Gripen9
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It's also conjecture on your part to claim a "possibility" that could've happened and certainly couldn't have happened. What else do we have that might've or might not have happened by the "treacherous" Sadat and Egyptian "dictators"? Any more made-up possibilities?
Let's set part of the record straight that is not mentioned in all the Sadat and ensuing Egyptian bashing. First of all, there is no proof at all mentioned in any legitimate historical context that Sadat did this part of that shameful article except this supposed quote from Shazly. But I have his book both is Arabic and in English and I will go back and refer to it to see how accurate the quote is portrayed in that silly article and if there was any changes in it, regardless if they were minor or major. It's also important that one understands Shazly position when he wrote this book.
He was demoted from his position and chief of staff of the Egyptian Military when he was trying to convince Sadat to simply withdraw a dozen or so Sagger unit specialist whom had effectively destroyed hundreds of enemy tanks and had become proficient at it with the enemy not having any way to stop them. His idea was a great solution that would've stopped the enemy in their tracks from crossing the canal to the western side and attempting to cutoff the 2nd army in the north and the 3rd army in the south. This was a great plan that would've worked very well and not only that, would've allowed backup armored units to move further south and create a line of defense that would've completely stopped the enemy's incursion. Sadat was fearful that any type of withdrawal, even if it was only a dozen men with their saggers and 10 tanks from the 2nd and 3rd armies would create a severe morale problem with the soldiers in Sinai and cause them to panic. He refused adamantly and then fired Shazly on the spot. Later on Shazly was relieved of all his military status and was treated by Sadat as if he never existed in Egypt's military. He essentially has his record expunged and wiped out completely by Sadat because of Sadat's selfishness and ego and wanting to have all the reward for the success of the war. Remember, the entire crossing and planning for the enemy's counterattack that the Egyptian Army was incredibly successful at including the layout of all SAM missiles that shot down hundreds of enemy aircraft was all the planning of Shazly.
All of that ended in the self imposed exile of Shazly who went to live in London. Later on, post 1981 after Sadat's assassination, Shazly was interviewed by the BBC or some UK news network which asked him what he thought of the assassination and Al Islambouli who was the primary culprit in the murder of Sadat. Shazly responded with this: "He's a hero." As shocking as that was to hear, he went on to praise Islambouli as a hero just like all of them who were against Sadat's policy including himself!" This was a mind-blowing confession and statement that he would analogize his status as the same as the murdering Islambouli. His reasoning is that they are all part of the legitimate group that would martyr themselves for the right cause of a Muslim country against infidels who would not continue to fight that enemy of Muslims who continue to occupy Muslim lands. His point was that this was a large group that wanted to continue fighting until all occupied Muslim lands are returned to the Muslim owners no matter what needed to be done, and that traitors amongst them would need to face that fate which is religiously required, hence they all belong in that group and why Islambouli was a hero in Shazly's eyes.
The bottom line of all of this is that Shazly had the utmost disdain for Sadat and legitimately so. But to venture into those grounds of martyrdom for the right cause etc. was profoundly disturbing as well as an indication that perhaps he would say things that were beyond the truth, or at the least, exaggerate the truth to make Sadat look as bas as possible. That is undeniably a very plausible outlook to many of the comments Shazly made in his book regarding Sadat and not his input on the military aspects of the war. Those were all easily proven with many historical material to back them all up.
That brings us back to the article's quote regarding all the items that were supposedly sold to the US by Sadat and there is nothing that shows the SA-3s or specifically the SA-6s and their "sensitive anti air radar missile tech" was provided either. Those missiles systems were kept in the EAD units for decades and still till today are used as part of Egypt's impressive multi-layered air defense network. Why on earth would they keep them and use them when they know they're compromised in that manner? It's absolutely ridiculous. It's easy to pile on and that part is a blatant lie.
People forget how proficient the US became against the Vietnamese air defense units when they created their Wild Weasels program and after their first few attempts at heavy bombing of Hanoi and northern Vietnam where many of their Skyhowks and F-4s were hit and crashed and the B-52s were losing their important escorts, they developed the Wild Weasels using F-100 Supre Sabres and F-4 Phantoms to fool Norther Vietnamese radar installation to locate them through their own developed techniques which included turning the aircraft's radar for a short while, causing the SAM units to turn their on to activate a lock and fire the missile while the F-100s would then turn off their radars in time that the SAM units couldn't get that lock, but they had revealed their positions which gave the Wild Weasels easy locations of the radar installation and they would take them out just as fast leaving the SAM missiles bare and ineffective. They then started to use jamming signals and electronic warfare that worked just as effectively in not only pinpointing their radar installation locations, but also the missiles locations which were mostly SA-2s which Egypt used mostly as well as Syria. There is no question that these techniques were passed on by the Wild Weasel's and US military to the enemy amongst all Arabs to use specifically against Syria in 1982, but also during the October War.
The US was very actively helping the enemy during the war with not only the impressive hardware delivery of tanks and F-4s and many other critical information.
This is a much more legitimate article from a respectable and worldly renowned journalism network that is actually pro-enemy in its choice of material to chose to write about. It was also written in late 1972. The main topic of the article was the reason why Sadat kicked out the Russians a little over a year prior to the October War. A great read that describes the difference in the way the Soviets treated the Egyptian military and also the difference in military hardware that the US was providing the enemy versus the hardware the Soviets were supplying the Egyptian military. It goes completely against the lying of 'qualitatively and quantitatively superior to the enemy' that the OP article shamelessly lies about.
This is good for many of you, if you wish to read it and this long post also if you care about trying to be just a little bit objective about this topic. I will highlight and copy/paste the essential part here to make it a little easier.
The crucial reason for the Egyptian ‐ Soviet estrangement was the Russian refusal to provide Egypt with offensive weapons. The key to Egypt's conflict with Israel is not ground forces, as huge as the Egyptians have made theirs with Soviet help, but air power. There, the balance Is still overwhelm ingly in Israel's favor, and the Russians, in effect, refused to alter it for fear of an eventual confrontation with the United States.
True, the Russians provided Egypt with the most immense air‐defense system outside the Soviet bloc, composed of SAM‐2 and SAM‐3 missiles, but the system was essentially intended to protect the Egyptian heartland from a surprise Israeli attack. Despite intense Egyptian pressure, the Russians steadfastly declined to furnish their client with the offensive missiles or bombers that could strike Tel Aviv. They did give the Egyptians a small number of TU‐16 Badgers, but even these would be hard put to penetrate Israel's air‐defense system because they are slow, subsonic bombers that each carry less than half the bomb load of a single Israeli Phantom fighter‐bomber.
The United States, on the other hand, has increasingly supplied Israel with offensive aircraft. The Israelis already possess 100 Phantoms and 40 more are on the way; all of them can carry more than 10 bombs of 1,000 pounds each to Cairo, and at low‐level, supersonic speed. The Egyptian MIG‐21's are no match for the Phantoms, nor are the MIG‐23's at low levels; the half‐dozen Egyptian MIG‐23's (which were flown by Russians) cannot carry bombs in their present form. Not even the Sukhoi‐7's and Sukhoi‐7B's can approach the range and bomb‐carrying capacity of the Israeli Phantoms and Skyhawks. For in addition to the Phantoms, Israel has well more than 200 Skyhawks and possibly 60 operational Mirages. Egypt has many more tanks than Israel, but this doesn't matter. Even the Egyptian Army should seize a foothold deep in the Sinai, the MIG's would be completely out classed by the Phantoms, and the army would be pinned down by the Skyhawks.
“There is simply no comparison between the military power of Egypt and Israel,” observes one of the shrewdest military attaches in Cairo. “The only thing that counts is a striking force in the air. Egypt can have twice or three times the number of tanks as Israel, and a navy on the same scale, but in the face of Israel's superiority in the air, it can do nothing. This, more than any other, is the reason why Egypt has not—cannot—go back to war, save for a very limited war or a suicidal total war.”
And yet Egypt did go to war and successfully crossed the canal and took over the Bar Lev line and went forward into Sinai by 20 kilometers to the end of its limited SAM umbrella protection and held onto all of that until the ceasefire and beyond the phony 3rd army encirclement that only gave the enemy bargaining position for their prisoners to be returned. They were, in their pajamas!
Theoretically, the Egyptians had assumed control of most SAM‐2 sites more than a year ago, but in practice the resi dent Russian adviser was the key technician: with out him the missiles could not be fired effectively. Moreover, the Russians often declined to disclose to the Egyptians the intricacies of the missile sys tem, for fear that some day they might fire the missiles without Soviet consent. The Russians con trolled most of the SAM‐3 sites completely.
Compare that with the way the Americans were helping the enemy! It's like night and day. Soviets treated the Egyptian military personnel like crap and held back a lot of information and assistance that could've made a huge difference turning a huge and unquestionable victory into a smaller one that has been argued as a defeat in the silliest manner possible, ignoring all the military success and holding of the gained position and the defeated withdrawal of the enemy and its loss of significant territory, especially the eastern bank or the canal and its entire protection that was designed to stop any military incursion by Egypt. After that, the most difficult part for the Egyptian military was WON! While the enemy never had a difficult waterway to cross, not to mention a massive fortification that would also impeded its movement and incursion. Funny how many just simply ignore all those critical factors.
The rest of the article talks about the fighting that brewed and got worst between Sadat and Breginev and the mounting tensions that developed leading to Sadat expelling the Soviets out of Egypt. But again, the bottom line, despite the generous help from the Soviets, the point is that it wasn't enough to mount a strong war that would've been adequate for Egypt to secure a much larger victory and inflict a much larger defeat on Israel, and certainly not leaving any ambiguity on the result. But as I've mentioned time and time again, the end result of enemy withdrawal and Egyptian gains prove without a shadow of a doubt that this was an undeniable victory for Egypt.
The Soviets had gambled that they could continue to exploit the Israeli military menace, together with their control of Egypt's missile de fense system, to blackmail Sadat and to contain his room for maneuver. They miscalculated Sadat's devious character and the almost bottom less Egyptian capacity for ingratitude. For, in fairness to the Russians, it must be said that in many ways they had been decent and generous to Egypt, rescuing the Egyptians time and again from the con sequences of their errors, and at the cost of a dreadful drain of Russia's own resources.
And why was there this sense of ungratefulness? It was much more like frustration that the Soviets took it as ungratefulness. The bottom line, as the top bolded part and others shows clearly that they weren't interested in Egypt obtaining an unequivocal victory with the appropriate weapons that were denied to Egypt, and that they had other ulterior motives that were much more important to them than a solid Egyptian victory.
There is also the "Jewish" factor. How many Russian Jews were there in Russia at the time? After WWII, it was estimated by the Nazis that there were approximately 5 million Jews in Russia. By 1973 there were probably a much larger group of the population not to mention how many Russian Jews had already migrated to the occupied Palestinian territory. So why would the Soviet brass want to see an enemy defeat? Clearly they had that problem they needed to control and stop from happening.
At any rate, the whole point of this is to show the difference between Soviet and American assistance and how terribly incorrect the OP article is regarding that specific issue. I will post the problem with the SAMs and missile tech that was supposedly sold to America in a later post. Sorry for the long post here, but no other way to show it.
Did Egypt get SA-6 before the relationship froze up.
Let's dissect some of the filth that was posted in that piece of crap, shall we? And straighten the record out as well, while we're at it.
