The breakwater at the entrance to Haifa harbor was lined with spectators as the boats of the northern task force returned from the battle off Latakia early in the morning. Word of stunning success off the Syrian coast had quickly spread through the port city. The sailors could see people crowding the rooftops and windows of buildings overlooking the port.
Barkai decided that his boats would not tie brooms to the masts in the traditional symbol of naval victory. They had left a lot of Syrian sailors at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Any flaunting of the victory, he told his men, “wouldn’t be respectful to them or to ourselves.”
Admiral Telem had come up from the war room in Tel Aviv to lead the debriefing. With him was Herut Tsemach, eager for the first reports from the EW officers. The central figure in the room was the unshaven, bleary-eyed flotilla commander. Hoarse from the night’s exhortations, Barkai spelled out in his salty tongue impressions of the new era they had sailed into. The theories they had developed thus far about missile warfare were fine, he said, but in combat, opportunity mattered more than theory. “When you’re outside his [the enemy’s] harbors you never know when he’s going to sortie out. It’s like fighting in a built-up area, like shooting around corners.”
Whipping both hands up to imaginary holsters like a gunfighter in a shootout, the wiry officer added, “What you need is quick reaction — not to go by the book, but to shoot to hit.”
Borrowing from the air force’s system of quick turnarounds, the navy set about getting the boats ready for another sortie in a few hours. For Telem this meant not only refueling and rearming but also drawing tactical and procedural lessons from the previous night’s combat to be implemented for the second night’s mission. The short wars Israel was accustomed to demanded swift battle analysis.
In the Yom Kippur War the Israeli ground army would undertake few night actions, once a highly favored mode of operation. The navy, however, would undertake almost all its operations at night. The darkness made the enemy reliant on his radar and thus gave the Israeli boats’ EW advantage full play. The darkness also offered better protection against air attack in enemy waters.
Technicians quickly located the problem with the missile systems on the Soufa and the Herev; cables to the radar had simply been misconnected. Tsemach introduced some new calculations into the EW system as a result of the first debriefing but found that on the whole the system had worked beautifully.
Looking at the exultant men on the boats, Admiral Telem turned to Tsemach and said, “If not for you, Herut, many of them would be dead.” Echoing Tsemach’s own feeling, it was a remark he would remember the rest of his life.
While service personnel swarmed over the boats to ready them for their next mission —augmented by top civilian electronic experts mobilized into the reserves — the crews descended to their bunks for a few hours’ sleep. The officers lay down on foam-rubber mattresses on floors or desktops. A succession of well-wishers appeared in Barkai’s office, and it was late morning before he could lie down. It seemed to him that he had only closed his eyes when he was roused to lead his boats out on their second mission. He had already informed his operations officer that this night they would go south with the squadron led by Commander Nitzan: “It’s time to let the Egyptians feel us.”
Nitzan’s task force lay all night west of Port Said but the Egyptian navy declined to come out. The only untoward incident occurred when the Hanit ran onto a sandbar off Bardiwill on the Sinai coast and could not pry itself loose. Before dawn, Telem summoned the force back to Haifa. Nitzan sent his three other boats back and set course for Bardiwill on the Miznak in order to get the Hanit free.
As tensions receded with the conclusion of their combat sweep, the weight of accumulated weariness descended upon the officers and men. Nitzan could no longer keep his eyes open. Before going up to his cabin to nap, he drew an arc on the plotting-table map extending twenty eight miles outside Port Said, the range of a Styx fired from the harbor. Tapping the arc, he told his duty officer, “Keep your distance from Port Said.”
Barkai, who had again chosen the Miznak as his flagship, had also gone to rest in his cabin. Udi Erell remained for a while sitting on a chair in the CIC, savoring the release of tension. In the dim light, the sailors around him seemed to be half nodding from sleep even as they sat at their screens and consoles. When he looked more closely, he saw that some were indeed sound asleep and he rose to shake them.
Glancing at the plotting-table map in the oddly silent room as he sat down again, Erell sensed through the curtain of sleep that seemed about to close on him that something was amiss. The plotting showed the boat sailing in a straight line parallel to the Egyptian coast. Suddenly the flotilla operations officer realized what was wrong: they should not be sailing in a straight line but swinging out to avoid Port Said. Egyptian radar must certainly be tracking them, and they were almost abreast of the port. As a lone boat they would make a tempting target for the missile boats in Port Said.
Erell was galvanized into wakefulness as he rose again and focused on the consoles. The instruments were issuing unmistakable indications that Egyptian boats were coming out. It was like the familiar nightmare in which a monster is about to grab you while all the people around you are uncomprehending. Missiles were about to be fired at them, the EW had not been activated, and everybody was at least half asleep.
At this instant, a voice crackling urgently over the loudspeaker roused the drowsy men in the CIC. It was Captain Moshe Tabak, Telem’s operations officer at navy headquarters, warning that radio monitors had picked up signs that the Egyptians at Port Said were preparing to fire missiles at an Israeli vessel. There was no time to encode the message and Tabak spoke in the clear even though the Egyptians themselves would certainly pick him up. Erell sounded the alarm.
Nitzan and Barkai, sleep gone from their eyes, rushed down the steps into the CIC. As the bridge officer swung the boat away from the coast and opened full throttle, the officers in the CIC scanned the map and made instant calculations. The instruments indicated two boats coming out of Port Said.
“Let’s turn and charge them,” urged Erell.
Barkai was measuring the distance from their own vessel to the Egyptian boats and the distance between the latter and Port Said.
“No,” said the flotilla commander. “We need only a few miles to be out of their range. If we attempt to charge them, they can fire and get back to port before we can hit them.”
Erell tried to argue that one of the Egyptian boats might break down in the pressure of the pursuit but Barkai stuck to his command decision. In the absence of a full EW deployment the risk was too great for such a slim chance at the enemy.
The Egyptians were taking time getting into firing position and every minute was bringing the Israeli vessel closer to the edge of Styx range. From the bridge, Nitzan saw a powerful reddish-yellow flash briefly illuminate the predawn sky far to the south. Three more flashes followed in quick succession as two Komars fired their salvos. The missiles themselves soon flew over the horizon into view. Nitzan saw the first ball of fire plunge into the sea far astern and sighed with relief. The second missile also exploded astern, but the third missile kept coming. It passed over the boat and continued for another three miles before exploding in the sea. The fourth missile appeared to be descending straight toward the Miznak. It plunged into its wake only one hundred yards astern, and the men in the CIC could feel the explosion. As the Komars on the radar screen turned back toward Port Said, the Israeli boat turned after them, but they made it back to port easily.
“Well, that woke us up,” said someone in the CIC.
The Hanit was a pitiful sight on its sandbar when Nitzan’s force reached it. A boat from the Hanit’s squadron that had been guarding the stranded vessel all night was relieved by the Miznak, and Nitzan began rescue operations. After lowering a rubber boat into the surf, he placed towlines aboard the stranded vessel and began pulling. But the Hanit would not budge. It had been traveling at high speed when it ran aground and its keel was deep in the sand.
At Nitzan’s request, a Dabur patrol boat joined him to help provide leverage in the towing operation. The smaller vessel’s lines kept the Hanit from going broadside to the waves and thereby being pushed farther onto the sand.
The operation continued all day, and by late afternoon the Hanit had edged well forward. Nitzan was feeling confident that he would soon see it slide free when his radio operator handed him a message from headquarters. A tug was on its way from Ashdod. As soon as it arrived, he was to pass it the towlines and make for the Port Said area where other boats would be rendezvousing with him. The Egyptian naval force in Port Said was expected to come out during the night; the missile boat flotilla would be waiting.