The Soviet-Israeli War, 1967–1973. The USSR’s Military Intervention in the Egyptian-Israeli Conflict

THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973

offered more than $1,000 per sortie.”^42 But it was actually the Soviets who dispatched
some Vietnam veterans to Eg ypt. One of the SAM-3 brigade commanders, then-Maj.
Vladimir Belousov, admitted in retrospect: “the Israeli pilots fought more bravely and
skillfully than the Americans [whom] I fought in Vietnam.”^43 Smirnov’s replacement
from February 1971, Maj.-Gen. Yury Boshnyak, invoked his year’s experience in
Vietnam to improve SAM-3 and Shilka performance.^44
Also fresh from Vietnam was the political officer Nikolay Streletsky, who served
with a SAM-3 brigade protecting the Helwan steel works. His account about the
men’s ideological loyalty—published in Belarus, 2007—contrasts sharply with
Logachev’s in respect of credibility. Especially suspect is his story about the outfit’s
obligatory “Lenin Room” (a combined library, clubhouse and briefing hall) whereby
the Eg yptians would fall on their knees to pay obeisance to the bust of the “proletar-
ian leader, whom they associated with Allah himself.”^45
Popov’s SAM-3 divizyon took up its ambush position on the night of 31 July,
flanked by Nikolay Kutyntsev’s to the south and an Eg yptian one to the north with
overlapping missile ranges. As Popov noted proudly, that night his men accomplished
a 150-kilometer relocation two and a half times faster than the standard requirement.
The Israelis were fooled: in 1973, the IDF still attributed the ensuing shootdown to
a new mobile weapon, probably the SAM-6, which they were not yet able to track.^46
Before dawn, under total blackout, the Soviets set up and effectively hid their missiles
in plantations near the canal. Even the trucks’ diesel exhausts were extended with
rubber hoses so that the fumes would rise at some distance. A dummy array was
concealed just enough to suggest a genuine camouflage effort.

By 0600 the divizyon was ready for battle. ... On 1–2 August the IAF made a lot of sorties

in the canal zone but did not enter the divizyon’s range. It can be assumed that the Israelis

knew something about our positions and tried to detect them, but we did nothing that

could give us away. We sent out signals only for a few seconds at a time. The P-15 target

identification system worked constantly. On 2 August, Maj.-Gen. Gromov came to the

divizyon ... we concluded that if 3 August also passed quietly, we would relocate again.^47

The IAF attack did come on the 3rd, and the Soviets’ meticulous preparations paid
off. The Israeli pilots bombed the dummy missiles; they were surprised by the SAM-3
launches; one Phantom was hit by at least two missiles, possibly from different bat-
teries. According to Popov, an outlying Strela crew of his outfit captured both crew-
men and handed them over to the Eg yptians. The pilot, Yigal Shohat, reported being
shot at and injured while still suspended under his parachute, later losing a leg in an
Eg yptian hospital. His WSO Yoram Goldwasser reached the ground alive—as shown
the next day in Eg yptian media—but did not survive, and was reportedly lynched.
Phantom no. 2 in Shohat’s formation was hit by another SAM-3 and the pilot,
Ra’anan Ne’eman, was disabled. The WSO Yoram Romem assisted him to land it at
Refidim.^48 As in previous cases, the Soviets scored this as a kill, and the overlap of