In the early morning of the 25th, the vanguard of the Third Armored Division arrived near Semede.

This time, the Israeli army did not take the initiative to attack, but stayed on the defensive position, and only used long-range artillery to greet the Egyptian army that had arrived from all the way.

Of course, there is nothing strange about this. [bsp;   The two armored brigades of Israel from Eilat are standard reserve forces. The officers and soldiers received mobilization orders before the war broke out. The main combat equipment they were equipped with were in stock, mainly sealed "Mekava 3" main battle tanks, and only a few "Mekava 4" main battle tanks. Although after modernization and improvement, the "Mekava 3" type is also equipped with a 120 mm smoothbore gun, which is not much different from the fourth generation "Mekava" in firepower, but it is still a big difference in other performances, especially protection capabilities. In addition, the officers and soldiers of these two brigades are all from the reserves, and the tankers are only trained three times a year, and their quality is far less than that of the permanent reserve troops.

After the 600th Armored Brigade was severely damaged and almost lost all the main battle tanks, the Israeli army naturally did not dare to advance rashly.

The problem is that the Third Armored Division is unlikely to attack Semad immediately, because the "Mekava" hiding behind the building still poses a huge threat.

More importantly, after the battle of Nehel, the Third Armored Division had lost nearly twenty Type 24 vehicles.

To be precise, including tank battles, there were only eleven vehicles, and seven of them broke down during the march. The other was pressed on anti-tank mines buried by the Israeli army when entering Naihele, causing damage to the walking mechanism and had to be dragged back to the tank factory for overhaul.

At this time, the Third Army had all crossed the Suez Canal, and the vanguard of the First Army had arrived in Schet.

In order to preserve strength, especially valuable armored forces, Qi Kaiwei issued an order in the early morning of the 25th to allow the Third Armored Division to leave the vanguard to monitor Semed. The main force retreated to Nehel and sent the 13th Infantry Division to reinforce at full speed, and replace the Third Armored Division to siege Semed.

This time, Qi Kaiwei did not specify when to conquer Semed.

At that time, he spoke to the commander of the 13th Infantry Division and issued a direct combat order, that is, when siege Semed, he must leave enough reserves to launch counterattacks, and set up defense lines west of the encirclement to actively attack to prevent the Israeli army from advancing west from Semed.

Obviously, Qi Kaiwei did not expect the Egyptian army to capture Semed in time.

According to the decision-making process he told in his memoirs, if the Third Panzer Division conquered Nehel before dark, he would order the Third Army to first capture Semed, and then send an armored force to assault in the direction of Eilat, forcing the Israel Defense Forces to leave enough reserves in the rear, and then concentrate the First Army and the Third Army to head north from Nehel to find the main force of the Israeli army to fight.

If this is true, the Egyptian army will win the war without any suspense.

Unfortunately, the Egyptian army failed to capture Nehel in time and arrived in Semed in time, so it was unable to pose a direct threat to Eilat and could not force the Israeli army to divide the troops. The result was that if the main force of the Egyptian army headed north from Nehel, it would definitely encounter the Israeli army's main force near Route 3. More importantly, the Israeli army's strength will definitely not be small, and it will be difficult for the Egyptian army to gain a military advantage.

On the contrary, neither the 14th Infantry Division nor the 28th Infantry Division are the main armored units.

The main force of the 14th Infantry Division is 118 Type 04 main battle tanks, while the main force of the 28th Infantry Division is 124 99 modified main battle tanks. In terms of performance, Type 04 is between "Mekava 6" and "Mekava 5", while the 99 modified is slightly worse than "Mekava 5". In terms of armored combat vehicles, the two infantry divisions have a total of nearly 600 vehicles and have sufficient military strength advantages.

In fact, the Egyptian army's advantage lies in its military strength.

The two infantry divisions had a total of more than 20,000 officers and soldiers (the 14th Infantry Division suffered huge losses and suffered more than 2,000 casualties when guarding the fifth stop), while the total strength of the two Israeli troops was less than 10,000. The problem is that the Egyptian army did not have a reserve force, and the Israeli army had sufficient reserve force.

It can be said that this armored battle is basically evenly matched.

Because they could not afford to lose, Israel first dispatched the air force, hoping to make up for the shortage of troops through air strikes. The Egyptian Air Force also dispatched immediately to provide cover for the ground forces.

At that time, the Egyptian Air Force also carried out the battlefield support mission for the first time.

From the perspective of equipment structure, the Egyptian Air Force should have good ground strike capabilities, because both J-10 and J-22 are multi-purpose fighters. However, in this war, the main task of the Egyptian Air Force is to compete for air supremacy and cover ground forces, rather than provide support to ground forces. As a result, almost all J-22s are used to perform air defense tasks, and only a few J-10s are used to perform ground strike tasks.

It can be said that the Egyptian Air Force fought very passively.

This illustrates the biggest problem of the Egyptian Air Force in one aspect, namely, lack of self-confidence and does not believe that it has the ability to challenge Israel's air hegemony.

If the Egyptian Air Force fought more aggressively, the Egyptian Army would have a much better life.

Of course, the problem of self-confidence cannot be solved overnight. It can only be solved through constant battles and defeating opponents on the battlefield.

It was the air forces of both sides that joined the army, which made the armored battle even more intense.

At noon that day, the Israel Defense Force had to use the reserve team and dispatch two armored brigades to the front line.

At around 2 pm, after the Israeli reserve team arrived, the Egyptian army stopped the assault and then retreated to the fifth stop under the cover of air force and long-range artillery.

The assault failed to achieve its goal, but it sounded the alarm for the Israeli army.

If the Egyptian army in the direction of the fifth stop was not paid attention to, the Israeli army would definitely suffer in the subsequent battle. The result was that, as the most critical combat force on the battlefield of the Sinai Peninsula, the "Givati" brigade has been staying near the fifth stop and has not moved eastward.

The Israeli army left at least five brigades in that direction, and they were all standing troops.

Of course, this is also related to Qi Kaiwei's subsequent deployment: in the afternoon of the same day, Qi Kaiwei ordered the four Egyptian army reserve divisions on the west bank of the canal to go to the fifth stop, and all four divisions were replaced with the number of the Second Army and used some of the main combat equipment of the Second Army.

In other words, when the Israeli army discovered it, it was believed that the main force of the Second Army had arrived at the fifth stop.
Chapter completed!