Qualla: 1974 Suez Canal Clearance Operation

1974 Suez Canal Clearance Operation: Introduction

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. On 22 April 1974, a U.S. Navy RH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter lifted off from the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima, anchored at the northern end of the Suez Canal, picked up a Mark-105 magnetic minesweeping sled from a support team on shore, and began sweeping the approaches to Port Said harbor. It was the first step in one of the most complex military clearance operations since World War II. The Suez Canal had been closed since June 1967, shut down at the start of the Six-Day War and kept sealed through the War of Attrition and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Eight years of conflict had left the canal and its banks saturated with naval mines, unexploded ordnance, and sunken wrecks. Reopening it would require the combined efforts of the United States, United Kingdom, and France -- and the discovery of 686,000 landmines buried along its shores.

Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

1974 Suez Canal Clearance Operation: Three Operations, One Canal

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USN, Public domain. The clearance effort was divided into three overlapping operations, each targeting a different dimension of the problem. Operation Nimbus Star handled the naval mines. The USS Iwo Jima, deployed more than a month early on just five days' notice, became the flagship of Task Force ...

Image: USN | Public domain

1974 Suez Canal Clearance Operation: 686,000 Mines in the Sand

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. The land clearance was staggering in scale. Nearly 1,700 Egyptian Army engineers received training from U.S. Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialists, including personnel from the 43rd Ordnance Detachment. Their task was to sweep the full length of the canal's banks, catalogi...

Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

1974 Suez Canal Clearance Operation: Diving Into the Canal Bed

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. The underwater phase, Operation Moon Water, ran through the end of 1974 and at a reduced pace into 1975. U.S. Navy EOD divers -- prohibited from handling ordnance directly due to diplomatic constraints -- trained Egyptian Navy personnel in diving and explosives techniques, then a...

Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

1974 Suez Canal Clearance Operation: A Canal Reborn

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. By late November 1974, the American-Egyptian team had completed one full sweep of the canal bottom. When the combined underwater operations finished in December, the clearance teams had recovered a massive quantity of ordnance from the canal bed, adding to the hundreds of thousan...

Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain