1973 Middle East Peter and Dan Snow: 20th Century Battlefields

This programme contains some scenes

which some viewers may find upsetting.

The Middle East was a battlefield for most of the 20th Century.

But one of the hardest fought wars of all was in 1973,

when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel

on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur.

For three weeks,

the battle swung violently from side to side.

It brought each within sight of victory and defeat

and it brought the superpowers - America and the Soviet Union - close to a nuclear showdown.

The Israelis were in no doubt they were fighting for their country's very survival.

For the soldiers of Syria and Egypt,

it was a battle for Arab territory and Arab pride.

In this programme, I'll be revealing how Arab and Israeli commanders

astonished each other with the boldness of their strategy.

And I'll be finding out how both sides

used the latest weaponry... with shattering results.

No 20th-century conflict has been as lasting and bitter

as the struggle between Israel and its Arab neighbours.

This is the story of the biggest battle between them.

It's still such a sensitive subject in Egypt

that they wouldn't let us film there.

This is the story of the October War of 1973.

This concrete security barrier here runs through Jerusalem

and hundreds of miles to the north and the south.

On this side live predominantly Muslim Palestinian Arabs,

on this side the largely Jewish population of Israel.

The 8m high barrier, which the Israelis started building in 2002,

is the most powerful symbol of the hostility between Jews and Arabs,

which still remains after nearly a century of conflict.

The Israelis say they built this barrier to keep out Palestinian terrorists.

The Palestinians say it's just Israel's way of grabbing more of their land.

And that's what this conflict has always been about - land.

Land known, at the beginning of the 20th century, as Palestine.

Back in 1917, the British controlled Palestine

and they promised the Jews a homeland here.

The problem was there were more than ten times as many Arabs as Jews already living in Palestine.

And as hundreds of thousands more Jews poured into the country,

open fighting broke out between them.

By 1947, things were so bad the United Nations stepped in with a plan.

This is how Palestine looked then.

Lying on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean,

it was bordered by Lebanon, Syria, Transjordan and Egypt.

The United Nations suggested partition.

The Palestinians would keep land here, here and here

and the Jews would have the rest.

Jerusalem would be an open city shared by everyone.

The Jews accepted the plan and, in 1948,

they declared their independence as the State of Israel.

But the Palestinians and the neighbouring Arab countries rejected partition.

War followed and the borders changed once more.

The Israelis took over Arab lands here in the north and along the Egyptian border,

ending up with most of Palestine and most of the key city of Jerusalem.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians fled

or were expelled from their homes.

These refugees headed to neighbouring Arab countries

creating a refugee crisis that lasts to this day.

One night, everyone was awakened to the sound of people.

"Go, go! The Jews, the Jews are coming."

I can still recall the voice and the ensuing chaos.

Within a short period of time, the entire village was marching out,

carrying bare essentials, bedding on a mule,

some clothing, and some food.

The Arabs refused to recognise this new state of Israel

and their resentment at the loss of Palestinian homes and land grew.

For their part, the Israelis felt vulnerable,

surrounded on all sides by hostile Arab enemies.

Over the next 20 years, there was regular fighting along the borders.

In 1967, things finally came to a head.

On the morning of June the 5th, Israel launched a pre-emptive strike against Egypt.

It was followed hours later by attacks on Egypt's allies - Syria and Jordan.

It would become known as the Six Day War.

Almost 200 pilots of the Israeli Air Force

took part in an incredibly ambitious air strike.

Their mission was to wipe out the Egyptian air force - the largest in the Arab world.

In just under two hours, Israeli bombs destroyed almost the entire Egyptian air force

before it had even got off the ground.

Next, Israel launched strikes on the air forces of Jordan and Syria.

By the end of the day, Israeli pilots had won total control of the skies.

Not very far away,

there were some military bases and, um...

they'd been attacked early in the morning. There was nothing announced

and we didn't know what was going on.

Defeat was unfolding right there.

Israeli ground troops stormed into Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

At the same time, other Israeli troops made a bid

to capture Arab-held Jerusalem.

On June the 7th, just two days into the war,

Israeli paratroopers charged through this gate into the Old City.

But as they pushed through these narrow streets,

they came under fire from Jordanian snipers,

who'd taken up position in the upper storeys of the buildings on either side.

The Israelis pushed on.

It took them a few hours to clear out these last pockets of resistance

but by early afternoon, the whole of Jerusalem was in Israeli hands.

I took out the Israeli flag,

which I carried with me the whole time, and waved it.

I hung the flag on the fence.

My commander, who was the toughest among us, was standing next to me.

He burst into tears underneath his steel helmet.

Another friend was weeping, a chain of bullets wrapped around his neck.

In the days that followed, Israeli troops drove back the soldiers of Jordan, Syria and Egypt.

In six days, the Israelis had won the war.

The defeated nations counted the cost.

It's estimated that Egypt lost 80% of its military capacity

and, along with Syria & Jordan, suffered over 30,000 dead and injured.

People didn't really know what was going to happen next.

I mean, people were scared.

The whole country was at a total loss of what to do.

The fighting may have been over, but it hadn't created the conditions

where the two sides could come together.

Peace was as far away as ever.

For the Arabs, the Six Day War was an utter disaster.

Before this whirlwind campaign,

Israel had been a tiny wedge of land,

squeezed between Arab states,

only nine miles wide at its narrowest.

Suddenly, it was a Middle East superpower and five times the size.

The borders had been pushed back

to swallow a piece of Syria up here, called the Golan Heights.

To the east, Israel had seized the West Bank

and, in the south, it now occupied Egypt's entire Sinai peninsula,

a huge expanse of desert.

From this new-found position of strength,

Israel's leaders demanded that the Arab world recognise the State of Israel.

Arab leaders met in Sudan to formulate their response.

They were emphatic. They would not recognise Israel

and insisted on a total Israeli withdrawal

from the territories it had just occupied.

Over the next few years, both sides became entrenched.

And nowhere was this more visible than along the new border with Egypt.

The Suez Canal.

The canal is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes,

allowing ships to pass between Europe and Asia without sailing round Africa.

But after the Six Day War, this international water way was closed to shipping

as sporadic fighting between both sides continued to flare up.

The Israelis and the Egyptians now faced each other

eyeball to eyeball across the canal.

The Egyptians could never accept that this was a permanent frontier.

But the Israelis were equally determined.

Egyptians now watched in horror as the Israeli military machine went to work.

All along the Suez canal, the Israelis built

a massive network of walls, forts and trenches

that became known as the Bar Lev Line.

Israel resolved that Egypt would never force its way back into the Sinai.

But they weren't just relying on the Bar Lev Line for defence.

The Israelis also had a system for rushing troops to the frontline.

Israel has a small population and can't afford a large standing army.

So every male Israeli does three years national service,

and remains a reservist into his forties or fifties, ready to be mobilised in times of war.

Today, females also do national service and they can also be called up if war breaks out.

30 years ago, an army of 250,000 men could be mobilised within 72 hours

if the Arabs showed signs of attacking.

But after the Six Day War, that didn't seem likely.

The Israelis had practically destroyed Arab air power.

Israeli intelligence was now sure the Arabs wouldn't try anything

until they'd rebuilt their air forces.

And that would take another ten years.

The Israelis were now supremely confident

that if their neighbours so much as twitched,

they would batter them into submission once more.

But in Cairo, something had happened

that the Israelis hadn't reckoned with.

A new Egyptian President with a new sense of purpose -

Anwar Sadat. When Sadat came to power in 1970,

Egypt was still a demoralised country,

smarting from the loss of the Sinai.

Sadat was considered a moderate by many,

but one of the first things he did was appoint

a dynamic and popular new military commander - General Saad El Shazly.

Shazly was given the job of revitalising

Egypt's poorly-trained and under-equipped army.

Because Sadat was determined to do what the Israelis least expected -

fight back!

Sadat had decided that the only way to win back the Sinai from the Israelis was to make war on them.

His plan was to launch a spectacular crossing of the canal

and retake a strip of land in the Sinai.

Sadat hoped that this would force the Israelis to negotiate a withdrawal from the rest of Sinai.

But for this plan to work, Sadat was going to need help.

Sadat found a willing ally in the Soviet Union, as the Israeli's had with the USA.

In the 1970s, both the United States and the Soviet Union

were adamant that neither superpower would dominate the oil-rich Middle East.

The Soviets provided Egypt with the latest surface-to-air missiles, called SAMs.

These missiles, supported by thousands of conventional anti-aircraft guns,

could effectively paralyse the Israeli Air Force.

The Egyptian commander, General Shazly,

would not have to rely on his weakened air force to deal with Israeli warplanes.

Nor would Sadat attack alone.

Another of his allies, President Assad of Syria, would be joining in the fight.

The key to the Egyptian plan

was a surprise co-ordinated ground attack on Israel.

The Syrians would attack on the Golan, at exactly the same moment

as the Egyptians struck along the entire length of the Canal.

But Shazly knew that, no matter how stunned the Israelis might be by this two-pronged offensive,

they would soon counter-attack with their most lethal weapon - their air force.

And that was where the SAM missiles came in.

Shazly concentrated his SAMs along the Suez Canal.

These missiles could bring down any Israeli planes that came within 15 miles.

The SAMs and regular artillery guns would create a protective umbrella,

shown here in red, under which Egyptian boats and infantry could cross safely.

They would then seize the forts of the Bar Lev Line

and secure a strip of land a few miles deep into the Sinai.

The date of the attack was set for October the 6th,

when the tides would give the most favourable conditions for crossing the canal.

But October the 6th was also the holiest day of the Jewish year -

Yom Kippur - when Israelis would be at home or the synagogue.

With their plans in place, the Egyptians and their Syrian allies

set about ensuring that the Israelis had no idea

they were about to be attacked on two fronts.

The Egyptians put into effect a complicated deception plan

to try and lull Israeli military intelligence into complacency.

They had been gradually mobilising their reserves.

But at the beginning of October, they demobilised 20,000 men and sent them home.

From what the Israelis could see, it didn't look like the Egyptian Army was gearing up for war.

As for the Egyptian soldiers based beside the canal - they were told to act as if nothing much was up.

They could go swimming and bask in the sun

in full view of the Israeli troops in the forts of the Bar Lev Line.

Any military activity the Israeli look-outs did spot appeared to be just another regular exercise.

By day, they watched as Egyptian troops came close to the canal to carry out manoeuvres.

At night, they appeared to head back inland to their barracks many miles away.

Hundreds of miles to the north, the Syrians on the Golan appeared to be doing the same.

But in fact, these troops weren't withdrawing every evening.

Under cover of darkness, more and more Arab soldiers were massing on both fronts.

We started to train with real ammunition.

We were also told we were going to Suez.

We started to take our tanks, our amphibious unit

on the railroad at night only, so the civilians couldn't see.

Reports of all this Egyptian activity

were given to the heads of Israel's military intelligence.

There'd been a number of false alarms in the past

and they were convinced that this was just another one.

But they were wrong.

At 4.30am on the 6th of October, the day of Yom Kippur,

the phone rang at the home of the Israel's Military Chief.

General David Elazar.

Elazar had been made Israeli Chief of Staff

after a long military career and a host of victories.

The call from Israeli military intelligence informed him

that both Egypt and Syria would launch an attack in hours.

Elazar's immediate thought was to send his air force

to hit the Arabs before they had a chance to strike.

But that decision could only be taken in the halls of power by Israel's politicians

and ultimately, that meant one person -

Israel's Prime Minister Golda Meir.

This 75-year-old was seen as the Iron Lady of Israeli politics.

But she said no to air strikes.

She argued that, if Israel was to win international support after the Six Day War,

it had to be seen not as the aggressor but the victim.

Elazar was appalled at his leader's reaction.

He was only given permission to mobilise a fraction of the reservists he needed.

And yet, within a few hours, his country would face invasion on two fronts.

Egypt and Syria were poised to launch their attack.

Just before two o'clock, the Egyptians put their part of the plan into action.

Their assault across the canal, on the forts of the Bar Lev Line,

was such a momentous event in Egyptian history, it was later re-staged for the cameras.

Thousands of Egypt's best-trained commandos

crossed the Suez Canal in rubber dinghies.

They landed on the East Bank in the gaps between the forts of the Bar Lev Line.

The Egyptian commandos then scrambled up the high sand ramparts.

They attached rope ladders to make it easier for the soldiers following on behind them.

Behind this first wave were 100,000 Egyptian infantry

and more than a thousand tanks waiting to cross the canal.

But the biggest obstacle to them were the giant sand ramparts on the Israeli side.

These were as much as 60ft in height.

It was impossible for the Egyptian tanks and heavy artillery to climb up and over them.

The Egyptians experimented with using dynamite to blow holes in them,

but this was found to take far too long.

But then, one junior engineer officer had a flash of genius.

He suggested using high-pressure hoses

to blast the ramparts with water from the canal.

It was an extraordinary idea, which would have to work

if the entire Egyptian assault was to be a success.

Four hours into the attack and with fighting raging around them,

the Egyptian engineers finally broke through the ramparts

and the first tanks started to pour through.

I never believed I would see the day

when I was in Sinai, but this was actually Sinai.

I looked back at the West Bank and all the green on the other side.

And to the East all I could see is desert.

It was a good feeling.

The eastern bank of the canal now became a battlefield.

The Israelis manning the forts sprayed machine gun fire

at their Egyptian attackers to try and stem the tide.

But within two hours, 23,000 of Egypt's infantry

were on the East Bank and advanced up to one mile into the Sinai.

The fort was surrounded by Egyptian forces

and was under constant fire. We made repeated calls for help.

We fired from time to time and reported back what we saw.

But mainly, we tried to keep up our morale.

But the Israelis were sure that their air force would come to the rescue.

The first Israeli jets were sent in at 4pm,

flying low over the desert.

But as they approached the canal, they found themselves under attack from the ground.

The Egyptian SAM missiles and anti-aircraft guns caused havoc.

As Israeli planes were shot down that afternoon, it soon became clear

that Egypt's elaborate air defence umbrella was working.

Israel's single greatest weapon - its air force -

was virtually powerless to hold back the Egyptian onslaught.

The most immediate hope for the Israelis surrounded in the forts

were Israeli tanks stationed just a few miles away.

The Israeli tanks raced towards the canal.

They thought they'd throw the Egyptians back as easily as they had done in 1967.

But as they got closer, they found themselves

coming under attack from a weapon they'd never faced before.

The Sagger missile.

This Soviet-made weapon was specifically designed

to punch through the thick metal armour of tanks.

Yet it was small enough to be carried onto the battlefield in a backpack.

Unlike bigger anti-tank guns, the Sagger could be set up in moments.

This light-weight piece of kit was made all the more lethal

because the missile could be steered onto its target.

'Today, Dan and I have come to the Royal Marines Commando Training Centre in Devon.

'We're going to find out why Egyptian foot soldiers

'found the new generation of anti-tank weapons so useful.'

'A modern-day equivalent of the Sagger is called the Javelin.

'It costs £75,000 to fire one missile, so I'm being shown the ropes on a simulator.'

OK, so as your looking through the eye piece now

hopefully you're seeing exactly the same pictures

I'll see on the computer screen.

'Rather than firing off a real missile,

'the Javelin trainer uses a laser system.

'If I hit the target, it will show up on the control panel.'

-Good scan.

-There's one, up there on that ridgeline.

So it's well-pinned, well-spotted, that one.

Another one's coming straight towards me.

-So make that your priority target, cos it's a direct threat to you.

-OK.

Activate the seeker and release.

He's going behind a few little hillocks and things, but...

Now on seeker field of view and you can decide to engage that vehicle,

so squeeze and hold left hand trigger. Squeeze and release right.

-Well done.

-EXPLOSION EFFECT

Let's see how we do.

Just watching him now - it's a nice time to do anything.

OK, so that's a good hit.

-Smack centre of the top of the turret.

-Right on the turret.

'I was ready to take the simulator out into the field.

'I'm aiming at a real target.

'That truck, fitted with a laser detector, that will register a hit.'

Here we are now in this moving vehicle making a target for Dan,

very like the Israelis moving forward

to attack the Egyptians in Sinai must have made for the Egyptians.

Thank you.

'For a novice like me, a Javelin is easier to handle than a Sagger.

'When a Sagger was fired, it trailed a control wire behind it

'and the operator used a joystick

'which had to keep steering the missile until it reached its target.'

I think I can see something now.

'A hit required good training and a steady hand.'

I was going to have a pop at them.

'With the Javelin, all I have to do is get the truck in the sights,

'lock the guidance system onto it and fire.'

-He's just popped out. I can see smoke from his exhaust.

-Yeah.

-Activating the seeker.

-OK.

-OK, I'm going to go for it.

-Go for it.

'At least, that's the theory.'

God, it's tricky with that...

-that wobble when you try and get the track gates on the target.

-Yeah.

-Did I miss?

Unfortunately, that's a no result, which means you've missed.

'I really had no idea where Dan was.'

This is where your speed of drill matters.

His state-of-the-art Javelin can hit my vehicle from over 2km away,

a similar range to the Saggers in 1973.

No wonder the Israeli tank drivers were taken by surprise as they headed towards the Suez Canal.

They simply couldn't see the Egyptians lying in wait with the Saggers.

-Hit - great!

-Well done.

-Ah, brilliant!

Hello, Dad.

OK, tell me you missed us?

I'm afraid to say...

-I got a hit.

-You didn't?

Yeah, look right there - hit, 700 metres.

-Good grief.

-Yeah, I did miss the first time.

-You have got the most modern guided missile in the world.

-I know.

Because one thing worth saying is that the Saggers were wire-guided missiles.

You had to keep the sight on the target all the time the missile was travelling towards it.

It had to be fixed there. Whereas you just fired it and forgot, yes?

It's hard enough to get the sight locked onto you

and to have to keep it there for the entire time the missile's in the air would be incredible.

You're shaking, breathing, nervous.

I couldn't have done it if it hadn't had been a lock on and then forget about it.

Very, very powerful form of anti-tank warfare.

For the Israelis, quite a new ordeal.

In 1973, the Sagger was turning the Sinai into a tank graveyard.

The tanks, which were the pride of Israel's army, were being destroyed by Egyptian infantrymen.

Israel had begun the war with around 300 tanks in Sinai.

By the end of the first 36 hours they'd lost approximately half of this number.

Things were critical for the Israeli soldiers in Sinai.

But that was only half the story.

At the same time the Egyptians launched their attack,

the Syrians had launched their bid to retake the Golan Heights.

The fertile soil of this battlefront

couldn't have been in greater contrast to the arid desert of the Sinai.

The Golan Heights had been a valuable prize when the Israelis captured them in 1967.

These Golan Heights provided Israel with more than just good farmland.

They afforded security too.

This is the Golan here,

once part of Syria, occupied by Israel since 1967.

The area is no more than 15 miles wide, and it ends with a steep slope down to the River Jordan.

To Israelis, the Golan was a vital buffer between their heartland and Syria.

Despite this, only 170 Israeli tanks

and 400 soldiers were stationed in the frontline on the Golan.

Most of the Israeli forces were here in the north

because Israeli commanders felt this was the most likely place for any Syrian assault.

But when the Syrians made their move,

their 1,200 tanks and 60,000 men

attacked all the way along the line.

Six hours into the battle,

the Syrians' overwhelming strength was beginning to tell

and their tanks broke through,

down here in the more lightly defended south.

By nightfall, they'd almost reached the western edge of the heights

where they could look down on the River Jordan.

If Syrian tanks could now seize the vital bridges across the Jordan

they'd be able to pour across the river into Israel's heartland.

For Israeli soldiers in bunkers along the frontline of the Golan Heights,

the first day of the war had been a disaster.

Their strong defensive positions had done little to halt the Syrian advance.

This is one of the Israeli bunkers dug in to the Golan Heights

and it's got an incredibly strong construction,

it's deep underground, reinforced concrete, and these steel plates here as well.

The amazing thing about 1973 is these strong points were so difficult for the Syrians to take,

they didn't even bother trying.

They simply by-passed them with their tanks and kept pushing forward.

By the end of the day,

the Syrians had taken almost the entire southern half

of the Golan Heights.

It was a nightmare situation for Israel.

It had been caught unawares with far too few troops on both front lines.

All Elazar, the Israeli Chief of Staff, could do

was to mobilise every single reservist in the country.

In towns, villages, and farms across Israel news filtered out that their country was under attack.

Because it was a holiday, TV and radio was off the air

and so soldiers on motorbikes had to race through built-up areas calling up the reservists.

I was in my kibbutz on Yom Kippur

when I heard the planes taking off from an air force base in the area.

I drove with another member of my kibbutz,

who was also a company commander, to our assembly point.

On the way, we said that whatever was happening,

we'll probably be back home in a day or two.

Men and tanks headed out towards both fronts.

But it would take two long days before they'd be ready to mount a counter-attack.

Then, on October the 8th, David Elazar announced to the world

that his army had finally gone on the attack.

This morning we started our counter-attack.

And we shall break and destroy completely

all the attacking forces.

Elazar's first push was in the Sinai Desert.

The Egyptians had known that the Israelis would always counter-attack

and they'd been lying in wait for just this moment.

As soon as the Israeli tanks came into view

they let rip with devastating rocket artillery and Sagger missile fire.

The Israelis suffered heavy casualties all day.

At least 50 of their tanks were destroyed or disabled.

To the Israelis it was abundantly clear this was no longer

the poorly trained Egyptian army they'd fought in the past.

By the end of the day Israel was facing catastrophe.

Israelis had believed that once their army was in place, they would be victorious.

Now they had to face the shocking truth that this hadn't happened.

Prime Minister Meir sent an urgent request to the Americans

begging them to re-supply the country.

Under attack on two fronts, Israelis felt their country was about to be squeezed out of existence.

It would need a bold change of strategy to save the day.

The simple truth was that Israel did not have the strength

to fight this war on two fronts at the same time.

Elazar had to concentrate his strength on one front

before he tried to roll back his enemy on the other.

In the Sinai, the Egyptians were separated from Israel by hundreds of miles of desert.

But here on the Golan, the Syrians were perilously close

to Israel's main villages and towns across the Jordan,

just a few miles' drive away.

The Golan had to be Elazar's priority,

so he ordered the army and the air force to put everything they had

into throwing the Syrians back.

Some tank units would attack halfway along the Golan

to relieve the pressure on Nafakh, the Israeli HQ on the Heights.

Other Israeli tanks had already been ordered to go to the Southern Golan

where the Syrians were closest to Israel's heartland.

Their commander had been told bluntly, "You are Israel's last hope."

But one thing in their favour was that the Syrians had made an extraordinary decision -

to halt up on the high ground rather than press on towards the River Jordan.

It gave the Israelis vital breathing room

to cross the river and move up towards the Golan.

On the night of October 8th, Israeli tanks stormed the Syrian positions.

The fighting raged around the clock.

The Soviets had given the Syrians their latest infrared night-fighting equipment.

The Israelis had nothing of the kind, and that meant, during the hours of darkness,

the Syrians could identify the Israeli tanks and cause horrific casualties.

I scanned the area with my scope

and picked up a pair of infrared lights coming directly at me.

I took another look. The headlamps were still approaching.

The Syrian was targeting in on us. "Driver, back up!" I screamed,

and the tank rocked back till we came to a stop.

But as day broke, the Israeli ground troops got some much-needed relief from their air force.

Throughout the rest of the day, however,

the Israelis fought desperately to hold the line.

The Israelis knew that if they gave way here,

their country faced a real threat of extinction.

Losses mounted on both sides, but as the battle progressed,

it became clear that despite some Syrian technological advantages, the Israeli tanks had thicker armour

and the Israeli crews could fire more quickly and more accurately than their Syrian counterparts.

After four days of combat,

I wasn't particularly worried by the Syrian tanks.

It was enough to locate them and to have them come out to meet us

and victory would be ours.

By the 10th of October, four days into the war,

there was an astonishing turnaround.

The Syrians were in full flight from here on the Golan.

Israel's tanks chased them into Syria itself,

and soon the Israelis were within shelling distance of the Syrian capital Damascus,

just 30 miles off that way.

Syrian President Assad sent a message to President Sadat,

urging the Egyptian leader to do something to relieve the pressure on Syria.

And now Sadat made a momentous decision.

Down on the Suez Canal, Sadat ordered his men to thrust way beyond the strong defence line

they'd established on the east bank of the canal.

Their objective - strategic passes through these mountains.

But to get there, they'd have to leave the safety

of their SAM missile umbrella way behind them.

It was a high-risk strategy and Shazly was appalled by the decision,

but Sadat was immovable.

What followed would be one of the biggest tank battles in history.

25 miles east of the canal, Israeli tank commanders were well dug in

on high ground, in good defensive positions.

Across the open desert,

they could see the sand being kicked up by hundreds of advancing Egyptian tanks.

The Egyptians were totally exposed to withering Israeli fire.

But over the following hours, the Egyptian tank brigades

repeatedly tried to push further east into the Sinai.

As the Egyptians moved out beyond the protective cover of their SAMs,

Israeli aircraft rained down bombs on the exposed Egyptian tanks.

The Israelis' skilful use of their tank guns

meant that they pulverised the Egyptians

exposed down on the open ground.

The Israelis knocked out an estimated 260 Egyptian tanks.

They lost only 20 of their own.

We fought hard, it was a successful tackle.

And what made it possible was the fighting spirit of our soldiers.

This battle was a turning point in the war.

Now the war started to swing in Israel's favour.

By October 15th, the Americans had responded to Prime Minister Meir's request for re-supplies.

For days, American planes arrived in Israel with huge numbers

of tanks, shells and new planes.

Israel was in a much stronger position.

Elazar and his commanders were determined to force the Egyptians back across the canal.

They now planned an exceedingly ambitious and risky operation

and a man who'd play a key part in it was General Ariel Sharon.

Sharon would later become Israel's prime minister.

But in '73, he was one of the country's most dynamic generals and immensely charismatic.

He'd just left the army that summer, but when war broke out, he was re-called.

His detailed knowledge of the Sinai, where he'd fought during the Six Day War,

would prove invaluable in framing Israel's audacious new plan.

The Egyptians on the East Bank of the canal were split into two armies.

One in the north and one in the south.

100,000 men and about 1,000 tanks well dug in

and well defended by minefields.

They looked impregnable.

But one of Sharon's patrols had discovered a narrow gap,

just one mile wide, between the two armies at this spot -

where the Suez Canal joined a large salt lake.

Sharon was ordered to push through here with his tanks,

widen the gap and secure a corridor through to the canal.

The Israelis would bridge the canal and hundreds of tanks would then

pour across it and fan out north and south

to cut off the Egyptians from behind.

The Egyptians' positions on the eastern canal bank would then be untenable.

For the Israelis the whole operation would be fraught with danger.

The biggest threat was an Egyptian stronghold here, called Chinese Farm.

It was just north of the planned Israeli corridor.

Sharon had to neutralise the Egyptians at Chinese Farm

if the Israeli plan was to succeed.

But what the Israelis didn't know

was just how big the Egyptian presence was at Chinese Farm.

Large numbers of Egyptian tanks and infantry were gathered there.

Unaware of how outnumbered they were,

at dusk on October 15th, the Israeli assault force moved in.

Sharon's tank crews approached Chinese Farm to make their surprise attack.

They moved in from three different directions,

but the Egyptian position was a lot stronger than the Israelis had expected.

A ferocious night battle erupted between the Israelis and the Egyptians.

Both sides now faced the same problem.

The fighting was at such close quarters that it was difficult to tell who was friend and who was foe.

At one point, when my tank had stopped,

an Egyptian soldier climbed onto it and asked me in Arabic for a cigarette.

He thought we were Egyptians.

I bent down and pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it at him.

All night the Egyptians put up a stiff defence.

They disabled Israeli tanks and killed and wounded enemy soldiers.

The Israelis realised they faced a tough fight to secure the vital road to the canal.

The Egyptians were spread out like a horseshoe.

They could shoot at us from three sides.

It was a carpet of fire, their bullets were everywhere.

I thought, from here, we are not going to get out alive.

This is our death place.

Sharon decided to cross the canal before waiting for the battle of Chinese Farm to be won.

At midnight he sent 750 paratroopers to sneak across

and establish the vital toe-hold on the west bank.

His men had been totally unopposed,

but to turn this into a major breakthrough,

the Israelis would need to get thousands more men and tanks across the canal.

In fact, the Israelis had built a mobile bridge a year before the war for just this purpose.

The bridge was 180 metres long, weighed 400 tonnes

and took three days to put together.

Once assembled it was towed on metal rollers

through the desert by 12 tanks along the only road down to the canal.

But there was a problem.

Because of the fighting still raging at Chinese Farm

the road to the canal was blocked by a huge traffic jam.

By daybreak the bridge had only travelled two miles -

there were another 13 to go.

Sharon needed to get tanks across the canal to reinforce his troops who'd crossed earlier.

Without the bridge in place,

he had to float 50 tanks across on inflatable rafts.

The sudden appearance of Israeli tanks on the west bank of the canal

was a huge surprise for the Egyptians.

Soldiers manning the SAM batteries reported that groups of several tanks

would show up in the distance,

open fire at them and then disappear.

Later that day, on the evening of October the 16th,

the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir triumphantly told the Israeli Parliament

their troops had crossed the canal into Africa.

In reality, it'd be another two days before the Israelis secured the corridor to the canal.

It wasn't until October 19th that the bridge was finally in place.

As Israeli tanks surged across the bridge,

they came under heavy bombardment from Egyptian artillery and aircraft.

But the tanks pushed on to their first objectives on the West Bank -

Egypt's SAM missiles sites.

Once these missiles were destroyed,

Israeli warplanes swept into the attack

in support of the tanks fanning out north and south

on the west bank of the canal.

Egypt's Third Army, here on the east bank, was soon in danger of being surrounded.

Shazly urged that some units should be pulled back here to the west bank to fight the Israelis.

President Sadat replied abruptly, "No retreat!"

He believed that reducing forces on the east bank would risk losing everything they'd fought for.

But Sadat WAS ready for a ceasefire.

It was announced on 22nd of October.

The Israelis agreed to the ceasefire as well,

but in reality ignored it,

and pushed on south to secure more land west of the canal.

By October 23rd, the Egyptian Third Army was surrounded.

The supply lines of its 45,000 men were cut.

With only four days of food and water left,

it wouldn't be long before they were starved into submission.

Some Egyptian soldiers were so desperate they surrendered.

Others hung on.

No food come to us.

No munitions come to us.

No evacuation of any injured.

No water.

We didn't need gas because we weren't going anywhere.

And just when it seemed to be over, the war took a dramatic turn.

It was at this critical moment that Egypt's most powerful ally,

the Soviet Union, made one final bid to help the Egyptians.

The Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev told the Americans,

unless they agreed to send a joint US/Soviet peacekeeping force to the Middle East,

he would send Soviet troops on their own.

The Americans were determined that no Soviet troops would enter the Middle East.

In a sudden escalation, America put its nuclear forces on alert.

US nuclear missiles were readied in their silos

and two aircraft carriers with nuclear strike forces were ordered to the eastern Mediterranean.

The implied threat of nuclear war

forced Brezhnev to make a choice - to escalate or to climb down.

Brezhnev decided to climb down and no Soviet troops went to the Middle East.

But the flurry of international pressure had made its mark.

On October 25th,

the Israelis finally heeded the ceasefire

and the October War was effectively over.

It's hard to say who was the clear victor in this war.

The Israelis, who saw both their fronts shattered by surprise attacks,

made an astonishing military comeback.

But the Arabs gave Israel a real shock.

For many Israelis, the 9,500 soldiers killed or wounded

during the October War was an unacceptably high price to pay.

They blamed their government for failing to heed the warnings that war was imminent.

Israeli confidence was shattered.

They were no longer the invincible military power that they'd thought they were.

Despite the fact they'd suffered up to 30,000 casualties,

perhaps, in the end, the side that gained the most from this war was Egypt.

The Egyptian crossing of the canal was seen as a major military achievement

that restored Arab pride and gave President Sadat the confidence

to make a spectacular bid for peace.

In November 1977, the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat

arrived in Israel, and in the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem itself,

he became the first Arab leader

to recognise the state of Israel.

Israel and Egypt were now on the road to peace

which culminated in 1982 with what Sadat had always wanted -

a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai.

But Sadat never saw it happen.

On October 6th, 1981, the eighth anniversary of the war,

Anwar Sadat was assassinated by gunmen opposed to his peace treaty with Israel.

The October War had claimed its last victim.

The war didn't sort out the fundamental dispute between the Israelis and the Arabs.

In fact, technically, Israel is still in a state of war with Syria.

All the treaties and all the talking still haven't brought peace

to this part of the Middle East.

And this barrier is a powerful reminder

that the conflict with the Palestinians over who owns the land

remains unresolved to this day.

Next week, 20th Century Battlefields brings you the Falklands War.

In April 1982, Argentina invaded these remote islands

and triggered one of the most ambitious military undertakings in British history.

I look at how the British fought 8,000 miles from home.

And I'll see how the troops tackled this hostile terrain.

It was, in a way, one of the century's most bizarre conflicts.

It's the story of the battle for the Falklands.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd