5 - 11 June 1997 Issue No.328 Supplement	Current issue Site map
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'A lesson we should have learned'

If only because he was the commander-in-chief of the air force and air defence, the testimony of Air Vice Marshal Abdel-Hamid El-Dighidi carries particular weight. His task was to repel the first air raid launched by the enemy, and strike back hard. This plan, if implemented, would have made a dramatic difference in the outcome of the war. Everything was ready, information about enemy plans and strategies was pouring in, yet El-Dighidi was taken by surprise when Israeli aircraft struck. Within 80 minutes, all his aircraft and defences were destroyed. No counterattack was even attempted. The disaster was over before it had begun.

Air Vice Marshal El-Dighidi was twice tried and acquitted by a military court. He withdrew from public life in shame, and died without leaving a written record of what had really happened in detail. He spoke of the war, however, in an interview conducted by Mohammed Uda and Abdallah Imam and published in the weekly Al-Ahali on 29 June 1983.

El-Dighidi began by quoting the words of Moshe Dayan, who had said that Israel's security 'is contingent on the destruction of Egypt's power, which begins and ends in the destruction of its air force'. The 1956 war, said El-Dighidi, "was the first lesson we should have learned fully and on which we should have built our strategy, but in 1967 we were surprised by much the same cause as in 1956. The Egyptian air force could have struck a severe blow to the Israeli airports and thus frustrated the entire Israeli strategy of surprise and intensive air strikes."

The critical question, of course, is why this occurred. El-Dighidi said that, in matters of war, the prime responsibility resides with the military command, mandated by the political leadership to take charge of the battle. The military command thinks for the army; without it, the army cannot win a war regardless of its strength in terms of men or equipment.

"The tragedy of the 1967 war," he said, "is that it began and was lost within a few hours, without leadership or command."

"Field Marshal Abdel-Hakim Amer, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and chief of staff, was not at his post on the morning of 5 June when Israel struck. Nor were any of the high-ranking officers. They were all with Amer, in his plane, flying over Sinai and reviewing the positions of the troops. Those officers who were not on the plane were waiting on the ground, ready to give Amer an official military salute!

"The tragedy is that this was taking place despite the messages that had been sent to the commanders, the field armies and military intelligence, warning them to be on alert. A message had been delivered at 10.30pm on 4 June, sent by the commander of the intelligence service in El-Arish. It read: 'The enemy has occupied the line joining El-Fateh, Birein, Rafah and Sheikh Zayed, and is expected to launch an attack on the land forces in Sinai at dawn on 5 June.'

"This message notwithstanding, all the commanders had abandoned their posts to wait for Amer. Some, positioned at a long distance from the meeting-place, had abandoned their posts since the previous night in order to be on time for the general's arrival in Beir Tamada early on 5 June. Lieutenant-General Salah Mohsen was also to blame.

"I received orders from Nasser to be on alert on 14 May 1967 and for all the military forces to be fully mobilised on 17 May. On 30 May, the political and military leaders held a meeting to review different scenarios, and to assess the consequences of finalising military mobilisation and preventing Israeli ships from entering the Gulf of Aqaba."

According to military documents, President Nasser had estimated that there was a 90 per cent chance that Israel would be the first to strike. On 2 June, Nasser held a meeting attended by all the officers in the general military command. He assured them that, 'since a war cabinet has been formed under Moshe Dayan, there is a 100 per cent chance that Israel will strike in two or three days, on 4 or 5 June.'

"Israel, Nasser said, would strike at both our air force and our air defence forces to incapacitate the air force, and eliminate it from the battlefield. He demanded that measures be taken to minimise predicted losses and enable Egypt to strike back forcefully, dealing Israel a decisive blow."

On 5 June, Egyptian radar screens showed a large number of aircraft on the Jordanian front, on their way to Egypt. The information was immediately conveyed to Nasser and the general military command in Egypt. The Agloun message, as it is known, could have been the turning point in the war. It is incredible that all this information went for nought. El-Dighidi blamed the military commanders who had attended the meeting with Nasser, but claimed never to have received either the Agloun message or Nasser's instructions. Lieutenant-General Mortagi, the commander of the Egyptian front, Lieutenant-General Abdel-Moneim Riyad, the commander of the Jordanian front, and the commander of the Syrian front were never informed.

El-Dighidi ascribed the cause of the defeat to the inefficiency and ignorance of high-ranking military personnel who were not qualified to manage a battle of such magnitude. But he excluded from this judgement Abdel-Moneim Riyad (who had been assigned to the joint defence command, possibly to deny him the post he deserved), Field Marshal Ahmed Ismail and Abdel-Ghani El-Gamasi, whose superiors were in control at the time.

El-Dighidi, however, claimed full responsibility for the battle from the first sortie to the last, and the lack of essential equipment, mainly low-flying radar detection systems. He claimed that the Egyptian air defence shot down 73 Israeli planes (one third of the total number of Israeli planes which took part in the war).

"Evidently, if we had received some sign that the war had begun, many more planes would have been shot down. I had 300 planes on the ground waiting on first-, second- and third-degree alert, and 150 planes were ready with their pilots strapped into the seats, ready for the signal. They could have been in the air in three minutes, and the rest of the planes would have followed ten minutes later.

"The intelligence service in my command station, however, were spying on me, not for me. Their information was often contradictory because they were fighting for power. I discharged the entire intelligence service only days before the war broke out. I therefore depended on my own men, but one of them betrayed me and did not perform his patrol sortie at the designated time. He had left the command office and gone home. Hours later, the air strike took place.

"But one man's betrayal does not tarnish the rest who performed their duties, nor should we forget the heroes of the air force. I believe there is some relation between the failure to execute the patrol and the advent of the Israeli planes. They had been assured that the skies were clear of Egyptian aircraft. To say the least, it was a betrayal."

El-Dighidi denied information revealed after the war: that all Egyptian aircraft had been destroyed by the very first Israel air strike. He claimed that the rumour had reached headquarters, and this explains the reaction of the military command, which, he said never commissioned the air force to engage in any operation, because they seemed to have believed the rumour.

"The Egyptian forces did not withdraw, but fell into a state of confusion which rendered it impossible to provide them with any air protection. The men moved in all directions in Sinai, without any order or command. Each was running for his life. No air protection was requested from the commander-in-chief of the armed forces nor from the commander of the front.

"The planes were ready but I had no authority to impose air protection. The commander-in-chief never issued any orders to engage the 212 planes under his command which had been waiting for his orders. The higher ranks were the first to leave Sinai. The decision to withdraw was communicated to us by Field Marshal Amer, and whether it had come from Nasser or not, nobody knows. As commander-in-chief and chief of staff, however, Amer had the right to object to or postpone the orders of the president until a plan for withdrawal was formulated to guarantee a more organised withdrawal and to minimise losses.

"Israel had full information about our forces. Leadership and command no longer existed as soon as the borders were crossed, so within two or three hours, the enemy had penetrated into Egyptian territory to a distance which would normally take a day or two. The military commanders who had abandoned their posts were not able to return immediately and so completely lost control of their forces and their command of operations."

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