Word: aweigila
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Dates: during 1956-1956
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...French attack, Nasser could not give his retreating forces air cover. By the time it got back across the Suez Canal, he admitted, the main body of his armored forces had lost 30 out of about 200 Russian T-34s and 50 out of 300 armored cars. At Abu Aweigila, site of the heaviest fighting in Sinai, the Egyptians, according to Nasser, lost another 24 artillery pieces, 24 self-propelled guns and 21 Sherman tanks. Nonetheless, he insisted, the Israelis (who claim to have captured more than 100 tanks and nearly 200 artillery pieces) had won no real victory...
...Sinai collapsed like a pricked balloon. "The first night of operations," Ben-Gurion told the Knesset, "we took Kuntilla after twenty minutes of resistance, Ras el Naqb near Elath after a brief engagement and Quseima after forty-five minutes . . ." Only once, at the crucial road junction of Abu Aweigila on the Jerusalem-Ismailia highway, did Egyptian armor and artillery succeed in stalling the Israeli advance (TIME, Nov. 12). Tough Moshe Dayan, dashing about Sinai in a command car from hotspot to hotspot, promptly took charge. "Our infantry was inching along taking casualties under heavy artillery fire," he said later. "About...
Third Day. In a stretch of dune country in north-central Sinai, at a vital road junction called Abu Aweigila, the Egyptians threw their one fierce punch. Israeli Shermans and AMXs ran into a strong battalion of Egyptian armor, veered away from it while Israeli infantry moved to the attack. Overhead, Israeli Mysteres spotted a major reinforcing column (it apparently was a full corps of up to 50,000 men) lumbering eastward along the macadam road from Ismailia. Egyptian Vampires and MIGs came in to cover the reinforcements, fell into battle with Israeli fighters. By late...
...dusk the first Anglo-French bombers hit Egypt's airfields. It was all the help the Israelis at Abu Aweigila needed. With Egypt's air harassment all but eliminated, the vulnerable but speedy French tanks engaged the T-345. Soon the hillsides were smoky with burning tanks, both Egyptian and Israeli, but the AMXs' speed was proving decisive when night fell...
Fourth Day. When dawn broke over the tank battlefield of Abu Aweigila, the Israels discovered that in the darkness the Egyptians had pulled out what was left of their armor, to scurry to safety west of the Suez. A considerable remnant got away, but the Egyptians' one big punch had failed...
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