How 100 Tanks Stopped 500 in the Valley of Tears (Yom Kippur War, 1973)

On 6 October 1973, about a hundred Israeli tanks held a ridge on the Golan Heights. Over four days, roughly five hundred Syrian tanks came at them, in daylight and in the dark. On the last morning some crews had one shell left, and the brigade ended with seven tanks. The Syrians were the ones who turned around. This video takes one tactic and one real fight. First the rule: why a five-to-one fight should be hopeless, and what the US Army wrote into its field manual after studying this battle. Then the proof, on the real ground of the northern Golan: the anti-tank ditch, the earth ramps, the night the Syrians could see and the Israelis could not, and the half hour on 9 October that decided it. At the end the battle is run again with one thing changed each time. Chapters 0:00 Seven tanks 0:23 The ground 1:45 The rule 2:49 The ditch 3:45 The night 5:18 The pile of dirt 6:32 The count 6:51 Run it again 7:33 The rule in one line Sources Chaim Herzog, The War of Atonement (1975) Jerry Asher and Eric Hammel, Duel for the Golan (1987) Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War (2004) Trevor N. Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947-1974 (1978) Kenneth M. Pollack, Arabs at War: Military Effectiveness, 1948-1991 (2002) FM 100-5, Operations (Headquarters, Department of the Army, 1 July 1976), pages 1-2, 2-1 and 5-7 F. W. Lanchester, Aircraft in Warfare: The Dawn of the Fourth Arm (1916) #YomKippurWar #MilitaryHistory #TankBattle