ABSTRACT

On the eve of the Kadesh Campaign, the Egyptian armed forces had reached a turning point. Only two years earlier, on 19 October 1954, the Egyptian and British governments had signed an agreement according to which the British forces would vacate the bases they still held in the Suez Canal region within 20 months. Thus for the first time since 1882, the sole responsibility for Egypt’s defence lay with her armed forces. At about that time, towards the end of 1954, Egypt and the USSR signed the first arms deal, known as ‘the Czech Deal’, to which the Egyptian president, Gamal Abd al-Nasser, first referred in public in his speech on 27 September 1955.1

On the outbreak of the Kadesh campaign, Egypt had received under the terms of this deal more than 500 tracked A.F.V.s-some 200 tanks, mainly the T-34 medium tank with 85 mm gun, some 100 SU self-propelled guns (100mm A/Tk guns mounted on the chassis of T-34 tanks) and more than 200 armoured troop carriers of the types BTR-40 and BTR-152; some 500 artillery pieces of various sizes; approximately 200 jet planessome 120 MIG-15 fighters, some 50 IL-28 medium bombers and 20 IL-14 transport aircraft-and various naval vessels, including 2 ‘Skory’ type destroyers and 12 MTBs (motor torpedo boats).2