Statistically, every single Shot Cal from the 7th and 188th Brigades was hit at least once. By the war’s end, nearly 900 Syrian tanks lay destroyed or abandoned on the Golan Heights, around 630 of them T-54/55s. In the end, despite grievous losses (especially among the exposed tank commanders), the Israelis prevailed-by inflicting even more grievous losses on the Syrians.

But with a “display of cold courage not seen before by the Israelis, the Syrian tanks simply bypassed the burning victims of the devastating Israeli fire and pressed on, pausing occasionally to return fire,” Dunstan wrote. Wrecked Syrian tanks soon littered the Golan Heights. According to Dunstan, Askarov’s gunner Yitzhak Hemo achieved a “remarkable” hit rate of one enemy vehicle for every one and a half rounds he fired. Shmuel Askarov, from the 188th Brigade, alone destroyed 35 T-54/55s.

The Shot Cals opened fire when the Syrian tanks were as far away as 3,000 yards-and kept firing even when the range closed to 50 yards or closer.

From these ramps, the two brigades fought off successive waves of Syrian tanks, mostly T-55s. In 1973, the 177 Shot Cals of the Israeli 7th and 188th Brigades initially fought from angled fighting positions-so-called “firing ramps”-that engineers had prepared before the war.Ī Shot Cal would roll just far enough up the firing ramp to expose its gun and sights, as well as its commander’s head as he stood in his hatch, per Israeli custom. The Israelis bought hundreds of Centurions, deployed them in the 1967 war with Egypt and upgraded the survivors to the Shot Cal standard, with a bigger engine and better fire-controls. Weighing 50 tons, with a world-class 105-millimeter L7 rifled gun, carefully sloped armor (thinner but more protective than a T-54/55’s armor) and 650-horsepower engine, the four-person Centurion was an immediate success. The Centurion entered service with the British Army in 1945. And in that test, a Centurion proved superior.

Syria tank battle