The Third World War: August 1985

CHAPTER 19: Air Defence of the United Kingdom and Eastern Atlantic

For some years after the Second World War the UK maintained a high level of air defence. The Berlin crisis and the airlift in 1948, and then the Korean War in 1950, did much to offset the idealists’ beliefs that all arms could be laid aside at once, and while the threat was possibly not very great in those days wartime memories of 1940 were still vivid. As a result Fighter Command’s resources up to the first half of the 1950s remained considerable. Indeed, in 1957 it boasted some 600 jet fighters and a sufficiency of airfields and radars to support them.

But in 1957 there was a major shift in policy that was to leave the country denuded of adequate air defence for nearly twenty years. Evaluation of the nuclear missile threat from the USSR in the early fifties, at a time of overwhelming strategic nuclear power in the USA, had led to the contemporary strategy of trip-wire and retaliation. In 1957 it was decided, with impeccable logic, that all that was needed was a fighter shield to protect our nuclear-armed V-bomber bases to ensure that they could get into the air on their retaliatory missions just as soon as the ballistic missile warning system indicated that they must go. (For a discussion of this phase of British defence policy see Chapter 4.)

Whether or not the policy of trip-wire and massive retaliation was appropriate to the circumstances of the time, it was later to demonstrate a fatal flaw. As Soviet missile strength grew and the retaliatory strategy had to give way to the flexible response, with its emphasis on the ability to fight with conventional as well as nuclear weapons, so the basic assumption on which this minimal air defence was predicated disappeared. But by then the demands on government spending from many quarters left no room for the costly rebuilding of a comprehensive air defence system to counter the growing Soviet capability to attack the UK in a phase of conventional war.

By the time intelligence assessments had finally (and rather belatedly) recognized the conventional air threat it was not just a matter of numbers of aircraft — though heaven knows they were short enough; it was also a matter of numbers of men in the air and on the ground. Both were difficult to come by with the competing attractions of industry and commerce in an affluent society. Radar communications and control centres were also insufficient in capacity or availability for the changed situation. The shortage of airfields gave particular concern. By the end of the 1939-45 war there had been an airfield every fifteen to twenty-five kilometres throughout most of the country; now there were only a handful — all the others had gone back to the plough or had been handed over to municipalities or other users for a variety of purposes. The shortage of airfields was critical.

In the seventies it was necessary to think of air defence on an immeasurably larger canvas than that on which the Battle of Britain was portrayed. Not only did the stand-off weapons of an attacking force require the defences to be pushed out hundreds of kilometres if the launching aircraft were to be destroyed in time, but the areas to be defended now reached across the Eastern Atlantic, where it was necessary to protect shipping which would no longer have air cover from large fleet carriers in the Royal Navy. In addition to the central task of the defence of the United Kingdom and its base facilities, SACLANT and SACEUR assigned air defence responsibilities to the British in an area that extended from the Channel to the North Norwegian Sea in the north and out very nearly to the coast of Iceland in the west. It was a tall order. If the worst NATO fears were ever to be realized then the air resources available in the mid-seventies would be decidedly inadequate, for in those circumstances the United Kingdom — as a rearward base for SACEUR and a forward base for SACLANT, roles decided by the strategic geography of the British Isles rather than by defence planners — could not hope to escape the close attention of the Soviet Air Forces.

To SACLANT, apart from affording air defence and antisubmarine air patrols for shipping in the Eastern Atlantic and Channel, the UK was a critically important base from which to mount flank support for his Strike Fleet as and when it had to fight its way against Soviet sea and air opposition into the North Norwegian Sea. And in war this was, assuredly what the Strike Fleet would have to do. For SACEUR, the UK would be the mounting base for much of the deeper air effort behind the forward edge of the enemy’s battle area on the Continent. It would also be to the UK that any aircraft and crews held in reserve would be likely to be withdrawn. And then there was the air bridge: the endless belt of heavy-lift jumbo-sized aircraft that would carry most of the human reinforcements and much of their equipment from the USA to Europe as soon as full mobilization’ plans were put into effect. Given a rudimentary air-to-air missile system, even early generation long-range aircraft could wreak havoc with this flow if they got into that great aerial procession. They must not do so — and it was the task of the British Air Defence Commander to see that they did not. If that officer appeared, with the resources available to him in the mid-seventies, a preoccupied man, no one could say he had no cause.

Nevertheless, by 1977 things were beginning to improve, even if, in the view of the Royal Air Force, nothing like quickly enough. Some measurable progress had been made with the addition of two extra air defence squadrons provided by extending the life of some of the Lightning interceptors; the F-4 Phantoms were now the backbone of an interceptor force and had greatly raised its capability at all levels, as well as its resistance to electronic jamming; Bloodhound surface-to-air missiles (SAM) had been re-introduced to give low-level area defence in the south-east of England, while mobile squadrons of the British Rapier SAM provided point defence to vital airfields in the north. More improvements were in the pipeline: the Tornado air defence variant was due to replace the Phantom in the eighties; Nimrod airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft were on order; and a major rationalization and modernization plan was in train to streamline the heterogeneous and unwieldy radar communications and control systems that had grown up piecemeal through the years as the RAF struggled to improve its air defence under the parsimony of British defence policy. Looking further ahead, airfields were to have hardened protection for their aircraft, while a particularly flexible and jamming-resistant new data communications system, the United Kingdom Air Defence Ground Environment (UKADGE), would link the fighters, control centres, airborne early warning systems and airfields by the early 1980s.

Once the national consciousness began to become uneasy about the danger to the UK of unchecked Soviet military expansion, the path of the air planners became easier, and it was possible to gain some political support from all sides in the House of Commons for measures now clearly seen to be needed for the defence of the homeland. Policy agreement was one thing, putting it into effect was another. The task was formidable. It is no simple matter to increase, or speed up, the production of complex aircraft and weapons, or to create their support facilities. It is more difficult still to conjure up the skilled and experienced men and women needed to operate an expanded and complex military system without mounting a deliberate programme of expansion in sufficient time to develop it in an ordered way over a number of years.

By 1985 the Tornado interceptors were in service in considerable numbers, thanks to increased production and round-the-clock working by all the contractors in that part of the European industry. The AEW Nimrod had replaced the Shackleton, and the numbers of SAM systems had been increased by restricting overseas sales and by purchase from the United States. Among some very promising air-to-air and ground-to-air weapons was the new EUROSAM, a collaborative project with France, of which the RAF now had two squadrons at home. A tanker conversion of the splendid old VC-10 transport was coming into service, and this, together with some Boeings bought from the United States, had greatly increased the air-to-air refuelling resources so critically important for long-range interception over the sea to the north and west.

Just as the early scientific gropings with radar at Bawdsey Manor in the mid-1930s had helped to turn the tide in 1940, so perhaps the most significant progress was in the completion of the new control and communications system (UKADGE). Without going into the technical details, it is sufficient to say here that it worked through mutually-supporting hardened control centres and accepted digitized data from the whole range of sensors contributing to the air defence system: ground and airborne radars, early warning aircraft, and NATO ground and sea-based sensor systems, including those of the French. This gave the Air Defence Commander, and all those concerned in the control chain, an immediate picture at any moment of the air threat and the resources available to counter it. It was to be the essential management platform from which the expected battle would be conducted.

Despite these improvements in equipment, and the highest quality of aircraft and weapons, the Royal Air Force still remained dangerously short of one vital asset: trained and skilled manpower. Political recognition in the late seventies that discontent with service pay and conditions was making a career in any armed service unattractive to young men came belatedly. The air force chiefs had long been anxious because the young men and women of the calibre they needed commanded particularly good opportunities in civil life. When substantial increases of pay were agreed in 1978 the situation quickly improved, but skilled servicemen became an even more expensive item in the defence bill than ever. The levels were raised to meet the increased front-line requirement, but not to the extent that the RAF, or indeed SACEUR in his operating criteria, considered necessary for sustained operations. If the RAF was to be engaged in hostilities in the near future, its commanders knew that through good leadership the human reserve would need to be stretched right to its limits and probably far beyond.

The account that follows is taken from a personal interview with Air Chief Marshal Sir John Hazel, AOC-in-C Strike Command and CINCUKAIR (C-in-C United Kingdom Air Forces) in the NATO command chain.

“At 0700 hours on the morning of 30 July the Air Chief Marshal waited in the hardened war room of his regional air operations centre at High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, for the next briefing to begin. Since mobilization seven days ago he had virtually lived in the small subterranean office with his bunk set in an alcove to one side. Now his eyes were on the closed circuit television screen as the master clock ticked off the seconds to the start time for the briefing. Exactly on cue, the briefing officer appeared on screen and the routine began: weather conditions, actual and forecast, throughout his wide command; totes of aircraft and aircrew availability, and readiness at the operational airfields and the newly activated satellite fields and forward operating bases. All of this was called up direct from the resource catalogue of the Command automatic data processing (ADP) bank.

Despite the urgent refurbishment programme of the last three years, new assets of runways, dispersals and hangars were still far from what he would have wished; overcrowding, and therefore vulnerability, was exacerbated by the inflow of USAF squadrons to their war bases in his command area. The reinforcement so far had been most impressive, but one of the consequences was that there were now some very juicy airfield targets on offer, and he made a mental note to have another talk about dispersal with the Commander of USAF Third Air Force after the briefing. The transition to a war footing had really gone very smoothly, and with all the air movement that had taken place he was particularly pleased with the way the complicated airspace management task (the identification and separation of aircraft) was being conducted. He reflected on how different things might have been if the improved UKADGE had not come on line much as intended. The greatly increased capacity to track and identify aircraft was going to be worth its weight in gold once the President authorized the reinforcement air bridge to start operating at full throttle, as he must surely do very soon now if SACEUR was to get his troop reinforcements in time.

A continuous stream of heavy transport aircraft at the rate of one every two to four minutes, day after night after day, was what was called for to pump in the manpower to the Central Region in order to steady the inevitable recoil of the forward defences when the massive armoured thrust of the Soviet forces hit them. Even though many transports would fly over his air defence region without landing, their identification, safe control, separation and integration with the UK-based movements, including the reinforcement shuttle traffic to and from the Continent, would tax his control resources to the utmost. On top of that, of course, there had to be scope for immediate reaction to hostile air activity, which had to be expected in his vast airspace once the war began and, perhaps, way out over the sea even before that.

The situation brief continued. Tornados of the Northern Interception Alert Force from Leuchars had been launched during the night in reaction to a high, fast-flying, radar plot. This was probably a reconnaissance MG-25 Foxbat, since it had turned away north-east and passed out of scan at an estimated 20,000 metres and two and a half times the speed of sound before the Tornados abandoned the chase and returned to base. Most of the ground-based radar sensors had experienced some sporadic ECM interference at the extremities of their cover but the AEW patrols had managed to maintain a clear low-level picture in their operating areas.

Overall his command looked in reasonable shape. All UK-based units had completed their formal alert measures and were now husbanding their aircraft except for essential air tests. Civil flying had virtually ceased now that the emergency repatriation flights for summer tourists were out of the way, and the national airline resources were being incorporated as a transport reserve. Liaison officers at the reception bases for the USAF augmentation forces were very busy briefing new arrivals. The C-in-C was confident that the joint operating procedures hammered out over recent years between the two air forces would stand up to wartime pressures. The influx of men and women from the support units and reserves to their war appointments was now virtually complete. After his call to Third Air Force Sir John handed over to his deputy commander and left to visit some of his nearer bases to get a feeling for the situation at first hand. After all, the intelligence staffs still thought the signs pointed to another ten days or so of this sort of waiting game.

As his helicopter approached Wattisham, he noted with satisfaction the effectiveness of the toning down and natural camouflage measures which had been pursued for some seven or eight years now.

You could not really hide the runway, of course, but it was not at all easy to distinguish the airfield from three or four kilometres away unless you knew the area very well. The dispersal and decoy system would also make it very much more difficult for an attacking pilot seeking to destroy aircraft on the ground.

“If only they were not tied to those damned runways,” he said to himself. Being a good airman the inflexibility and vulnerability that went with long runway airfields had always affronted his professional conscience.

Talking to the Tornado crews in their hardened operations room he was, as always, exhilarated by their professional competence and dedication. This squadron had less than a year’s experience with the Tornado but they were clearly delighted with it.

“The radar is absolutely superb, sir,” one enthusiastic crew member told him. “We can track them right down in the weeds if we have to.”

Talking to the Squadron Commander, Hazel was reassured by the thoroughness with which the training programme had been conducted; co-operation with tankers and with AEW was obviously first class, and full advantage had been taken of the Tornado’s electronic navigation and weapons system to develop methods for concerted, and if need be autonomous, interception techniques between groups of fighters.

Flying on to Bentwaters, he had a talk with the USAF Base Commander who was grappling with the problems of absorbing some fifty F-15s that had just landed from the States. Overcrowding was his problem; the pre-stocking of spares and munitions seemed all right, and he was deploying the aircraft to pre-planned dispersal airfields as rapidly as he could. One thing was certain: he was not going to get caught with his birds on the ground if the balloon went up.

“They’ll be up there,” he said, “fighting — and shooting the hell out of the Russians.”

Dropping in at Stanmore on the way back, Sir John talked at length with AOC No. 11 Group, his Air Defence Commander, and they reviewed the state of preparation together. They did not expect heavy losses in the air; after all, they had superb aircraft, and there was no reason why they should lose many in combat against intruding attackers. Losses on the ground were another matter. But the AOC’s real concern lay in the limits of his human resources.

“We can’t know,” he said, “whether this is going to be short and decisive or drawn out by reluctance to go nuclear. My chief worry is that in any action beyond a week or two my air and ground crew will be stretched beyond the limits of exhaustion.”

This was not news to the C-in-C; he shared his AOC’s reservations, but there was little that could be done about it. Together they looked into the Command bunker which would serve as first alternative operations centre, with all the information available to the Command and Group operations centres duplicated there. This would be a vital facility if battle damage put out the main centres at any time — which was something that a resolute enemy was bound to try to do.

It was a thoughtful and reflective Air Marshal who flew the remaining few kilometres back to his headquarters that afternoon. Much had been done to gear up defences since the penny had dropped with the Western governments. The crucial question was whether there had been time to do enough. On the answer to that question might well depend not only the continued existence of an independent United Kingdom but the survival of Western democracy.

Five days later, as we know, the Soviet offensive opened in the Central Region. Sir John Hazel did not take much waking in the early hours of 4 August. He was not greatly surprised to learn that heavy Soviet pressure was already being exerted along the whole length of the Central Region. He knew that many of his strike-attack forces would be committed immediately to interdiction and counter-air operations, for which they were ready, in an effort to slow down the momentum of the Soviet advance. He also knew that such of his aircraft as were assigned to SACLANT would be required for a pre-emptive attack on the main Soviet Backfire base in the Kola Peninsula up in the Arctic Circle. This would be carried out by Tornados and Buccaneers from the UK, supported by tanker aircraft for refuelling during the mission.

Hazel thoroughly approved of this objective. Maritime air defence philosophy had long been a lively subject for debate between differing schools of thought, but he saw this attack on the source of the threat as entirely consistent with his own strongly held view that the best form of maritime air defence was to prevent as many of the enemy aircraft as possible from reaching the sea area where the targets were. In the EASTLANT area this meant an emphasis on a barrier defence across the routes that geography forced on the Soviet long-range bombers. This philosophy, which was not shared by all, did not rule out air defence forces being dedicated to the needs of a specific surface group, but resources were sparse and point defence was an extravagant way of using aircraft. He certainly would need strong arguments before he would divert significant effort from the more cost-effective tactic of hitting the enemy at or near his point of origin.

In less than an hour the radar plot started to show intruders approaching the UK Air Defence Region from the far north. In the next few days the defences were to be very hard pressed indeed as wave after wave of attacks were launched against the UK mainland. The pattern suggested that the Soviet long-range and naval air forces hoped to achieve four main objectives: the neutralization of the air defences; the elimination of nuclear-capable forces on the ground; the disruption of command and control; and the impeding of the transatlantic flow of reinforcements by sea and by air.

No one as yet knew an effective way of hiding a radar aerial, but mobile equipments complicated the attacker’s job and made gap-filling feasible — with the underlying strength resting in the flexibility and resilience of the new command-and-control data system which could accept and process information from any source. Radars were knocked out, AEW aircraft were shot down, and air defence ships were sunk; continental early warning was nullified quite early on by the speed of the Soviet advance on land. At no time, however, was the air defence system so bereft of data as to prevent it from reacting. In some of the worst periods the Tornados, supported by tankers, ran autonomous combat air patrols, providing their own raid information and directing their own interceptions until replacement AEW aircraft could come back on station or a mobile radar could be brought on line.

Airfields presented a less tractable problem. If only there had been time and money to prepare more satellite airfields and dispersals — better still, if the fighters had been less dependent on those wretched concrete surfaces. Dispersal to reduce losses on the ground increased the operating problems on bases already short of manpower and the time needed to get aircraft into the air. Cratering and mining were among the most disabling forms of attack: an airfield with its runway out meant that all the aircraft on the ground were neutralized until repairs could be effected. Rapid runway repair units had been a key feature in the improvement programme, and now paid off well. They took many casualties, especially from delayed action mines, as they courageously pressed on with their vital repair work. In one way, things turned out rather better than Hazel’s men had expected. Low-level attacks did not seem to be the Soviet Air Forces’ strong point. After 1,500 kilometres or more of transit flying, and of fighting their way through the defences, many of them failed to locate their targets with sufficient precision. Those who climbed to 500 metres or so for a quick verification of their navigation were almost always picked off by the Rapiers positioned around the airfields.

As was expected, not all the attacks were at low level. Some came in at medium levels with a massive shield of electronic counter-measures and a high-speed dash to the point of release for their stand-off weapons. Against these tactics the Tornados, pushed well forward on combat air patrol and supported by tankers, proved the only effective counter. From the outset it was clear that the electronic war was going to be as closely and tenaciously fought as any other aspect of the air defence battle. The Soviet command of the art was clearly high, but air force thinking within the Alliance had foreseen this and the in-built counter-measures proved equal to the task when the test came. The revived emphasis that the RAF placed on tactics after the sterile years of the trip-wire strategy also paid off handsomely.

The corollary to the development of precision-guided stand-off weapons was that targets had to be selected with great discrimination. This was evident in the pattern of Soviet air attacks. Apart from airfields and vital points in the air defence system, key targets such as ports, ordnance and aircraft factories all received attention and suffered substantial damage. Whitehall was strewn with masonry. Many buildings (including, ironically, the Treasury, as well as parts of the Defence Ministry and the Palace of Westminster) were destroyed — though key members of the government and central administration were safely established at alternative and hardened centres. Civilian casualties, while not on the scale of the 1939-45 war, were nevertheless considerable, and because of the selective nature of these attacks they were often very disruptive.

As the Allied forces were pushed back in Central Europe a great hole was torn in the NATO air defence system in the northern area. This opened up new and shorter lines of approach for the Soviet Air Forces’ attacks on the United Kingdom. Their aircraft could now come out through the Baltic with comparative immunity and fly across, or down, the North Sea. The response to this was to mount Tornado combat air patrols (CAP) and tankers forward in the direction of that area in the same way that CAP were mounted at focal points to intercept Soviet aircraft coming around the North Cape and into the North Norwegian Sea. Soviet aircraft, dropping to low level, could now pose a much stronger threat to the French Channel ports which were so vital to JACWA for the reception of the massive transatlantic CAVALRY convoys. Hitherto the Russians had found it difficult to find a short, and sufficiently soft, line of approach to be able to attack with intensity. Now, if they could skim through the Channel undetected at very low level they had a chance of doing very serious damage indeed to the installations and the sea transports themselves. In addition to the barrier patrols across the Baltic Exits, the C-in-C now agreed with HQ Third Air Force, and with COMAAFCE’s ready consent, that some of the recently arrived F-15s held in reserve should be dedicated to meeting this threat and protecting the French ports (in conjunction with the French Air Force). This was done, and the brilliantly versatile F-15s had great success against those attacking aircraft that managed to evade the barrier patrols to the north.

Losses in the air were well up to the levels that the peacetime analysts had forecast, but valuable fighters were more often lost on the ground than in the air. AEW aircraft paid the price for having to be far out on station and relatively unprotected, and tanker aircraft were sometimes lost for the same reason. A proportion of airfields were always unusable, but never so many that the defences were totally grounded. The problems of identification in a very active sky and of separation between missile and non-missile zones proved as difficult as exercises had always suggested that they would be. Inevitably some RAF attack aircraft returning from their Central Region targets fell victim to their own defences. The barrier patrol up to the north was there as a tourniquet around the Soviet long-range air forces seeking to threaten soft transport aircraft coming over the air bridge and the shipborne reinforcements coming across the sea. Some inevitably got through the net, but when this happened there was a second chance to intercept them in lower latitudes, though not always until after they had done damage to sea and air supplies.

As one instance, on 6 August two Backfire bombers armed with a massive battery of air-to-air missiles got loose in the procession of air transports wallowing across the Atlantic at 550 miles an hour. It was easy shooting. They knocked down three C-5s and four 747s before withdrawing at high speed to the north. One of them fell to a Tornado trap on the way home.

A system of dispersing the transports when a raider was known to be loose had been introduced, but that time, for some reason, the codeword did not get through. The air bridge had been attacked before, but this was a black day with more than 2,000 men missing from a Central Army Group formation before they even knew they were in action. But for most of the time the losses were at least militarily acceptable.

After eight days it began to look as if the advantage might be lying slightly with the defences. It was impossible to draw up an exact balance sheet, but they were certainly taking a heavy toll of aircraft in the promising ratio of around four to one. All now depended on how long the Russians would keep up the pressure and how long the UK air defences could sustain their reaction.”

The following rather more personal account of events on a day in the second week of full hostilities is taken from an as yet unpublished narrative by the former Personal Staff Officer to AOC-in-C Strike Command. It illustrates the understanding commonly found between top commanders and those who work with them.

“Late in the afternoon of 12 August there was, for the first time, nothing on the radar plot. There had been plenty of action that day. The last incident had been when a force of ten-plus aircraft had turned back as soon as they ran into the Tornado CAP outside the Baltic. As many of No. 1 Group’s attack aircraft as they were likely to see again were now back from their early sorties over the Central Region, and it looked as if things might be quiet for an hour or so at least, while they, and no doubt the enemy, got ready for the next assault.

Sir John came up from the ground for a breather. His surface HQ had been hit several times but his operational control facilities were still working. It was a relief to walk on the grass in the Chiltern Hills on a summer afternoon. The day was clear but up in the sky a milky veil of what looked like cirrus cloud stretched from horizon to horizon. In fact it was the condensation trails of the great transatlantic airlift, each aircraft’s trails being churned up and added to by the one behind it as they ploughed on to their destination airfields.

In 1940 he had been at school in Kent, and he recalled how the masters and boys had had a grandstand view of the Battle of Britain from the playing fields — watching and cheering as Hurricanes chased Heinkels, and Spitfires fought Messerschmitts. The school-boys nowadays, and for that matter the whole civilian population, must be puzzled, he reflected, as they heard bombs explode and saw the grim result, with no action going on in the sky. They would know what that great milky way was because there had been so much about it on television. But would they understand that No. 11 Group, the same group as bore the brunt of the battle back in 1940, was once again fighting day and night for the survival of the country and the West — but this time way out of sight and far from the country’s shores? In due time, and if things came out right, he certainly hoped they would, for these were important matters to be understood by the public. If his reputation meant anything at the end of this war he would do his damnedest, he resolved, to see that the politicans did not forget a second time.

After the luxury of letting his thoughts stray for five minutes he went down the hole again and picked up a direct telephone to AOC 11 Group, his Air Defence Commander.

Air Vice-Marshal Bill Williams, the AOC, was a very experienced fighter pilot, but of course he was not old enough to have been in the 1939-45 war. He had a feeling, one way or the other, that this war was not going to last very long; as an airman to the core he had no wish to have to tell his children that he had spent all of it underground. So that morning he had handed over to the Group Captain Ops and flown one of the Tornados on the Baltic Exits combat air patrol. The very one, in fact, in face of which the raiders had turned back. Later he remembered his telephone conversation with the C-in-C because it seemed to mark a watershed in the relentless battle that he was running.

Understandably, he was keen to give his chief a first-hand account from the front line of battle. The C-in-C, who knew most things that were going on, forestalled him.

“Hello Bill — I see you had a good trip. What were they?”

“Backfires we think, sir, but we didn’t get a visual. They turned back as soon as they got us on their radar. We couldn’t close them — not this end of the Baltic anyway — and we thought they might be spoofing.”

“How are things in the Group?” asked the C-in-C.

“Well, you know our battle claims and our air and ground casualties. We’re still keeping a four to one kill ratio including aircraft losses on the ground and that seems to be good. Everyone’s tails would be right up now except that they’re so bloody tired. The aircrew are still all right — just — and we’re enforcing rest periods between sorties for them, but the ground crew have only been snatching sleep as and when they can since the first scramble. They’ve taken the casualties on the ground absolutely marvellously, especially in the runway repair teams. There have been plenty of medals earned by those chaps if we ever get round to that sort of thing. But they’re pretty well flaked out now. I hate having to say it but I can’t see how we can keep this pace up for more than a day or two. How do you think things are going, sir?” There was a pause before the C-in-C answered — he wanted to be encouraging.

“Several of their raids have turned back in the last eight hours and that must mean something. I think it’s just possible that they’re coming round to the idea that they probably can’t win this one.” He paused again. “I only hope they don’t twig that they probably could if they raised the tempo and kept at us for another week or so. Bill, you’ve got to keep your men going and it may be quite a time yet.”

As the C-in-C hung up, a Sergeant placed a folder of intelligence reports and photographs on his desk. He studied them very closely. Half an hour later he called the Air Defence Commander again:

“Bill, we’re getting some very good Int stuff by satellite now about our counter-air ops. The losses of 1 Group, and of the Germans and USAF, in Tornados and F-111s, have been pretty heavy but COMAAFCE reckons the exchange rate is a very good one and I agree. With what they’re doing, together with the cruise missiles, it looks as if we’re fairly ripping those airfields to bits.”

“Can I pass that round the Group?” asked the AOC, hoping for anything that would help hold back their battle-weariness.

“Of course,” said the C-in-C, “but, Bill — for your ears only in case I’m being too optimistic — if these reports are as good as they look your chaps should be getting a little more rest before long.” “