With the exception of the northern sector, the Syrians broke through by the 7th--less than one day. Technically they never broke through red ridge, though the 7th armored was ultimately down to a handful of tanks.
A day more then managed by the Syrians against the Jordanians.
Of course there was covering fire; dunno why the Syrians didn't use smokescreens. The Egyptians used plenty; maybe they hogged the quantity of smoke shells the Soviets were willing to provide.
Not much covering fire and Syrian gunnery reportedly sucked. Why the Syrians, but given that they didn't appear to lack for anything else the Egyptians also had it's much more likely that they failed to incorporate it into their battle plan rather then they lacked it.
Where did Pollack say they were only good at handling their vehicles by arab standards? I have his book here I could check.
Addendum, see page 506. A foremost Israeli authority on armored warfare who fought on Golan in 1973, General Peled, rated Syrian crews at "8" whereas Israeli and US ones were "10." But I presume Syrian officer quality was relatively poorer.
The Israelis consistently overrated their opposition to pump themselves up. It wasn't until experiences in Iraq and in association with (trying to) train the armies of Saudi Arabia that caused us to realize that they were really just competent who were fighting scrubs.
Jordanian skills must have deteriorated greatly since the '40s or even '67. Or maybe they were reluctant to fight hard against other arabs (I strongly suspect this also explains poor Egyptian performance in 1991). They did much better fighting Israeli armor from a defensive position in '67, as Pollack relates.
From 1921 to 1956 the Jordanian Army was the Arab Legion, and was staffed by actual serving British Officers and NCOs, as well as British trained Jordanians. The commanding General of the Arab Legion from 1939 until he was dismissed in 1956 was John Glubb, a retired British Army officer. The competence of the Jordanian Army was tied to Glubb, the British soldiers under his command, and the system they entrenched over three and a half decades of command. Following their departure the quality of the Jordanian military steadily declined, going from fighting the Israelis to a draw, and even outfighting them tactically in many instances, in 1948 to getting increasingly badly thumped by them in successive conflicts. In 1967 the Jordanians did fight better than any other Arab army, but they still weren't the equal of the Israelis, despite having better tanks (M48s against Super Shermans). Even by then, they showed numerous tactical flaws and had serious trouble coordinating tanks, infantry, and artillery.
The best Jordanian Tank Brigade, fought well, but only as well as an average Israeli unit. The 40th also benefited from the fact than in its major battles it was defending on excellent terrain with a numerical and technical advantage. By the standard military calculus it
should have won, which it did. However other Jordanian units with similar advantages were thrown back by Israeli attacks they should have been able to defeat and thus that brigade was very much the exception. Needless to say, the decline of the Jordanian Army continued over the succeeding years.
It's worth noting that, for whatever reason, the Jordanian Air Force didn't suffer this problem. They seem to have paid more attention to securing their system and actually dealing with the "meat-and-potatoes" of warfare instead of getting all focused on shiny toys.
Enthusiasm probably didn't have much to do with it. That's one area that Arab armies have generally proved quite good at: they've generally been willing to fight, regardless of their ability to do so.
But the terrain was not well suited to maneuver--the Syrians attacked through a Kudne gap and a Rafid gap--a situation compounded by Israeli obstacles which channeled attackers into kill zones. Add to that the ditch and minefield...Btw did you see Katz Israeli Tank Battles? Although basically slanted toward Israel he mentioned the courage and dedication of Syrian combat engineers, who managed to get bridges across the ditch despite heavy fire. Considering what they faced the Syrians didn't perform so badly.
In 2008, in a narrow mountain valley with the equivalent of a enemy brigade packed into a frontage of about 2km, Russian forces were still able to find space to maneuver aggressively and throw the Georgians off balance. The suggestion that there wouldn't be room to maneuver on a front 32 times that size against an enemy only twice as numerous is absurd. As if to prove the point, the Israelis had little trouble in maneuvering when they went the other despite being outnumbered by the Syrians and facing similar terrain challenges. And while Arab troops have certainly been brave, something I've never questioned, their competence and in particular their leadership generally left a lot to be desired.
Says who?? That would've been foolhardy from both a military and political point of view. Page 481 of Arabs at War indicates the Syrians only contemplated retaking the Golan--a daunting enough challenge for them....
Nobody can say for certain either way, since Syrian planning documents on this point are still largely hush-hush, but some circumstantial evidence does support it. From a conventional military point of view, it would only be foolhardy if the Syrians took into account their own forces failings. Which they obviously did not. But on paper, they certainly had the numbers and material to do it... they just didn't have the men. Politically, being the conqueror of at least some of the Israelis homeland on even a temporary basis would have earned Syria tremendous prestige in the Arab world, far outstripping what the Egyptians gained, even if (as is likely) they were subsequently forced to relinquish it by the superpowers... which makes it rather the opposite of foolhardy. The nuclear issue (which is half political, half military) is rather the real crowbar in that, but it's not clear how aware the Syrians (or Egyptians, for that matter) were of Israelis nuclear capabilities. I've even seen it speculated that one of the reasons the Egyptians and Syrians attacked is because they erroneously believed it was their last chance to wage a conventional war
before Israel acquired atomic arms. Another possibility is that, given that Israel only had a handful of nuclear gravity bombs and the effectiveness of Arab IADS early in the war, they may have placed expectations in that working to neutralize any Israelis nuclear counter-attack. In any case, the kind of attack the Syrians mounted was a far cry from the sort of "bite-and-hold" the Egyptians launched at the Suez and that they would have executed if they were limiting their ambitions to the Suez (and which probably would have worked out better for their men).
The Golan Heights was only a daunting challenge for incompetents. Other armies with the numerical and material advantages the Syrians had would have gone through it like a knife-through-butter.
Of course the Syrians did that. They constructed mockups of the terrain in which they'd be fighting and practiced repeatedly. See Arabs at War page 482, where Pollack makes this clear.
Compared to what the Egyptians did, the scale, thoroughness, scripting, and intensity of the planning and practicing was grossly inferior. The Egyptians also gave uber-specific orders to their troops that covered
all eventualities, which they could only do for 48 hours (in the Iran-Iraq War, the Iraqis managed to get this up to 72 hours... but no more). The Syrians failed to do this.
Of course it was inferior. The MIG-21 had a single 23mm gun--some variants had none--and crummy atolls, whereas the Israeli Mirage had two 30mm guns and much better Shafrir air to air missiles.
The two aircraft were roughly even. The 23mm was a perfectly adequate gun for the MiG-21s job and the Atoll's available by the 1970s were not any more inferior then the Shafrir or the Sidewinders of the same period, in addition to not being the only missiles the MiG-21 was outfitted with as well. The MiG-21 even proved to be superior to the MiG-23, which was supposed to be it's replacement. In any case, the Mirage wasn't the main fighter of the Israelis air force at the time: the F-4 was.
Iraqi and Jordanian pilots flying Hunters performed much better than other arabs flying MIGs or SUs.
No, the Iraqis were not. Both their pilots and organization were pitiful against the Iranians despite overwhelming numerical, material, and technological advantages and even against the Americans they did not remotely do as well as they could have given what they were flying (although it's doubtful they could have ever won, obviously). The Jordanians were, but then as noted above their air force actually paid attention to meat and potatoes rather then shiny kit, so it can't be attributed to flying western aircraft.
But the Americans in Vietnam at first weren't well prepared and had to improve their skills in air to air combat. The Israelis always emphasized that.
Sure, the Americans pulled ahead after they revamped their training programs, which involved throwing in more resources then the Vietnamese could even hope to possess in doing so. But that only further proves my point: technology is secondary next to skill. Even then, the ratios weren't on the order of 10:1 like they frequently were in the Israelis vs Arab match-ups... more like 2:1, ignoring that there were several cases of the US assigning losses to ground fire that may have been air-air kills. They actually did better then Korean and Chinese pilots in the Korean War, who managed 3:1. Had they been flown by Russians, they probably would have been 1:1 like was the case in Korea.
Of course there's no suggestion technology is everything. But it's important.
It really isn't. In the examples we do have where technology could be singled out as being the only influence on the kill ratios, the difference was only a few percentage points... not 10+:1 like has been seen with in Arab vs non-Arab fights.