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Sword of David
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Since the devastatingly effective missions of 5th June 1967, the Heyl Ha’Avir, the air arm of the Israeli Defence Force, has become a legend for deadly effectiveness. In this exciting series, Israeli defence writer, Ben-Tor, describes from interviews with IDF aircrew how modern air combat is fought and won.
October, 1973
Dassault Mirage IIIC Mikoyan MiG-21 J
During the first days of the 1973 Yorn Kippur War, the Israeli Air Force lost heavily to the Surface-to-air missile batteries of both the Egyptian and Syrian ground forces. Perhaps the densest and most effectively operated SAM belt was in the Canal region where Egyptian mechanised forces had successfully crossed the Canal and overwhelmed the defensive Bar Lev line of fortifications designed primarily to repulse such a crossing.
One of the premises of the Bar Lev line was that if an invasion was launched by Egypt into Sinai, the Israeli Air Force would quickly reduce the attacking force to rubble. During the 1969/70 War of Attrition, a whole new ball game had entered the combat arena which was, in retrospect, not specifically appreciated by our side. The use of electronic warfare and the saturation of area defence regions with fixed and mobile air defence guns and missile belts was only just emerging as future policy on the Arab side when hostilities ‘ceased’ in August of 1970. I guess we were pretty impressed with our continuing high standard of airmanship against both Arab and Soviet pilots to believe that in the first days of a future conflict, SAMs could effect the damage that they did in those early days of the October conflict.
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