The Battle of the Chinese Farm took place during October 15 to October 17, 1973 between the Egyptian Army and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), as part of the Yom Kippur War. It was fought in the Sinai Peninsula, north of the Great Bitter Lake and just east of the Suez Canal, near an Egyptian agricultural research station. The area was known to the Israeli military as the Chinese Farm – a misnomer resulting from the research station's use of Japanese-made equipment, with Japanese writing on the machinery mistaken by Israeli observers for Chinese.
Combat began when the IDF launched Operation Abiray-Lev ("Knights of the Heart"): an attempt to establish a corridor to the canal, and allow bridges to be laid for a crossing. Under Abiray-Lev, the Israelis attacked Egyptian forces in and around the Chinese Farm.
Determined Egyptian resistance made progress extremely slow for the Israelis, who suffered heavy losses. The Israelis were repeatedly reinforced with armor but were unable to make much headway, only managing to seize an important crossroad on the second day. Suffering from a lack of infantry, the Israelis brought up paratroopers during the night of October 16–17. They were tasked with clearing anti-tank defenses for the armor, but they became pinned down by heavy Egyptian fire. The paratroopers drew Egyptian attention long enough for the Israelis to move bridging equipment to the canal undetected. Armored forces later extricated the paratroopers.
The Egyptians attempted to restore their defenses to their initial dispositions with an armored attack on October 17. It initially succeeded, but was pushed back by Israeli counterattacks in an armored battle lasting the entire day. Seriously depleted by the continuous fighting, the Egyptians relinquished control of the routes to the canal, opening them up to the Israelis. The battle is remembered as one of the most costly and brutal battles of the war.
Background
On October 6, 1973, Egypt launched Operation Badr, intending to cross the Suez Canal and establish bridgeheads on the opposite bank of the Sinai Peninsula, which had been occupied by Israel since 1967. Coordinated with a Syrian assault on the Golan Heights, the crossing achieved tactical surprise and was a success. Thereafter, counterattacks by Israeli reserves were unsuccessful. By October 10, fighting along the front had come to a lull. The Egyptians dug in and hoped to wear down the Israelis by attrition, while remaining within range of their ground surface-to-air missiles, which provided air cover from the west bank of the canal, while the Israelis focused on directing their main efforts against the Syrians in the Golan and reorganizing their battered forces. Israeli failures led to the replacement of the chief of the Israeli Southern Command, Major General Shmuel Gonen, with Chaim Bar-Lev, although Gonen was retained as his aide.
The situation changed when Sadat, in the face of protests from his senior commanders, ordered an offensive to seize the strategic Sinai mountain passes, hoping to relieve Israeli pressure on the Syrians. The resulting offensive was ill-planned and ill-executed, culminating in heavy Egyptian losses without achieving any of its objectives. This gave the Israelis the initiative to launch a counteroffensive.
On October 14, immediately following the Egyptian offensive, Israeli Chief of Staff David Elazar presented the general outlines of a crossing operation of the Suez Canal to the Israeli cabinet in a meeting in Tel Aviv. Elazar emphasized the military and political gains of the operation, and the expected collapse that would occur in the Egyptian forces on the east bank when their supply routes became threatened. Elazar received unanimous support from the cabinet. Later that day, Bar-Lev headed a meeting attended by the senior and main division commanders in the Sinai theatre: Major Generals Abraham Adan, Ariel Sharon and Kalman Magen. Bar-Lev informed the Israeli officers of the decision to begin the crossing operation on the night of October 15/16, and assigned duties and responsibilities to the division commanders.
Operation Abirey-Lev
According to the plan set for the Israeli crossing, Operation Abirey-Halev (Hebrew for "Knights of the Heart"), the designated crossing point lay near to Deversoir, at the northern end of the Great Bitter Lake on the Suez Canal. The Israelis had to open the principal route to Deversoir and secure a corridor stretching 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) north of the crossing site (known as "The Yard"). Paratroopers and armor would then cross the canal to establish a 5-kilometer-deep bridgehead (3.1 mi), after which the bridges would be laid, with at least one to be operational by the morning of October 16. The Israelis would then cross to the west bank and attack south and west, with the end goal of reaching Suez, thus encircling and cutting off two Egyptian divisions on the east bank. Southern Command allotted 24 hours for the setting up of the bridgehead and 24 hours for Israeli forces to reach Suez, with the latter expected to be under Israeli control by October 18 at the latest. It would soon be shown that the execution of Operation Stouthearted Men would deviate from planning and schedules and that the time-frame had been highly optimistic and extremely unrealistic.
Order of Battle
Major General Ariel Sharon's 143rd Armored Division was given the critical tasks of opening the corridors and laying the bridges. His division included Tuvia Raviv's 600th Armored Brigade, Colonel Amnon Reshef's 14th Armored Brigade, and the 'Haim' Brigade commanded by Colonel Haim Erez. Major General Abraham Adan's 162nd Armored Division was tasked with crossing the canal and achieving an encirclement with its 300 tanks. The division included Colonel Natke Nir's 217th Armored Brigade, Colonel Gabi Amir's 460th Armored Brigade and Aryeh Keren's 500th Armored Brigade. A paratrooper brigade would be transferred to Adan's division during the course of the battle. Kalman Magen's 252nd Armored Division would initially launch diversionary attacks elsewhere to draw attention from Sharon's operations at Deversoir. Thereafter the division would hold and secure the corridor and bridgehead.
Egyptian forces in the area formed the southern flank of the Second Field Army. These units were the 21st Armoured Division, commanded by Brigadier General Ibrahim Oraby, and the 16th Infantry Division, commanded by Brigadier General Abd Rab el-Nabi Hafez. In addition to being the division commander, Hafez also commanded forces within his division's bridgehead, which included the 21st Division. Oraby's unit included the 1st Armored Brigade, under Colonel Sayed Saleh; the 14th Armored Brigade, under Colonel Othman Kamel; and the 18th Mechanized Brigade, under Colonel Talaat Muslim. Hafez's 16th Division included the 16th Infantry Brigade, commanded by Colonel Abd el-Hamid Abd el-Sami', as well as the 116th Infantry and the 3rd Mechanized Brigades.
Location of battle and deployment of forces
Two main roads led to Deversoir. The first was the Tasa-Tel Salam Road, codenamed Akavish by the Israelis. This road connected Artillery Road (running north to south 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) east of the canal) to Lexicon Road (running north to south directly east of the canal). The Lexicon-Akavish junction fell on Tel Salaam, near the Great Bitter Lake and 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) south of Deveroir, where Fort Lakekan (part of the Bar Lev Line) was located. The second road, codenamed Tirtur, ran north of Akavish. It too connected Artillery Road to Lexicon, but provided a direct route to "the Yard". The Lexicon-Tirtur junction fell on Fort Matzmed. This fortification, which consisted of two strongpoints 500 meters (1,600 ft) apart, had been captured on October 9 by a small assault force, while Fort Lakekan had been evacuated without any combat on October 8. The importance of both fortifications lay in their control of the Lexicon-Akavish and Lexicon-Tirtur junctions. Both forts, however, were in the designated buffer zone, 35 kilometers (22 mi) long, between the Second and Third Armies. It was believed this area would not need defending, as it was both adjacent to the Great Bitter Lake, a natural obstacle, and most of it lay outside the range of the Egyptian SAMs. Thus they were left unoccupied by the local Egyptian commander, who chose not to extend his defenses southwards. The Egyptian negligence to occupy and defend both forts would greatly assist the Israelis in Operation Stouthearted Men.
Just north of the Lexicon-Tirtur junction was the village of al-Galaa. Prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, the village had been the site of an agricultural project. This agricultural station incorporated several irrigation ditches and specialized Japanese-made machinery. When the Sinai came under Israeli occupation, Israeli soldiers saw the Kanji characters on the equipment and labeled the area as 'Chinese Farm' on military maps. Just north and north-west of Chinese Farm was a hill mass known by its Israeli codename 'Missouri'. During Operation Badr, al-Galaa and the Chinese Farm fell within the designated bridgehead of the 16th Infantry Division. Abd el-Hamid's 16th Infantry Brigade occupied and defended these locations. After partaking in the initial canal-crossing, the brigade, along with the rest of the division, faced an attack by Raviv's brigade on October 9. The Israelis achieved some initial gains, but were repelled by the end of the day. Also located within 16th Division's bridgehead, as of October 13, was the 21st Armoured Division. Its units were positioned in the center and the north of the bridgehead. The 14th Brigade had been involved in the crossing and, along with the 1st Brigade, participated in the Egyptian offensive on October 14; as a result, it had lost half of its operational tank strength. In the aftermath, Oraby's efforts to reorganize and replace armored losses were hampered by frequent artillery barrages and air strikes. On October 15, there were 136 tanks in the Egyptian bridgehead, unevenly split among Oraby's brigades: 66 with the 1st Armored Brigade, 39 with the 14th Armored Brigade, and 31 in the 18th Mechanized Brigade. Despite their heavy losses, the Egyptian forces in the bridgehead outnumbered Reshef's force.
Early on the morning of October 15, Adan moved his division from its positions in the north to a concentration area west of Tasa in preparation for the crossing. Sharon's division had been in the central sector since its arrival at the Sinai Front, along with the crossing equipment and bridges since October 13. Sharon had his headquarters in Tasa, 40 kilometers (25 mi) east of the canal.
Israeli plan and initial maneuvers
After receiving his orders late on October 14 from Bar-Lev, Sharon headed to his headquarters to prepare for the operation. His division incorporated Raviv's Brigade, Colonel Amnon Reshef's 14th Armored Brigade, and the 'Haim' Brigade commanded by Colonel Haim Erez. Attached to his division was the 243rd Paratrooper Brigade commanded by Colonel Dani Matt.
Sharon planned for Raviv's brigade to attack from the east, diverting Egyptian attention away from Deversoir. Erez was tasked with transporting a pre-constructed roller bridge to the crossing area at Deversoir, while one of his tank battalions would be attached to the paratroopers. Colonel Reshef was given the most critical tasks of all. Accordingly, his brigade was heavily reinforced to incorporate four armored and three mechanized infantry battalions, in addition to the division's reconnaissance battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Yaov Brom. His brigade would conduct a turning maneuver at 6:00 am on October 15 south of Akavish Road, move through the sand dunes to reach Fort Lakekan, before heading north to occupy Fort Matzmed. Reshef's brigade would then split up to clear the Akavish and Titur Roads and seize the Chinese Farm, while occupying the crossing area and awaiting Matt's brigade. Matt's paratrooper brigade, containing an additional tank company and the armored battalion, would move south-west via Akavish to reach Fort Matzmed. From there, it would continue on to the Yard and cross the canal at 11:00 pm, using rubber dinghies and rafts for the tanks.
Matt's brigade began moving to Tasa at 4:30 pm on October 15, before turning eastwards on Akavish. Heavy congestion on the roads made the brigade's progress very slow. A little after midnight, the brigade left Akavish and moved westward to the Yard, an area 700 meters long and 150 meters wide surrounded by protective sand walls. The site had been made long before the war.
Reshef maneuvered his brigade as planned, entering into the previously discovered gap without any opposition. Leaving a combined recon and paratrooper force at the canal, he sent his tanks north and west to secure the flank of the projected crossing site and clear the Akavish and Tirtur roads from behind for the follow-on bridging equipment. He seized the Lakekan and Matzmed fortifications without resistance. Reshef informed Sharon that the forts were under control and that Akavish was clear. Sharon in turn informed Southern Command of these successes, sending a wave of jubilation through the Israeli commanders, delighted that the operation had begun so smoothly.