Operation "Escort"
On the eve of the 7th of September, 1969, in the midst of the War of Attrition, a group of fighters from Shayetet 13 (the Israeli Naval Commando) reached the Egyptian harbor of Ras-Sadat. At 22:05 pm they found their targets, two missile boats which were used to patrol the north of the Suez Canal and which could jeopardize the IDF's plans to carry out an armored raid on the western bank of the canal. Two pairs of Israeli frogman attached explosive charges to the sides of the two ships. Before dawn on the 8th of September, 1969, the two Egyptian ships left their harbor in order to conduct a patrol. Suddenly there was an explosion on one of the two ships, as a result the ship was beginning to sink. The second ship hurried towards the sinking ship when a second explosion ripped a giant hole in its bottom the second ship then ran aground and was taken out of use. This is the outcome of Operation "Escort" which enabled the IDF to proceed to and execute Operation "Raviv".
Operation "Raviv"
On the night of the 8th September, 1969, 6 tanks and 3 APC'S were loaded on 3 landing crafts at Ras-Soder in the Sinai peninsula. All of these were Egyptian tanks and APC'S which were captured by the IDF, this in order to confuse the Egyptians. The landing force was secured by Israeli naval boats and naval commandoes. The landing began at 03:37 am on the 9th of September, 1969, 40 kilometers south of the Egyptian city of Suez. Immediately the armored landing force advanced south and managed to advance for over 50 kilometers, while doing so the force wreaked havoc behind the Egyptian lines, attacking Egyptian guard points, radar stations, military vehicles and other military targets. In the operation a Soviet general was run over and killed while he was driving along the route the landing force was taking. After 10 hours the force was evacuated and returned home safely.
All in all 150 Egyptians were killed, 2 Egyptian missile boats were sunk and only 4 Israeli soldiers were killed, out of which 3 were S'13 fighters who were killed on their way back to base after completing their mission in Operation "Escort". They died after a charge in their boat accidentally went off.
http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/vehicles/tanks/tiran/tiran5.jpg
Captured T-54 (Tiran 4), these tanks were used in Operation "Raviv"
http://vietnamresearch.com/armor/BTR50_2.jpg
Captured B.T.R-50 APC's were also used in Operation "Raviv"
2RHPZ
07-31-2004, 02:09 PM
Great site at http://www.geocities.com/moshe_madness/shayetet13/
http://www.geocities.com/moshe_madness/shayetet13/divers.jpg
It contains two old articles from Jeruslam Post:
Daring missions deep down under
Matan Polibuda and Yair Engel had a dream. While some of their friends sought to fly supersonic warplanes, they aimed to be denizens of the deep: members of an elite group of Navy frogmen that carried out daring missions.
The dream ended in the murky waters of the Haifa Bay on December 5, 1996, when the bodies of both men were found amid the sunken wreckage - still tied together by a rope that was to ensure that they wouldn't lose each other.
For IDF commanders, their deaths highlighted the latest in a series of troubling accidents in Shayetet 13, the elite underwater commando battalion that has seen better days. In the last five years, four members of the unit have been killed by accidents and many others have been injured. Moreover, after years of being regarded as one of the top units in the military, the navy commandos have been struggling in the 1990s to maintain their prestigious position as those who participate in the most important missions against Israel's enemies.
It's a subject that most Shayetet veterans don't want to talk about in public. "What's the use? Will it bring more volunteers to the unit?" asks Dov Bar, a Shayetet commander in the 1970s.
The early years of Shayetet were the stuff of legends. The unit was formed in the 1950s, modeled after the famed Italian naval commandos who operated during World War II. Yohai Bin-Nun was its flamboyant commander and the atmosphere resembled that of the Palmah underground.
But the Shayetet reflected the rest of the navy, a small force where discipline was lax and professionalism was low.
The low point was the 1967 Six Day War. Then, the Navy won approval for five attacks on enemy ports. It was an ambitious mission - way beyond the capacity of the service. All of the missions failed.
"The Navy had the resources to carry out the operations," Zev Almog, former Navy commander, says. "Unfortunately, the Navy failed and disappointed."
After the 1967 war, Almog took over Shayetet and the unit became professional. Unlike his predecessors, Almog went on missions. He drilled the importance of constant training into his men. He integrated the commando force with the rest of the Navy fleet, rather than maintain it as merely a unit of frogmen on call.
The result was dramatic. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Navy, this time with a less ambitious plan, struck four times at Egyptian ports and overwhelmed Arab forces considerably larger than its own.
Simply put, Shayetet and the Navy emerged as the heroes of that war.
"The benefit of the Six Day War was that the Navy learned its lesson," Almog recalls.
By 1968, Almog had convinced the IDF chief of staff to use Shayetet as an amphibious commando force far from Israel's shores.
The raid on Egypt's Green Island in 1969 was the best example, where Shayetet surprised and overpowered an Egyptian army force on the strategic Red Sea island, thought to have contained surface-to-air missiles that could threaten Israeli warplanes.
The 1970s and early 1980s were the golden period of the Shayetet. Almog's Shayetet was comprised of members of kibbutzim, most of them children of Holocaust survivors. They underwent a course of nearly two years that made them the best frogmen in the world. Then, they learned other aspects of the Navy, such as commanding patrol and missile boats. Between 1969 and 1971, four members of the unit died in exercises and many more were injured, but at the time the IDF censored the media from releasing the information.
In addition, the unit instituted a system of promotion for the best and brightest. Almog introduced modern doctrine and equipment for his men. The model was the Air Force, and the system that was eventually adopted by the rest of the Navy.
"A frogman is like a pilot," says [Res.] Lt.-Col. David Schick, former deputy commander of Shayetet. "They are very special and demand special qualities that only a psychiatrist can analyze." Schick characterized the Shayetet commando of the 1970s. He joined the unit in 1971 and within two years was participating in missions in Egypt and other Arab countries.
The unit's goal was to press for raids wherever there was danger. Commanders argued that Shayetet can do what no other unit can - slip into the sea many kilometers from the coast and then emerge on land and take the enemy by surprise. For this, they would need neither air or ground support nor a large number of fighters.
"They were always better than the Sayeret Matkal ," Meir Pa'il, a military historian, says.
The campaign to include the Shayetet caused a perpetual tug-of-war between its gung-ho commanders and the IDF general staff and the defense minister. During the 1973 war, defense minister Moshe Dayan called off a Shayetet raid into Syria as unit frogmen were in the Mediterranean because of fear the operation would fail.
But in the mid-1970s, the Shayetet disproved the doubters in the military when they sunk a ship with weapons bound for Lebanon, a country that was turning into a PLO stronghold. The unit's commander was Gadi Sheffi, one of the most flamboyant figures in the Navy.
During the Lebanon war, the Shayetet participated in numerous commando raids, alongside such units as the General Reconnaissance Unit. They surprised PLO fighters and their Arab allies within Lebanon. During one raid, the Shayetet killed 12 enemy troops.
BUT BY the early 1980s, the nature of the Shayetet commando was beginning to change. The turning point came as early as 1978 when then-Shayetet commander Col. Hanina Amishav was fired by then-COS Lt.-Gen. Rafael Eitan because of a training accident in which Capt. Oded Elias was killed off the Sinai coast. The dismissal of the charismatic Amishav, the first ever of a commander because of a training accident, stunned the navy commandos, who threatened to quit en masse. Years later, Eitan, who only five months earlier fired the previous Shayetet commander, Sheffi, acknowledged he had acted in haste.
Amishav's successor was Ami Ayalon, who later became Navy commander and now is head of the General Security Services. From the start, Shayetet veterans say, Ayalon was the odd man out. Until Ayalon, tradition demanded that either the Shayetet commander or his deputy be a veteran frogman. That changed.
"It was a good idea in principle," a Shayetet veteran, who did not want to identified, recalls.
By the late 1980s, after Ayalon left the Shayetet, the unit became embroiled in a power struggle. Ayalon was regarded as a careerist, with the backing of Almog, and the daring commandos of the 1970s were soon placed on the sidelines.
Moreover, the unit was inundated by a new type of recruit. He was no longer a kibbutznik but a city slicker who graduated from a navy academy. They viewed the Shayetet the way others dreamed of the Air Force - as a personal challenge rather than as a national mission. (Only 3 percent of applicants are accepted into the unit.)
At the same time, the Shayetet was becoming more bloated in personnel and less influential with the IDF general staff. From about 1988, military sources say, the Navy was redirecting its energies from elite units such as the Shayetet to turning the service into a modern fighting force. Commanders no longer lobbied the chief of staff to participate in operations but sought to acquire missile boats and submarines. At the same time, then-Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Shomron, under orders from his political superiors, drastically decreased the number of special operations.
The result, military sources say, is that the Shayetet has not been called to participate in special forces operations, particularly in Lebanon. Shayetet veterans say the unit, which is not under the direct command of the general staff, has stopped trying to fight for its place in the array of IDF special forces - at a time when the Arabs are developing their navies and commando forces.
"In the 1970s and 1980s, we were always pushing the chief of staff to involve us in operations," a former Shayetet veteran recalls.
"At a certain point, two things happened. First, the army began playing it safe and the Shayetet was the first to be out. The second was that the Shayetet commanders didn't want to rock the boat and their careers."
Pa'il, the military historian and former IDF commander, agrees that in the campaign in south Lebanon the Shayetet has been largely replaced by ground troops, he says, like other special units the Shayetet finds it difficult to stay in shape without participating in prestigious operations.
"You need a commander to lead the Shayetet because in times of peace or calm they don't do much," he says.
Today, the Shayetet remains a busy unit, although its operations are not made public. The exercise in which Polibuda and Engel, both first sergeants, were killed, was regarded as routine. They were to swim two lengths of 650 meters behind a breaker in Haifa Bay. They were attached by a 1.5-meter rope so that they would not lose each other and could come to the other's aid.
An inquiry committee appointed by OC Navy Adm. Alex Tal is expected to return with conclusions within the next few days.
Regardless of what the committee says, Schick agrees that the Shayetet needs a face-lift and a new sense of purpose. "They're using the navy commandos but not sufficiently. I would say that they are not being exploited in an efficient way by either the general staff of the army."
2RHPZ
07-31-2004, 02:11 PM
Shayetet 13 Interview - Coming up for air
When Shayetet 13's former junior commander, Col. Danny, enters a Tel Aviv restaurant for an interview, every head turns. A muscular 45-year-old, with hoary hair cut close to his scalp, he looks straight ahead with piercing blue eyes as he answers questions; his extreme good looks are not diminished by the long horizontal scar bisecting his face at the nose.
"The high-level training in both sea and land operations makes for a very powerful dynamic," says Danny. "We can do what every other unit does, but they can't do what we do."
The Shayetet 13 naval commando unit is the most combat-active in the Israeli military. The words "frogman commando" or "seal" usually conjure up the image of a Rambo-like warrior slowly emerging, in the dead of night, from the black ocean surface, with a knife between his teeth. Trained to use a multitude of explosives, weapons and small craft, these soldiers are capable of quietly penetrating deep into the heart of enemy territory and swiftly striking a target.
"Sea commandos can set out for an operation with 16 men ... while regular infantry [for the same mission] would need more men, which magnifies their chance of detection, complications and the number of potential casualties," says David Sheek, a colonel (res.) who served more than 20 years in Shayetet.
What is the quintessential quality that distinguishes the Israeli underwater commando as one of the most feared warriors around the world? "Inner peace," says Danny, oblivious to the irony of his answer.
Although one of the most active units in the army, Shayetet - known to its members as Shin 13 - had enjoyed the lowest combat unit fatality rate in the IDF. In total, they had lost nine men in operations and 20 in operational training, with no deaths during operations in the past 15 years.
That enviable record remained intact until September 4, when 12 commandos were killed on a mission in Lebanon. The disaster was magnified by the failure to bring home the body of one, Third Petty Officer Itamar Ilya.
The Ofir Committee set up to investigate the incident concluded this week that the unit was caught in an incidental ambush set up by Hizbullah. Militiamen set off the explosive charges, fell back and opened fire, the investigators believe. The reports discounted earlier rumors that Hizbullah had advance information of the Shayetet raid.
Such a large tragedy in a small family is certain to have a devastating effect operationally and psychologically.
"Shin 13 is a very well-oiled war machine," says Channel 2 News political correspondent Gadi Sukenik, one of the best-known veterans of the unit. "The nature of the beast doesn't allow room for introspection, and the unit doesn't encourage it. The men aren't built for that."
Some military brass are suggesting that new missions should be "found" quickly so the Shayetet can get back on the horse. "The military doesn't need to find new missions," Sukenik responds. "Shayetet has enough work as it is."
Most Shayetet activities are not reported, and if they are, they're usually the failures. In recent years, two trainees drowned during scuba-diving maneuvers. And not all missions in the past have ended successfully.
In 1988, a joint operation to simultaneously attack three terrorist bases in Nuweima, Lebanon, was led by the elite Golani Reconnaissance Unit but included Shayetet members, regular Golani Brigade soldiers and an explosive-carrying dog unit. The mission was a quasi-failure due to the ineptness of the Golani soldiers. Even though the naval commandos took control of the situation and extricated the troops, they were labeled as being part of a botched operation.
Every year, Israeli "seals" go on hundreds of missions and, according to foreign press reports, almost always when there is no moon. One Shayetet officer explains: "It makes it harder to reach the target, but it's even harder on the enemy. I feel very secure in the pitch blackness of the night."
For the past 50 years, details of Shayetet's operations remained dark and murky - exactly the conditions they are trained to operate in. The interview with Col. Danny is allowed only in the presence of an army spokesman, as well as a senior intelligence officer. The current commander is known only as Col. G.; the size of the unit and its members' faces may not be published, and articles about them are often bowdlerized by the IDF censor.
"The original purpose of Shin 13," explains former commander Shaul Ziv, "was first and foremost to operate against enemy targets on the sea..., a ship or a port, via swimming, diving or small underwater craft called 'pigs,' " which are fast and filled with explosives. The frogmen were meant to speed toward enemy targets, kamikaze style, tie a rope to the steering wheel to steady the craft and eject right before impact. "And, of course, Shin 13's main task was to transfer ground forces across or below the water," Ziv says. There are multiple theories as to the meaning of the number 13 in its name, but none is convincing or authoritative.
Former member Mike Adler writes in his well-researched book on Shayetet 13: "The model they were based on was the Italian sea commandos that blew up enemy targets at sea [during World War II]." During the war, four Italian sea commandos were captured in an Egyptian port riding live torpedoes toward British ships. The Italian founder of that unit helped Israel organize its own naval commando unit after the establishment of the state.
From its inception, Shayetet 13 was limited to sea operations, but on March 15, 1962, it was given a land target to attack for the first time. They were meant to cross the Kinneret and destroy the Syrian position opposite Kibbutz Ein Gev in Kursi. The task was to kill as many enemy troops as possible, as well as to obliterate Syrian fishing boats. They were spotted, however, before reaching the target and were forced to retreat under heavy fire, reinforcing the perception that sea commandos, like fish, should stick to the sea.
During the Six Day War, another mission ended in fiasco: a risky raid was attempted on Alexandria's seaport, and six Shayetet fighters were captured. The war, however, extended Israeli control from the Jordan River to the Suez Canal. This new geographic reality opened the door for multiple Shayetet missions in tandem with ground-force commandos.
The watershed for Shayetet came in June 1968, the beginning of the War of Attrition. The IDF decided to destroy the fortified, Egyptian-controlled Green Island in Suez Bay. The General Staff Reconnaissance Unit was assigned the mission, but because the noise of transport helicopters would eliminate the advantage of surprise, Israeli generals decided to have the naval commandos ferry the reconnaissance fighters over the water. There weren't, however, enough dinghies to carry all the men. The Shayetet commander jumped at the opportunity, and convinced the chief of staff to let his unit make up most of the task force. The denouement was that three soldiers were killed from the General Staff unit and three from Shayetet. Militarily, the mission was considered a great success.
In 1971, Shayetet was given another mission on the Egyptian front, which to this day remains classified. It is known as the most daring successful military operation ever executed by Israel. It was this mission that earned the elite frogmen the reputation as the IDF's best.
In 1973's "Spring of Youth" joint operation with other IDF units and the Mossad, the Shayetet helped wipe out the leaders of Black September in Beirut. According to foreign sources, in 1988, it was Shayetet that led a hit team onto the shores of Tunisia where they gunned down Abu Jihad, Yasser Arafat's PLO deputy.
In the early 1980s, Sukenik found himself in the awkward position of participating in a special rescue operation for Ethiopian Jews bringing them over the Red Sea to Israel, as well as being interviewed by his colleagues in the news media about it.
The gibush - entrance exam - for the unit has varied over the years but remains one of the hardest to pass. At one point during the exam, in the middle of the night, candidates for induction are blindfolded and driven in a truck to a small deep pool filled with cold water. They are pulled off the truck and dropped in one by one. Blindfolded, freezing and scared, they are meant to tread water for an unspecified period in cramped quarters, without pushing down on anyone else.
Col. Danny explains the difficulties would-be inductees face when they are not told when a particular exercise is supposed to end. "You don't know how to allocate your energy efficiently throughout the week of testing." The intense psychological pressure during the screening process is meant to weed out those who might not be able to cope with future tasks the unit might be given.
"Someone who's the type to analyze every nuance of the difficulty he faces will never make it through the test or the training period, because you face an endless amount of difficulties," Sukenik says.
Danny says the unit wants each inductee to reach "his fullest potential and, when reaching that point he goes beyond it, even sacrifices himself, to help a comrade. We're not looking for Superman. You can always acquire physical strength."
Passing the gibush doesn't guarantee graduation from the strenuous, 21-month training course. Many, in fact, don't. It is so difficult and dangerous that "there is no one in Shayetet who doesn't have disabilities," says Sukenik, "including myself. Shrapnel wounds, compressed disks, impaired hearing, damaged lungs.... They made us endure physical tasks that no human body was meant to bear."
Cmdr. Yosef Kurakin, the leader of the unit caught in the September 4 Hizbullah ambush who was also killed, was interviewed on Army Radio shortly before that mission, and spoke frankly about the qualities needed to serve in Shayetet 13. Although frogmen need to be aggressive, he said, "one of the most important qualities that we look for is an openness that allows the soldier to create an emotional bond with his other unit members. When I say openness I mean honesty.
"In Shayetet, that's one of our most important behavioral codes. The moment they stick their heads underwater there is no chance of establishing contact with them. There's no real way of knowing where they were and the only way to gather information about their performance is from the reports they give on themselves."
Reserve officer Effy (not his real name) notes that most of the time in underwater operations "you can't see your hand in front of your face. What you do down there is between you and God."
What type of personality is attracted, and accepted, to this unit? Interviews with ex-commandos paint an interesting, but often highly contrasting, impressionistic picture. Up close, some brush strokes reveal them to be mavericks - wild, beer-guzzling, motorcycle-riding loners, always looking to push the limits - while other strokes show them to be reserved, serious, motivated and responsible. But when in training or on a mission, they consistently come off as team players, well-disciplined, focused and highly professional.
"My men," said Kurakin, "experience unique training and go on special missions that no one else in the army go on. As a result, from these experiences they acquire a certain amount of self-confidence which is sometimes, wrongly, interpreted as being haughty."
Danny says the unit never felt invincible, "but there is a feeling that anything is possible ... especially after doing things they never dreamed they could do." For men who have accomplished so much, and feel that anything is possible, those interviewed - and many declined - come off as strikingly modest, almost antiheroes. "The more experienced you become, the more you realize how small and fragile you are," says Danny.
In addition, the men don't like to talk to reporters for a more practical reason. "The media, both domestic and foreign, have over the years exposed more and more of our methods, which has had a cumulative, harmful effect," he says ruefully. "The silence about Shayetet's activities and procedures is its beauty."
"On some underwater missions, the water is so black your eyes don't see anything, your ears can barely hear anything, and so you're left with nothing but your mind. That kind of work demands inner peace," says Effy, who has seen his share of missions in enemy waters. "Unfortunately, the sea commando entrance exam cannot adequately replicate those kinds of conditions."
Shayetet soldiers are extremely professional. In other combat units, after a training exercise or an operation, the commanding officer summarizes what happened for the unit. In contrast, the men in Shayetet go through a much longer, painfully exacting postmortem of the operation in which everyone speaks, reporting on his own and other members' performances. Even though they are like brothers, they don't hold back criticism, not if it can make them a more effective fighting family.
The interview with Danny takes place in a cafe next door to the Beit Lessin Theater where Fog is being staged. It's the play about the aftermath of the 1992 Tze'elim-2 disaster in which five members of General Staff Reconnaissance Unit were killed during a training exercise. The playbill screams: "They take adolescents, practically children, give them an assignment that is beyond human capability - and drop the responsibility in their lap."
Is that really an accurate description of the burden placed on soldiers serving in the IDF's most elite units, including Shayetet? "First of all, they're not children," Danny responds. "When they finish training, they're 20 years old. Young maybe, but not children. The tasks are not impossible, and yes, we do place the responsibility on them. Who else should take the responsibility?
"Don't judge every command or operation by the results."
Danny says the death of Kurakin and 11 others "is an unprecedented tragedy for our small unit. The whole 'family' is in mourning. But the will of the dead is to continue fighting. This tragedy just makes the unit more determined. From a crisis you get stronger. There is no psychologist in Shayetet. They don't need one. Their commanders are the best psychologists. The best treatment is to go back out on a mission."
They use the word "distance" to refer to the respect accorded superior officers. In Shayetet, says Danny, "there is no 'distance' of superiority, only of honor for past accomplishments. I don't need 'distance' to rule."
When Shayetet resumes operations in Lebanon, will it be looking to get back at Hizbullah for the blow the unit suffered?
"We do not take revenge. We're not looking to bring home 12 heads," Danny asserts, perhaps referring to the graphic photo, printed in European and Arabic newspapers, of Hizbullah proudly displaying one of the Israeli dead.
"The best revenge," insists Danny, "is to get the unit back on its feet and operational as soon as possible."
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