Bar Lev Line - WikiHQ

The Bar Lev Line ( ; ) was a chain of fortifications built by Israel along the eastern bank of the Suez Canal shortly after the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, during which Egypt lost the entire Sinai Peninsula. It was considered impenetrable by the Israeli military until it was overrun in less than two hours during Egypt's Operation Badr, which sparked the Yom Kippur War.

History

thumb|Bar Lev Line

thumb|Haim Bar-Lev, seated center, 17 October 1973

Six-Day War and War of Attrition

The Bar Lev Line evolved from a group of rudimentary fortifications placed along the canal line. In response to Egyptian artillery bombardments during the War of Attrition, Israel developed the fortifications into an elaborate defense system spanning along Suez Canal, with the exception of the Great Bitter Lake (where a canal crossing was unlikely due to the width of the lake). The Bar Lev Line was designed to defend against any major Egyptian assault across the canal, and was expected to function as a "graveyard for Egyptian troops".

Cost, construction, and materials

The line, costing around $300 million in 1973, was named after Israeli Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev. The line was built at the Suez Canal, a unique water barrier that Moshe Dayan described as "one of the best anti-tank ditches in the world." The line incorporated a massive, continuous sand wall lining the entire canal, and was supported by a concrete wall. The sand wall, which varied in height from , was inclined at an angle of 45–65 degrees. The sand wall and its concrete support prevented any armored or amphibious units from landing on the east bank of the Suez Canal without prior engineering preparations. Israeli planners estimated it would take at least 24 hours, probably a full 48 hours for the Egyptians to breach the sand wall and establish a bridge across the canal. Sharon said that it would pin down large military formations, which would be sitting ducks for deadly artillery attacks, but the line was completed in spring 1970.

Yom Kippur War

thumb|right|Egyptian forces crossing the [[Suez Canal]]

Egyptian breach

During the Yom Kippur War, the Egyptian army, led by Chief of staff Saad El Shazly, overran the Bar Lev Line in less than two hours due to the element of surprise and overwhelming firepower. To deal with the massive earthen ramparts, the Egyptians used water cannons fashioned from hoses attached to dredging pumps in the canal. Other methods involving explosives, artillery, and bulldozers were too costly in time and required nearly ideal working conditions. In 1971, a young Egyptian officer, Baki Zaki Yousef, suggested a small, light, petrol-fueled pump as the answer to the crossing dilemma. The Egyptian military purchased 300 British-made pumps, five of which could blast 1,500 cubic meters of sand in three hours. In 1972, it acquired 150 more powerful German pumps driven by small gas turbines. A combination of two German or three British pumps would cut the breaching time down to two hours. These cannons pumped out powerful jets of water, creating 81 breaches in the line and removing three million cubic metres of packed dirt on the first day of the war.

The Egyptians assaulted the Bar Lev Line with two field armies and forces from Port Said and the Red Sea Military District. The Second Field Army covered the area from north of Qantara to south of Deversoir, while the Third Field Army was responsible for the area from Bitter Lakes to south of Port Tawfiq.

thumb|Egyptian vehicles crossing the Suez Canal in the Sinai

The Egyptians began their simultaneous air and artillery attacks with 250 Egyptian Air Force planes attacking their assigned targets accurately in Sinai. Meanwhile, 2,000 artillery pieces opened massive fire against all the strong points along the Bar Lev Line, a barrage that lasted 53 minutes and dropped 10,500 shells in the first minute alone, or 175 shells per second.

thumb|right|Budapest fortress January 1973

thumb|right|Israeli flag flown at Bar Lev Line Fort Budapest throughout the [[Yom Kippur War]]

Within the first hour of the war, the Egyptian engineering corps tackled the sand barrier. Seventy engineer groups, each one responsible for opening a single passage, worked from wooden boats. With hoses attached to water pumps, they began attacking the sand obstacle. Many breaches occurred within two to three hours of the start of operations—according to schedule; however, engineers at several places experienced unexpected problems. The sand from the breached openings in the barrier was reduced to mud, which was one meter deep in some areas. This problem required that the engineers emplace floors of wood, rails, stone, sandbags, steel plates, or metal nets for the passage of heavy vehicles. The Third Army, in particular, had difficulty in its sector. There, the clay proved resistant to high-water pressure and, consequently, the engineers experienced delays in their breaching. Engineers in the Second Army completed the erection of their bridges and ferries within nine hours, whereas the Third Army needed more than sixteen hours.

Israeli defense

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.

Criticism

In his book The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, historian Abraham Rabinovich posits that the Bar Lev line was a blunder—too lightly manned to be an effective defensive line and too heavily manned to be an expendable tripwire. Moreover, it can be argued that the concept of the line was counter-intuitive to the strengths of Israeli battle tactics, which, at their core, relied on agile mobile forces moving rapidly through the battlefield rather than utilizing a heavy reliance on fixed defenses.

References

Bibliography

The Yom Kippur War : The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East by Abraham Rabinovich.
The 1973 Arab-Israeli war: The albatross of decisive victory by Dr. George W. Gawrych. Leavenworth papers US ISSN 0195-3451