THE SOVIET PRESENCE IS FORMALIZED AND EXPANDEDLikewise, one of the first naval advisers dispatched under Lashchenko’s agreement,
who arrived after the incident (on 2 November), gives the conventional attribution
of the Eilat sinking to Eg yptian Komar boats—but appears to contradict it with his
description of the state in which he found the Eg yptian Navy. Not only was morale
at all levels abysmal but “combat readiness, technical condition of the equipment and
the vessels overall, left much to be desired. Organization of everyday routine and
combat readiness in general, tactical preparation of the officers and primarily ship and
detachment commanders, were at a low level.” Sorties out of harbor were rare,
attempted only in daylight and for a few hours, and the crews—who did not live on
board—brought along their own food from home because the galleys were used as
storerooms.^39 As late as 1972, the Soviets still saw little improvement, particularly in
respect of the skippers’ reluctance to put to sea even for training.^40
Besides the advisers, did the Soviet navy itself play a part in the Eilat engagement?
Over six months later, an American report from Cairo held that the Eilat was sunk
“during a rare period when no Soviet ships were at Port Said last fall.”^41 The Eg yptian
press had reported that the Soviet ships’ first visit finally ended on 18 August and
another began on 3 September.^42 Despite the lack of any direct evidence, it became
established as fact that all the Eskadra’s ships and men left Port Said several days
before the incident, returned on 27 October, and only “thereafter maintained a con-
stant vigil, thereby deterring the IDF from further reprisals.”^43
But Port Said, the obvious address for avenging the Eilat, was already spared when
Israel retaliated on 23 October with an artillery strike that destroyed the oil refineries
at Suez City instead. Testimonies from at least two Soviet warships recently indicated
that they were in or near Port Said at the time. One of the Eskadra’s missions was,
explicitly, to “gather information on Israeli forces.”^44 The destroyer crewman
Kharchikov, whose ship was on “permanent station” at Port Said, attested: “We stood
watch around the clock with radio spotting of targets” entering territorial waters,
and continually reported them to the Arab officer on duty at the naval base command ...
on one such watch, a ship was detected still outside the ... zone, moving at over 18 knots—
that is, of military significance. As it turned out later, it was the Israeli destroyer Eilat.^45This roughly corroborates sketchy evidence that the Israelis had at the time: an
informant of the Israeli embassy in Washington “heard from an Indian diplomat at
the United Nations who heard from an Arab source there” that “the Russians have
cracked the Israeli code in the Suez region [and] our signals are being deciphered by
them. This also applies to the movements of the Eilat before she was sunk.”^46
Kharchikov goes on: “a Soviet-made K[omar]-class boat ... with a mixed crew pro-
ceeded to attack” the Eilat.^47 More than a year later, French and US reports held that
in the Algerian Navy, Komar boats were still operated by such “mixed crews. The
Soviets justify this because part of the equipment on these boats is secret.”^48