HEAT WAFTED UP IN SLEEPY SPIRALS from the Sinai Desert on the afternoon of October 6, 1973. Lizards lay about on sun-warmed stones, blinking in contentment. Falcons circled lazily in the pale blue sky. The waters of the Suez Canal lapped gently at its sandy shores. Suddenly, at exactly 2 p.m., this hushed stillness erupted as 2,000 Egyptian artillery pieces, Katyusha rockets, howitzers, and surface-to-surface missiles blasted the canal’s eastern bank, throwing tremendous plumes of sand into the air. Israeli defensive positions years in the making were pulverized in minutes. Without warning, 222 Egyptian MiG and Sukhoi fighters came screaming out of the sky and bombed command posts, surface-to-air batteries, air bases, supply dumps, and radar installations. Simultaneously, a few hundred miles to the north, the rugged hills of the Golan Heights shook with massive explosions as 100 Syrian MiGs attacked Israeli positions and an assault force of as many as 900 tanks and 40,000 infantry crossed into Israeli territory.
The October War had begun. Before it was over, battalions of tanks, hundreds of aircraft, and legions of soldiers would clash in one of the late 20th-century’s most momentous wars. Oil prices would soar to unprecedented heights, and the specter of nuclear war would loom over the battlefield. Though brief—fighting ended within a month—the conflict had enormous impact. It broke a political stalemate and made possible a long Egyptian-Israeli peace that’s unique in the roiling Middle East.
The roots of the fighting in 1973 lay in the Six-Day War of June 1967, when the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) trounced combined Arab armies and took the Golan Heights from Syria, the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and East Jerusalem from Jordan. The so-called War of Attrition followed, with artillery duels, commando raids, air strikes, and diplomatic forays, none of which shook Israel’s grip on its newly occupied territories. Stymied, Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat determined to retake the lost lands with another war. Sadat went to Syrian president Hafez el-Assad, who burned to recapture the Golan Heights. “I’ll be with you,” he told Sadat. Jordan and Iraq agreed to provide a few military units.
Sadat, a talented politician and soldier who had succeeded longtime president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970, determined he had no choice but to fight. Israel would negotiate on the occupied lands only if threatened militarily, he thought. And he knew that if he made peace without a fight, Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab states would cut off much-needed development aid to Egypt.
SADAT DID NOT SET OUT TO DESTROY Israel. The IDF was too strong, and the United States would never let its ally fall. Rather, he wanted to deliver a blow that would shake the IDF’s sense of invincibility—inflated by its quick victory in the 1967 war—and persuade Israel and its allies that the negotiating table offered the best chance for security. “If we could recapture even four inches of Sinai territory,” he reasoned, “then the whole situation would change—east, west, all over.”
Operationally, Sadat believed he had to hit hard and fast. Once hostilities opened, the United States and the Soviet Union would almost certainly get involved—the Americans to protect Israel, and the Russians to help Syria and maintain its influence in the region. Sadat also assumed the United Nations would insist on a cease-fire. The key, he believed, was to quickly retake as much land as possible to give Egypt a strong bargaining position in negotiations that would undoubtedly follow. “He who wins the first 24-hour encounter,” Sadat said, “will surely win the entire war.”
The Egyptians and Syrians designed a two-front operation, coordinated from Cairo. As the Egyptians stormed across the Suez Canal and occupied part of the Sinai, Syrian forces would move to retake the Golan Heights. Military leaders for the two countries tapped the Soviet Union for help constructing the world’s most formidable surface-to-air defense systems, with SAM-2, -3, -6, and -7 missile batteries. They bought thousands of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and AT-3 Saggers, wire-guided antitank missiles. Soviet T-55s and T-62s were added to the tank battalions, while air power was bolstered by MiG-17, -21, and -23 fighters and Su-7 and -20 fighter-bombers, as well as Scud surface-to-surface missiles.
Egyptian soldiers trained intensely, rehearsing their attack across the Suez at least 35 times with full-scale mockups of Israeli installations. Sadat’s chief of staff, Lieutenant General Saad el-Shazly, focused on what he called “the harshest test”: crossing the Suez Canal, which was as wide as 220 yards in places, and breaking through ramparts that IDF engineers had built on the other side. These mountains of sand topped 60 feet and had slopes of 45 to 65 degrees. To carve out passages for their men and machines, the Egyptians created some 40 engineering battalions equipped with 450 high-powered water hoses.