Bar Lev Line

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A trench on the Israeli Bar Lev Line

The Bar Lev Line ( Hebrew קו בר לב Kaw Bar-Lev , Arabic خط برليف, DMG Ḫaṭṭ Bar-Līf ) was a defensive line built by Israel along the east bank of the Suez Canal . It was created after the capture of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula by Israel during the Six Day War (1967) from 1968 to 1969.

Planning and construction

Conquest of the Sinai Peninsula on the 7th – 8th June 1967

The $ 500 million building on the Sinai Peninsula was named after the Israeli chief of staff Chaim Bar-Lev . It consisted of protective walls made of sand and clay as well as observation points made of concrete, which were positioned along the canal with extra strong fastenings at the transition points. Looking towards the canal, the protective walls had an average height of 20 to 22 m and an incline of 45 °.

Each post was manned by around 15 men, whose main task was to identify an attempted Egyptian attack in good time and to provide the artillery in the hinterland with target coordinates. Behind the lines, the Israelis kept lightly armored troops and artillery units ready, as well as a little further back the stores for the equipment of the reserve brigades, which could be mobilized within 24 hours if an attack was attempted. Israel assumed that their air force and artillery would be able to keep the enemy in check long enough for the reserve brigades to reach the canal.

Israeli pioneers had built 30 bunker-like posts at 7-10 kilometer intervals on the sand walls along the canal. These protective systems, built into the ground over several floors, were designed to offer the soldiers protection from bombs of up to 1,000 pounds , but also to give the soldiers opportunities to rest, for example. The posts were between 200 and 350 m wide, surrounded by barbed wire and mine fields to a depth of 200 m. The entire length of the canal provided positions for battle tanks , artillery, mortars and machine guns , so that the Israeli soldiers would be able to fend off an attempted Egyptian crossing over the canal.

history

The Bar Lev Line was established after the War of Attrition 1968-1970 ( Hebrew מלחמת ההתשה- War of Fatigue) against Egypt slightly changed. Of the 30 or so posts, around eight were removed by the Israeli military . Despite these reductions, the line remained a strong defensive line. The Bar Lev Line was built like the French Maginot Line , and the Israeli leadership believed that if Egypt attempted to build beachheads, it would become a cemetery for whose soldiers would.

The defense of the Sinai Peninsula was based on two plans, the Dovecote ( English : dovecote, Hebrew שובך יוניםְ Schowach Jonim ) and the rock ("rock", Hebrew: Sela). In both plans the line was viewed by the General Staff as a “stop line” (Hebrew: kaw atzira) - a line of defense that had to be held at all costs. Shortly after the War of Attrition , an Israeli colonel described : “The line was laid to meet two basic military needs: first, to prevent a possible Egyptian attack and the building of beachheads, which could lead to a great war, and second, to cover casualties To keep sides of the defenders as low as possible. "

The line was popular with the people, but some generals, including Ariel Sharon , were not convinced of its defensive capabilities.

War and destruction

The Suez Canal from space. Central Egypt in the west, the Sinai Peninsula in the east

During the Yom Kippur War (October 1973), the Egyptians, led by Anwar as-Sadat, were able to easily cross the Bar-Lev Line using the element of surprise and its high firepower. In order to overcome the massive earth walls, water cannons were used, which were connected by hoses to water pumps in the canal. Other methods such as explosives , artillery or bulldozers were too time-consuming and required ideal working conditions. Using a bulldozer during the first hours of the attack phase while protecting it would have been almost impossible, and building the much-needed bridges would have been delayed too long.

In late 1971, a young Egyptian officer suggested a small, lightweight, gasoline-powered pump as a solution to the dilemma. So the Egyptian army bought 300 British-made pumps and found that five such pumps could clear 1,500 cubic meters of sand in three hours. In 1972 the Pioneer Corps organized 150 much more powerful pumps with German-made gas turbine drives. The combination of two German and three British pumps has now reduced the removal time to two hours. This timeframe fell far short of that calculated by the Israelis. Apparently the strength of the pumps used by Egypt in experiments was massively underestimated. On the first day of the war alone, these cannons were able to strike 81 fractures in the line by removing 3 million cubic meters of sand.

The Egyptians attacked the Bar Lev Line on October 6, 1973 with combined air and artillery strikes. For this purpose, 250 Egyptian MiG-21 -, MiG-19 - and MiG-17 - combat aircraft were used on targets on the Sinai Peninsula. Meanwhile, 2,000 artillery pieces opened fire on the defenses along the canal: a barrage that shot 10,500 shells (approx. 3.3 per second) at the enemy's positions in 53 minutes.

The USS Bainbridge in the Suez Canal 1992 (to show the width of the canal)

Within the first hour of the war, 70 groups of the Engineer Corps, operating from wooden boats, attacked the earth walls, each responsible for opening an entrance. They worked on the walls with the water cannons connected to the pumps by hoses . Many of the break points were cleared after the calculated time of 2-3 hours, but in some places unexpected problems were encountered. The mud created by the water and sand was up to one meter high, which meant that the pioneers had to lay makeshift paths made of wood, rails, stones, sandbags , steel plates or metal nets to allow heavy equipment to pass through.

The 3rd Army in particular had problems in its sector. There, the clay with which the posts were fastened was better able to cope with the strong pressure of the water masses and thus the efforts of the pioneers were slowed down. 2nd Army pioneers completed the construction of bridges and ferries in their sector in 9 hours, whereas 3rd Army took over 16 hours.

Of the 441 Israeli soldiers in 16 forts on the Bar Lev Line at the start of the war, 126 were killed and 161 captured. Only Budapest , to the north of the line near the Mediterranean city of Port Said , held out for the duration of the war, while all the others were overrun.

Remarks

According to historian Abraham Rabinowitsch, the Bar Lev line was a bad design - too understaffed to be an effective line of defense and too crowded to be an effective stumbling block. On the contrary, many experts said that the line of great strength of the Israeli army tactics - which essentially relied on mobile armed forces quickly crossing the battlefield - was counterproductive as a rigid defensive.

Ariel Sharon, who was appointed commander of the southern front in 1969 , criticized the static defense of the line and, in turn, proposed an agile and mobile defensive tactic. However, he continued to fortify the line to provide better protection for the Israeli Army ( IDF ) in the War of Attrition.

literature

  • Abraham Rabinowitsch: The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East . ISBN 0-8052-4176-0
  • George W. Gawrych: The 1973 Arab-Israeli war: The albatross of decisive victory . Leavenworth papers, US, ISSN  0195-3451

Coordinates: 30 ° 31 ′ 30 ″  N , 32 ° 19 ′ 45 ″  E