersection. The only way to get the rolling bridge into place was to open the Tirtur Road.
A second crossing method was pontoon bridges. These could be disassembled into parts, driven down the Akavish Road, then make the sharp turn onto the Lexicon Road and ultimately the canal. It sounded easy enough, at least on paper. In reality, each pontoon was over 55 feet long and 36 feet wide. Loads this size took up the entire width of every road and created a logistical nightmare. Hundreds of vehicles clogging the narrow arterials had to be pushed aside to make way for the special wagons that carried the pontoons. Like the wagons, the vehicles all sank in the soft sand the moment they moved off the asphalt. Once in the Yard—the staging area along the canal—it took hours to assemble the pontoons, even if the combat engineers were not taking fire. A "fast assembly" mechanism was under development, but the war broke out before it could be perfected.
As an afterthought, and because they could be acquired secondhand on the cheap, the Israelis also purchased amphibious boats that were nicknamed the "crocodiles." The crocodiles could drive short distances over land, reach the jump-off point in the Yard and then ferry tanks across the canal. The problem was that they cost only $5,000 apiece, and the Israelis got what they paid for. The crocodiles were extremely vulnerable to enemy fire and constantly broke down. Perhaps worst of all, there were not many of them. The army initially planned to buy 60 old crocodiles and cannibalize the parts to make 32. Budget cuts left them with only 19. One fell off its wagon on the trip down to the canal. Two were broken before the war. There were only 16 available for duty.
However, the Tirtur Road was still blocked, and with it any hope of getting the rolling bridge to the canal. While the Akavish Road was still passable, the pontoons were trapped miles away behind a wall of gridlocked vehicles.
Secret Wonder Weapon
That left nothing but the crocodiles. Somehow, late in the hectic chaos of the war's first week, someone had the good sense to free up enough trailers to send the crocodiles from northern Israel up to the head of the Akavish Road (to this day, no one knows for sure who it was). The strange, enormous vehicles looked like net-covered houseboats on trailers. When they passed through Israeli cities, onlookers did not know what to make of them. They sparked rumors of some secret wonder weapon.
As they came closer to the canal, they passed the smoldering wreckage of battle on both sides of the road and got stuck in the same traffic jam that stalled the entire army. But here again, someone—the record is not clear who—had the good sense to put a bulldozer in the lead to shove everything out of the way. Most vehicles that landed on the sand sank below the wheel hub and required a winch, a tracked tow truck or even a bulldozer to be extracted. But the crocodile convoy continued, sometimes moving just 100 yards at a time, its drivers inching behind the bulldozer absorbing curses and verbal abuse as they went.
The crocodiles were little more than large trucks with inflatable rubber flotation devices attached to each side. To get tanks across water with them, you had to lash several of them together. As ferrying craft, the crocodiles were slow, had practically no armor and were extremely vulnerable to enemy fire. In short, they were the least reliable means of crossing the canal. But there they were in the Yard, engines idling under the moonlight.
Combat engineers went nervously into battle with tiny bulldozers they knew were too small to remove the enormous mound of dirt separating the Yard from the canal. But in what one called a minor miracle, on the way to the canal they found a full-size bulldozer that got lost on its way to a military base. Sharon was in the Yard to show the combat engineers the spot he had marked out before the war to indicate where the dirt was thinned out and could be removed quickly. The path was hastily cleared and the far bank of the canal came into view, its palm trees illuminated by the moonlight reflecting on the water.
Fresh tanks from the 421st Armored Brigade began arriving. They were available to either cross the canal or turn back and (hopefully) open the Tirtur Road so that the rolling bridge could be laid. Sharon knew that Army Chief of Staff David Elazar wanted him to first open the roads before crossing with any armor and to first establish a safe corridor so the bridges could be laid.
And so, with the battle raging behind him, his face illuminated by the red flicker of fires in the distance—and knowing that his superiors required him to stop at the water's edge—Ariel Sharon gave the order: "We will cross with what we have."
▸ Adapted from Eighteen Days in October © Copyright Uri Kaufman. Published by St. Martin's Press.
