The Boats of October-How a Missile Battle with Syria Changed Naval Warfare
RABINOVICH, ABRAHAM
The Boats of October How a Missile Battle with Syria Changed Naval Warfare ABRAHAM RABtNOViCH The bridge of the destroyer Eilai was crowded, as it always was toward sunset, when the watch is...
...Missile ready," he said...
...If the Russians did pick up his words, by the time they were passed on to Leningrad and back to Damascus the action would be over...
...Finally the flotilla commander's voice was heard again...
...And so, at 2:30 a.m...
...As the boat was leaving harbor, the sailors heard the sirens going off in the city, signaling the onset of war...
...Shoshan thought he heard the sound of singing in the distance...
...Code books were thrown overboard in weighted sacks, and sailors smashed secret electronic equipment with axes...
...Missile to port...
...By the time they could see it clearly, it was too late...
...From his knowledge of standing procedures, the skipper outlined a likely timetable for the rescue operation now that it was set in motion...
...The vessels were undis-cerned by the Saars' European-continued on next page purchased radar, on which they were masked by the land mass...
...The torpedo boat was too small to warrant the expenditure of a missile...
...Even their failure to return by the next morning—Friday, the 26th—failed to ruffle the pleasant post-holiday torpor enveloping the town...
...In turning, the vessel would be presenting its narrow stern...
...As the helmsman put the wheel over, Shoshan spoke over the intercom to the radioman in the ship's command room...
...A fire was being fought amidships...
...Alert," shouted Shoshan...
...On the way up, headquarters had informed him that a state of war existed and authorized him to sink any enemy ship encountered...
...It was now almost 5:30 p.m., and in five minutes there would be a routine sounding of battle stations as the sun prepared to slip below the horizon...
...Two hours after the missile attack, the communications officer managed to piece together a working radio...
...Peres headed south at top speed and took up position off the Sinai coast...
...Driven by the need to prove itself, and free of any cause for arrogance, it had invested original thought and years of intense labor to enter a new era of its own creation...
...get no closer...
...He could not rule out the possibility that it was a civilian vessel, perhaps from Cyprus, caught in the war zone...
...The other four boats in the northern task force were waiting for Barkai off northern Lebanon when he arrived on the Miznak in the darkness...
...At the other end of the Sinai, Ze'ev Almog ordered his men to assemble in a small amphitheater at the naval base at Sharm al-Sheikh, after the conclusion of Yom Kippur services conducted in the base synagogue by a chaplain...
...The first missile-to-missile battle in history had been fought, and the results had been spectacular...
...technologically updated in 1963, it became the Gabriel...
...Several machine guns opened fire at long range, but the missile came on implacably...
...We have received you and transmitted your message...
...Thirty-five miles southwest of Latakia, the Miznak, with Barkai aboard, in the lead of the western column, picked up a sighting on its radar...
...The other captains responded in predesignated numerical order...
...At 7:40 the ensign in the stern reported that the bulkhead was beginning to give way...
...The Styx exploded in the water harmlessly, but the Ga'ash's radar picked up a second Styx already coming at them...
...Uncertain whether he was dreaming or awake, he began moving in that direction...
...One blow had been sufficient to reduce Israel's flagship to a drifting heap of scrap metal...
...They cheered when he announced that contact had been made with Israeli forces...
...Each courier represented a military unit...
...The Ga'ash's second missile exploded in the water, because the target had been destroyed by the first Gabriel a minute before...
...It was imperative that they stick together, because the rescuers would not find them all if they were scattered...
...Instantly all the buttons on the panel turned red, and a grating alarm sounded throughout the vessel, below decks and above...
...navy itself had been deeply concerned about ever since the sinking of the Eilat...
...Over to homing," said the weapons officer...
...Anything that floated, including jerry-cans and mattresses, was to be tied to the deck railings to be used instead of the demolished rafts if the abandon-ship order was given...
...Target dead in the water," the radar operated reported after several dozen shells were fired...
...To have mustered such strength and such an offensive initiative on the first night of the war meant, as a summary by the Syrian War Command College would subsequently note, that the Israelis had been planning this action for at least two days...
...The bridge reported her sailing without lights and bearing a low silhouette...
...On the boats themselves there was little time for celebration beyond a deep sigh of relief...
...From the direction of Port Said, the starboard lookout had seen a flaring of greenish light...
...The command thought it knew Israel's naval strength, but the number of vessels being picked up by its radar was incredible...
...More often than not, the courier was directed by a wife or a neighbor to one of the nearby synagogues...
...Twelve missile boats were commissioned and by December 1968, seven of them had been completed and sailed to Israel...
...Choking smoke filled many parts of the ship...
...Looking through fixed binoculars, the aimer used a joy stick to guide the missile, which had been launched only roughly in the direction of the target, into the center of the circles etched on the binocular lenses...
...An exultant cry went up, and space was made by the raft for the two men...
...The twenty-foot-long object had stubby delta wings and looked like a small pilotless plane...
...By increasing speed he was increasing maneuverability...
...Abandon ship...
...In any case, Israel's ability to punish the Egyptians severely made it unlikely that they would even attempt to fire the missiles...
...Too long," groaned the flotilla commander as he watched the track of the missile disappear from the radar screen short of the target...
...The three Syrian missile boats, two Komars and an Osa, fled southward after firing their opening salvo in order to put distance between themselves and the Israeli boats...
...Missile ready for homing," said the noncom operating the radar...
...The rescue scenario went almost exactly as Shoshan had outlined to his men earlier—first the planes, then the dark shapes of torpedo boats picking their way carefully toward the survivors, and finally the helicopters pulling men up on winches...
...The task force's objective, Barkai told his captains, was to draw Syrian warships out of Latakia, Syria's main harbor, and to sink them...
...The Luz was offered to all branches of the Israeli armed services in 1960, and the Navy was intrigued...
...More than a thousand pounds of explosives had detonated in a boiler room in the very heart of the ship...
...It had now been locked on the Syrian minesweeper, invisible in the darkness, by the operator in the CIC below...
...Since the minesweeper was fleeing at top speed, it had pulled out of the Gabriel range in the two minutes during which the missile was in the air...
...Israeli scientists had been working on a guided missile since 1954...
...Satisfied that the radar was locked onto the correct target and that the target was in range, he leaned over the operator at the central console and pressed a white button labeled "Permission to Fire...
...Micha pushed the "Permission to Fire" button again, and two minutes later the bridge reported a second hit...
...Despite Israel's postwar euphoria, Shoshan had been ill at ease about these close brushes with Port Said ever since a night action three months before when two Egyptian torpedo boats had been sunk in a classic ambush by two Israeli torpedo boats operating with his destroyer, the Eilat...
...He tried alternate wavelengths to broadcast his message of distress from the bridge...
...From one of the loudspeakers in the CIC ceiling came the first response...
...The blast holed the ship on the port side and staggered the men on the bridge...
...All radios were out...
...The navy had been the one military arm not burdened by glory in that earlier conflict, a fact that would account in good part for its performance in 1973...
...Number two here, sir...
...With their radars showing a vast hostile fleet erupting around them incredibly, the Osa—the only one of the Syrian boats with missiles remaining— turned to face the pursuers...
...Such a ruse, however, could only be used to buy time and provide a semblance of legitimacy while the boats were being completed...
...General Eli Zeira was wakened by the telephone shortly before 4:00 a.m...
...When he had recovered from the shock and looked about him, Shoshan found himself alone in the darkness...
...System on target," he announced...
...The small flame from its exhaust traced its trajectory as it arched upward for 300 meters, then dived toward the sea...
...Both began throwing up chaff clouds (part of the Israeli-developed electronic warfare [EW] defense system designed to confuse enemy radar-directed missiles...
...The skipper," said the officer...
...Skeptical of Egyptian technical abilities, Israeli military circles believed that even if the Soviet-made missiles had some kind of homing capacity—and that was far from certain—the Egyptians were unlikely to maintain them and operate them sufficiently well in combat conditions for the vessels to constitute a serious danger...
...This is the navy ship Eilat...
...If the missiles hit, then all the years of intensive effort to develop Israel's Gabriel missile system would have been for naught— the Arab missile boats could simply stay out of Gabriel range and blow the Israeli missile boats out of the water with their longer-range missiles...
...In his combative mood, that was precisely what Barkai intended to do, despite the danger of the Syrian coastal guns...
...The boats sailed in two parallel columns—the Miznak, Ga'ash, and Hank to port and the Mivtach and Reshef several miles closer to shore and slightly astern...
...Before moving into Syrian waters, Barkai detached one of the telephonelike handsets dangling from an overhead hook in the Miznak's Combat Information Center (CIC...
...Against the 11 Israeli boats loaded with missiles and two Saars (smaller missile boats) without missiles, the Egyptian Mediterranean fleet had 12 Osas and two Komars, the Syrians three Osas and six Komars—all Russian missile boats...
...At less than 30,000 meters, two-thirds of its maximum range, the Osa fired...
...It was a courageous choice, because these Russian-made missile boats did not have EW to defend against an oncoming missile, relying for protection only on the superior range of their missiles...
...Shortly before 2:00 p.m., carrying his plotting board, Barkai boarded the Reshef-type missile boat, the Miinak with his staff, and ordered its captain to cast off and head north...
...Around him, men were calling to one another...
...Shetler received Barkai's permission to engage...
...The engine of the missile ignited for a fifth of a second and the Gabriel shot into the sky...
...Green rocket to starboard...
...The Israeli experience would have a powerful impact on the development of missile boats, missiles, and EW systems throughout the, world...
...We're going full speed for Latakia...
...Raising their electronic umbrella, Israel's four attacking missile boats charged across the missile belt to press home the first head-on missile-boat-to-missile-boat encounter in history...
...The Ga'ash, with Lieutenant Commander Arye Shefler in command, was closest now to the rapidly approaching Osa...
...The powerless ship was spinning slowly to the left as a result of the last order issued by Shoshan before the missile hit, but it had swung past the narrow-profile orientation and was now once again turning broadside to the missile, this time offering its opposite side...
...Inside the cubicle, wearing a helmet, was the "aimer," who would actually launch the missile and start it on its course\ With the alarm raucous in his ears, he kicked aside with his left foot a metal safety shield and pressed down on the firing pedal beneath...
...French defense authorities recommended the private shipyard in Cherbourg founded by Felix Amiot, who had hidden Jewish children during the war...
...No one in Israel knew the nature of those missiles—neither their range nor whether they had the capacity to home in on a target...
...A console operator pushed one of the buttons before him...
...The cheer that went up on the Reshef was echoed by a cheer in the naval command pit in Tel Aviv, monitoring the task force's radio communications...
...In the Reshef, on the right flank of the Israeli formation, Commander Micha ordered full power as he moved to head off the torpedo boat running for Latakia...
...As traumatized post-Yom Kippur War Israel tried to grasp what had stalled its vaunted military machine, the navy's performance was little noted, its astonishing success seemingly as marginal to the overall picture as its failure had been in 1967...
...The boats of Cherbourg sailed into Haifa on December 31 under cover of night, to avoid flaunting their escape in the face of Paris in front of the TV cameras...
...The United States had invested astronomical sums in shipboard antimissile systems in an attempt to cope with the threat of Soviet missiles, whereas the Israelis had performed superbly with a system so seemingly simple that the Americans were amazed it had worked at all...
...Rising upon hearing their names, men in prayer shawls accepted the embraces of their synagogue neighbors and hurried home to don their boots...
...No weapon system like this existed in the West...
...It passed within twenty yards of him as it dived toward the ship's waterline...
...By Friday night, however, word had leaked out of the extraordinary international caper...
...Some at naval headquarters had objected to his turning the boats into "Christmas trees" with his space-consuming equipment, but Tsemach had convinced them that a multioptional defense was needed to give the boats a reasonable chance of crossing the missile belt safely...
...The first Gabriel was still in the air when Shefler pressed the "Permission to Fire" button, which dispatched another Gabriel at the same target...
...It had glimpsed its own mortality and been shaken out of the sense of invincibility engendered by the Six-Day War...
...Its missile boats could slip down the Lebanese coast unseen by Israeli radar and suddenly dash out to sea to lob missiles at Haifa's oil refineries, or at the city itself, less than 30 kilometers from Lebanese waters and thus well within Styx range...
...He was suddenly gripped by fear and disoriented by shock, and his legs seemed like weights pulling him under...
...The sinking of a destroyer by a missile was an event that changed the nature of naval warfare as dramatically as the introduction of naval guns or the appearance of the first ironclads a century before...
...An hour after the Eilat went down, rescue planes flew low over the survivors and dropped flares and rubber boats...
...The singing was coming from a group of sailors gathered around a raft bearing wounded...
...Looking down, Shoshan saw the deck amidships peeled back like a sardine can...
...Addressing the men on his bullhorn, Shoshan told them to distance themselves at least 200 meters from the ship so as not to be sucked under when it went down...
...The captain watched as the ball of flame descended toward the ship and hit the stern...
...With the calmness of someone reconciled to the fact that his life had already ended, Shoshan watched the missile approach in the last light of day...
...Let us pray for our soldiers...
...Because of this and because of the holiness of the day, no one will go down to the beach tomorrow.' From dawn,' all anti-aircraft positions on the boats and onshore will be manned...
...A powerful explosion tore through the Eilafs starboard side just above the waterline...
...The sinking of a destroyer by a missile changed the nature of naval warfare as dramatically as the introduction of naval guns...
...It took two minutes for the Styx missiles to complete their flight, two minutes in which the radio in the pit in Tel Aviv remained silent...
...The bow of the Eilat was projecting above the water in the classic pose of a sinking ship when he looked back...
...His arm brushed someone...
...One of the team leaders, an admiral who subsequently undertook a worldwide study of the impact of modern weapons on the battlefield, would say more than a decade later that the way the Israeli navy had analyzed the nature of the threat facing it and then taken the necessary steps to solve the problem "stands out as the one clear example [in the development of modern weapon systems] where everything was done right...
...the two missiles passed close by each other...
...To test its reaction, Barkai ordered the Miznak captain to fire several shells in the boat's direction, but not to hit...
...Neither the Egyptians nor the Syrians had ever attempted to use them, not even in the Six-Day War, when they had 24 missile boats between them...
...Pressed by the French government to take back their money—the boats, though still under construction, had already been paid for—the Israelis instead began the intricate plotting and preparations that became Operation Noah...
...Even as Micha had been preparing to fire his second missile, the Reshef s Israeli-developed search radar picked up three unidentified vessels close to the Syrian shore...
...Contemplating a sea-to-sea version of the Luz, it was determined that the missile be mounted on small boats, which would be relatively cheap to build...
...The Israeli side had a shorter sword but a sophisticated electronic defense system and well-thought-out battle tactics...
...A machine gun on the starboard side began an urgent clatter, but the anti-aircraft guns remained silent...
...Although still experimental, it was virtually the only hope the Israeli navy had of staying afloat in any confrontation...
...The father released his son, and the rabbi placed his hand on the young man's head to bless him...
...If the Syrian missile boats were out and the torpedo boat had alerted them before sinking, the Syrians were probably already scurrying back to port...
...Following a well-drilled mobilization procedure, military couriers with lists of names and addresses emerged from the vehicles and continued on page 52 scanned house numbers...
...said a familiar voice...
...The first missile, which had been programmed to stay 20 meters above the water for most of its flight to avoid being hit by waves should there be any, had dropped down as it approached the target and was now skimming toward its target just two meters above sea level...
...As they came ashore to celebrate, parties were starting all over the country...
...A shouted reply in Arabic was cut off as the officer switched wavelengths...
...Shoshan turned quickly...
...Israel had come through the Yom Kippur War bloodied and sobered...
...The country, as it happened, was Israel...
...Barkai winced and felt like swatting the captain of the Ga'ash on the head for firing...
...Zeira immediately telephoned the prime minister, the defense minister, and the chief of staff, and within moments the message was being passed on to the service chiefs...
...The cubicle was a "slave" to the radar, turning as it turned...
...His voice was level, but the men in the command room could detect its tautness...
...There was in fact only one country in the world working on an answer to the Soviet missile boats...
...Alert" surpassed "Battle stations" in its degree of urgency, permitting gunners to open fire without further orders...
...Standing on the gun position with a bullhorn, Shoshan ordered all unwounded men in the forward part of the ship to assemble on the bow...
...By 1958, they had developed the Luz, which flew 12 miles...
...The Eilafs bow had disappeared and there were no sounds to be heard except for the lapping of the waves...
...As the second missile was being prepared for launch, the image of the first missile on the radar screen merged with the target...
...The cry by the port lookout froze movement...
...Three of the four missiles fired had hit their target, and the fourth had missed only because there was virtually nothing left of the ship sticking out of the water to hit...
...The Mivtach was still not armed with missiles, but its guns were operational...
...Someone shouted "missile" and there was a hush...
...Shoshan1 s orders were to skirt the edge of Egyptian territorial waters 12 miles from Port Said...
...The West had known of the existence of the Soviet sea-to-sea missile but had no idea of its accuracy or power...
...lhe embargo imposed by trench president Charles deGaulle on arms sales to the Middle East after the Six-Day War was not applied to the boats being built at Cherbourg until January 1969, when only five were left to be completed...
...The Israelis had presumed that the Saars' Electronic Support Measures would give them ample warning of enemy missile boats, but the Saar commanders were totally surprised when fast-moving dots suddenly appeared on the radar screens heading in their direction...
...In the ambush operation three months earlier, he had initially kept his distance in case the Egyptian vessels were missile boats, which would find the relatively large silhouette of the Eilat an easy target...
...In the final hours before Yom Kippur, 1973, the pace of everyday life was slowing to a halt as Israel prepared for the most solemn day in the liturgical calendar—the Day of Atonement...
...On the decks, men could see balls of light arching up at them over the horizon from the southeast, off their starboard beam...
...As the sexton went down the list, he paused for an instant, then called out the name of his son...
...The Ga'ash fired first, launching a Gabriel at the maximum, 20-kilometer range...
...However, the young Syrian commander of the torpedo boat, Lieutenant Ali Yehiya, had already alerted his headquarters that he was being attacked by three enemy warships...
...It's not important to know exactly where...
...that it had come on Yom Kippur increased his anger...
...War would come before sundown this day, on both the Egyptian and Syrian fronts...
...May God give them courage and protect them...
...Darkness closed on the stricken ship lit by flames and rent by the cry of the wounded...
...Who's that...
...In doing so he was placing the missile in the path of the radar beam with which the binoculars were aligned...
...This is an army unit in Sinai...
...Shoshan swung his binoculars to starboard and saw a bright ball of light...
...According to intelligence, there were missile boats inside Port Said harbor...
...The Reshef, in the lead as the boats swung east, picked up a radar sighting 15 miles to the east...
...To Herut Tsemach, the battle of Latakia, small in scale and strategically marginal as it was, would rank in the history of naval warfare with Trafalgar or Midway...
...It leveled off at 20 meters...
...by Saturday, through worldwide headlines and news broadcasts, a fascinated world followed the search for the five small boats...
...it was New Year's Eve...
...Of the 200 aboard, 47 had been killed and more than a hundred wounded...
...Wisdom sometimes lay in recognizing when to disregard the rules, and this, Barkai sensed, was one of those times...
...The empty pier in Cherbourg was noted on Christmas morning by residents of the adjacent apartment buidlings but awakened no suspicions...
...As they did so, they also turned their boats toward the enemy and began maneuvering wildly in order to further confuse the enemy radar...
...Unlike the Gabriel, which could be guided directly onto target by an operator in the mother ship if enemy EW tried to confuse it, the Russian Styx was a fire-and-forget missile, whose dispatchers had no control once it was launched...
...Spewing chaff, the Ga'ash began vigorous maneuvers...
...Tsemach had devised a broad mix of EW elements in the hope that at least one of them would prove effective...
...Projectiles fired from a small boat by operators viewing their target only on a radar screen had destroyed a ship ten times the size of the attacking craft...
...As he turned over on his bruised back there was a loud explosion, and his body was pummeled by a powerful underwater blast that wrenched a cry of pain from him...
...Heading south, as it had been for the last minute, the Eilat was broadside to the missile and offering its maximum profile to the missile's radar...
...The center of activity now shifted to a rotating cubicle on the open bridge, the optical director...
...High to the west, the bright malevolent eye was once more searching them out...
...A young man rose when his name was called, but his father, weeping, held him and refused to let him go...
...The missile now flew down the the track of the radar beam locked on the target...
...With shipboard communications knocked out, Shoshan had to shout his orders from the bridge or dispatch them by runner...
...In missile firings, only the captain was permitted to push this final button...
...Apart from their military and technological impact, the Cherbourg boats were a reaffirmation of a beleaguered nation's most important attribute— national will...
...The Haifa naval base, however, had never seen more activity than on this day, as hundreds of men swarmed over the missile boats to prepare them for war...
...Hold on...
...The message passed on to the director of military intelligence from a source he could not ignore shattered the concept he had been gripping stubbornly for more than a week in the face of a rising tide of evidence...
...Watching the plotting of the radar reports, Barkai could follow a fast vessel four miles to the northwest moving across their course...
...A war has begun," said a rabbi in another synagogue...
...Shoshan, however, knew that Israel had as yet no effective measures to counter missiles...
...With no power for water hoses, the crewmen tried to snuff out the fires with extinguishers...
...Rudder hard left...
...According to intelligence reports, said Almog, war might break out tomorrow...
...He threw away his bullhorn and slid down the ship's side...
...The results were more decisive than naval engagements almost ever permit—all five Syrian vessels caught up in the battle destroyed, no Israeli vessel touched...
...The American naval team subjected the results of the Israelis' experience to intense scrutiny over the course of weeks, including computer analyses of the missile clashes...
...The first Gabriel fired on a target within range had struck home...
...This is number one...
...In this type of warfare, it was quite conceivable for two combatants to blow each other off the surface in their first exchange of missiles, leaving their second volleys, already airborne, to strike their respective oil slicks...
...A corner had been turned...
...There could be no more clinging to the crippled vessel...
...Barkai felt personally affronted by the news that the Egyptians and the Syrians had launched a surprise attack...
...He sent a pair to join the first two that had gone north, and ordered three pairs to the south to take up nighttime ambush positions rehearsed many times on the simulator...
...Shoshan looked up at the mast, tilted crazily against the night sky, and raised the bullhorn...
...The Reshef and Mivlack were closest to the Syrians and appeared to be the principal target...
...Cupping the top of his head with one hand, Tsemach spun himself around the room as if he were a top...
...It was questionable, on this first night of the war, whether planes could be made available on short notice, and time was now the critical factor...
...Before the boats would be released by the French authorities, they would surely discover the boats' real destination...
...Shoshan knew that since 1962, Egypt had been receiving vessels from the Soviet Union designated as missile boats...
...For orientation, they would swim away from the ship in the direction of the moon...
...The vessel, the Syrian minesweeper, was still out of Gabriel range as it ran for shore...
...The missile age at sea was beginning, and he had less than a minute to try to save his ship and the 200 who sailed upon her...
...on Christmas, 1969, in the face of a storm that had delayed departure for hours and was just beginning to recede, the five missile boats—manned by a crew expanded with the addition of men who had slipped into town unnoticed and been hidden aboard the boats for days—slipped out of Cherbourg harbor on a 3,200-mile escape route from the Atlantic to the Eastern Mediterranean...
...At each name a man in prayer shawl detached himself from the congregation and headed for the doorway...
...As cantors in synagogues around the country chanted Kol Nidre, the missile boat commanded by lieutenant Shmuel Peres eased out of Haifa harbor...
...Three Syrian missile boats that had just headed south from Latakia were notified of an enemy force approaching from the west...
...It was an attempt at electronic ventriloquism being played out by black boxes, and the men on the boats could for the moment be passive spectators only...
...The missile was distinguishable for a while by its white exhaust as it rode an electronic beam toward the invisible target...
...If the reservist he was seeking was at home, the courier handed him a call-up order to report to his unit's pre-fixed assembly point...
...Aboard the Reshef, Commander Micha watched as the range closed...
...As cantors in synagogues around the country chanted the Kol Nidre prayer, the missile boat commanded by Lieutenant Shmuel Peres eased out of Haifa harbor...
...They missed...
...The Syrian force had been armed with a powerful Soviet missile whose range was more than twice that of its adversary's, but the force was itself defenseless against missiles...
...Shoshan suddenly remembered a warning he had read in a seamen's journal to swim on one's back if there was a danger of underwater explosion, in order to avoid the blast's impact on the abdomen...
...In a Jerusalem synagogue the sexton mounted the podium to read names handed him by a courier...
...At the missile-selection console, the operator designated one of the boat's missiles for firing and pushed buttons to confirm that its electrical connections were functioning...
...This would be the first testing of the missile-boat system on which the navy had expended its energies and hopes for the past decade...
...For the same reason, he ordered the Eilat this day—October 20, 1967—to turn away from Port Said while still a good mile and a half from Egyptian waters...
...The glow turned orange-yellow, and from a roiling of smoke on the horizon a dark object hurtled into the sky...
...But the navies of the world had taken note...
...All electricity was out...
...He ordered the severely wounded to be immediately lowered onto rafts secured alongside, so that the rest of the crew could go over the side quickly when the abandon-ship order was given...
...The ship appeared to be settling at the stern, and the list had become more pronounced...
...From the same direction that the previous missile had come two minutes before, a bright light was once more arcing into the sky...
...Although the Syrian fleet was weaker than the Egyptian, it posed the more immediate danger...
...Over his bullhorn, Shoshan called on the crew to stop working for a moment...
...He saw it swerve slightly and knew instantly that he was looking at his nightmare...
...Doubts about the unknown vessel's identity ended when it responded to the 40mm rounds with several desultory bursts of machine-gun fire...
...The horizon abruptly erupted in jagged light, and across the water came the roll of a violent explosion...
...His repeated calls were met by silence, and the hope that had gripped him began to fade...
...The decisive combat factor, however, would not be the number of boats—or the number of missiles—but the fact that the Russian Styx missile had two and a half times the range of Israel's Gabriel missile, and whether Israel's defensive electronic warfare system could overcome that handicap...
...The Eilat disaster was the worst the navy had ever experienced...
...Captains, to your communications stations...
...on Yom Kippur, two missile boats were dispatched northward to serve as a blocking force in case the Syrians tried to come south...
...At 10:00 a.m...
...Jerrycans and mattresses tumbled into the water as crewmen released them from the railing and followed them over the side, a cascade of dark figures wearing life vests throwing up white splashes as they hit the water...
...His ship and the 200 he had commanded were gone...
...The Eilat was now listing fifteen degrees to port...
...The boats would take position off the northern Lebanese coast, out of sight of land, and await further orders...
...A projector on one of the missile boats briefly illuminated the target and showed it to be a Syrian torpedo boat...
...Although there was a Russian spy ship in the area, Barkai spoke in the clear in order not to waste precious time in the coding and decoding of messages...
...Suddenly a deep, calm voice issued from the radio...
...Night shrouded the movement of the Arab armies as they made their final preparations for war, but the intentions of the Arab leaders would be revealed to Israel before dawn...
...It was an officer who had joined the voyage on a training mission...
...At this critical juncture—where he was in range of Syrian missiles but could not reach the Syrians with his shorter-range missiles—Barkai decided to abandon major elements of the plan the Israeli fleet had been preparing so arduously for years...
...As it neared the target, the missile signaled that its own radar had picked the target up...
...In daring to conceive and undertake something so unorthodox and risky, the small band of men associated with the missile boats proved that, a generation after independence, despite the apparent passing of the heroic age, Israel's life force had not ebbed...
...In the end, the Israelis would have to escape in the night with the five gunboats...
...We are sinking and requesting assistance...
...Yet it was the Syrians and the Egyptians who had opened the war, with a surprise attack, hardly eight hours before...
...Most of the sailors were just a year or two out of high school...
...He had considered requesting air assistance, because if the enemy boats were kept busy dodging planes, the Israeli vessels would stand a better chance of crossing the deadly 25-kilometer missile belt in which they would be in range of the Syrian's Styx but unable to reach the enemy with Israel's Gabriel...
...The two boats raced directly at each other...
...The radio's range was only 25 kilometers, and there could be no certainty that Israeli listening posts ashore would pick it up...
...Then the exhaust became too small to see, and for a moment all was silent...
...The cry was instantly repeated into the public-address system by the watch officer...
...The normally reserved Tsemach in the pit let out an Indian whoop as cheering filled the war room...
...The Egyptian navy, he felt, was unlikely to let the humiliation pass without attempting revenge...
...By midnight, the Israelis had also dispatched the two fleeing Komars and the minesweeper...
...Syrian navy headquarters ordered a minesweeper that had also been on picket duty to head for the cover of Syria's coastal guns at full speed...
...The senior officers and ijpncoms (noncommissioned officers) in the engine room who led the damage-control operation in training exercises had all been killed, and it was necessary to improvise new teams in the darkness...
...The sinking of the Eilat was etched in the mind of every man aboard the missile boats...
...Supporting each other, the pair moved in awkward tandem toward the sound...
...They conceived the idea of having the boats bought by a foreign shipping company...
...With battle about to be joined, however, Barkai decided to go it alone...
...One of the boats was the Mivtach, the first Saar to be launched—six years before—at Cherbourg, and the other was the Reshef, first of a new class of boats launched in Israel just seven months before...
...The Egyptians and the Syrians had begun their attack four hours earlier than expected...
...The Boats of October How a Missile Battle with Syria Changed Naval Warfare ABRAHAM RABtNOViCH The bridge of the destroyer Eilai was crowded, as it always was toward sunset, when the watch is doubled against the surprises lurking in a world half drained of light yet unprotected by darkness...
...Engines full ahead," said Shoshan, keeping his binoculars fixed on the approaching missile...
...Despite the shutdown of newspapers, radio, and television on this day, it would soon become apparent to Israelis all over the country that something unusual was happening...
...At the Haifa naval base, Commander Michael Barkai was periodically dispatching missile boats as the hours passed...
...Ahead of them still lay the ultimate test—the performance of their homegrown concept in combat against the technology of a superpower...
...The Russian Styx missile was still descending when, at its maximum range, 20,000 meters, the first Israeli Gabriel lifted off the Ga'ash's deck...
...Help would shortly be on its way, he said...
...Stores and offices closed by 1:00 p.m., radio stations went off at two, buses stopped running and the streets emptied as the population ate its pre-fast meal and prepared for synagogue...
...The government had decided on large-scale mobilization, and army vehicles began making their way into residential neighborhoods...
...As they drew closer, they could hear a chorus singing "We Shall Overcome" in Hebrew...
...The Syrian naval command, as reports filtering to the West would later reveal, was astonished at what was happening...
...In the womblike embrace of the dark and empty sea, the instincts of command that had sustained him superbly in the critical hours since the first missile was sighted began to crumble before a primal sense of guilt over the fate of the men and the ship he had been entrusted with...
...It was trailing smoke and flying at less than the speed of sound...
...For the first time in history, a ship had been hit by a missile, and the effect was devastating...
...The rafts with the wounded were cut loose...
...They would stay in groups led by officers and noncoms...
...Wounded were to be assembled in one place, he told them, and officers were to drill the men in procedures for abandoning ship...
...The first step was to acquire a suitable torpedo boat from abroad to serve as a missile platform...
...Many of the rafts and lifeboats had been destroyed...
...A button on one of the consoles lit up, indicating that the missile was now homing in on the target with its own radar, freeing the Reshef's fire-control radar to start a second missile on its way even while the first was still in the air...
...Admiral Binyamin Telem could report that his missile boats were armed and his men at their stations...
...It was clear they could not stay afloat much longer...
...It was not rising like a flare but wafting lazily toward them and trailing smoke...
...In addition, the Reshef s deceptor and jammer, devised by Herut Tsemach, automatically kicked into operation— analyzing the missile radar's characteristics and sending back signals to it on the same wavelength, in the hope of blotting out the Israeli boat's image and creating imaginary images in the distance for the Styx to turn on...
...Only an hour and a half had passed since first contact had been made with the Syrian torpedo boat, now also sunk...
...As Shoshan and the officer approached, someone called out, "Who's there...
...Silence gripped the naval command pit in Tel Aviv the moment Barkai's report of incoming missiles was heard on the radio net...
...The ship was beginning to list...
...Shoshan remained on deck to make sure that no one alive was still aboard...
...If they don't come out, I mean to sail into the harbor and destroy them with cannon...
...The moon had risen, and in its light Shoshan could make out the soot-blackened faces below him...
...Does anyone hear us...
...The Egyptians were again firing in pairs...
...Inform headquarters that a missile has been fired at us...
...The United States navy sent to Israel a large team, including top EW experts, shortly after the war, to learn how a small navy had managed on its own to so overwhelmingly defeat a Soviet weapon system that the U.S...
...Does anyone hear us...
...The Osa's second Styx exploded harmlessly in the water before the first Gabriel had completed its trajectory.' The Israeli bridge officer saw the Gabriels erupt from their containers on the Ga'ash and head across the dark sea...
...Atop the cubicle was the fire-control radar with its large dish antenna...
...In this brief period, the nature of naval warfare had been changed...
...As soon as the aimer reported the missile in the center of his binoculars, the weapons officer in the CIC below ordered, "Over to beamride...
...Sailors raced to their stations as the raucous klaxon urged them on...
...It was almost certain to be a Syrian warship, but Barkai thought it odd that such a small vessel would be alone so far from port...
...When the Reshef was 19 kilometers from the target, he addressed the weapons officer: "Prepare missile for firing...
...Deploying the boats in battle formation, Barkai swung his five-boat force wide to the west, toward Cyprus, in order to avoid Syrian coastal radar...
...The bridge simultaneously reported a flaring of light on the horizon...
...The wait was excruciating...
...he was 13.5 miles out and intending to Shoshan swung his binoculars to starboard and knew he was looking at his nightmare—the missile age at sea was beginning...
...The Israelis had perceived a threat, devised a solution, and moved to implement it, letting nothing stand in their way...
...What happened to the Eilat was more than a tragedy for those involved or even than the loss of the major warship of the small Israeli fleet...
...Micha ordered the weapons officer to fire on the Syrian torpedo boat with the Reshef s guns...
...The adjacent engine room was destroyed, the ship powerless...
...The weapons officer locked the fire-control radar onto the minesweeper...
...Several gun positions had been knocked out...
...The shout came from the water...
...Help is on the way...
...Instead of reveling in this ambush, Shoshan was troubled...
...Ever since Israel's spectacular victory in the Six-Day War four months before, the navy had been patrolling Sinai's coasts against infiltration and showing the flag up to the limits of Egyptian territorial waters...
...If the enemy's out there he's between us and the coast," Barkai told his commanders...
...The approach to Latakia would be made from the north, so as to come from the direction least expected...
...Micha descended from his high stool to check the radar in one corner of the room, the plotting table in the center, and the three consoles against the opposite wall...
...To all units in Sinai, this is the navy ship Eilat requesting assistance...
...Without power, nothing could be done to arrest the drift...
...Through his binoculars, Captain Yitzchak Shoshan could make out the tops of cranes in Port Said silhouetted against the horizon...
...The officer in charge of depth charges was leading a singalong to keep up morale among the young sailors...
...In a few hours the Eilat would turn toward home...
...Instantly the alarm ceased throughout the boat, and the top of one of the white Fiberglas missile canisters on deck swung open, revealing the pointed snout of the Gabriel...
...His place is not with us today," said the rabbi gently...
...Almost all the men were fasting...
...As the Syrian missiles appeared on the horizon, the EW decoys began tugging at the Styx's guidance systems...
...None of the gunners had ever seen a missile before, and some believed the object approaching them to be a disabled plane...
...iji...
Vol. 13 • September 1988 • No. 6
