DR CHAZOV’S “VACATION IN EGYPT”ous volunteers to operate sophisticated electronic equipment.”^34 Whether or not the
Soviets had suggested this propaganda line, they continued to repeat it, both to their
own forces and outwardly, and pounced on any fact that seemed to confirm it.
Fawzy’s charge appeared on the day that Eg ypt claimed to have shot down a first
Phantom in a big dogfight over the Gulf of Suez. The encounter did take place,
though at the time the Eg yptian claim was dismissed in Israel as “fairy tales.” IAF
Phantoms were used for the first time to cover Mirages and Skyhawks attacking
Eg yptian SAM batteries. An Eg yptian MiG-21 did get into position behind the lead
F-4, and fired two Atoll missiles, one of which “exploded near the plane.” The
Eg yptian pilot stated “I think the F-4 crashed on its way home.” The Phantom, how-
ever, flew again the next day.^35
Meanwhile, the Shilkas had taken up positions. Shishlakov’s recollection of their
arrival in October 1969 checks out against Israeli observations. A year earlier, after
the IDF’s heliborne raid at Nag Hammadi, on the northern fringe of the Soviet-built
Aswan Dam complex, the Soviet ambassador pledged to defend the dam, and “air
defenses subsequently built up around it were partially Soviet-manned.”^36 In April
1969, the Israelis carried out an air bombardment of the same site. The pilots reported
that the region was brightly lit up, and that again they met no resistance. But when
the IAF tried to repeat the exercise on 26 October 1969, the Nile valley was blacked
out and the attackers ran into heavy, effective flak. Two planes sustained considerable
damage and barely managed to return to Sinai.^37 The Soviet Shilkas had evidently
arrived, for their first deployment outside the USSR.^38
On the canal front too, the Israelis noticed that
the AA cannon can be a greater nuisance [than the SAM-2s] ... One squadron leader
noted: “... I must say to their credit that they don’t stop shooting. They don’t get scared.
Once they used to flee at the very sound of [our] planes and bury their faces in the ground.
Now they shoot even as the bombs are falling.”^39As there is no evidence that the Soviet-manned Shilkas had already been posted
on the canal, the air defense advisers may have begun to achieve results even with the
Eg yptians’ older-model guns.
So did their naval counterparts: on the night between 9 and 10 November, Soviet
advisers led an Eg yptian naval bombardment of Israeli forces on the northern
Sinai coast.
Our directives were clear: “the Soviet military advisers should not participate directly in
military operations.” We used to go to sea incognito, in seamen’s blue fatigues with no
insignia or documents. ... Only six months later, when they returned to the USSR, three
advisers were decorated for “bravery and valor while carrying out a mission for the Soviet
government.”They were the only naval advisers to be decorated during 1967–9.^40