23. The Battle of Baltim

The order for the flotilla to sail immediately for Port Said reached Haifa before all the missile boats had completed refueling. The orderly scene exploded into frenzy as supply personnel leaped ashore, fuel lines were disconnected, and engines roared to life. A gantry was maneuvering a missile toward the deck of the Herev when the skipper shouted to his men to halt the loading operation and prepare to cast off. Within twenty minutes, eight missile boats had pulled away from the naval docks and were heading southwest from Haifa at thirty knots.

Barkai was lying off Port Said with two boats when the others arrived five hours later. A powerful force was now at his disposal, but the reason for their presence had dissipated even before they arrived. The Israeli army had launched a counterattack this day — the third day of the war—hoping to push the Egyptian forces back across the Suez Canal. The naval command had expected that ground pressure on Port Said just opposite the Israeli lines would compel the Egyptian boats in the harbor to flee to their main base at Alexandria, 110 miles to the west, for fear of being captured or shelled. But the ground attack had failed and the Egyptian boats were not coming out.

Barkai and Telem decided to provoke them by shelling targets in the Nile delta. The Israeli boats had just begun this task when they picked up targets to the west on their electronic sensors shortly after 9:00 p.m. Forming a broad skirmish line, the boats charged. They made a gallant sight, ten warships plunging abreast through the sea at forty knots like a cavalry squadron at full gallop. After half an hour, however, it became apparent that they had been chasing electronic shadows—reflections of clouds or some floating objects.

As they halted to regroup, Barkai asked each skipper to report on his fuel supply and armaments. The boat he was on, the Miznak, was low on fuel, he knew. When the reports came in, he saw that three other boats also had barely enough fuel to get back to Haifa. Barkai informed Telem that he was debating whether to return with his force in view of the fuel problem.

“Why don’t you send home the boats low on fuel and stay on with the rest?” suggested Telem.

It was a simple solution but Barkai, his mind full of weighty calculations, hadn’t thought of it and was grateful that Telem had. Bidding the Miznak farewell, Barkai descended into a rubber boat with his staff, clutching his vertical plotting board like Moses descending Mount Sinai with the tablets. He had just cast off when the task force picked up indications that four Osas were coming out of Alexandria harbor and heading eastward. When Udi Erell heard the report shouted at them, he had a momentary vision of the six missile boats speeding off, leaving the command staff adrift in the rubber boat. The vessels, however, remained in place until Barkai reached the Herev. As soon as he clambered aboard, he ordered the force to begin moving towards Alexandria.

It was now 11:00 p.m. Barkai formed his boats into three pairs moving across a broad front. The northern pair was made up of the two large Israeli-made boats, Reshef and Keshet. The central pair consisted of the Eilat— named for the sunken destroyer — and the missile-less Misgav. Barkai positioned the Herev with the Soufa on the southern wing. It was still not clear that the Egyptians were sailing to meet them: they had not been picked up by radar or by long-range electronic sensors.

Close to midnight, Barkai took his pair of boats close inshore to shell targets at Damietta in the Nile delta. As the gunnery officer of the Herev was preparing to open fire, the boat’s ESM picked up readings off Baltim, to the west. Uncertain whether this was another electronic fluke, Barkai ordered Commander Eli Rahav on the northern wing to disperse long-distance chaff to his north to see if it would draw fire. In a few moments, missiles began arcing toward the chaff cloud from the west. The squadron switched on its electronic defenses and opened full throttle. Once again Barkai decided not call on the air force for help.

The battle line this time was banana-shaped, the two Reshef-class boats on the north having moved farther west than the others before contact was made. Two pairs of Osas were moving directly toward them but were still beyond Styx range. This time it was indeed like a cavalry encounter. Such head-down charges had become as rare in sea battles as on land. In 1798 Nelson had destroyed Napoleon’s fleet off Egypt at Abukir, just a few miles from Baltim, in a battle full of maneuver and deployment of strength against weakness. The midnight charge of the missile boats at Baltim was more reminiscent of the long-ago encounter between English and French troops in which the respective commanders, after marching their men up to within musket range, gallantly saluted each other with sweeps of their hats and offered each other side the first shot.

It was clear who would be getting in the first shot at Baltim. Unlike the first night’s tumult off Latakia, where the Syrians had been able to snap off their first salvo before the Israelis were expecting it but at less than maximum range, the battle of Baltim was classic in its neatness. The Osas would fire when they reached the Styx’s twenty-eight-mile range. The Israeli boats, if they survived this salvo, would attempt to close to within the Gabriel’s twelve-mile range. The major maneuvering would not be of boats but of electronic beams.

Tension gripped the men aboard the Israeli vessels as the gap closed. In the CIC of the command vessel, sailors at the consoles and screens began shouting when the Egyptians came into view.

“Here they come.”

“Four — four boats.”

“Coming right at us.”

Barkai and Erell shouted at the men to quiet them down: “Shut up. Everybody shut up.”

As the Osas approached to within Styx range, excitement gave way to fear. Despite his cool demeanor, Barkai felt it no less than on the first night. “They can tell you what the missile can or can’t do,” he would say, “but you can’t be sure that the missile knows it, too.” The EW defenses lowered the odds of being hit by offering the Styx a wider choice of targets, but the missile boat itself remained one of the targets.

At fifteen minutes past midnight, sensors indicated an Egyptian launch at forty-eight thousand yards.

“They’re firing,” said a console operator.

Lieutenant Peres bounded up the steps leading to the bridge.

“Where are you going?” shouted Barkai. “You’re the boat’s commander.”

“You’ve seen the missiles already,” said Peres. “I haven’t.” In fact, Barkai had not seen a missile in the air because he remained at his CIC post in every encounter.

From the bridge Peres could clearly see flashes on the horizon to the west. Pillars of flame curved in the sky and began rushing toward them. In two minutes the balls of fire began descending towards the Israeli boats. Tracers lifted from the decks and guns barked. The missiles exploded in the sea, their half-ton charges sending up lofty geysers. The Egyptian squadron kept coming, firing three more salvos in the next ten minutes.

Fire seemed to be concentrated against Rahav’s boats on the northern wing. The absence of any secondary explosion was reassurance to the bridge officers elsewhere on the Israeli line that none of the missiles had hit their target. With the last Egyptian barrage, fired at a distance of twenty miles, the two pairs of Osas executed a U-turn and began racing back for Alexandria. The pursuit was on.

Barkai addressed his commanders. “We’re going to close to ten miles before firing. Anybody who fires longer I will dismiss on the spot.” He did not want a repetition of the long shot that had been the first Israeli response at Latakia. Quick calculations indicated that they would catch up with the slower Osas before they could make it back to port. He divided the targets on the radar screen among his commanders. All that had to be done now was to maintain pursuit at maximum speed.

In the naval command pit in Tel Aviv, Admiral Telem studied the three-story-high Plexiglas screen in the dimly lit chamber; the chase was magically taking shape before his eyes in the form of six “friendly” boat markers slowly closing on four “non-friendlies” making for Alexandria on the giant map depicted on the screen. Unseen behind the screen, young navy women moved the boat markers as position reports were fed to them over earphones.

In the CICs of Barkai’s force, the men settled down for the long chase. They worked in overhead light kept purposefully dim so as not to interfere with the light on the screens and plotting table. The captains had ample time to brief their men and to ensure that all systems were operating properly. At the plotting tables, seamen continually adjusted the relative positions of the Egyptian and Israeli boats. Reports from other parts of the boat and from other boats — sometimes even from Telem in Tel Aviv — issued constantly from the overhead loudspeakers, some restrained and precise, some almost chatty. Periodically, an officer took one of the overhead headsets to talk to the bridge, gun positions, or engine room. Armaments officers checked the electrical circuits of the missiles to prepare them for firing. Each captain at his plotting table measured the distance between his boat and his assigned target.

The crews fell silent as the gap narrowed. On the Keshet, an officer brought water to the men sitting at the consoles and wiped sweat from their brows as they kept their eyes fixed on the instruments. Barkai’s calm and confident voice issuing from the loudspeakers cautioned the captains again to wait until the range was certain. Although the Gabriel’s range was twelve miles, the target was moving away, which meant that any missile fired at maximum range would find the target already gone by the time its two-minute flight was completed.

After a chase of twenty-five minutes, Keshet, on the northern wing, reported itself within 10.5-mile range. Ensuring that the fire-control radar was locked on the nearest Osa, Commander Rahav pressed the “Permission to Fire” button. A Gabriel leaped from its pod and the missile aimer on the bridge, picking up its white exhaust in his binoculars, guided it into the radar beam with his joystick. There was a flash on the horizon and the bridge officer shouted, “We hit.” At this point Rahav was notified that the Keshet’s engine room was taking on water from a burst pipe. He brought his vessel to a halt a mile from the burning Egyptian missile boat he had hit while the missile-less Misgav dashed in from the center of the line to finish off the stricken boat with gunfire.

As the Keshet slowed down, the Reshef, sailing behind it, fired at the second Osa and scored a hit. Together with the Eilat from the center, which had also fired a missile at the target, the Reshef closed on the burning Egyptian vessel and hurried it to the bottom with gunfire.

The southern pair of Osas had split, one heading toward the coast and one racing west toward Alexandria. The former was hit by a missile and came to a standstill close to shore but refused to sink. Even when the Herev and the Soufa poured dozens of shells into it, the boat remained afloat. Not until the captains checked their charts did it become apparent that the Osa was aground.

Glancing at his radar screen on the Reshef, Commander Micha Ram saw that the fourth Osa had meanwhile fled out of range. Either the Saar assigned to hit it had fired at a different target or its Gabriels had missed. The Reshef was closest to the fleeing boat and Ram ordered pursuit. As his weapons officer prepared another missile for firing, the console operator checking its system reported a short, such as one suffered the first night, off Latakia. Ram maintained pursuit as the technicians labored to repair the missile system. If they failed, he hoped to reach gun range.

On the command vessel, Barkai watched the Reshef drawing rapidly away from the main force with growing concern. If the boat got much closer to the Egyptian coast, it would be vulnerable to air attack without backing from the rest of the task force. Barkai took the radio handset and addressed Ram

“Come on back. You’re getting too far out.”

“Just give me five minutes,” implored Ram. “We’ll have the bug fixed by then.”

It would take several more moments of argument before Ram broke off and rejoined the main force, leaving the last Osa to disappear over the horizon in the direction of Alexandria.

Years later Ram would meet an Egyptian naval officer who had commanded one of the Osas in the battle of Baltim. Both were enrolled in the same course at the U.S. Naval War College and quickly established friendly relations.

“Where were you in the line?” asked the Egyptian when he learned that the Israeli had commanded a missile boat at Baltim.

“Second from the north,” said Ram.

“Then you were the one who sank me.” The Egyptian officer said he and two or three members of the crew had survived the explosion and managed to swim to shore.

Barkai would later tell headquarters that he had experienced a sense of deja-vu during the battle, as if he had already fought it before. He had in fact done so on several occasions in almost identical fashion in the tactical simulator at the Haifa naval base.

Shlomo Erell, who had arrived from Europe earlier in the day, joined Telem in the war room during the battle. The first voice the retired admiral heard on the loudspeaker was that of his son reporting from off the Nile delta near Damietta. In his own youth, Shlomo Erell had been a seaman on small freighters sailing between Damietta and Latakia, one of the few Jewish sailors in Palestine. His son was now fighting in those same waters.

Telem ordered Barkai to break off his chase. The force was now too close to the main Egyptian naval base at Alexandria. The shore was lined not only with gun batteries but also with shore-to-sea missiles, a weapon the Syrians did not have, and the Egyptian air force was a threat. At 1:30 a.m. the six Israeli missile boats turned northeast towards Haifa.

In a battle off the Egyptian coast, three Egyptian missile boats were sunk and one escaped. All missiles fired at the Israeli boats were diverted.