The Six-Day War between Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan established Israel as a great military power in the Middle East. In less than a week, Israel was victorious over the Egyptian forces. How is it that a nation as small as Israel could defeat the biggest power in the Arab world? Due to the well prepared planning, better leadership, and mistakes and carelessness of Egypt, Israel was able to gain control of the Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, approximately a geographical location four times bigger. Israel had essentially won the war after the tremendous success of the first day of fighting.
Leading up until the first day of fighting, the troops of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan mobilized their troops on Israel’s borders in what would be an all-attack. At 0710 on June 5, 1967, sixteen Magister Fouga jets took off from Hatzor Airfield. Within twenty minutes, 200 planes were in the air for Israel’s preemptive air strike on the Egyptian Air Force, owning approximately 385 aircraft. This would prove to be the most important move by the Israelis. By 0740, the last Egyptian MiG-17 and MiG-21 fighter-interceptors had landed after their successful half-hour combat air patrols along the Egyptian-Israeli border in Sinai. The last of the pilots then joined the rest of the comrades at breakfast. They flew extremely low, sometimes no more than fifteen meters high, to avoid detection by any of Egypt’s eighty-two radar sites as well as Soviet and American. While observing radio silence and using hand signals, even as flight paths crossed, Colonel Rafi Harlev, chief of Israel Air Force (IAF) operations, told his pilots that in the event of mechanical trouble, they could not call for assistance; they were instructed to crash in the sea. This allowed the planes to reach the Egyptian coast undetected. Every morning the IAF ran routine flights, flying west across the neutral Mediterranean Sea. In Egypt, the radar operators noticed the daily morning flight and thought nothing of it since the flights had been flying regularly for two years.
This surprise attack was extremely successful because of the Israelis’ secrecy of the mission. Only a handful of the ministers knew of the operation, and members of the general staff received no more than a single-page summary. Egypt received a warning from Jordan’s radar facility, supplied by the British, at ‘Ajlun, near Jeras. One huge mistake made by the Egyptians consisted of changing their encoding frequencies the previous day, but without updating the Jordanians. The Egyptian Defense Minister had gone to bed just a few hours before the attack, and left strict orders not to be disturbed. This was also another minor mistake by the Egyptian military. The attack was so successful that the Arabs originally concluded that the British and Americans had assisted Israel with aircraft, but this hypothesis was eventually discontinued. One of the men responsible for the tremendous success of Operation Focus was Commander Mordechai Motti Hod. Hod had earned a reputation as a “skilled and cool-headed pilot,” and known more for his resourcefulness and grit rather than brilliance. He concentrated on refining Focus, shortening the turnaround time for refueling and rearming to eight minutes, whereas the Egyptians’ turnaround time was a whopping eight hours. The conditions for the attack were optimal, with visibility being excellent and the wind factor close to zero. The jets flew up as high as 9,000 feet and then dove after the Egyptian radars went off. The planes approached in foursomes and attacked in pairs.
Another reason why Egypt suffered such heavy losses is due to the superior Israeli strategy. On the first morning of the attack, Israel sent all but twelve of its jets in a massive assault on the Egyptian airfields. Since the Egyptians had virtually no defensive infrastructure there were no armored bunkers to house and protect the planes. The lining up of Egyptian MiGs in neat rows on the airfields also helped the Israelis in destroying several aircraft. The tactic of bombing the runways of the Egyptian airstrips along with the fighter jets allowed Israel guaranteed air superiority since the planes that were not hit were rendered virtually useless since the runways were destroyed by tarmac-shredding penetration bombs. The bombs began to fall right after radio contact with Kabrit air base near Cairo went dead. Half of the eighteen Egyptian front-line airfields between mid-Sinai to Cairo were each struck by four Israeli bombers starting around 0745. Moments later, a tenth Egyptian runway was attacked at Fayid. Radar screens were also destroyed, twenty-six Egyptian screens, sixteen in Sinai.
One part of Israel’s ingenious tactics involved the types of bombs used on the planes and flight patterns. The small rockets on the bombs allowed the explosives to dive straight downward, even through a concrete runway surface, and retard forward motion. The young Israeli pilots optimized the use of their payloads by flying up and diving down steeply and then released the bombs in order for higher accuracy. The Israeli jets also flew in strafing patterns in order to avoid being hit by air-to-ground missiles that were equipped with infra-red heat-seeking systems. Due to the swiftness of the turnaround time and strafing tactic, each pilot made two, and sometimes three, strafing passes. This surprise air raid was a key factor for winning the war – without air support, Egypt was doomed in their fight against Israel. In all of the first morning’s confusion, the Egyptian military did not know whether to attack or defend themselves. At night after the first day of fighting, Israel had complete control of the sky. Hod had reported that 387 Arab aircraft had been lost, Egypt with the most at 300 MiGs, 280 of them being destroyed on the ground alone and 204 jets lost within the first thirty or forty minutes of the air raid. Syria lost 52 planes, Jordan 20, and Iraq with the least at 15. Only 19 Israeli aircraft had been lost and nine pilots killed, approximately ten percent of its total strength.
At 0815, Israeli troops began their ground offensive against the UAR forces in the Sinai Peninsula, employing a three pronged attacked each supported by a division of about 15,000 men. The Egyptian commanders had sent a large chunk of their troops in the southern region of the Sinai Peninsula several days before the initial attack since they anticipated an Israeli offensive from the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba, resulting in an attack at Egypt’s weakest point, the northern coast of Sinai. General Tal commanded the first column, assaulting Khan Yunis with tanks at the southern end of the Gaza Strip and headed west. The second column, led by General Ariel Sharon, headed toward the heavily fortified Egyptian complex of Abu Agweigila, situated about 25 miles southeast of El Arish, which would be captured by the end of the day. The third force, headed by General Avraham Yoffe, penetrated Egypt between the other two columns and came around behind the Egyptian forces that were being attacked by Tal’s column to prevent an escape route to the west. Thousands of Egyptians were taken as prisoners in the battle for Gaza, including the military governor of the Gaza Strip, General Abdul Monam Husseini. After the defeat at El Arish, Tal split his forces into two groups, one heading west towards El Mazar and the other group turned south to join Yoffe’s column, which was preparing to combat the UAR army’s second defense line.
In comparison to the IAF, the Jordanians grew tired of waiting for their unreliable allies. Sixteen Hawker Hunter jets took off to bomb Israeli bases. They came back thirty minutes later claiming they destroyed four planes on the ground without losing any men. These were the only aircraft they saw, since Israel concentrated their efforts on destroying the Egyptian Air Force. The Israelis in Tel Aviv were about to place their attention elsewhere. Hod gave the order to go to the next phase of Operation Focus, the attack on Syria and Jordan.
At 1235, the Israelis attacked Mafrak Airbase in Jordan. The air raid left craters 5 meters wide and 1.6 meters deep and left Durendal bombs inside the craters. These bombs were equipped with timers set to go off at random intervals, thus disallowing repair on the runways. They also had a mercury switch that was set to explode if they were moved, rendering the already destroyed runways completely useless. The Durendals were a top-secret device created jointly with French developers. These bombs weighed 180 pounds and were stabilized by a retro-rocket and a parachute until the bomb was directly over its target and pointed at a 60 degree angle downwards. Over 100 Durendal bombs were dropped on Abu Suweir, Egypt alone in less than one hour.
In order to help cover their aggression, Israeli ambassadors announced that the Egyptian ground forces had started the fighting by firing artillery on Israeli border villages. Radar screens indicated that early on the first day of the war, Egyptian planes were headed toward Israel’s coast on the Mediterranean and the Negev Desert. As a result of this “report,” the Israelis sent jets to intercept the planes. Even Prime Minister Eshkol lied to President Johnson, sending a message about Egypt’s aggression “culminating in this morning’s engagements and the bombardment… in Israeli territory.”
The Israelis were not the only ones lying. When Nasser telephoned Field Marshal Amer about their losses, he would not give a straight answer. When Nasser demanded to know, Amer responded with a loss of forty-seven planes, with most being able to be repaired. By lunchtime on the first day, Egypt lost all of its heavy and light bombers, along with most of its fighters. Eventually Nasser found out the truth about Egypt’s situation before 1400 that day. Even radio broadcasts were reporting that Arab forces had shot down twice the number of Mirages Israel had. The Egyptians claimed that the forces of the UAR, Syria, and Jordan shot down 161 Israeli planes. Cairo reported only two Egyptian losses. Because of the false reports, when Israeli jets approached Mafrak Airbase in Jordan as previously mentioned, they assumed they were allies, until the jets started attacking. The IAF also managed to kill one of the Jordanian squadron commanders, Major Firass Ajlouni as he was trying to take off in his already damaged plane.
Not only did the Israelis have the element of surprise and sophisticated military equipment, they also had excellent military leaders such as General Tal. Tal had served in the Jewish Brigade Group, part of the British Army. Educated in philosophy at Hebrew University, he rose through the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and later commanded the Armored Corps. Tal was also a bit of a technical genius, he was awarded the Israel Prize for important inventions in the field of security twice, and later designed an Israeli battle tank, the Merkeva, or Chariot tank, which at the time was one of the most advanced tanks in the world. He later became adviser to the Minister of Defense on development and organization.
The Israelis had another brilliant leader in Moshe Dayan. He was a recipient of the Distinguished Service Order, one of Britain’s highest military honors, for his fighting with the Australian 7th Infantry Division, which was combating the Vichy French during World War II. This is when Dayan lost his left eye and wore an eye patch, which would become his trademark. During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Dayan was commander over the defensive effort in the Jordan valley and later given command over several military units on the central front. Between 1955 and 1958, he was the Chief of Staff of the IDF and commanded forces during the Suez Crisis.
In the end, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world had been destroyed by Israel. The superior tactics of Israel, advanced equipment, mistakes and carelessness of the Egyptian forces, and better leadership led to complete Israeli victory by the end of the first day. The Israeli forces lost approximately 600 to 700 men, which pales in comparison to the Arabs’ 25,000. The outcome of the war did not lead to a peace settlement between Israel and its neighbors – the land won during the Six-Day War is still in dispute today. Because of Israel’s supreme military strength, the Israeli’s have relented from backing down from an enemy they know they are capable of defeating.
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