Office of the Historian

385. Telegram From the Embassy in Egypt to the Department of State1

Cairo, June 2, 1956—4 p.m.

2396. Re Department telegram 2780.2 Latest estimates deliveries Soviet bloc equipment by Military Attaches as follows. Attaches stress inability determine accurately types or quantities all items.

Army: 250 T–34 medium and 34 JS–3 heavy tanks; over 100 BTR 152 armored personnel carriers; 51 SU 100 self–propelled artillery; in excess 4 truck mounted rocket launchers. Concerning AA guns, anti–tank mines, bazookas, Bangalore torpedoes, light arms and ammunition, other military vehicles, artillery type rockets, field artillery, no information available.3

Navy: 4 190 foot T–43 class minesweepers; 12 class 627 torpedo boats. Existence 3 to 6 landing craft probable plus unknown quantity naval mines and 21–inch torpedoes.

Air: 11 IL 14 transports; 35 IL 28 jet bombers actually observed; 21 MIG 15 jet fighters observed in reconnaissance all major air bases, but estimate 30 operational. Latest … report indicates total 65 or 70 MIGs in Egypt. These figures include U–MIGs and U–IL 28s. No indications any YAK–11s here. No information available re airborne [Page 707] radar equipment, however, believe limited number early warning installations received.

Although Embassy aware reports new arms deals (Embassy telegram 23614) Embassy has no information about “additional sizable deliveries in process and contemplated”.

Byroade
  1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 611.74/6–256. Secret. Received at 5:46 p.m.↩
  2. See footnote 11, Document 353.↩
  3. On June 4, the Embassy in Cairo asked the Department to delete “artillery type rockets” from the last sentence of this paragraph. (Telegram 2407 from Cairo; Department of State, Central Files, 611.74/6–456)↩
  4. Telegram 2361 from Cairo, May 29, reported that the Iraqi Ambassador had informed Byroade that Egypt and Czechoslovakia had recently concluded another arms deal. (Ibid., 674.87/5–2956)↩