The Air Battle Of Ophir is a classic dogfighting tale. The surprise attack. The insurmountable odds. The outrageous kill ratio. It has the lot.
Curiously it has somehow avoided the same kind of detailed scrutiny that similar tales from other wars have attracted. In this video I tell the story of the battle with as much cross referencing of sources as I can. I then analyse the claims and counter-claims about what happened 50 years ago in the early afternoon of the 6th of October 1973.
I hope you enjoy this one. Given the lack of accurate accounts of the action it took me a long while to get to a view on the action that I believed in.
Sources/ Notes:
Amir Nachumi is a funny and very engaging speaker. He has been interviewed on numerous occasions about the battle. There are variations on the story each time – to be expected with the passing of history. What is notable is that he has little recollection of most of the actions in the battle. See what you make of these:
‘How The War Fell on Me’ (2013) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC-ntTHcmM8
Eagle 2016 interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeTX9t_AY7Q
Arab MiGs Volume 5 was a great source of Egyptian testimony on the battle: https://www.harpia-publishing.com/node/25
IDF account of the battle: https://www.iaf.org.il/9559-55861-en/IAF.aspx
The maps in the battle were based on my assessment of the speed of the aircraft, testimony from pilot interviews and by looking at the few pictures of the action. I am not an expert on the local geography of Sharm El Sheik and there are few pictures of it from the time. What I would say is that the other popular video on this story has the action happening far too close to the runway. Lovely animations though.
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The F4 phantom was all mighty in 73 war were any F4s ready with nukes we will never know 😂
Possible and has happened low level high speed panic arabs fly their a/c into ground
Now THAT is how you present an honest and balanced historical account. Bravo!
In fairness to the Egyptians, it may have been wiser to NOT have launched a second attack wave against Ofira Airbase – the Israelis were now alert and more capable of inflicting damage on the Egyptian air strike. If the Israeli claim of 7 Egyptian fighters downed in the first seconds of the war is true, then the Egyptians would likely have faced a prospect of another 7 or more aircraft losses, in the face of an alerted Israeli defense. Of the original 28 attacking aircraft, 50% or more may have ended up as losses, by sundown on 6 October 1973. So, better that the EAF did not follow up their attack with a 2nd wave.
Just realised that my recollection of events from the time (I was a teenager) are wrong. I hadn’t realised that the Vietnamese War was still going on during this short conflict
The Phantom is still the worlds biggest distributor of Mig parts.
God was with the Israelites, you shouldn't doubt.I understand why you do. God was with them, as he has been for some time .He will remain with them in the coming days. Palestine has made a huge mistake. oh and what the hell are you talking about 1 in 15000 getting struck by lighting, thats the dumbest thing ive heard this week. there are 370,000,000 in the US. 3000 a year get struck by lightening. thats 1 in120000. that 3000 number is for all strikeswhere a person is affected. actual direct strikes are more like 300 to 500, thats 1 in 740,000 on the high side.anyway,i really like your short docs,im sure the 1 in 15000 was just an error and you place alot of importance on hard evidence that can be verified,sometimes though your not going to get it,that doesnt mean it didnt happen
Five minutes in: beautifully written script – evocative without sounding like it’s overwritten (some larger channels lay it on way too thick and use far too many cliches for my taste, but not here) and the sound is excellent. It was always good in other videos bar one small issue. Fixed. Really enjoying listening and watching as I walk the dog.
The wing loading of a MIG17 does allow for missile defeating bat turns. The Aim 9 success rate seems excessive.
The israelis tended to rely on the cannons of the Mirage III/Nesher and F-4E when engaging, the AIM-9D and Shafir II would have been used to distract or cause pilots to lose energy avoiding them.
This is great. 'A-toll', though?
The timing of this video is amazing. It was released right when Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, in a similar fashion to the Yom Kippur War.
20:28 That's assuming the Sidewinder did not have an above 70% hit chance which seems normal for all sidewinders but the B… Could it be the Vietnam numbers are hit chance from acual cases not the if you did everything right and the enemy did not evade/counter then it will be above 70%?
I mean it makes no sense that in a target rich encoment when you had ever advagtage you shot down no enemies and won the war… Like if it's a slim chance of isreali account being correct how are we to believe any German ace during WW2 could get huderds more fighter kills then an americain ace? The only case for that is they had more things to shot down and had much more seat time in combat… Like they were at a massive disadvantage in every way compared to the isrealis' and they to did lose the war… So how is 7 kills of a flight of two in a day any different statisticly to hurnderds of kills in a year by just a few aces?
I enjoy your analysis and your narration is excellent.
Maybe you could do some videos on the India/Pakistan air combat.
Goes to show how shit radar really is. Good against bombers but not much more.
AIM-7 would have been useless in this scenario, it is only good at some range when everyone is flying in a straight line.
Speaking of sidewinder reliability, just 9 years later, the 9L model got a kill out of 80% of launches, during the Falklands conflict.
Very timely video. Thank you.
The Israelis LIED all the time especially during their various wars, during the 05 Lebanon conflict with Hezbollah, one of their warships was struck by an Iranian anti ship missiles the AP news report claimed only 1 sailor was killed but it turns out 4 of them died during the attack.
Very good analysis; interpreting accounts of combat in terms of what was reported or claimed vs what likely really went down is always challenging, but you've gone about this in a very practical manner.
For what it's worth, i have a similar problem with the Battle of Sluys during the Hundred Years War: An absolutely apocalyptic level of lopsided slaughter is recorded in the various accounts (no doubt essentially derived from a few or even one English source), to the point that it's claimed that a smaller fleet of sailing ships with longbowmen and armoured men-at-arms managed to totally destroy a two-or-three hundred strong force of similarly high-sided sailing ships. This force apparently brought about the deaths of over ten thousand fighting men in a single day of battle, with very few casualties to themselves – and this all happened in a crowded inlet with little in the way of room for tactical manoeuvre.
To my mind, this has long seemed unlikely, because the variable factors involved in such a large action all needed to come together at each around or near a 100% level of efficiency, for an almost totally effective day's work by the attacking force.
To say that very few battles in history ever result in such annihilation when difficult tactical factors are in play is an understatement. But many simply accept such things without further critical thought.
A first-rate presentation.
I think since God is with Israel and helps them, that they downed what they said they did. Just my personal opinion.
@ 13:20, "…outnumbered more than five to one…" , understatement much?? FOURTEEN to one by my math.
Great video on a legendary air battle not well documented
Thank you!!!!
well done
Muslims lie like rugs…
Very well done. There is one more issue when comparing to Viet-Nam however that may be a factor: For much of the Viet-Nam conflict, pilots worked under semi-impossible rules of engagement about how far they could go, how far they could shoot into certain areas, and how far they were allowed to pursue the enemy. Throw in the SAM avoidance issues and it may account for the raw numbers re. air-to-air hits vs. misses.
Dude your videos are fresh, interesting and great to listen to. Your approach is so good, combining an interest with an obvious understanding of how human and tech operations work and how to apply this to analyse these scenarios. I love it.
So much for being prepared… there should have been an attack siren button in the tower and he should have activated that first… shoddy… very shoddy..
One cannon shell from a 17 and it could have been goodbye to an f4…
Excellent presentation
I’m a bit confused, the Yom Kippur war was a surprise attack, so how did the IAF official have advanced knowledge to keep an eye out ?
— Or did I not follow the narrative correctly ?
I believe the account. The IAF pilots are in the elite of the world.
The failure ratio. This assumes the F-4 carried 4 sidewinder the way the US F-4 s do in twin pods under the wings. Look close at the photo of the F-4 right side in the conclusion of the video. with the air crew milling about. The AIM -9 is hanging from a single pod below the starboard intake. This Isreali modification would allow six AIM -9s to be carried.
GOD makes zero mistakes period.
Shortcuts to video outline and footnotes:
0:00 (Title) Ofir Air Base 1400 hours October 6th 1973 Yom Kippur
4:54 (Note) The F-4E radar also lacked look down capability
5:01 (Note) Nachumi couldn't authorise loading CBUs as his missiion was intercept…
6:36 (Note)The arrows supposedly point to parked Mirages at Ophira
12:35 (Title) Analysis
13:52 (Note) I've put links to two interviews with Amir Nachumi in the show notes. They are both entertaining…but there are some differences between them…
14:00 (Title) The Case For
17:24 (Title) The Case Against
18:11 (Note) This dramatic photo shows Nachumi pursuing a MiG-17 near the Ra's Mohammed communications base (his third claim)
18:30 (Note) * The pilots fired seven Sidewinders in total
19:56 (Note) In fairness, he has managed to get EVEN lower here!
23:56 (Title) Conclusions
Thank you for your excellent video! If you ever have the chance to update it, could you perhaps add animation to the maps? I get lost with the entire lines suddenly appearing on the maps. To me, it would be a little more clear if I could see a tiny little airplane moving and leaving a color line behind it with say, green for Egyptian and blue for Israeli. And for me, I'm not sure where the airbase itself is on the map. Maybe this would help. But thanks again!
8:03 Map
9:18 Map