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During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, one of the centerpieces of the Egyptian and Syrian strategies was the introduction of extensive Surface-to-Air Missile systems over the areas they had selected as battlefields in the Sinai and Golan Heights.
This was a planned move and stroke of genius to nullify the Israeli Air Force, and it worked. The Egyptian army, especially, operating underneath a SAM shield (except for a foray to the Mitla and Gidi Passes) was able to acquit itself fairly well because of it's immense multitude of Sagger missiles and other defensive weaponry.

The shear amount of killing power and the range the masses of Egyptian soldiers could deploy it at was stunning to the Israelis, especially since their Air Force couldn't seem to do anything about it.
The IAF had two plans for this war: Operation Tagar (the attack on static Egyptian SAM sites) and Dougman 5 (a similar Syrian operation). It was decided within 48 hours to launch Operation Tagar once information started flowing in about the divisional units of the Egyptian Army that were already across the canal and into Sinai.

The IAF carried out the first phase of Tagar; a toss-bombing of several radar sites in preparation for a final attack on the SAM launchers themselves. It was thought that they would be able to complete the destruction within a few days. But when the F-4s and A-4s returned to their bases, the ground crews were told not to fit them with the loadouts for the second phase of Operation Tagar, but for Dougman 5.
The entire IAF, even though it couldn't fit in the airspace over the Golan Heights, was directed to go after Syrian targets.

The helicopters that had launched drones over Sinai didn't have time to move north, and neither did the photo-recon planes. So when Dougman 5 was launched, it was done so without any intelligence whatsoever. This was a gamble the IAF would regret. According to The Yom Kippur War by Abraham Rabinowitz, only one Syrian SAM battery was destroyed, while six Israeli Phantoms were lost (all to ground fire).

This is where The Yom Kippur War posits what could have been:

Of all the what-ifs of the war, the decision to call off Tagar is probably the most weighty. If the operation had been succesfully executed, stripping the Egyptian army of its missile shield, it would clearly have been a different war. Without the missiles to wory about, the IAF could easily have eliminated the conventional antiaircraft batteries from altitude. The planes would then have been free to hover over the canal and hit the bridges and ferries, and they would have been able to methodically attack the ground forces that had already crossed.
Not all air force officers were certain about how Tagar would have played out given the mobility of the SAM-6s and uncertainty about suppressing conventional antiaircraft fire by toss bombing. But Bin-Nun, Furman, Amir, and other senior air force officers would remain convinced that Tagar's cancellation denied Israel an early and decisive victory. There was no question that the Egyptian missiles would have been eliminated Amos Amir would say years later. The only question was how many planes would have been lost. This, he expected would have been in the dozens.
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