Very close fought thing. I’ve heard Egyptian Officers saying that they were preparing a trap for the Israelis. I don’t believe it. It would have made more sense to spring a trap in the Sinai. Spring a trap in Egypt? With Cairo so close? Nope.
One of the less known stories from that war is that it produced some real changes in the US Army. General Donn Starry is one of America’s least known heroes.
The Egyptian officers of that time had their asses paddled. The only thing that stopped the annihilation of that trapped Egyptian army was Sadat’s capitulation to a (delayed and overdue) ceasefire agreement. The Syrians had harangued him into straying from his battle plan (which he’d kept to himself) and sending the Egyptian assault out beyond the SAM umbrella to take pressure off the collapsing Syrian invasion.
In the course of the war, Syria sent nearly 1400 tanks against Israel, and left with a bit more than 300, nearly 1000 lost tanks.
Sadat’s original strategy was to neutralize the Bar-Lev line and cross into the Sinai over multiple bridgeheads simultaneously. A German company had sold Egypt high pressure firefighting equipment designed for high-rise, despite the fact that in 1973 pretty much the only high-rise was pharaonic in age; the water was shot all the way across the Canal to obscure the vision of, then bury alive, the Israeli bunkers. The SAM units were left west of the Canal, and the Egyptian advance was stopped by plan about ten miles into the Sinai (the practical limit of the SAMs). Unprecedented numbers of recoilless antitank weapons went east across the Canal.
For an Arab army, the Sinai crossing was a masterpiece of planning, training, and execution. But when Sadat strayed from his original plan, the much better Israel armed forces could turn the tables. When attacking the dug-in Egyptian invasion force, the IDF had a hard time, not least because the SAM umbrella had an impact on IAF’s ability to provide ground support.
The dogfights went mostly the IAF’s way — Soviet pilots in Egypt to support and train routinely badmouthed the Egyptian pilots; when they went up themselves and got their asses handed to them by the IAF, the Egyptians weren’t shy about making jokes at their expense.
AirLand doctrine:
http://armyintelligence.tpub.com/Is70007/Is700070008.htm
http://www.cna.org/sites/default/files/research/5500046300.pdf