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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Stand of the Centurions |
| 2013-11-02 |
| A good slice of history from Wretchard. In a few days it will be time to recall the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination. But the 40th anniversary of a far more monumental event -- at least for Israel -- came and went last month without being much remarked. More than 40 years ago in October Israel came within an ace of being destroyed by a brilliantly planned Syrian armored attack across the Golan heights. A friend of mine, then a child, told me about the terror in his town as terrible rumors circulated that the Syrian tanks would be there by nightfall. And by rights they should have been. Yet what should have happened didn't. What occurred instead was something that occurs only in fiction but which on this occasion happened in fact. A little over 150 Centurion tanks and 4 batteries of M-109s had stopped more than ten times their number before they could reach the Jordan or the Sea of Galilee, as slated by the Syrian high command to occur within 36 hours of the jump off. |
| Posted by:Matt |
| #1 In the Spring of '74 an Army briefing team visited the various Army school houses (armor, infantry, etc) with findings they brought back from their liaison mission to Israel following the '73 war. One portion of the briefing covered the Golan Heights fight. IIRC when the Syrians initially crossed the line of departure, they failed to drop the external fuel cells on their Soviet tanks. The Israelis see the opportunity, used VT fused artillery to first rip the fuel cells and then switched to WP (white phosphorous) to set the tanks alight, basically reducing that initial wave. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2013-11-02 09:46 |