182 ISLAM AT WAR
ment to make basic training a reality. The same mistakes would not be
made four times.
Egyptian President Nasser had died in the course of his preparations
for a renewed war with Israel, and Anwar Sadat had inherited his prepa-
rations. The Egyptian army had planned its attack with incredible care
and precision. It is interesting to note that both the Egyptians and Syrians
called their plan of attack Operation Badr. They had named their plan after
the first major battle fought by Muhammad inA.D. 624. This was to be a
jihad, and by naming it after Muhammad’s most important battle, they
hoped to bring upon it the blessings of their God.
When the Egyptians launched their assault across the Suez Canal it was
executed with clockwork precision. They quickly formed bridgeheads
across the canal as their air force engaged the Israelis. This was the major
failure of the Egyptian attack. Their inability to seize air superiority from
the Israelis would play a decisive role as the war developed. Instead, they
defended their bridgeheads with a massive antiaircraft missile barrier that
reached across the Suez from its western bank.
In the initial Israeli counterattacks the Egyptian infantry fought stub-
bornly and bravely. Armed with RPGs and Sagger antitank missiles they
broke several Israeli armored assaults.
Facing the Egyptian attack, the Israelis rapidly mobilized their reserves
and prepared for further attacks. On October 14 a massive armored battle
began with 2,000 tanks on both sides locked in a battle along the entire
front. The Egyptian armor advanced to attack the carefully prepared Israeli
positions, moving directly into the killing ground prepared by the Israelis,
where it was broken with heavy casualties. Chaim Herzog says that the
Egyptian forces in this attack were “poorly led and their tactics were
unimaginative.” Still, they had developed a good campaign up to this
point. But as the crisis developed, matters began to deteriorate badly.
On October 15 the Egyptians mounted a further major offensive, but
rather than concentrating in a single powerful attack they distributed
their efforts across 100 miles and in six separate thrusts. In addition,
these armor-heavy attacks lacked sufficient infantry support. Some mili-
tary theorists would argue that six attacks dissipated their major combat
power and that one single, massive thrust would have had a greater
chance of success. The nature of this attack was determined by Anwar
Sadat himself, so he overruled his generals, who may or may not have
understood the desirability of concentrating their armored forces into a
single assault.
In one of these thrusts, the battle for the Tirtur road, a massive struggle
developed. Herzog describes part of the battle as being a “scene... of