Operation Nickel Grass was essential; it shortened the war, for certain, and led to as favorable an outcome as could be expected. For the US, it showed the value of the C5; the US had a screwy flight path (thanks to the Europeans; Portugal alone helped, by giving permission to use that air field in the Azores) that was also much longer, yet out-airlifted the Soviets by a large measure (and that doesn’t even include the older Hercules transports, which were also active on a much smaller scale). The airlift was also closely coordinated with the Israelis, who would keep the US informed of what they were critically low on, and within 12 or so hours the parts would arrive. At the end of the operation, to test capability and to show off a little, a ready-to-roll M60 tank was delivered aboard a C5.
The1973 war is often held up as an Israeli defeat, but it was merely a very costly victory — Syria lost nearly 1000 tanks, which is mind-boggling, the USSR lost Egypt, and the rest of the Arab states saw Egypt and Israel (and much later, Jordan and Israel) sign a peace treaty, undermining and destroying the effectiveness of the Khartoum Declaration of 1967.
The Arabs did carry out a surprise attack, but it shouldn’t have been so surprising, considering they’d been carrying out maneuvers and had been staging the attack for weeks leading up to it. The Jordanians actually managed to inform the Israelis of the exact date of the attack, via an Israeli asset in London (a Jewish doctor that King Hussein relied on) — but the Labor Party-era morons running Israel’s intel had convinced themselves and their politicians that the Arabs feared yet another loss (the 1967 Six Day War is just the best known nowadays, the Israelis have been beating the asses of Arab forces since before the founding of the modern state), were incapable of concerted action, and didn’t have military parity.
The initial attack resulted in the destruction of the Bar-Lev line and the deaths of everyone stationed there, along the east side of the Canal (sitting duck fortifications have been a stupid idea for a long while before that one was built) and a massive bridgehead established within hours by the Egyptian army using multiple pontoon bridges, and protected by a SAM umbrella, using launchers located west of the canal. Sadat’s objectives were limited, which is why Egypt succeeded and one reason why Syria failed. Sadat intended that the bridgehead not exceed the range of the SAM umbrella, and that his army would dig in, armed with an abnormally high number of anti-tank weapons, and be too difficult and costly to dislodge, forcing Israel into a negotiated cease-fire, and eventual recovery of the entire Sinai. Also in his overall plan was the ejection of the USSR and a turning to the US as a big-power ally.
Syria used SAMs to negate Israel’s tactics of using close air support to knock out armor. In the early hours of the war, that was costly for the IAF, which knew it had to continue to use thost tactics until the reservists arrived on the ground, because the skeletal Israel tank forces available on the frontier wouldn’t be able to hold their ground, and Syrian tanks could be blanketing the most densely populated part of Israel within 24 hours as a worst-case scenario.
Syria also used Soviet-style massed attacks of armor, and of course both Syria and Egypt had been goaded into the war, and supplied with up-to-date anti-tank and SAM missile systems by the Soviet Union. The accounts of the Israeli tank forces’ first day or two of the 1973 war are awe-inspiring and poignant. There are a few different documentaries on YouTube (avast ye swabs!), and of course a number of books. Israel concentrated its available forces and early arriving reservists to the Syrian front, and used the mobility of its limited armored forces in the Sinai to prevent an Egyptian advance. They didn’t realize that the expected advance wasn’t planned.
Another thing that beat the Arabs was that Sadat didn’t share his objectives with his ally Syria, or anyone else (Kissinger figured it out, and had his suspicions confirmed during his famous shuttle diplomacy during the struggle), leading Assad to seriously over-reach on the one hand, and on the other not make sure his armor was pushing to its limits. Syria’s tank forces also had better night vision equipment than that of the Israelis. Israeli tank commanders however had the habit of riding halfway out of the hatch, so they could better surveil and direct fire. Syrian tanks by and large went all buttoned down.
Do I remember that the Egyptians used fire boats to wash away the Israeli fortifications in the Sinai?
I also seem to remember that Ariel Sharon was instrumental in saving them on the northern front.
I often muse at how funny it is that Nixon, that curmudgeonly anti-semite, probably did more to help Israel than any other president. He paid a price for this, as it could be argued that the recession triggered by the Arab oil embargo is what helped elect that hideous 1974 congress.