Getting ready to pound the Israeli pocket into smithereens in that pic. Operation Shamel if it went into effect would've put a severe hurting on the Israelis and they realized that which is why they tucked tail immediately after Sadat ordered that lineup and he never agreed to any of the ridiculous demands the Israelis were in no position to make anyway lol and they knew it! They only extended this whole phony surrounding because the longer they could keep it, the more they could sell it to the world that they were in control of things but they also needed desperately to capture Suez City which was critical as many of the journalists would ask them about it and tell them that it wasn't captured and it would be a launching point to supply the 3rd Army as well as give it safe harbor, which is why the enemy tried 4 times to enter the city and got clobbered and could never take it. They lost quite a few bodies and tanks and armored vehicles in their desperation-laden attempts. Then with the new and fresh army ready to bear down on them with thunder, they realized it was over and they withdrew halfway across the Sinai in shameful defeat.
And just to show the doubters about how that whole 3rd army surrounding saga was nothing but BS, here's a GREAT passage from Edgar O'Ballance's "No Victor No Vanquished" which I had read way back when it came out but then some very cool fella on Twitter posted the PDF file of that book and I got to skim through it and if this paragraph doesn't define the situation for the 3rd Army and the Israelis and how the situation didn't seem to be like it's described in Wikipedia LOL and how desperate they were and how the 3rd Army was just fine for the most part and it was a matter of time before the Israelis were going to run out of options at the 101 km tent marker and they did, while they were hoping the 3rd Army would run out of options first but that never happened!
Also check out the portion where he says the Americans had figured out for sure the Soviets had brought nuclear weapons to Port Said knowing quite well it could turn into a disaster! This is how tense the situation was and how the Israelis were so humiliated that they tried everything they could to create a surrender by the 3rd Army and also in Suez City AND Kabrit Fort where they got neither of the three. They even tried to do the same thing to the 2nd army LOLOL can you believe the drugs they must've been taking?! lol. They learnt their lesson very quickly in Ismailiya trying to go north that's for sure.
Out of all the books written about this great war, this is probably the most balanced because it took accounts from both sides and not just the Israeli side and he was also there to see things for himself which made for a much more realistic description of the war and the results than any of the other books which were predominantly taken from Israeli sources only. The best part is this line in the passage below:
The situation was as much a stalemate as a siege, although the Israelis did not like to see it that way.
If that isn't the perfect description of what occurred at the end of the war, I don't know what is. And that also shows you that as a result of that "stalemate".......and the eventual Israeli withdrawal halfway across the Sinai and the Egyptian Armed forces getting to keep all the land it had gained (including all 16 Barlev line forts & posts and the 20 kms in past the bank to the line of Separation Forces) is an indication of a full and complete victory for the Egyptian Armed Forces. Here's the PDF for one of the better reads on the war:
Egypt's second War of Attrition with Israel began on 1 November 1973 and lasted until 17 March 1974. During these months there were almost daily incidents of shelling, minor attacks, and patrol raids in the Third Army sector. There was frequent Israeli aircraft action against the besieged army,
the Israelis trying desperately, for prestige reasons alone, to force it to surrender. (Hahaha!) For example, the Egyptians say there were over 1,500 such incidents from 1 November 1973 until 18 January 1974; they included four major clashes and eighty-nine others in November, 312 in December, and 133 in January. These are selective figures, perhaps, but they give an indication of how raw and abrasive the front was.
Egyptian planes also intervened, and the first aerial dogfight took place over the Third Army on 6 December. (Wait wut? I thought the EAF was incapable of any sorties to help the 3rd army? Isn't that what most of the Israeli lies say? lol)
The situation was as much a stalemate as a siege, although the Israelis did not like to see it that way. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I THOUGHT THE ISRAELIS HAD WON MILITARILY LMFAO)
Some supplies were flown in at night to the Third Army by helicopter or brought across by boat, and water was obtained from the Ein Musa Springs. (Excuse me?! I thought the situation for the 3rd army was complete desperation and they were finished?! lol) On 1 November the 7th and 19th Infantry Divisions were unified under the command of Brigadier Ahmed Badawri and became known as Badr Force.
Also, holding out on the east bank during this period was the besieged Kabrit Fort, which the Israelis also tried hard to force to surrender, subjecting it to constant artillery fire and bombing. (Hahaha, yet another failure by the Israelis that the haters ignore.) The water at this point was particularly full of debris, including human bodies, which floated in each direction twice in every twenty-four hours.
Some of the defenders swam out at night and caught a floating motor launch and then three SP pontoons which they used to ferry supplies across the narrow neck of water. The west bank was only 2,500 to 3,000 yards from the fort. The first supply run was made on the moonless night of the third/fourth of November; in all thirty such runs were made, carrying some thirty tons of supplies, mainly on the darker nights. The Egyptians consider the defense of Kabrit Fort, "taken in thirty minutes and defended for three months," to be one of their war epics in which the water shortage was overcome by boiling and vaporizing salt water from the canal.
So as you can see, the situation was actually quite different than what many of the haters think it was and when we would tell them so, they would never believe it and the sad part is not because they were convinced that it wasn't that way, it's because they DON'T WANT it to be that way. I say shame on them again! The Israelis failed to take Ismailiya, Suez City, Kabrit Fort and never got the 3rd Army to surrender 1 man! All this while they played to the cameras and news to pretend they had some victory LOL and they tried so hard to negotiate a bunch of unrealistic crap to the point where Sadat gathered an entire division of SAMs, tanks, infantry and artillery and the EAF was on standby ready to carry out Operation Shamel and that's when the Israelis tucked their tails and ran back halfway across the Sinai. This is why it was an unequivocal victory for the Egyptian Armed Forces DESPITE all the mistakes the leadership made!
They're brand new and just delivered to the Italian Navy a short time ago, not sure when but I think about a year ago at the most. So they're really not 2nd hand by the normal definition of that. They're actually brand new ships that probably haven't even finished all their preliminary live testing.
Speaking of the Egyptian Navy, coming up soon is a rare exercise between the Russian Navy and the Egyptian Navy in the Black Sea. Looking forward to see the videos and photos and description of how that exercise went.
#Egyptian #Navy held a conference on the organization of the joint exercise "Bridge of friendship – 2020" in Novorossiysk
https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12318199@egNews
