Famous Tank Battles

On 17 October, the Israeli crossing at Deversoir was still young enough to die. Men had crossed the Suez Canal in boats, bridges were beginning to turn a foothold into something heavier, and the corridor east of the canal had been forced open at terrible cost. But the operation was not yet secure. It looked, from the Egyptian side, like a dangerous wound that might still be closed if pressure came quickly enough. That day became a test of whether Israel’s countercrossing would survive its most vulnerable moment. Egyptian armor moved to cut the penetration and crush the bridgehead, while Israeli tank crews, shaken by the war’s first days but learning fast, prepared to fight one of the sharpest defensive armored battles of the campaign.

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The Egyptian command now faced a nightmare reversal of its own opening success. On 6 October, Egypt had crossed from west to east, using surprise, engineers, infantry, anti-tank weapons, and missiles to make the canal a doorway into Sinai. Now Israeli troops were west of the canal, threatening the rear of the Egyptian armies and the air-defense network that had protected the bridgeheads. If Israel could reinforce the crossing, the whole canal front might begin to bend backward. But if Egyptian forces could cut the narrow Israeli corridor east of the canal, isolate the west-bank lodgment, and destroy the bridgehead before it widened, the Israeli counterstroke could be reduced to a costly gamble. The Egyptian answer was to strike with armor while the crossing was still fragile.

The most immediate battlefield was still the seam around Deversoir and the road network feeding the crossing. To follow it without a map, imagine the canal running behind the Israeli corridor to the west, while Egyptian bridgeheads still sat to the north and south on the east bank. Israeli forces had pushed through the gap between the Egyptian Second and Third Armies, but that gap was not a broad safe highway. It was a contested passage, crowded with tanks, engineers, bridge convoys, infantry, wreckage, and exhausted units trying to keep one another from being cut apart. The Egyptians did not have to recapture all Sinai to win the day. They had to sever that passage, and with it the lifeline between the Israeli army in Sinai and the forces now crossing into Egypt.

One Egyptian armored formation, moving from the southern sector, became central to the drama. It was ordered northward along the canal-side route to strike toward the Israeli penetration near Deversoir. The movement made sense in broad terms. If Egyptian tanks could drive up the east bank and hit the crossing area from the south, they might roll into the Israeli flank, disrupt the bridges, and trap the forces already committed. But the order also carried danger. Egyptian armor had suffered badly on 14 October when it moved beyond the conditions that had protected it near the canal. Now, again, tanks were being asked to move through ground where Israeli crews could prepare ambushes, use long lines of fire, and make the desert punish a column that could not easily see the trap forming ahead.

The Israeli commanders waiting for that counterattack were no longer fighting like the stunned men of the war’s first days. They had learned, harshly, what happened when tanks rushed into prepared Egyptian anti-tank defenses near the canal. Now they had a different kind of opportunity. Instead of attacking head-on into the strongest part of the Egyptian bridgeheads, they could position themselves to receive Egyptian armor moving along predictable approaches. A tank ambush is not passive. It requires reconnaissance, discipline, fire control, and the nerve to let the enemy come far enough that the first volleys matter. Israeli crews used the ground, the road network, and their gunnery skills to turn the Egyptian movement into a killing ground. The battlefield that had punished Israeli haste was now ready to punish Egyptian urgency.

For the Egyptian tank crews advancing that day, the danger was not visible in full. They were moving under orders shaped by a real operational crisis. Their army’s great achievement at the canal was being threatened from behind, and speed seemed necessary. Yet armor on the move is vulnerable when it is channeled along routes the enemy expects. Dust, limited visibility, radio traffic, and the pressure to keep formation can make it hard to detect enemy tanks waiting from hull-down positions or concealed angles. A column has momentum, but momentum can become imprisonment when the lead vehicles are hit, the route narrows, and following crews have only seconds to understand whether to push forward, stop, turn, or fire at shapes half-hidden in smoke and sand.

The Israeli fire, when it came, was devastating. Tanks engaged from prepared positions, using the advantage of waiting against an enemy forced to move into view. Artillery and other supporting fires added to the confusion. Egyptian vehicles were hit in succession, and the column’s ability to maneuver and coordinate began to collapse. This was not the same kind of battle as the trench fighting around the Chinese Farm, though it belonged to the same struggle for the corridor. It was closer to the classic desert armored fight, but now fought after both sides had been bloodied and educated. The Israelis had rediscovered the power of armor used with patience and positioning. The Egyptians were discovering again how costly it could be to send tanks outside a fully integrated protective system.

The destruction of the Egyptian counterattack did not mean Egyptian soldiers lacked courage or that their commanders had imagined a foolish danger out of nowhere. The danger to Egypt was real. Israeli forces west of the canal threatened missile sites, artillery, supply roads, and eventually the lines feeding the Egyptian Third Army. A counterattack was necessary in some form. The tragedy lay in the conditions under which it was attempted. Tanks asked to move quickly against a prepared opponent, without the full protection of infantry, artillery coordination, and air-defense cover at the decisive point, can become exposed strength. They carry heavy guns and thick armor, but they still depend on timing, intelligence, terrain, and combined arms support. On 17 October, the Israeli defenders had more of those factors working in their favor.

The day also showed the importance of command adaptation. Earlier in the war, Israeli armored attacks had often been too hurried, too confident, and too unsupported against the Egyptian bridgeheads. By 17 October, Israeli commanders were beginning to use their armor in ways that matched the actual battlefield rather than the remembered one. They chose positions more carefully. They looked for enemy movement instead of charging blindly toward the canal. They understood that the crossing survived not by dramatic gestures alone, but by preventing Egyptian armor from breaking the corridor at the exact moment the bridges were becoming usable. This was armored warfare as a defensive art: not retreat, not passivity, but the deliberate shaping of enemy movement into fields of fire.

At the same time, fighting continued around the corridor and west-bank lodgment. The Egyptian counterattacks were not a single isolated armored charge that ended all danger once defeated. The Israeli crossing remained under pressure, and the roads feeding it remained crowded and vulnerable. Engineers still had to keep bridging systems functioning. Supplies had to cross. Wounded men had to be evacuated. Tanks that had destroyed Egyptian armor still needed ammunition, fuel, maintenance, and orders for the next phase. A successful ambush could save the bridgehead for the hour, but the hour had to be turned into a day, and the day into a sustained operation. Mechanized war is relentless in that way. It rarely rewards one success by letting everyone rest.

For Egyptian headquarters, 17 October deepened the crisis of understanding. The Israeli penetration was no longer rumor or local disturbance. It was becoming a serious operational breach, and efforts to cut it were failing at high cost. The Egyptian armies east of the canal still held their bridgeheads and were still powerful, but their rear was increasingly threatened. The same canal that had made Egypt’s opening victory possible now complicated Egypt’s response, because large forces and supplies had to be controlled across a divided battlefield. The command problem had changed from holding ground in Sinai to containing an enemy who had appeared behind the canal line. That kind of reversal can be psychologically corrosive. It forces commanders to defend in directions their plan had not emphasized.

For Israel, the successful defense of the crossing was a grim kind of vindication. It did not erase the losses of the first days, the anguish of the Bar-Lev strongpoints, or the brutal cost of the Chinese Farm corridor. But it proved that the countercrossing could live. The bridgehead had survived the moment when it was most vulnerable to being strangled. Israeli armor, used with discipline and placed well, had defeated Egyptian armor trying to cut the lifeline. That mattered not only tactically but emotionally. Armies need more than plans. They need proof that the plan is working. On 17 October, amid smoke and wreckage, Israeli commanders and crews could see that Egypt had not been able to slam the door shut.

The importance of 17 October in the history of armored warfare lies in its contrast with the war’s opening. In the first days, Egyptian infantry and missiles showed how tanks could be stopped when they advanced into a prepared defensive system without the right support. On 17 October, Israeli tanks showed the other side of the same lesson: armor remained lethal when it fought from favorable ground, with clear purpose, proper timing, and disciplined fire. The battle was not evidence that tanks had become obsolete, nor that anti-tank weapons had solved every problem. It was evidence that armored warfare had become more demanding. Success belonged to the side that understood when to move, when to wait, and how to connect machines to terrain, intelligence, and command.

By the end of the day, the Israeli countercrossing had passed through another gate. The Egyptians had tried to cut the penetration before it could widen, and the attempt had been beaten back with serious armored losses. The corridor remained dangerous, but it remained open enough. The bridges and ferries could continue feeding the west bank. Israeli forces across the canal could grow from a vulnerable presence into an expanding threat. The war was now moving toward a new phase, one that would carry Israeli armor into Egypt proper and turn the rear of the Egyptian armies into contested ground. On 17 October, the bridgehead survived because Israeli tanks fought not as symbols of old confidence, but as instruments of hard-earned adaptation. The canal crossing was no longer a gamble waiting to be crushed. It was becoming a campaign.