Russia is ready to hand over to Israel an Israeli tank located in Kubinka near Moscow since 1982, world news agencies report. This information has already made a lot of noise in the Russian public. Why on earth is this done? What will Russia get in return? And what kind of tank is this anyway?
The correspondent of the Federal News Agency understood the issue.
The appearance of "Magah"
The starting point in this story was the arrival in Israel in the first half of the 60s of the XX century in Israel, a starting batch of American M48 Patton tanks. Since at that time the United States officially supported the embargo on the supply of military equipment to Tel Aviv, the Yankees undertook a kind of "knight's move". The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) received American vehicles not directly from the United States, but from the arsenals of the Bundeswehr.
Following the starting batch, new ones followed, so that very soon the IDF acquired a very solid fleet of American Pattons. The new owners renamed the car "Mages". In English - Magach. This Israeli name M48 was deciphered as follows: Ma and Ch represented the initial syllables of writing in Hebrew numbers four and eight, and Ga - a derivative of Gimel - meant Germany and served as a reminder that the first M48 were obtained from Germany.
However, the “Patton”, which was already pretty outdated at that time, did not quite suit the Israelis with the “Magician”. Beginning on December 15, 1966, the IDF began upgrading these tanks to the M48A3 modification level. After the tank received a 105-mm gun, a new transmission, a diesel engine, a low-profile commander's cupola and Belgian machine guns instead of American ones, the vehicle was named "Magah-3".
His Majesty Blazer
Time passed, the power of anti-tank weapons grew in the world, and the "skin" of the "Magakhs" did not become thicker. To somehow cope with this problem, the Israelis at the turn of the 70s and 80s made a kind of revolution in tank construction - they were the first to adopt the first generation dynamic protection (DZ). Under the name "Blazer" it began to be installed on "Magah-3".
What is Blazer? These are metal containers with explosives fortified over tank armor. This substance detonates towards the anti-tank cumulative projectile, scattering the cumulative jet and preventing it from burning through the tank armor located under the DZ.
Actually, the DZ was developed long before the 80s both in the USSR and in the Federal Republic of Germany. But the idea of covering a tank from the outside with explosives seemed so wild and "redundant" to many that these experiments remained at the development stage. This gave primacy in the adoption of DZ into service in the hands of the Israelis.
Ira Efroni in the "bag of fire"
On June 6, 1982, the Lebanese War broke out, better known in Israel as Operation Peace for Galilee. Then it was like this.
At 17:30 on June 10, 1982, Ira Efroni, commander of the 362nd tank battalion of the 734th tank brigade of the IDF, received an order from the command to occupy the intersection south of the settlement of Sultan-Yaakub. Intelligence data indicated that the defeated Syrian units were fleeing, so the battalion commander moved forward his Magah-3 equipped with Blazers, practically in a marching column and without infantry cover.
It soon became clear that the data on the state of the Syrians were "not a fact, but good wishes."After midnight, having moved eight kilometers from the main forces of their division, Efroni's tanks found themselves in a "fire bag", which was arranged for the Israelis by the Syrian commandos entrenched on the dominant heights. Instead of the planned offensive, the 362nd battalion had to break through the winding mountain road back to its own all night.
By 9:00 on June 11, Efroni had escaped from the "bag", but at the cost of eight destroyed tanks and the loss of 15 people. At 12:00 on June 11, a ceasefire agreement entered into force, allowing the Israelis to evacuate four damaged tanks and most of the bodies of the dead. However, four more “Magah-3” battalions lost by the 362nd battalion remained in Syrian-controlled territory after the ceasefire.
Along the way, it turned out that conscripts Zachariya Baumel and Yehuda Katz, as well as reservist Zvi Feldman, were missing in the hell of a night battle. All attempts to find at least some traces of them after the battle of June 10-11, 1982 at Sultan Yaakub ended in failure, which became perhaps the most painful moment for the Israelis in this whole story.
A story that had an unexpected continuation.
Guest from Lebanon
One of the captured "Magah-3" with "Blazer" the Syrians handed over to the USSR. So the Israeli tank ended up in Kubinka near Moscow, where it was carefully studied. Of course, the Blazer was of particular interest to Soviet designers, engineers and tankers.
The Israeli DZ made such an impression that in the summer of the same 1982, the USSR Ministry of Defense authorized the start of development work on the development of DZ for domestic tanks. This feverish activity ended in 1985 with the adoption by the Soviet army of the mounted DZ "Contact-1" complex with the 4S20 dynamic protection element.
From that moment on, DZ became an indispensable component of the protection of Soviet tanks.
Well, what about the "Lebanese" "Magah-3"? From the test tank site, it was moved to the departmental museum of armored weapons and equipment in the same Kubinka. In 1996, the museum was removed from the 38th Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation into a separate state and opened for free visits. Now everyone could look at the "bins" of the tank museum …
In the footsteps of the museum story
Meanwhile, Israel did not forget about their soldiers who went missing near Sultan Yaakub. Not a single description of the tragic battle of the battalion of Ira Efroni was complete without the obligatory mention of Baumel, Katz and Feldman. The fact that the USSR possessed a considerable amount of captured Israeli armored vehicles transferred to it by the Arabs was, of course, suspected in the IDF. But Israel did not have specific data on this topic for a long time.
Everything changed after 1996, when the doors of the armored museum in Kubinka opened to everyone. Although after that, the light "Magah-3" in the museum pavilion was not paid much attention for a long time.
This continued until the rumors reached the Israelis, spread by one of the museum guides "for the sake of a word of mouth". He, with a completely serious air, told the listeners that one of the Israeli tanks had been brought to Kubinka from the Middle East, having sealed tower hatches and the remains of a dead crew inside.
The story was just a story, but it forced the Israelis to start a check, during which they were surprised to see that the tank standing in Kubinka near Moscow is one of Ira Efroni's cars lost on June 10-11, 1982 at Sultan Yaakub! And purely theoretically, inside the tank at the time of its capture (but not delivery to the USSR), there really could be the remains of missing Israeli soldiers.
From that moment on, the relatives of Baumel, Katz and Feldman began to bombard the Israeli government and the IDF with demands to return the old tank to their homeland. In the end, these messages turned into the corresponding requests of the Israelis to the Russian government and the RF Ministry of Defense. But for a long time these messages remained unanswered.
Putin gives the go-ahead
The history of the "Lebanese" "Magah-3" underwent another unexpected turn after the Russian Aerospace Forces launched a counter-terrorist operation in Syria on September 30, 2015. From that moment on, the attention of our government to Russian-Israeli relations, for obvious reasons, increased many times over. Israel's benevolent position on Russia's actions in Syria became even more important after a Russian Su-24M bomber was shot down by Turkish F-16 fighters near the Syrian-Turkish border on November 24, 2015, and Russia's relations with Turkey deteriorated sharply.
All these circumstances together led to the fact that the initiative of the Israeli side to transport Magah-3 from the Russian Federation to Israel began to find more and more "understanding" from the Russian government. At the request of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and with the approval of Russian President Vladimir Putin, consultations began. Gradually the parties came to an agreement. Moreover, its elaboration did not start in April 2016, as the Israeli side claims, but earlier - back in January of this year. At least, this is what employees of the Russian Central Museum of Armored Weapons and Equipment say.
One way or another, by order of the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, Gadi Eisenkot, a team of IDF technicians was sent to Russia, which, together with Russian colleagues, began to prepare the transportation of the tank from Kubinka to Israeli territory.
On May 29, when all the dots on the "i" in the issue of the transfer of "Magah" were finally dotted, Netanyahu posted on his Facebook page the following text: "I thank Russian President Vladimir Putin, who responded to my request to return the Israeli tank, which was knocked out during the battle. at Sultan Yaakub during the first Lebanese war. I raised this issue during our meeting last month. The families of the missing Zachary Baumel, Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz have not even been able to visit their relatives' graves for 34 years. The tank is the only evidence of that battle, and it will be returned to Israel by the decision of President Putin, who responded to my request."
Tank in exchange for sympathy
Why the return of the tank is necessary for the government of Israel and the relatives of the missing near Sultan Yaakub is understandable. Why the return of the tank is necessary for the Russian government - in general, it is also clear. This is a convenient opportunity for the Russian Federation to demonstrate to Israel its negotiability and, albeit indirectly, to strengthen Tel Aviv's friendly neutrality on the Syrian issue.
To summarize, we have an exchange of obvious historical value for non-obvious Israeli sympathies. The future will show how justified this step will be. In the meantime, it is obvious that the museum fund of Kubinka is losing an exhibit with an interesting and unique history. Moreover, an exhibit that had a great influence on the development of domestic tank building.
It is not yet clear whether Kubinka will receive something in return for the tank that is leaving for Israel. Pessimists believe that the matter will be limited to the gratitude of the Israelis. Optimists and, by the way, some museum employees believe that the agreement between Putin and Netanyahu implies not just the transfer of the "Lebanese" tank to Israel, but its exchange for another tank of the same modification, but deprived of the "steel grave" status.
If you think sensibly, then such an exchange of equipment is more logical than a one-way transfer of a tank. In this case, the exchange can be made not only for the same "Magah-3", but also for other armored vehicles that were in service with the IDF and are of undoubted historical interest. For example, it can be a heavy tracked armored personnel carrier "Akhzarit" converted by the Israelis from captured T-54 and T-55, or even the main tank "Merkava" of the first modifications.
