The Third World War: The Untold Story

Chapter 11: The Central Front

The contingency plan formulated by the Defence Council of the Politburo for the defence of the Soviet Union and its socialist allies against the aggressive designs of Western capitalism had two supreme aims: to cause the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance and to bring about the neutralization of neo-Nazi Germany. The second would lead to the first. The dismantling of the Federal Republic must, therefore, receive primary and very close attention.

To the Chief of the Soviet General Staff, Marshal P. K. Ogurtsov, an old cavalry soldier brought up in his profession in the 1930s to the use, incredible though it sounds today, of the sword as a weapon from the back of a horse (as, incidentally, was the main author of this book), the analogy was simple. Federal Germany was the point of the sword presented at the enemy; the outstretched right arm (‘at cavalry, engage — point!’) was Allied Command Europe; the hilt, which would come up against the victim’s body with extreme violence once the point was through, was NATO; the rider on the horse’s back, swinging forward with the thrusting, outstretched sword, planning, placing and timing the thrust, was the United States; the galloping horse giving the chief strength and impetus to the hilt, which, directed by the rider’s swinging body and extended arm, would hammer the pierced enemy out of his saddle, was Western capitalism. Reflecting by the stove in his dacha, the vodka bottle handy, the Marshal always admired the aptness of his analogy, only regretting that no one understood it any more. What had once been cavalry, riding horses and wielding l’arme blanche, had been suffocating in stinking tanks for nearly half a century.

The destruction of Federal Germany would mean the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance, the total demoralization of Europe, the withdrawal of the USA across the sea and swiftly widening opportunities for the spread of socialism throughout the world. The importance of the FRG was such, however, that an attack upon it would be no less than a total attack on NATO and would be resisted as such. It would have to be planned accordingly.

The initial assault had to be massive. To carry out the intentions of the Defence Council, ten fronts would be activated, two in the GDR, one each in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and the far north, all in the front line, with follow-up fronts in the Leningrad Military District, in Poland and in the Ukraine, while in Belorussia and the Ukraine there would be also two groups of tank armies comprising three tank armies each, making six tank armies to exploit success in the centre, or to be used otherwise as circumstances dictated. The initial assault at dawn on 4 August, following action in space to restrict surveillance, undercover operations to frustrate command and support, deep air bombardment in Europe to interdict forward movement of war material and reserves, and action at sea to begin the interruption of maritime reinforcement, would open with the utmost violence along the whole Warsaw Pact-NATO interface, from Norway to Turkey.

Since the Central Region of Allied Command Europe (ACE), against which three fronts threatened, with a fourth standing by in Poland, was to be the focal point of this immense operation, it is upon the Central Front that we now concentrate. In our earlier book, The Third World War: August 1985, published in the spring of 1987, we described at length and in some detail the course of the main operation in this theatre and other accounts have appeared in other places. We do not intend here to recapitulate all that has been written. It is upon more personal aspects of these events that we shall focus instead, sometimes at very close range.

No plans for a major land offensive in modern war can ever be followed for very long after the offensive opens. The plans are made as part of a long-term concept. They embrace the object of the operations as a whole; the dispositions and movements of the enemy as they are known at the time; the probable reactions of the enemy’s commanders; and, perhaps most important of all, the estimate of what will be necessary for logistic support. Preparations for this demand forethought and imagination. They must be made far in advance and have to cover a period much longer than that during which the original operational plan of attack can continue to be followed. The operational plan may at any time have to be radically altered in a matter of days, or even hours, as commanders respond to the requirements of a developing situation. Logistic support, involving the movement and positioning of huge tonnages of material of all kinds, from bridging equipment to missile and gun ammunition, from fuel and food to medical supplies, cannot be as easily adjusted as the fighting formations can be moved around the battlefields.

Soviet logistic planning was on the whole sound. It recognized that some unforeseen movement of divisions, or even armies, would be forced upon the High Command as the action developed, and made preparations accordingly. Notwithstanding the rigidity of much of Soviet planning, the movement of formations, as the flow of the battle dictated it, was carried out on the whole successfully in spite of Allied air interdiction, and the logistics proved generally adequate.

One formation directly affected by regrouping, as the pattern of the battle changed, was 197 Motor Rifle Division. It had come into the forward area as part of 28 Army, whose headquarters had been located in Belorussia in peacetime but whose main fighting strength and equipment was always held in the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany (GSFG). The outbreak of hostilities on 4 August found 28 Army to the south-east of 1 Guards Tank Army which had just moved forward westwards from near Dresden. On 5 August, 197 Division was transferred from 28 Army to come under command of 8 Guards Army, operating west of Leipzig, involving a move for the division in a north-westerly direction of about 100 kilometres. This was almost completed on the night of 5/6 August, relatively little hindered by the movement westwards of rear echelons of 1 Guards Tank Army, now heavily engaged further forward. To keep routes open for 197 required some radical measures on the part of KGB troops none the less. It was fortunate that the traffic blocks which sometimes took an hour or more to clear received no attention from NATO air forces. The movement of 197 was completed early on the night 6/7 August, the division being due to move forward into the battle on the morning of the following day, 7 August.

“The 197 Motor Rifle Division was warming up to go into action. There was the continuous roar of a thousand motors, as tanks, armoured personnel carriers (BTR), infantry combat vehicles (BMP) and self-propelled weapons lumbered in long columns out of woodlands in the early mist of an August morning on to German country roads, where the upland hills of the Harz softened down into the plains. The division was pushing towards the forward edge of the battle area, 25 kilometres away.

The 13 Guards Motor Rifle Division had been pressing against British formations there for three days, but with few gains. It was exhausted. Now, at last, in the dim light of dawn, there seemed to be the chance that a fresh division would be brought up into their sector. The battle-worn soldiers of 13 Guards Division might soon be taken back to the rear, fed there and allowed to get some sleep. The fire power of hundreds of guns and scores of multiple rocket launchers firing salvoes of heavy rockets would cover the approach of the fresh division. Both 13 Guards Division and the new division’s own artillery, manoeuvred into firing positions during the night, would take part in the artillery programme. In addition, the commander of 8 Guards Army had allotted his own army artillery brigade as further support for the deployment of the new division, bringing in an extra ninety 130 mm self-propelled (SP) guns.

A sudden salvo at 0700 hours from the two BM-27 battalions and the eight regimental batteries of multiple rockets started off the artillery programme. Over 1,000 shells, many of them chemical, suddenly burst on the British division. This deafening chorus was at once enormously increased by 340 guns and howitzers and 120 automatic 82 mm heavy mortars. At first the sound of distant gunfire and the thunder of nearby explosions could be distinguished by men in the advancing division one from another. Very soon the high and growing rate of fire set up a continuous roar.

The fresh 197 Motor Rifle Division pushed on fast towards first contact with the enemy. The 13 Guards Motor Rifle Division had prepared and marked out the lines of advance and covered them with smoke. The rate of artillery fire increased. As the column advanced, Nekrassov in something of a dreamy state watched formations of silvery planes flying over the battlefield like birds, almost touching the treetops.

The 13 Guards Division bade farewell to the enemy. Tanks in contact fired off all the ammunition they had, directly into enemy locations. The heavy multiple rocket launcher batteries coughed fire. The division was, in fact, shooting off all its remaining ammunition — perhaps to save hauling it back to the rear. It was faced with only one problem. This was to keep the enemy’s head down in that vulnerable time when the fresh division was just on the point of engagement.

The columns of the fresh division as it came up had been met by dirty and mutilated machines of 13 Guards Division moving back. Spirits sank in Senior Lieutenant Nekrassov’s company. Grey-faced men of the retiring Guards, hardly able to keep their red eyes open, their cheeks hollow and unshaven, were not an encouraging sight.

“How goes it?” went up a cry from the men in the fresh division.

The answer came.

“Wait till you meet a Chieftain, or better still a Challenger, then you’ll know…”

There was laughter from the fresh column. “We’ve got instructions about what to do with a Chieftain!”

“You try fighting it with instructions!” The laughter, this time grim and sardonic, came from the other column.

Senior Lieutenant Nekrassov smiled cheerlessly. He was going into battle for the first time. Perhaps it was for the last time. He’d had a double ration of vodka that morning, thinking it would make things easier, but it hadn’t. There was this voice in his head — “What’s it all for, why am I here, why is anyone here?” His BMP was for the moment stationary. Its soldier driver, Boris Ivanienko, was watching his officer, whom he loved, with care.

“There they are!” The word went round among anxious men at the sharp end in 13 Guards Division. “Here’s that other lot — and high time too!”

The two incoming light motor rifle regiments of the fresh division deployed swiftly into action. Two tank battalions led, with six motor rifle battalions behind them. Barely a kilometre ahead, enemy tanks could be seen in action. Breaking down the bushes, filling the air with the stench of exhaust fumes, eighty tanks and 200 other armoured vehicles thundered creaking and clanking through the smoke in horrifying menace over the last few hundred metres. Multi-barrelled rockets from the Soviet side brought down enormous concentrations of fire to cover the moment when the infantry left their vehicles. The positions of the British enemy were still obscured by the continuous smoke of exploding shells, rockets and mortar bombs, as the BTR slackened speed and the troops spilled out of them. The grey-green mass of grimly silent infantry spread across the ground and, forming some sort of lines, followed closely behind the tanks.

Suddenly the artillery fire ceased and the air was filled with a savage, if somewhat forced, “Hu-r-r-r-ah”. Even the terrifying whiplash of automatic rifle fire could not drown that blood-chilling howl. As if reluctant to give voice again, the artillery was silent a moment and then lifted to more distant targets.

The two light motor rifle regiments, now for the most part attacking on foot, had the job of searching out the enemy’s weak places. The whole of his anti-tank front could not, for sure, be uniformly strong. The moment a weak point was discovered the division’s tank regiment and its heavy motor rifle regiment would be deployed there. These two regiments were even now lumbering slowly towards the forward areas, where it would soon be their turn.

Now, as the artillery and air preparation seemed to have passed its climax, and dismounted infantry from the two light motor rifle regiments were probing in on foot, all saw the signal of three green rockets for the general attack. The divisional tank regiment and its heavy motor rifle regiment slowly moved ahead. Clumps of mud flew up from the caterpillar tracks, accelerating motors roared. Gunfire broke out again — it was the tank regiment, now deployed into battle order, engaging the British battle groups. Spread out behind the tank regiment came the heavy motor rifle regiment. First the tank battalion of the regiment, then the first of its three motor rifle battalions. The second came up on the left, the third on the right. Each battalion was formed into identical columns of companies: the first company moved straight ahead; the second, at great speed, off to the left; the third to the right. The rumble and clash of iron filled the smoke-laden air. The armoured fighting vehicles spread out from their columns into battle formation as the tank guns hammered out their deafening drumbeat. This dreadful clanging noise, this terror and confusion, this necessity to do what you had to do when everything happening around was driving you away from it, was a battle.

Nekrassov scanned around him from the command BMP through his periscope, swinging it from side to side. Smoke drifted everywhere. Explosions ploughed up the open ground close by. Red flames leaped and licked over the armour of a T-72 tank not twenty metres distant. Beyond was another with its tracks broken, perhaps by one of the anti-tank mines the enemy dropped by air. Where the hell were those Chieftains? The Soviet tanks and BMP filled the landscape like an avalanche. The enemy was somewhere at hand but not to be seen. The British tanks were there all right, firing not directly from the front but from the flank or from far back, in well-chosen positions behind low crests in undulating ground.

Now the enemy’s anti-tank helicopter gunships were coming in, with their deadly guided weapons. These would zoom down, attacking the ZSU-23 air defence guns and missile launchers, and then withdraw to open a way into the defence for the fixed-wing American A-10 Thunderbolts, storming in with tremendous weapon power, their swift and thunderous onslaught on tanks and BTR followed up again by the helicopter anti-tank gunships. Armoured vehicles in some numbers, whether tanks or BTR, fell victim to these attacks but attacking aircraft suffered too. No sortie withdrew without explosion in the air and flaming wreckage left on the ground. Nekrassov had not expected this. He had been told that the American tank destroying aircraft would be operating further south. They were wrong!

The BMP was fast and clung close to the ground. It was a difficult target for a tank gun, or a ground-based anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW), but as Nekrassov watched, one of them took a direct hit from a powerful shell. All that was left of the BMP seemed to be pieces of armour flying through a cloud of rubbish like rags in the wind. Almost certainly that was a Challenger gun. Mercifully there were said to be relatively few in the British Army. Nekrassov would have welcomed some of these on his own side, stronger though it was.

By mid-afternoon on 7 August, 197 Motor Rifle Division had pushed 6 kilometres into the enemy defences. But that was all. The division had ground to a halt. In Nekrassov’s company only six of the original ten BMP remained. His own was still on the road, with Boris Ivanienko as its careful, steady driver. When the tanks had gone as far as they could, the infantry threw themselves forward under cover of tank fire, followed up by their BMP. One difficulty emerged quite early: the reserve riflemen had not been well enough trained to conserve their ammunition. As they moved they were firing off their automatic weapons without restraint. The 120 rounds each carried could not last very long. Without ammunition they took cover where they could. The enemy’s anti-tank defences were still intact. Soviet tanks were halted.

Nekrassov lay in the grass, gnawing his fist. If there were a counter-attack now, the entire regiment, without ammunition for its riflemen, would probably be wiped out. But there was no sign of a counter-attack. The enemy had clearly had a hard time too.

Two East German and two Soviet motor rifle divisions had now been taking turns pounding at one British division for several days. There would have been severe losses on the enemy’s side, but not as many as we have had, thought Nekrassov as he looked around at his own company. Only twenty-three dismounted men were left, plus six remaining BMP with their crews. But what was happening? The troops on the ground had gradually begun to drift away, slowly crawling to the rear.

“Back! Back!” shouted Senior Lieutenant Nekrassov. It was no use. They did not understand him. These were all Uzbeks or Kirghiz, with scarcely a word of Russian between them. Nekrassov had taught them what he could. They had all learnt the command “Advance”. Not “Withdraw”, naturally; there was no such order. They might misunderstand what he was saying now, and go on making for the rear instead of back to the battle. Those heavy multiple rocket launchers on the other side were enormously destructive and very frightening, that was sure. But this had to be stopped.

“Back to where you came from,” shouted Nekrassov, “not to the rear. The KGB will shoot you!”

The soldiers who were creeping back stopped and looked towards their commander. Still keeping close to the ground, he pointed to where No. 2 Company, also drifting back, was coming under the machine-gun fire of the KGB barrage battalion, whose function at the rear was to ensure, by any means, that the forward momentum of their own troops was maintained. The Uzbeks understood and took cover. They turned and grinned at Nekrassov. Their expression clearly said: “Thanks, Sir! You told us just in time!” But only their eyes said this. They had never been taught enough to be able to say it in Russian.

It was late evening before the ammunition arrived. In some ways its arrival was welcome, in some ways not. It is impossible to manage without ammunition in a war, that’s certain, but now they’d be sent in to attack again. Who would survive this time?

Along with the ammunition came meagre rations for lunch and supper rolled into one as well as the next morning’s breakfast. There was vodka for 105 men, very little bread and only ten jars of meat paste. Nekrassov cursed the supply services in a rage.

“Comrade Senior Lieutenant,” explained the stout Sergeant Major, Astap Beda, doing his best to calm things down, “the regimental doctor says it’s dangerous to eat a lot during a battle. What if you are wounded, and have to be operated on with a full stomach?”

“That man’s a lickspittle liar!” burst out Nekrassov. “They’ve no bread, they can’t feed the troops, so with the help of the medics they dream up bogus scientific theories.” Then he stopped himself.”

The Warsaw Pact offensive opened with considerable advantage to the attack. The ratio of forces gave them a general superiority over their opponents of rather better than three to one in ground troops, with an even more marked numerical advantage in tanks and tube artillery, though with no great advantage in quality. Indeed the latest generation of NATO tanks, the US M-1 Abrams, the German Leopard II and the British Challenger, which represented an improvement even on the formidable Chieftain (though this still formed the core of the British tank fleet) were every bit as good as the T-72s which constituted the main Soviet tank armament, and even had the edge on the T-80s, of which some but not very many were already in service with Soviet troops in 1985. Allied ATGW were fully as efficient as those of their opponents, though their air defence weaponry was less so.

In their tactical air forces, as in target acquisition and battlefield control techniques, the Western allies had had to accept disappointment in the pre-war years, when budgetary restrictions deprived them of much needed innovations. They had largely had to make do with what there was, but with a deliberate attempt to do so more effectively, exploiting to the full such improvements as tight budgets permitted.

The Warsaw Pact side also enjoyed the advantage on 4 August 1985 of having had, roughly speaking, about two weeks’ more time in which to mobilize than NATO.

A further advantage to the offensive lay in the initiative over nuclear and chemical weapons. It was clear that biological weapons would not be used, but operations on the Western side had to be conducted in initial uncertainty over the other two. This meant accepting the penalty of operating under nuclear and chemical precautions with a degradation of efficiency which in some situations could be something like 50 per cent.

The greatest advantage of all to the offensive, however, lay in the choice of time and place for attack, which put in the attackers’ hands the power to concentrate a high superiority of force almost where they wished.

In fact, topography exercised so compulsive an influence on choice of thrust line that Soviet hands were not as free as in theory they should have been, while Allied formations were fighting on ground they now knew very well indeed, which the enemy did not. None the less the speedy identification of main thrusts, so that defences and counter-offensive means could be moved to meet mounting threats in good time, formed one of the main preoccupations of Allied corps and divisional commanders.

A message that came out from Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) to the world at large on 4 August 1985 read as follows:

‘Warsaw Pact attacks Allied Command Europe. First light undercover and parachute operations followed by massive armoured assault along entire front. Heavy fighting in Central Region. Allies under severe pressure. Soviets claim action “purely defensive”. Situation confused. MFL.’

There was, indeed, scarcely any part of the forward positions of NATO in the Central Region which in the early hours of that August day of 1985 did not come under violent air and artillery attack, with chemical weapons freely in use.

The position in NATO over chemical warfare (CW) was far from satisfactory. Up to the very moment of the outbreak European allies had not been able to reach general agreement on the acceptance of chemical munitions to be located in their own countries in peacetime. The US, as we have seen earlier in Chapter 5 on weapons, had been manufacturing binary rounds since the early 1980s and under bilateral agreements with the UK and the FRG producing stocks also for them, to be held on their account in the United States until needed. The UK took in some of the stock held on their behalf in air shipments from the United States starting on 1 August and were ready to retaliate on 6 August. The FRG followed suit two days later. Typically, there was on 4 August still no decision in the NATO Council. The Supreme Allied Commander, as Commander-in-Chief of all US troops in Europe, would not wait. In that capacity, with the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, he ordered immediate retaliation by US troops on 4 August. The I British Corps opened retaliatory action on 6 August, the three German corps on 8 August.

Other allies had no such capability. There was no great difficulty in furnishing them fairly soon, however, with compatible binary round artillery munitions and in lending 2 Allied Tactical Air Force (ATAF) a squadron of F-4s fitted with spray tanks, with which to reply. Warsaw Pact protective equipment was less effective than that on the Western side and chemical casualties were proportionately higher for the same weight of attack. After 8 August chemical attack on ground troops dwindled everywhere, though it continued on airfields where, with the additional use of delayed-action bombs, there was sometimes a serious lengthening in turn-round times of aircraft as a result.

On 11 August 1985 Mr and Mrs George Illingworth of Bradford, Yorkshire, received a letter from their eldest son Brian, a senior aircraftsman instrument mechanic serving with the RAF at Bruggen in West Germany when war broke out. It ran as follows.

Artillery and air preparation all along the front of the Central Region was soon, on the morning of 4 August, followed by very heavy concentrations in four areas which preceded four powerful armoured attacks, each on a divisional frontage, on thrust lines that had been largely predicted. All four were into the Federal Republic of Germany. In the north, 2 Guards Tank Army pushed in past Hamburg (which had been declared by the Senat in despair an open city) towards the Netherlands, with one column thrusting up through Schleswig-Holstein towards Denmark. The Soviet 103 Airborne Division had already secured Bremen airfield and exploitation troops were being flown in. Further south 3 Shock Army had moved in towards Hanover, with the recognized possibility that a drive southwest towards Cologne and the Ruhr might result. It was probable, they thought in Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT), that this was the thrust that needed most careful watching. If it got across the lower Rhine in the Low Countries some awkward possibilities would lie ahead, particularly that of a turn southwards along the west bank of the Rhine, upstream to take the Central Army Group (CENTAG) in the rear. Further south, 8 Guards Army was pushing in towards Frankfurt. The country was less favourable to the offensive here, close, hilly and often wooded, but the depth of the NATO position in the CENTAG sector was far less than further North. The Rhine was scarcely 250 kilometres away from the frontier here, and Frankfurt little more than 100. The going, however, was far from good for armour. Well reconnoitred anti-tank weapon positions in undulating country combined with the skilful use of the tanks of armoured cavalry in fire positions which they knew well, together with the intervention of anti-tank helicopters in close co-operation with fixed-wing ground attack aircraft, slowed the armoured advance considerably.

Further south, where French command in an army group task had not yet been established, the thrust of 41 Army out of Czechoslovakia towards Nuremberg, aiming at Stuttgart, made better progress.

Such was the pattern of events, briefly stated, on day one of the Warsaw Pact offensive seen as it were, from a long way up. Lower down, at ground level, things were different. There was noise everywhere, distant noise of bombs or gunfire, noise of aircraft screaming overhead, of tracks clanking and squealing as the tanks hurried by, and sometimes the enormously stupefying impact of a close and direct attack, either of crashing bombs, or multiple rockets with their repeated and violent explosions, or those dreaded automatic mortars which fire five bombs in ten seconds, bringing down a curtain of despair. There was also weariness struggling with responsibility. Everybody was tired. Everyone had something he had to take account of. All this tended to leave otherwise quite sensible and stable men in a quivering condition of uncertainty and shock. Some ran to hide, anywhere. Others walked around in a state of dumb non-comprehension, almost as though in a coma. When the moments passed, as they almost always did, men collected themselves, called up reserves of self-control and stamina which were happily still plentiful if not always inexhaustible, and put things together again.

On the evening of the first day Warsaw Pact gains along the whole front had been considerable. The seizure of Bremen airfield in the north by the Soviet 103 Airborne Division at dawn had been exploited by a motor rifle division quickly flown in under heavy air cover, and a bridgehead had been consolidated across the River Weser in the sector of I Netherlands Corps. Hanover was threatened by 3 Shock Army but I German Corps, though it had been forced back by the weight of the attack some 20 kilometres from the frontier and had taken heavy punishment, was still in good order. Further south, I British Corps had yielded ground west of the Harz mountains while Kassel, at the junction of I British Corps with the Belgians, was under heavy threat, also from 3 Shock Army. Over the boundary between the Northern and Central Army Groups, III German Corps, under command of CENTAG, had been driven back by a powerful assault from 8 Guards Army through the hill country of the Thuringer Wald but yielded no more than 10 to 20 kilometres of ground, while V US Corps on its right was particularly hard pressed defending the more open terrain around Fulda against a determined effort from 1 Guards Tank Army to break through to Frankfurt. The VII US Corps on the right of the V had lost Bamberg in a Soviet penetration by 28 Army of some 30 kilometres but was firm in front of Nuremberg, while II German Corps, having lost ground to an attack by 41 Army from the Carpathian Military District, now deployed in northern Czechoslovakia, was also firm, backed by II French Corps, which had not yet been engaged.

As the pattern of the day’s events grew clearer on 5 August, the Soviet High Command could view the outcome of the first day’s operations with some satisfaction, even if all its hopes had not been wholly fulfilled. There had been no complete breakthrough on any of the four major thrust lines. There was no sign yet of any opening which could be exploited by the huge mass of armour in the two groups of tank armies in Belorussia and the Ukraine, which were being held there principally for this purpose. But gains had been made, particularly in the north, where Hamburg had been isolated (and, like Berlin, bypassed) and left uncertain of its fate, while the seizure of Bremen had opened, as had been intended, good possibilities of exploitation towards the Low Countries. Most of Nieder-Sachsen was already in Soviet hands.

Morale in NATO formations, though patchy and showing signs of cracking here and there under the first furious waves of assault, with its head-splitting clamour and the thunderous menace from which there was no hiding place, had not collapsed. It seemed, indeed, by nightfall to have improved somewhat. Progress in the assault against the Americans, where easy gains had been expected, had been disappointing. The forward anti-tank guided missile defences were well sited and skilfully controlled and anti-tank helicopters acting with A-10 Thunderbolt tank destroyers had inflicted many armoured casualties. A weakness on the Western side, which was of advantage to the Soviets and which had been foreseen by them, was some uncertainty as to who actually owned rotary-wing aircraft, with division of opinion between ground and air commanders, as to how best to use them. Where there was a close relationship between rotary and fixed-wing anti-tank tactics, as in the action against 8 Guards Army of US formations in the Fulda area, the result had been distinctly unfavourable to attacking armour.

The movement of refugees out of the frontier areas, where the population had largely stayed in place as a result of political assurances based on forward defence, was seen as particularly favourable to the attack. Soviet air and artillery had aimed at driving refugee movement on to roads in use for rearward movement by the Western allies, and then off the main thrust lines intended for use in the Soviet advance. Orders not only to disregard civilian casualties but to maximize them to this end had been correctly carried out.

There was no doubt, however, that the first day, whatever its gains, had not shown the rate of advance expected by the Soviet High Command. This had to improve if the plan were to be completely successful.

At the outbreak of hostilities the British Prime Minister had instructed that the press be kept as fully informed as possible. There would, it was hoped, be no misunderstanding of the kind that had plagued the coverage by the American media of the Vietnam tragedy. Consequently, Squadron Leader Guy Whitworth, Weapons Leader of 617 Squadron of the RAF, stationed at Marham in the United Kingdom, was not surprised to receive a sympathetic but firm invitation from his Station Commander to ‘Come down and tell some defence correspondents about your Magdeburg trip’.

It was 0630 hours on 7 August. Guy Whitworth was in the Ops block at RAF Marham, just finishing his debrief to the Wing Intelligence staff. He had landed two hours previously after a three-hour trip in a Tornado which had taken him from the relative peace of Norfolk across Belgium and West Germany beyond the Elbe to an airfield just a few miles east of Magdeburg and through a trough of action he had yet to sort out for himself. This is his description of the flight which had taken eight GR-1 Tornados from Marham in an attack upon a major airfield 100 miles beyond the battle. We reprint it here as it came out in the Christian Science Monitor in June 1986.

“We were briefed that this particular airfield housed a regiment of MiG-27 Flogger Js. These are the best of the current Soviet short-range offensive support aircraft and we have been told that they make their presence felt in the ground battle. It seems that they can operate from hard-packed earth runways, but that they have not yet begun to do so, perhaps because they can maintain a higher sortie rate by staying close to their weapon and fuel support at their main operating base. Flogger has a very limited night or all-weather capability and we reckoned we had a good chance of catching most of them on the deck in the early hours of the morning.

Wing Commander Bill Spier, our Squadron Commander, led the first wave of four with my navigator, Flight Lieutenant Andy Blackett, and myself as his No. 4. Each Tornado carried two JP-233 anti-airfield weapons, two defence suppression anti-radiation (ARM) missiles — these home on to radar emissions — and an electronic counter-measure (ECM) pod. Our object was to close the Soviet airfield down and stop Flogger operations for as many hours as possible.

The first leg of our flight was uneventful. After climbing out of Marham we rendezvoused with a VC-10 tanker over the North Sea. We had practised night refuelling, of course, so there was no problem there. We were passed on to the Sector Controllers in Belgium, who I think must have been in touch with one of the NATO AWACS, because the last transmission we received from the ground gave a very accurate position for the Warsaw Pact thrust lines. Andy was monitoring their accuracy through the combined map and radar displays and the TV displays. He hadn’t needed a radar or laser update. Anyway, as we approached the Rhine we dropped down to 200 feet and stepped up the speed to 600 knots.

Once across the Rhine we caught a glimpse of the war. Thanks to the accurate AWACS update we were spared having to fly over Warsaw Pact armour and its accompanying SAM. We were grateful for that. Over to the left we could see a fair amount of gunfire but when Wing Commander Spier took us down a further 100 feet into the weeds the sky became very dark and very small. Our Tornado was now being flown by the automatic terrain following system (ATFS), following the contours of the earth as closely as its speed permitted. As we approached the northern edge of the Harz mountains the aircraft remained rock steady, wings fully swept to 67 degrees, but as we crossed the inner German border (IGB) east of Kassel it began to get a bit noisier. We heard the “bing, bing” of a surveillance radar in our radar warning receiver and then the high note of a low level SAM tracker. By this time I think we must have been spotted by one of the Cookers, although happily the area ground-response wasn’t all that sharp, perhaps because our pre-planned route was taking us along the boundaries of 8 Guards and 3 Shock Armies.

South-east of Magdeburg we swung north. Many hours of practice over Canada had taught us that loose station-keeping at night at low level was not easy, but by no means impossible. With 20 miles to go, Andy selected the “attack” mode on the TV display and the “stabilized” mode on the combined map and radar display to bring together visually computed target and aiming markers. I monitored the sequence in my head-up display in the front cockpit, just in case I picked up an aiming error and had to take over from the auto pilot.

For a few seconds we thought we were going to achieve complete surprise, and perhaps our approach from the south-east rather than the west did give us a little extra time, but then we were well and truly lit up by several different surface-to-air defence systems. I loosed off both arm. The automatic self-screening ECM pod was obviously working well. Andy kept his head down. I think he was grateful to have his time taken up with placing his laser range finder on the main runway of the airfield, and with the fine tuning of the aiming marker. There was a fair amount of activity below us by now as we swept over the airfield. It was then that we lost No. 2 and Eric and Ken. I think they must have been hit by the guns or low level SAM. They were just blown apart. The rest of us sprayed the base with the JP-233s. I didn’t see the effect of our weapons but the sub-munitions put down by the Wing Commander spread out beautifully right across the runway. Unless our weapons failed badly, we cut it in three places and in addition scattered delayed-action mines all over the tarmac and the airfield itself. The damage will take a long time to put right. I didn’t see any Floggers but we expected them to be in their hardened shelters anyway. They’ll stay there for a quite a time now. One unexpected bonus was the presence of two Candid transports. Andy saw both those go up. I suppose the other side also has problems of airfield overcrowding. Our second four were thirty seconds behind us and according to their report we can assume that any additional warning the enemy had that they were coming in was more than balanced by the impact of the first wave. As the second four were clearing the area they lost one aircraft after it had dropped its weapons.

So, we headed for home, but we weren’t there yet. We now had two problems to think about. First, whether there was any stray Flogger who fancied his look-down-shoot-down chances. After that there were our own air defence people who quite naturally get a bit tense about high-speed low-level aircraft coming out of the east. One or two of the Tornados still had ARM left but we had to rely on the ECM pod to get us back over the Warsaw Pact SAM. In fact, as we had hoped, their SAM (which had just rolled forward with the armour) were not as well co-ordinated as the kit we had found near the airfield. It takes time to site SAM radars and naturally they tended to concentrate on their fronts, not their rear, which was where we were coming from, still at 100 feet and still tracking quite quickly.

So we crossed the FEBA over the Teutoburger Wald at a height, speed and heading which should have seen us through. As far as I know our IFF (identification friend or foe) kit was functioning but I don’t know how far it might have been spoofed earlier in the night. For whatever reason, some bastard let a SAM go. At least I assume it was a SAM. It could have been one of our own HAWK. I hope not. Andy hadn’t picked up any AI (air-intercept) radar warning and we didn’t see any other aircraft. It got Wing Commander Spier’s Tornado .The aircraft simply disintegrated in a ball of flame. No one could have got out. It was ironical, because one of the last things he had said in the briefing was to take care not to relax on the home leg because that was when the greater number of losses usually occurred.

I took over the lead and we climbed to meet our tanker again. I must admit I’m glad that the mates up at the box (Ministry of Defence) decided in 1982 to go ahead with the VC-10 modification because there was no way we could have launched from Marham against Magdeburg on that routing without air-to-air refuelling. So here we are: five Tornados back out of eight, and one major Warsaw Pact base knocked out for several critical hours.”

The 1 Guards Tank Army, deployed at the outbreak round Dresden, came into action against CENTAG on 5 and 6 August but by now two fresh US divisions flown in from the United States to man their pre-positioned equipment had come under command and the position had to some extent improved. By 8 August all of the Federal Republic east of a line from Bremen southwards to just east of Augsburg was in Soviet hands. Both Berlin and Hamburg had been bypassed but Hanover, Minden, Kassel, Wurzburg, Nuremberg and Munich had all been lost and a huge and threatening salient had developed westwards from Bremen into the Netherlands. The crossing of the lower Rhine by nightfall on that day, 8 August, had been successfully carried out and a strong Warsaw Pact bridgehead consolidated on the left bank of the Rhine as far as the River Waal.

“A “Concentration Centre for Reinforcements” had been set up at Dresden. It was planned for a very high capacity and a rapid through-put, but the movement of tank armies over the Polish rail network had virtually taken up the system’s whole capacity and there was a significant fall in the flow of replacements of material and of personnel reinforcements from the USSR.

Bringing 197 Motor Rifle Division back to full strength took four days instead of the stipulated two. The 94 and 207 Motor Rifle Divisions were in the area at the same time. All the T-72 tanks were taken from the motor rifle regiments of 197 Division and used to replace losses in the division’s tank regiment. To the motor rifle regiments old T-55 tanks were issued instead, taken out of mothballs. The heavy motor rifle regiment was brought fully up to strength with new BMP straight from two factories in the Urals, but there were no BTR replacements available for the two light regiments of the division, which should have been equipped with BTR 70s. The remaining undamaged BTR were collected into a single battalion, with the rest of the battalions having to make do with requisitioned civilian lorries. As for men, numbers were made up with reservists and soldiers from divisions that had sustained too many losses to be re-formed.

At the Centre a collection of captured NATO tanks, armoured transports and artillery had been assembled and a training programme for officers and men was organized. The NATO equipment had usually fallen into Soviet hands as a result of mechanical failure, from damage to tracks by mines or gunfire, for example, though several prize specimens had been acquired when crews were taken by surprise in early non-persistent chemical attacks to which they had at once succumbed leaving their equipment intact as an easy prey to swiftly following Soviet motor rifle infantry. To their great delight both Nekrassov and Makarov, the latter now in 207 Motor Rifle Division, found themselves together in the programme.

There was also a small camp of Western prisoners of war at the Centre. They were available for questioning. A special sub-unit of the GRU Soviet military intelligence ensured that prisoners answered questions willingly and correctly.

The two Senior Lieutenants crawled over and under and through every piece of equipment they could find at the Centre, testing the feel of it all. They inspected the West German Leopard II tank and the Marder infantry combat vehicle. Good machines but very complicated. How could such equipment be maintained in the field if crucial repair facilities and supply bases in West Germany were lost? The US Abrams M-l tank wasn’t bad either, a low-lying predatory machine, but the main armament wasn’t really powerful enough and it had a disproportionately gas-guzzling engine. They were both impressed by the Chieftain and even more by the Challenger, fighting machines to be reckoned with — almost impenetrable armour, super-powerful armament and a dependable engine. The Leopard II was good and so of course was the Abrams. The Challenger was better. A few more thousand of these in Europe and the attack would soon get bogged down.

The GRU officers were happy to give the necessary explanations. The British Army had the best tanks though too few of them, and the best trained soldiers, but it was short on automatic anti-aircraft guns. The British were practically defenceless against Soviet helicopters. The German Bundeswehr was both determined and disciplined with first-rate professional training. The East Germans mostly fought against the Americans.

Nekrassov asked how the Belgian and Dutch units had been performing in battle. He knew about the British.

“Not bad at all,” he was told. “Their supply system is first class. Their equipment is not bad either. There are few of them, of course, but they are very good in defence. One great weakness is that soldiers query their orders. There is no death sentence for disobeying an order.”

Nekrassov shook his head in disbelief and the two moved on.

They then came to the captive officers, caged like wild animals. The GRU interpreter playfully twirled a thick rubber truncheon in his hand — an instrument which served as a dictionary might, to facilitate the interpreter’s job.

“Ask him,” Nekrassov indicated an American major sitting in the cage, “ask him why some of their vehicles have a big red cross painted on a white background instead of the actual camouflage markings. It’s stupid — just makes it easier for us to pick them out and destroy them. Why do they do it?”

Evidently other Soviet officers had asked the same question. Without referring to the prisoner the interpreter explained to Nekrassov.

“Vehicles with a red cross are ambulances,” he said. “They think we should not fire on them. They say there’s an international agreement to that effect.”

“If there were such an agreement we’d surely have been informed.”

“Of course.’’ The interpreter shrugged his shoulders. ”It would be in some manual. But I’ve never myself come across a reference to such an agreement anywhere. None of our books or newspapers mentions it.”

“There’s certainly nothing about it in the Field Service Regulations.” Nekrassov shrugged his shoulders in turn.

“Then ask if it’s true,” said Makarov to the interpreter, “that women serve on equal terms with men in their army?”

The interpreter, again without bothering to translate the question, answered for what was obviously the hundredth time: “They do.”

Nekrassov was perplexed. “That’s ridiculous! Women are not men. For one thing they need proper food and rest. They won’t get that in the army.”

“What sort of rations do the prisoners get?” asked Makarov. He addressed the question directly to the interpreter, who simply affected not to hear.

Nekrassov had never in his whole life talked to a foreigner from the capitalist West. He wanted to ask something the interpreter would not know already, just to hear an answer from this gaunt-looking American major in the tattered uniform.

“Ask him if it’s true that in America anyone can write what he likes in a newspaper, even something against the President.”

“That’s irrelevant,” said the interpreter abruptly.

Nekrassov knew he’d gone a bit too far and allowed his friend Dimitri to hurry him off so that they could lose themselves in the crowd of Soviet officers glued in fascination to a Canadian armoured personnel carrier. One question too many and you’d end up in a cage yourself. “

At the further end of the Central Region in the south an Allied Army group had been set up under French command (the Southern, or SOUTHAG, balancing up the Northern and Central), with responsibility south of a line through Karlsruhe (exclusive) and Nuremberg, north of which CENTAG with four corps under command (I BE, III GE, V and VII US) seemed, though not over-optimistic, reasonably hopeful of holding the position east of Frankfurt.

If the Soviet High Command had put in 3 Shock Army immediately behind 1 Guards Tank Army the threat to CENTAG would have been far more serious. The Soviets, however, had committed 3 Shock Army in the north, to exploit the favourable position developing there for the execution of the truly critical part of the main plan, the breakthrough to swing southwards along the Rhine on the left bank.

NORTHAG, with two British, one German and the remains of one Dutch corps under command, was now fighting grimly on a line running westwards from near Minden to Nijmegen in the Netherlands, facing north, with an ominous bulge in the south near Venlo, later to be generally known as the Krefeld salient. The I British Corps on the right had done well to stay in being, largely due here also to the successful use of anti-tank guided weapons, particularly those deployed in small stay-behind parties, operating with German Jagd-Kommandos in country which the British knew very well and which to the Germans was native soil. The tactics of the ‘sponge’, for the absorption of the flow of armour, had been paying off, but the situation could not stay the way it was much longer. In the west I German Corps was under heavy pressure along the Teutoburger Wald, the Soviet intention clearly being to drive it in very soon. Further west II British Corps with a US brigade and some Dutch troops under command was being hard pressed south of Wesel, defending the Venlo gap between the Rivers Rhine and Maas in the very tip of the salient.

“The order to advance against II German Corps in SOUTHAG at 0400 hours on the morning of 7 August had been received on the previous afternoon by Major General Pankratov, commanding 51 Tank Division of 8 Guards Army on the Central Front. It found the division theoretically (though not in fact) at full strength, its personnel at an assumed total of 10,843, its armoured fighting vehicle strength at 418 T-72 tanks and 241 BMP 2s. Its artillery included 126 SP howitzers, forty-eight multiple rocket launchers (twenty-four Grad-P, twenty-four BM-27) and sixty-two heavy SP anti-aircraft equipments in combined rocket and automatic artillery units. The division was organized normally. It was a Category One formation, as was usual for those deployed in Eastern Europe, with its equipment complete and personnel at between 75 and 100 per cent, filled out to full strength in an emergency such as this. It had one motor rifle and three tank regiments, a regiment of 152 mm SP guns and one of anti-aircraft missiles, together with eight other separate battalions. These comprised a FROG 7 rocket unit, communications, reconnaissance, engineer, transport, chemical defence and repair battalions and another embodying medical services. Manpower, from many parts of the USSR, was by now some 10 per cent deficient.

The day before the advance three further battalions were added to the divisional strength, in theory under Major General Pankratov’s command, in fact under the exclusive control of one Lieutenant Colonel Drobis of the KGB, the head of what was known at divisional headquarters as the Special Section. Two of these units were so-called KGB barrage battalions, manned by personnel of mixed origin with a relatively low degree of military training. There were cheerful, healthy looking young Komsomol workers alongside guards drafted from prisons and members of respectable bureaucratic families who had hitherto done little or no military service but whose engagement to the Party interest could be counted on as total.

The barrage battalions were equipped with light trucks and armed with machine-guns and portable anti-tank weapons. The function of these units was simple and their location in the forward deployment plan of the division in the attack followed logically from it. They were placed well up behind the leading elements to ensure, by the use of their weapons from the rear, that the forward impetus of their own troops was maintained and there was no hesitancy or slowing down, still less any tendency to withdraw. KGB fire power was an important element in the maintenance of momentum. This caused losses, of course, but these would be readily compensated for in the arrival of fresh follow-up formations, so that the net gain could always be reckoned worthwhile. The use of KGB barrage battalions to stimulate offensive forward movement was, moreover, an essential element accepted without question in the Red Army’s system of tactical practice in the field. This was wholly oriented to the offensive. Defence played virtually no part in it at all and offensive impetus had to be maintained.

Total refusal to countenance withdrawal could, of course, at times be costly. On the first day of the offensive two tank battalions of 174 Tank Regiment, moving forward from out of woodland cover, were caught almost at once in open ground by heavy anti-armoured air attack from the United States Air Force. Temporary withdrawal into cover, which was all that made sense, was flatly forbidden by the KGB. When the attacking aircraft themselves withdrew, tank casualties on the ground were in each battalion over 80 per cent.

The progress of 51 Tank Division in the attack on 6 August had been slower than hoped for, it’s leading battalion hammered by United States anti-tank weapons in front, against the anvil of the KGB behind.

Of the three special KGB battalions attached to 51 Tank Division, the third was 693 Pursuit Battalion. This followed up in the advance rather further back. Its business was the liquidation of possibly hostile elements in the local population — any who were obviously reactionary bourgeois, for example, or priests, or local officials — as well as taking care of officers and men of 51 Tank Division who had shown insufficient fighting spirit.

The divisional commander stood at the operations map in the BTR 50-PU which formed his command centre. On his right stood his political deputy, a Party man; on his left, his chief of staff; behind him Lieutenant Colonel Drobis of the KGB. Colonel Zimin, commanding the divisional artillery, was just climbing down into the BTR, closing the hatch firmly behind him. It was late afternoon on 6 August.

“An important task for you, Artillery,” growled the divisional commander. “We’ve got a valley here between two hills with a road along the valley leading towards us. We tried to break through there yesterday, but got our fingers burnt. We start to attack and the Americans bring far too effective anti-tank fire along that road from positions further back.

“If they try that again this time your BM-27 multiple rocket launcher battalion will take them out. They have to be suppressed in one go. So there’s a prime task for you for tomorrow.”

“Comrade General,” replied the artillery commander, “permission to move the BM-27 battalion 5 kilometres back and another 5 to the south?”

“Why?” barked Lieutenant Colonel Drobis, breaking in.

“It’s a question of ballistics, of the laws of physics,” explained Colonel Zimin patiently. “We fire off several hundred rounds at a time. We want to cover a road which is at right-angles to the front — so the impact zone has to be spread along the road, not across it. Our present firing positions are too far forward and too far to one side to do this. So we have to fire from further back, and further to the south. We move back, fire and move forward again.”

“In no circumstances,” snapped the KGB Lieutenant Colonel, “none at all. You stay where you are and fire from there.”

“But then the zone will lie across the road instead of along it.”

“Then try to get it along the road.”

“I can’t do that from the present firing position, only 2 kilometres from the front line and 5 from the axis of the road.”

“You want to retreat?”

“It’s essential to move back at least 5 kilometres and 4 or 5 kilometres further south if the tank regiment is to break through.”

“You go back to the rear, while we’re in the thick of it up here? Listen Colonel, you get your zone, or whatever you call it, along the road from the front line or…”

“It’s ballistics, Comrade. Our fire pattern depends on the laws of ballistics. We can’t make those up as we go along.”

“Right. No more of this. I won’t allow you to retreat, and you refuse to carry out orders. Arrest him! You can discuss this further where you’re going.”

Two KGB sergeants pinioned Colonel Zimin’s arms and dragged him out.

General Pankratov went on looking stolidly at the wall map, keeping out of this skirmish between the artillery chief and the head of the Special Section. The divisional commander could see that another disaster was due in a few hours. He knew that, for all the theory of offensive action upon which it was based, tomorrow’s attack would get bogged down again just like yesterday’s and for the same reason. He was sad not to be able to do anything to protect the artillery commander, who was an old friend, but he knew that it would be useless to try.

Many years ago, when the General was still a young lieutenant, he was puzzled at the irrational, even, he used to think, the idiotic way in which so much was done in the Red Army. It was not till he was studying at the Frunze Military Academy that he was able, with greater maturity and more experience, to take a closer look at the Soviet power structure. He saw it not the way it was theoretically said to be, articulated under an exemplary constitution, but the way it was in actual naked fact, a structure serving one end only, the perpetuation of the supreme power of the Party. It was also true that other elements in the composition of the USSR were more interested in the preservation of structures which embodied personal power than in their functional efficiency.

The Red Army was the only organized power grouping in the Soviet Union capable of destroying the entire socialist system without harming itself. It was scarcely surprising therefore that in every battalion, regiment and division, in every headquarters at any level, in every military establishment, the Party and the KGB kept keen and watchful eyes on all that went on. There was a Party political officer in every Soviet company, in the post of deputy commander. There were KGB secret agents in every platoon.

The KGB and the Party realized (for these were not all stupid men) that such close control kills initiative and contributes to a dullness of performance which in an army invites defeat. But what could they do about it? If they did not keep control of the army it would devour them. Here, as many realized, was a clear dilemma. An army which is allowed to think holds dangers for socialism. An army which is not allowed to think cannot be an efficient fighting force. The Party and the KGB, faced with a choice, as they saw it, between an efficient army which could threaten their own position, and an army which constituted no threat but was unlikely to give a good account of itself in battle, chose what they saw as the lesser of two evils. When war came it was even more dangerous to loosen controls on the army than in peacetime. The interference of amateurs in the persons of Party bureaucrats and the secret police in such highly professional matters as the conduct of military operations was certain to cause mistakes and even lead to disaster, but this was clearly far better than letting the army off the leash and out of Party control.

General Pankratov, a high-grade professional, was quite confident he knew how to break up an American division. Neither the KGB men nor the Party stool pigeons knew how to do this and it was not possible to show them, for they were not professional soldiers. They would mouth their Party platitudes and act according to their secret instructions. They would always, of course, have to have the last word. Tomorrow, therefore, General Pankratov would do what they wanted, without any choice, and also without either originality or initiative. He would attack the enemy head-on, for this was the only way his controllers thought a battle could take place. If he did anything else he would be killed and a new commander would take over the division. A newcomer would almost certainly act in a way that the stool pigeons from the political department and the suspicious, watchful “Comrades” from the Special Department understood. If he did not, he too would be killed and another replacement found and this would go on until a commander was found who could easily be controlled and whose every move would be easily understood by everyone.

Nothing, General Pankratov reflected, could be changed. The orders he would have to give for tomorrow’s battle would be foolish ones. Soldiers, of course, would now yet again be sent to a wholly purposeless death.

Quite apart from these personal and somewhat philosophical reflections, the General was also worried over some strictly professional matters. He had found it very difficult to relate the action of motor rifle infantry in BMP to movements of the tanks with which they had to co-operate. The vehicles moved at different speeds. The BMP were highly vulnerable to even light attack from gun or missile. The riflemen were often more effective dismounted than in their vehicles, in spite of the additional armament these carried. On their feet, however, they could not keep up with the tanks and were weak in fire power. It was increasingly the case, therefore, that tanks either came to a halt because they had out-run the infantry, or moved on into anti-tank defences which there had been no infantry at hand to suppress.

Moreover, General Pankratov was again finding himself travelling round the old vicious circle. He could not call for air support unless the progress his attack had made had earned him preferential treatment over other divisions in the army. As he had already discovered, it was sometimes impossible to make the progress required to qualify for air support unless you had it in the first instance. The inflexibility of battle procedures was a good match for the tight restrictions placed upon a commander’s action by the Party. The two together made an almost certain formula for disaster, which was only kept at arm’s length by the enormous weight of forces the Red Army had available and the staggering degree to which the common soldier accepted casualties.

General Pankratov looked up from the tank, vehicle and ammunition states which had just been given to him — none of which made any more cheerful reading than the personnel strength and artillery states he had already seen — and in a tired and indifferent voice gave the orders for tomorrow’s battle.

He would go into action in his command vehicle, wearing a peaked military cap, as always. Steel helmets were hard on the head and difficult to manoeuvre in and out of hatches. If his BTR 50-PU were hit by anything that mattered, a steel helmet would be of no help anyway. General Pankratov, like most generals anywhere, was something of a fatalist.”[5]

The performance of Warsaw Pact formations had not in some important respects proved entirely satisfactory to the Soviet High Command. Co-operation between arms had been incomplete. Artillery support had been slow in response and inflexible. Junior command had been lacking in thrust, relying too much on guidance from above. The Western allies had been quick to exploit this weakness, applying their excellent electronic capabilities to the identification of command elements which they then often managed to take out. Coherence in units, in spite of the close attention of KGB barrage battalions, had not been high, often because of the low level of reservist weapon skill and the great difficulty in achieving co-operation between men who could not understand each other’s languages. Finally, there was the greater difficulty of co-ordinating infantry and tanks in action. Only infantry, in the long run, could effectively put down anti-tank defences, however powerful the assistance of technical aids to suppressive action by artillery and fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. The tanks were highly vulnerable to unsuppressed and well-sited ATGW, as well as to long-range fire from very capably handled Allied tanks. Without infantry the tanks of the Warsaw Pact were at a severe disadvantage. But the BMP was even more vulnerable than the tank, as well as being unable to move over the country at the same speed. It very quickly became Allied practice to try to separate infantry from tanks and this was often highly successful.

There was enormous weight in the resources still available to the Soviet High Command. There were on 14 August forty Warsaw Pact divisions in the Central Region, of which fifteen were tank divisions, and no more than half of them had been in action. Their total fire power was three or four times as great as the sum of what faced them. Time, however, was not on their side. The reasons for an expeditious consolidation of the stop-line on the River Rhine had lost none of their urgency. Failure to keep up with the timetable could have unwelcome consequences.

“Wing Commander Roger Pullin, Commanding Officer of 19 Squadron, could hardly believe his senses. It was 0430 hours on 15 August, he was very tired, he was down to his last five Phantoms, the main runway had been repaired twice, his crews — or what remained of them — were on their last legs from battle strain and sheer fatigue and now, standing on the other side of the plotting table in the hardened Squadron Ops block, between two rather self-important engine mechanics turned Squadron guards, was a real live Soviet pilot, still in his equivalent of a Mae West, “G” suit, leg restrainers, and all the rest. He was obviously a very angry pilot.

The lads explained that he had literally dropped into the middle of the Squadron dispersal area, unclipped his parachute, thrown his revolver at their feet and, muttering under his breath, marched willingly with them into the Squadron block.

Roger buzzed the Station Commander, notified the Ground Defence Wing Commander and then turned to the angry man before him. On the evening of 3 August, less than a fortnight but what seemed more than a century ago, Roger had stopped by the Officers’ Mess to pick up a bottle of Scotch. There had been much to think about since then and it was still in his brief case. He now took it out and in excellent Russian asked his visitor if he would like a cup of coffee or maybe something stronger. The pilot was taken aback by the offer, as well as by the fact that it was made in his own language. The Wing Commander was a Cambridge modern language graduate, who had done a tour as Assistant Air Attaché in Moscow in the late 1970s, but his visitor could not possibly have known that. Five minutes later they were sitting in Roger’s office, the door open and an armed guard a couple of yards away in the corridor.

Roger had had quick instructions from the Station Commander.

“Your man will be going off up the line as soon as they come to take him away, for specialist interrogation. What I want you to do is to get from him his own story of what happened to him and put it on a tape for me the way it might have come from one of our own boys, so that I can really get the hang of it. I gather he’s a bit het up and should talk freely. You’ve got about ten minutes.”

The visiting pilot’s name was Captain Leonid Balashov, and he had just been shot down by one of his own SAM. When Roger asked him how it had all happened Balashov let out a torrent of abuse and recrimination, none of it directed against Allied air forces but against the system that had put him in the same piece of sky as was being used at the same time by a massive Allied bombing effort half an hour earlier.

What follows is taken from the account that Roger Pullin put on a tape for the Station Commander a few minutes later.

“As if it wasn’t bad enough being scrambled without close ground control on a general heading towards an unknown target at ‘approximately’ 30–40,000 feet along with a bunch of cowboys in MiG-25s who had never shot at anything in their bloody lives and had no idea whatever about attacking as a formation, with a bunch of bloody Poles behind you and you never knew whether they would simply poke off or have a go at you before they did poke off…”

The Flogger pilot held out his mug for a refill.

“I haven’t got twelve hundred hours on Floggers in thirteen years, and my Sniper badge, just by crawling round the Squadron Commissar. I’d guessed that this one was a biggy and I knew all about F-15s: to stand any chance at all you’ve got to stay low and pray your Sirena’s working so you can pick up the Sparrow lock-on in time to twist away and round it. And so I ignored the brief and went in low level. It was working too; I could hear and see the melees going on above me and I had the main bomber stream, or some of it, on my High Lark radar at 15 miles when I got my tail shot off. Bloody typical: for five years now Flogger pilots have been told to use their ‘initiative’. That was translated by the Squadron boss to mean that if a mission failed because you followed the plan, you should have done your own thing; if you did your own thing and it worked, then that proved that the boss’s plan was flexible; but if the mission failed for whatever reason you should not have done your own thing. Trouble was that the SAM trogs were also being told about initiative and that really was bad news. And in any case, how could you stay a competent fighter pilot and become a mud-mover at the same time if they only let you fly for 90 hours a year. Oh yes, since 1981 they’ve tried to make Flogger G drivers do ground attack as well. Now, if instead they had spent the time and fuel working up big regimental intercept attacks, or even let the Foxbat clowns mix it with the Floggers a bit — but no one at Army Headquarters would ever listen to the Squadron shags. They just push the bloody paper around and watch promotion lists.”

The RAF police had now arrived. Balashov swiftly held out the mug just once more and broke, for the first time, more or less, into English.

“Cheers, comrade. You are good troop.”

He then moved off, a little unsteadily, down the corridor. The Wing Commander reflected, as he watched him go, on the unchanging characteristics of the fighter pilot everywhere — especially at 0430 hours after being shot down by his own side!

It was clear, at least, that they had not yet solved the problem of airspace management on that side either! “[6]

Whatever difficulties faced the Soviet High Command in the field, apart from growing concern in the Kremlin over signs of internal instabilities further back, all of which indicated a pressing need to bring the operations in the Central Region to an early and successful conclusion, there was no doubt that on the other side Allied Command Europe was in deep trouble. It is well known now that SACEUR was under urgent pressure from his army group commanders to seek the release of battlefield nuclear weapons. He was still resisting this, convinced that it would rapidly lead to the all-out nuclear exchange dreaded on both sides. He knew that the President of the United States shared this view. SACEUR recognized that he had to do three things: plug the Venlo gap, where a further heavy attack from 20 Guards Army spearheaded by the crack 6 Guards Motor Rifle Division could not be long delayed; relieve pressure there by a counter-offensive from south to north into the rearward echelons following up this attack, in the general direction of Bremen; and interdict the movement through Poland of the armour now beginning to move forward from the group of tank armies in Belorussia. He had put together a theatre reserve, carefully husbanded and held under the command of Allied Forces Central Europe (AFCENT) with instructions not to deploy it without express instruction, of the equivalent of some seven divisions. He expected that if the trans-Atlantic air bridge held and the air and sea defences in the Western Approaches to the British Isles were sufficient to bring into port four big convoys now nearing the end of a hazardous journey, he could expect, even with the heavy losses there would have been at sea, the equivalent of two fresh US corps very soon. He had also managed to persuade the French to divert an armoured division intended for SOUTHAG to the north and expected it in the Maastricht area within forty-eight hours. Finally, he had great faith in the strength and capacity, as well as in the leadership, of the Allied air forces. Battered though they were they could still make a special effort and pull out something good.

The Krefeld salient near Venlo would simply have to be held by the troops already there, assisted by the French and whatever he could push up from CENTAG (a brigade or two perhaps) until his fresh troops could come in, but he would also ask for a maximum effort from his air forces in support.

The all important counter-offensive towards Bremen would be undertaken by NORTHAG, to which he ordered the allotment of four of his precious reserve divisions as from 0001 hours on 14 August, for an offensive to open at first light on the 15th.

For the interdiction of tank movement across Poland, where Polish workers were being urged by Western broadcasting media to do their utmost to sabotage the rail system, he would ask the air forces to make one supreme effort.

“SACEUR spoke over his discrete voice-net to Commander Allied Air Forces Central Europe (COMAAFCE) in his underground war room in the Eifel region.

“Can you cut the main rail links running west from Wroclaw and Poznan in Poland?” he asked.

COMAAFCE was startled. This would mean sending what remained of his irreplaceable F-111s and Tornados through the grim defences of East Germany and Poland. SACEUR’s question suggested such a complete misunderstanding of what they would be up against (and what they had already done at such high cost, for that matter) that he found it hard to be civil.

“I know things are bad,” he replied, “but have you gone out of your mind? If I sent thirty aircraft we would be lucky if ten got over the targets and five of them came back. And these are some of your dual-capable nuclear aircraft.”

“Okay, okay,” said SACEUR. “You airmen are always so touchy — I’m not telling you how to do it. I’m just saying what it is that’s got to be done. Give me a call back in half an hour.”

At COMAAFCE’s operational headquarters the planners looked at it all ways but continued to shake their heads. They just could not see how an effective force could be brought to bear at a remotely acceptable cost in air losses. The use of calculators and operating manuals speeded up as heads drew closer together over the plotting charts;

Twenty-five minutes later COMAAFCE was back on the line to SACEUR.

“Look,” he said “those Swedes are having their own war up there, but if you can get them to let us into two of their southern airfields we can do it. All we’ll want is fuel for thirty aircraft between two bases. They’ll arrive and leave at night and there will be no fuss. Depending on how it goes we might need to recover to the same bases early in the morning but we’ll try to get them back to Britain, or at least to Norway. Of course if the Swedes could give some fighter cover on the way back from the Polish coast that would be great. But from what I hear that’s against their rules.”

The senior Swedish liaison officer at SHAPE listened gravely to this request and undertook to put it straightaway to Stockholm.

In half an hour the answer came back — yes, the two Wings could use the airfields, provided it was planned and executed exactly as COMAAFCE had said: namely, in and out on the same night with the highest security before and after the event. They could not agree to let the force recover to Sweden next morning unless it was in distress. Nor could there be any question of Flygvapnet (Swedish Air Force) fighters providing cover, for that would constitute offensive action in breach of the widely known and well recognized principles of defending Swedish neutrality.

By noon that day, 13 August, eighteen USAF FB-111s and twelve Tornados (six each from the RAF and the German Air Force) had been detailed for the mission from Upper Heyford, Cottesmore and Marham in England. Cottesmore was the air base to which the German Air Force Tornados had been withdrawn from Norvenich in Germany. The Wing Commander who was to lead the RAF/GAF element left his crews studying their radar and infra-red target maps and took a Hawk jet-trainer down from Marham to see the CO of the FB-111s at Upper Heyford. These were old friends from their time together at the US Air War College at Maxwell, Alabama, and they had a lot to tie up.

The essence of the plan was that the F-111/Tornado force, having flown over southern Norway to Sweden, would approach Poland from the north. Flying across the Polish plain at 70 metres or so they would have an excellent chance of avoiding detection until well over the coast, when the distance to run would be only 180 kilometres to Poznan and 270 to Wroclaw, and this would be covered in twelve to eighteen minutes’ flying. By refuelling and setting out from Sweden, the northern flank of the Warsaw Pact defences would be turned. This was the key to the whole operation. Evasive routing would keep them clear of the worst of the fixed defences which would anyway have minimum warning of their approach. With luck they might be taken completely by surprise. The force would be split when it crossed the Wista river north of Bydgoszcz and the two parts would then head separately to their targets. A hot reception by fighters would undoubtedly be waiting for them on their way back but they would have to rely on their speed and keeping as low as possible in the dark to get them through.

At midnight, and with a bare minimum of airfield lighting, the two Wings landed at the Flygvapnet air bases of Kalmar and Kallinge. All thirty aircraft were refuelled and ready in little more than an hour before taking off again on their mission at 0200 hours. The primary targets were the multi-span bridges over the Warta and Oder rivers, which carried the main railway lines to Berlin from Warsaw and Krakow. Long trains of transporter floats, each train carrying up to fifty T-72 tanks or equivalent loads, were moving slowly to the west around the cities of Poznan and Wroclaw, sometimes spaced no more than a 100 metres apart. It would be a rewarding operation indeed if that flow could be halted, but bridges had always been difficult targets in air warfare. From above, it took only a small line error to produce a complete miss and bridges were designed to take heavy loads in the vertical plane anyway. Now it was all different: they were going to be hit sideways by missiles fired from 3,000 metres’ range with radar and infra-red homing weapons striking the bridge piers like giant hammers on a demolition job. Any missiles or bombs left over would be launched at whatever trains they could find in their path on the way out.

The Tornados led both streams as they divided over the Wista river to the north. Their first task was to bring anti-radiation defence suppression weapons to bear against the SAM systems around the cities and on the bridges and to clear the way for the heavier armament of the FB-111s.

At the first bridges they had an easy ride, but when the gunners dozing over their ZSU radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns woke up to what was happening they put up such a dense curtain of fire that four Tornados had gone down before the batteries were silenced. Five FB-111s went the same way and two which had been straggling a bit had fallen to SAM near Bydgoszcz to the north when the force had split. In all, four bridges went down, with spans crumpling into the rivers carrying two trains with them. This was a tremendous achievement, of critical importance to the battle on the Central Front.

Nineteen out of the original force of thirty aircraft swept round out of the target area to battle their way back along the shortest route to the Baltic west of Gdansk.

The defences were now fully alerted but it was still dark, and flying not far below the speed of sound a bare 70 metres above the flat terrain they were a very difficult target for the MiG-23 Floggers of the GDR and Polish Air Forces waiting for them to the north. One more Tornado and an FB-111 went at this stage but, although it is difficult to know even now, it was the general opinion of the crews in the easterly stream that the Polish fighters had not pressed home their attacks with much enthusiasm.

Four of the seventeen surviving aircraft with heavy battle damage made distress calls and, taking the Swedes at their word, put their aircraft down on the ground in the first light of dawn at Kallinge air base. Four Soviet Air Force Foxbats in hot pursuit into Swedish airspace were met by interceptors and the greater agility of the Swedish Viggens sent two of the Foxbats down before the other two turned away and headed back towards Leningrad.

The two commanders, the American and the Briton, were still in the lead of their sections as the remaining aircraft flew on low over the sea towards the west. They had agreed the day before that they would cut the south-west corner of Sweden very fast and close to the ground, before pulling up over the mountains to make their pre-planned landing at Oslo in Norway.

Next day was to see the massive B-52 onslaught on the front line near Venlo. If that was the bludgeon blow, this daring and skilful attack by night intruders had been the rapier thrust. As had looked likely, the enemy’s heavy bridging equipment had been taken well forward into East Germany, where it expected to be attacked, and where, of course, it repeatedly was. This resulted in scarcity of bridging and recovery equipment further back. Many trains had now to be sent back to Warsaw and Krakow and laboriously re-routed through Czechoslovakia to the south and Bydgoszcz to the north. On the map it looked like a relatively easy exercise, but yet again the inflexibility of Warsaw Pact plans was to create difficulties. Even more resulted from widespread sabotage by Polish workers, acting on exhortation and instruction over Western radio broadcasts. In all, the rapier had added a telling thirty-six hours or so to Soviet reinforcement timings. This was to multiply and would greatly exacerbate Warsaw Pact problems after the B-52 attack on the front line next morning, 15 August.”[7]

The position near Venlo on the front of II British Corps, whose four divisions were flanked on the right by a US brigade and on the left by I Netherlands Corps, was critical. By nightfall on 14 August the Soviet 20 Guards Army was not far from achieving the front commander’s object, which was to force a way through the Allied forces defending the point of the Krefeld salient that Soviet forces had driven between Duisburg and Venlo, and thus open the possibility of carrying out the truly critical part of the whole Warsaw Pact operational plan. This was still, once a crossing had been forced over the lower Rhine, to swing left upstream and take CENTAG from the rear.

Already trans-Atlantic reinforcement was building up and the massive augmentation the Soviet Union had hoped to forestall was well under way. The arrival in the Central Region of a fresh US corps was imminent. Its advanced parties began to arrive in the Aachen area early on the 15th. A French armoured division was approaching Maastricht. SACEUR had released four divisions from his last theatre reserves to NORTHAG, as from 0001 hours on 14 August, for the counter-offensive north-eastwards towards Bremen to open at first light on the 15th.

This was to be a critical day in the history of the Third World War. At the point of the Krefeld salient Soviet troops had penetrated II British Corps and by nightfall on 14 August Soviet tanks were not far from Julich. Unless the Soviet advance could be held up on 15 August the fresh US corps and the additional French division could not be brought into action in time, the NORTHAG counter-offensive towards Bremen would be stillborn, and the whole Allied position in the Federal Republic would be threatened by the Soviet thrust southward, up the left bank of the Rhine, in CENTAG’s rear. This, it was clear, was the time to use the B-52s standing by at Lajes in the Azores. On the morning of 14 August SACEUR ordered COMAAFCE to make a maximum effort at first light on the 15th, to slow down the Soviet advance and help to stabilize the position in the Krefeld salient. The action of the B-52 bomber force, at what was a truly crucial moment of the war, deserves attention in some detail.

All were aware, ground and air commanders alike, that the practical problems raised by the decision to use the B-52s would be difficult to resolve. Defending forces would have to break contact far enough and long enough to give the B-52s a bomb line that would permit the maximum impact on Warsaw Pact armour with minimum casualties in NATO forward positions. That, COMAAFCE must have reflected pragmatically on the morning of 14 August, was now the army’s problem; his was to get as many of the B-52s as possible over the Krefeld salient at 0400 hours local time the following day.

The targeting directive was received at Lajes at 1200 hours local time on the 14th. During the previous week the crews had increased the customary proportions of alert status, which ran from fifteen minutes to six hours. By 1500 hours that day the last batch of air tests was complete and thirty-nine of the B-52s were declared serviceable for the mission. It was now that the expertise built up by air crew and ground crew in several years of European exercises paid handsome dividends. One hundred MK-82 bombs were loaded into each bomb bay and, although the round trip of 4,000 miles would be well within B-52 range, a full fuel load was taken on board. By 2200 hours air crew briefings were completed. The target area was a strip of territory 10 kilometres from north to south by 2 kilometres east to west, due west of Neuss. It was believed that in that area at least three divisions of 20 Guards Army, with probably one or two of the leading regiments of the second echelon, would be concentrating for a final breakthrough. In practical terms the targets would include at least 20,000 troops, 1,000 tanks, 500 BTR and a further 1,500 soft-skinned vehicles essential to the forward momentum of the ground attack. The terrain was flat and offered little natural cover. The proximity of an Autobahnkreuz afforded a near-perfect identification point for either visual or radar bombing. Time on target would be 0400 hours and bombing height would be 40,000 feet.

The B-52s carried a wealth of defensive equipment but exercises during the previous five years had pointed the need for fighter escort. On this occasion that responsibility was to be shared amongst French Mirage F-1Cs, 2000s and USAF F-15s. The B-52s’ route would take them north-eastwards across the Pyrenees and up across France and Luxembourg towards Cologne, where they would begin their bombing run.

By 0300 hours the bombing stream was cruising at 525 miles per hour at 40,000 feet over France, still on a north-north-easterly heading. Above and to either side were loose gaggles of Mirage F-1Cs of the Commandement Air de Forces de Defense Aeriennes (CAFDA). The awacs screen, now pulled back over central France, detected no unusual enemy fighter movement either from the captured airfields in West Germany or across the inner German border.

From the Meuse valley area onwards, the B-52s entered theoretical intercept range of Flogger Gs and Foxbats. To reduce Allied difficulties of identification and airspace management COMAAFCE had stopped all deeper battlefield interdiction or counter-air attacks in the Central Region after 2300 hours, so that anything coming across the FEBA could be assumed to be hostile. COMAAFCE’s staff had calculated that some kind of warning would reach the Warsaw Pact from agents in Lisbon and that the remaining IL-76 C Cookers, although now held well back over central Poland, would probably pick up the high-flying B-52 formation over central France. Seeing the formation, however, was one thing; deciding where it was headed was quite different. The known combat radius of the B-52s was so great that they could at any moment change heading and threaten troop concentrations, logistic support, command centres or any other targets anywhere between the Baltic and Bulgaria. Moreover, while COMAAFCE knew that Flogger and Foxbat units had been moved forward behind the advancing Warsaw Pact armies during the previous ten days, he suspected that the Soviets, rather like the Nazis with the Luftwaffe in France in 1940, had found it quite easy to deploy the aircraft themselves but much more difficult to support them quickly with enough weapons, fuel and battle-damage repair facilities to allow them to maintain a high sortie rate. It would, therefore, have been fatal for the Warsaw Pact’s air defence units to be thrown into battle either too deep in NATO territory, where the French interceptors were still relatively unscathed, or before the final heading and destination of the bombers were more definitely known.

COMAAFCE also knew that the Soviets were about to have their hands forced, because as the B-52s approached Luxembourg they were joined by four F-111EB ECM aircraft which effectively blinded all three Cookers and a large number of the enemy’s shorter-range surveillance radars. The Floggers and Foxbats had to be scrambled towards the last known B-52 heading from bases up to 400 miles away and, as the NATO planning staffs had hoped when they had first envisaged the use of the B-52, the fighters’ problems did not end there. Despite Soviet attempts to encourage pilot initiative, looser formations and reduced ground control, most air defence crews had been trained to fight in their own airspace against intruding bombers whose position and heading were precisely known. Not only were air crew conditioned to this; the aircraft were designed for little else. Foxbat was purely and simply a high-speed high-altitude interceptor with poor manoeuvrability, while Flogger G, although more flexible, was by no means an air-superiority fighter, though both would fare better at high level than at low against their NATO counterparts. A further complication was that Polish, East German and Czechoslovak pilots had expected to be defending their own homelands. Scrambling with little control from unfamiliar airfields against a vaguely defined target well away from their national airspace was not the best invitation to enthusiastic performance.

Such enthusiasm for combat as they did have would shortly be reduced still further. The formation of F-111EB ECM aircraft was soon to be joined behind their jamming screen by forty Mirage 2000s and thirty of the remaining F-15s from 2 and 4 ATAF. As the bombers turned north-north-west over Cologne their crews could see outlined against the slightly lighter sky to the east the comforting silhouette of some of the most effective fighters in the world. Although the night was clouded, the city of Cologne and the river bend were crystal clear in the air-to-ground radar displays. Within a few seconds the offset aiming point, the Autobahnkreuz between Venlo and Duisburg, came up with equal clarity. Then, as the diary of 337 Squadron of the USAF records, ‘all shades of hell broke loose both in the air and on the ground’.

It was, and is, impossible to say how many Warsaw Pact fighters were scrambled against the B-52s. The early warning Sentries identified eighty-five blips initially but their ability to note every target was soon lost in the very large numbers of aircraft flying in less than 100 square miles of airspace. The situation was further confused by the attempts of three Soviet Air Force Cubs to jam both the bomber radars and the Sentries’1 own surveillance beams. The balance of advantage, for the time being at least, remained with the NATO force. The Warsaw Pact ground controllers could do no more than direct their fighters to the approximate source of the F-111 jamming and leave them to it. But, for the first time in the war, F-15 Eagles were able to engage to the full extent of their equipment. There was no need to close to identify: if it was heading west, hack it. At 50 miles the Foxbat and Floggers were clearly visible on the Eagles’ radar, and head-on at Mach 2 the enemy aircraft were well within the attack envelope of the Eagles’ radar-guided Sparrow missiles.

Each Eagle carried four Sparrow and four infra-red homing Sidewinder air-to-air missiles. So many Sparrows were fired in such short time that to the bomber crews they looked like salvoes. But by no means all found their targets. A small proportion failed to detonate, one or two exploded against each other in what is called fratricide, some targets were struck by more than one missile and a few Warsaw Pact pilots were quick enough to react to their Sirena radar warning receivers and break the beams of the incoming missiles. It is possible, however, that more than 100 Sparrow missiles were fired in the first moments of contact and that some sixty attackers were hit. Sentries observed with interest that immediately after the opening contact, several hostile blips abruptly changed heading and set course eastwards.

Most of the fighters that had escaped the first impact, however, were not deterred and at 20 miles from the bomber stream the powerful Fox Fire AI (air-intercept) radar of the Foxbats began to burn through the F-111 jamming to disclose the B-52s. By now, however, it was 0400 hours and the first light of dawn was reaching the upper skies. Still the advantage lay with the Western allies. Now the F-15s and the Mirages could use their considerable advantage in agility to close, identify and kill the fast-tracking MiGs with the wide-aspect infra-red homing Sidewinders and Magics.

Then, to everybody’s consternation, Soviet and Allied radar warning receivers (RWR) detected the launch of a real salvo of SAM from one of the forward Soviet battalions near Dortmund. Defection from the attackers’ ranks promptly occurred as several Warsaw Pact pilots realized the implications of Soviet SAM firing into the middle of the melee in the air. As the salvo of SA-4 missiles was not repeated it is not known whether a trigger-happy major had been demonstrating a rare flash of initiative or whether a decision at a higher level had been hastily countermanded as a result of angry protest from the Warsaw Pact fighter commander.

In the B-52s each electronic warfare officer (EWO) sat in his compartment oblivious to the crackle of sound in his headset, intent only on the 12-inch-square cathode-ray tube in front of him which displayed the information from a suite of ECM equipment on either side. The SA-4 launch was monitored and when warning of missile ‘lock on’ was received the automatic self-jamming screen immediately broke the link. SA-4 homing frequencies had long been known and, to the EWO’s relief, they had not been changed. None of the bombers fell to SAM attack.

Combatants elsewhere in the sky were not so fortunate. Subsequently, several pilots from both sides vehemently claimed that they had been shot down by SAM rather than by enemy fighters. Certainly they were not expecting such interference from the ground, but in fact very few of the pilots knew for certain exactly what had shot them down. The MiGs were intent on reaching the bomber stream but could not afford to ignore the Mirages and Eagles. Pre-battle tactical plans were rapidly forgotten in the confusion, RWR keys flashed continuously as aircraft illuminated each other with their AI radars. Infra-red missiles, and finally guns, were used by both sides and losses mounted, aggravated by air-to-air collisions and an unknown number of errors of identification. It was quickly obvious that while the Floggers were out-manoeuvred and out-gunned, if a Foxbat was not picked off on the first attack its ability to burst away at Mach 3 would make catching and hitting it from the rear impossible. The Foxbats speed advantage had serious implications for the B-52s.

The main air battle raged for little more than five minutes, but that was just long enough for almost all the bombers to complete their bombing runs. Below them, the units of the 20 Guards Army were completing their nightly replenishment before moving on to maintain the momentum of the advance against what must have seemed from its apparent attempt to disengage during the night a defeated II British Corps. The revving of tank and BTR engines, the rumble of fuel bowsers, engineer trucks and all the other noises of four divisions preparing to attack obscured completely the faint whine of jet engines 8 miles above. There was no warning as the first deluge of 500 lb bombs smashed down among them. In the next six minutes over 1,500 tons of high explosive thundered over an area of little more than 8 square miles. The T-72 and T-80 tanks that had survived frontal assaults from air-to-surface rockets were shattered by direct hits or had their tracks torn off by blast, while BTR and soft-skinned vehicles were destroyed in their hundreds. The impact on the Soviet ground troops was terrific. Many were killed outright or injured. Many more were stunned and paralysed. Tank and BTR crews were caught either on top of their vehicles or away from them on the ground. Most were reservists, having their first taste of battle, and many broke down under the surprise, ferocity and duration of this thunderous assault from an unseen enemy. Two forward divisional headquarters survived but 20 Guards Army in less than ten minutes of one-sided combat, had virtually ceased, for several vital hours, to exist as a fighting formation.

Inevitably, losses on the ground were not confined to 20 Guards Army. Although a bombing line 1,200 yards ahead of the defending British and Dutch troops had been defined, free-falling bombs from 40,000 feet are no respecters of bomb lines. And although the bombers’ approach on a track parallel to the bomb line had reduced the risk from shortfalls, the navigator bombardiers were not all equally adept at handling their almost fully-automated bombing systems. As a result, one British battalion and some companies of Dutch infantry suffered heavy losses.

Above the ground forces, the B-52 crews had no time either to exult in their success or worry about their bombing accuracy. One EWO after another picked up search illuminations from Foxbat radars, quickly followed by the continuous warning of AA-9 missile lock-on. Chaff dispensers were fired and many missiles exploded harmlessly in the clouds of drifting foil or veered away sharply as their guidance giros toppled. Occasionally the tail-gunners caught a glimpse of the fighters and blazed away optimistically with their four 0.5 inch guns, much as their B-17 forbears had done forty years previously. But the Foxbat pilots were brave and persistent. No. 337 Squadron was the last in the wave and bore the brunt of the fighters’ attack. Two aircraft were destroyed before they could release their bombs, and two more immediately afterwards. As the stream turned west towards the relative safety of North Sea airspace it suffered further losses: one B-52 was rammed from above by a Foxbat, while others fell to short-range AA-6 infra-red homing missiles. It was no consolation to the survivors that most of the MiGs were themselves about to be intercepted and destroyed by Dutch and Belgian F-16 Fighting Falcons, which were now, at dawn, able to join the fray.

Altogether, only seventeen B-52s got back to Lajes and several of those had suffered battle damage and casualties. Four more force-landed safely at bases in France or Belgium, but of the original thirty-nine, eighteen were lost, an attrition rate of over 45 per cent. Military historians will discuss that figure with interest. They will perhaps agree that no commander in history could accept such loss rates for any length of time. But as in the October War of 1973 in the Middle East, any evaluation of attrition rates must take into account the importance of the overall objectives. The alternatives to the B-52 attack had been probable failure to prevent 20 Guards Army from rolling up CENTAG from the rear, or well-nigh intolerable pressure from NATO field commanders to release nuclear weapons to relieve pressure, with all the dreadful consequences of the escalation that would almost certainly follow. In exchange for the loss of less than fifty fighter and bomber air crew and some 270 soldiers, the critical Warsaw Pact thrust had been checked, while the NORTHAG counter-offensive towards Bremen was far from being stillborn.

It had all been a very near thing. So much could have gone wrong. The actual launching of the NORTHAG counter-offensive, for example, had depended on the possession of the area around Minister, south of the River Lippe, during the day of 14 August and the following night. Without that it was hard to see how the counter-offensive could have got under way at all. Soviet pressure from the north was heavy and continuous. The Battle of the Lippe, which has been written up elsewhere,[8] was another very important blow in the preservation of the Federal Republic from destruction.

By 16 August the newly arrived US corps, fighting in a flank position near Aachen, was threatening any further forward movement southwards along the Rhine. The Soviet armour never got further south than Julich.

The Warsaw Pact timetable had now been seriously upset and regrouping was necessary, involving not a retreat but certainly some rearward movement, beginning with the withdrawal of forward divisions in the Krefeld salient now threatened with encirclement. This was not, it must be clearly understood, a decisive military defeat for the Red Army. There were still huge forces at hand which could be brought to bear before the full potential of the United States could become effective. But it was a setback, a failure to achieve the early swift success which was rightly seen to be of such critical importance. It was a demonstration that the USSR, however powerful, was neither omnipotent nor invulnerable, and this offered encouragement to any in the Soviet Union or its satellite states who hoped at some time for a lifting of the dead hand of a communist regime.

“On 14 August a Soviet MiG-25 Foxbat B landed at an aerodrome near Dijon. The pilot, one Captain Belov, requested political asylum. Captain Belov reported that he had been flying an intelligence mission prior to a fresh major offensive in the central sector ordered for the next day. The attack of which Belov had given warning, but of which there were also plenty of other indicators, started at dawn on 15 August, with simultaneous thrusts at the boundaries of four NATO corps. In each case a single Soviet motor rifle division was used, followed as usual by the KGB barrage battalions and with normal artillery support. The intention was to force wide dispersal of the enemy’s reserves. The 4 Guards Tank Army now formed in Poland would move in to exploit success.

The 197 Motor Rifle Division, with its two light motor rifle regiments up, was by 0630 hours beginning to force a wedge into the enemy positions at the junction of I British and I German Corps. The advance was covered by the fire of 400 guns and supported in depth by 180 attack aircraft.

The tank and heavy motor rifle regiments were still deployed along their start lines, waiting for the light infantry to find a weakness in the hostile defences.

In the early morning mist, the punishment units that had reinforced the division were preparing for battle alongside Nekrassov’s battalion. Ammunition was only distributed to those units right in the firing line. They had no heavy weapons. Security at the punishment battalion rested with elderly, heavy-tracked BTR 50-PUs, from which the men in forward units were kept in the sights of automatic weapons. The punishment units were international. On Nekrassov’s right, arms were being distributed to Polish workers straight from prison, covered by the weapons of an East German security company. On his left, a battalion of Soviet dissidents were downing their vodka under convoy of a Polish company.

Nekrassov was now a Captain. The previous evening, everyone who had returned from the earlier engagements had received a medal. Officers’ epaulettes everywhere were brightened by a new sprinkling of stars. The regimental commander had presented Nekrassov with his new captain’s epaulettes, promising him he would be a major in three days’ time, if he was still alive. He himself had got to be lieutenant colonel from captain in just that time, and was now a colonel. Nekrassov was not encouraged. He stared into the distance chewing a piece of grass. It was just possible that he set more store by the support of stolid Boris, still driving his BMP, and the attentions of little Yuri, worn out and fast asleep now in the back of the BMP, than any hope of further advancement.

A curtain of black smoke hung over the wooded hills 2 kilometres away. Flights of monstrous metallic birds were again flying towards the smoke, the treetops bending in their infernal roar. Sometimes a whole squadron would fly past, sometimes they came over in pairs or fours. The noise as they screamed by made the soldiers duck, seconds after the black shadows had already flickered past over the column and were lost in the distance.

Tanks came rumbling past Nekrassov’s battalion: he realized that the tank regiment was now being put in. The punishment troops rode on the tanks. They had been issued with green battledress jackets but still wore their striped prison trousers.

“Where are you lot off to in your pyjamas?” Nekrassov’s men shouted at them.

But the punishment troops on the tanks did not understand a word. They were not Slavs. They were probably Romanians, put out there as enemies of the regime. Close alongside the Soviet tanks, lurching over the damaged road, BTR loaded with soldiers in Hungarian uniform were making sure that the punishment troops stayed with the tanks. Nekrassov reckoned that since the guard was Hungarian the punishment troops were almost certainly Romanian. Romanian and Soviet regimes were in full agreement on one point at least. Why feed dissenters in gaol if they can die heroes’ deaths for the regime?

The tank regiment carrying the punishment troops was sent into battle on a narrow sector, followed by three barrage infantry battalions, these followed in turn by the heavy motor rifle regiment with orders to shoot in the back any from the pyjama brigade who failed to show the right spirit.

By noon there were few punishment troops remaining. The tank regiment too had suffered heavy losses. It had been amalgamated during the course of the battle into a single battalion. The heavy motor rifle regiment had got off lightly, protected as it was by the tanks and pyjama boys. Now it, too, pushed forward. Although not itself a punishment regiment, none the less a barrage battalion of the KGB followed close on its heels, just to be on the safe side. There was hardly any opposition from the enemy. Groups of attacking Soviet BMP were moving into swift thrusts at the remaining pockets of defence.

By 1000 hours it was clear that the regiment had broken through into an undefended area. The regimental commander gave the order, “No skirmishing!” The regiment was to bypass any active defence and move on westwards with all possible speed.

The army attack had been made on three thrust lines at the boundaries of four enemy corps sectors. Two divisions had been held up. One, the 197 Motor Rifle Division, had broken through. In fact, the two divisions that had been checked had been almost completely wiped out, paving the way with their casualties for a battalion or even a regiment at a time to break through here and there, charging on regardless of threats from the flanks or of shortage of ammunition, or even damage to essential equipment.

The front commander decided to concentrate on the boundary between I British and I German Corps, where the defence was crumbling before the attack of his most successful division, the 197th. This was the critical time to throw the Tank Army Group into the attack.

Polish workers and NATO air attack had ensured that only one tank army out of the three poised in Belorussia was available in time. Even so, as Nekrassov knew, a single tank army was a formidable thing. The aim of tank forces, or the Tank Army Group, was to use the narrow openings made by the divisions and armies of the first echelon to thrust westwards, smashing a steel wedge through troop positions, communication centres and administration, destroying any hope of reintegrating the defence. It had to be like a million tons of water suddenly breaking through a little crack in a concrete dam where only a few drops at a time had been seeping through before.

The roar of the endless columns of 4 Guards Tank Army was deafening. The sky had vanished. A mist hung over everything and the faint disc of the sun hardly showed through the cloud of grey dust. What could withstand this avalanche?

The 197 Motor Rifle Division had broken through but was itself disintegrating. Nekrassov’s battalion, now comprising twenty-three BMP, and reinforced by a tank company with eight tanks, was on its own. All communication had been cut off. Divisional headquarters had almost ceased to function and now the regimental command appeared to have been taken out too. He could make no contact with them. Nekrassov knew that if the advanced units of the tank army were deployed on one of the neighbouring lines of advance, and not on his own, there would be for him and his command no hope at all. His regiment had split into three independent groups with no central command. There was no one behind him, only thousands of corpses and hundreds of burnt-out vehicles. If the approaching tanks attacked in his direction his battalion would be like the little fish that live round the jaws of a shark, with this tiny battalion ahead, the huge tank army behind. They would be safe.

With no orders, no information, Nekrassov suddenly sensed with certainty that the tanks had come into the attack behind him. There had been no air support for some hours past, but now the whole sky filled with the roar of rocket motors. It was clear that several air divisions had been put up to cover the attack. Now the tanks began to come swiftly into Nekrassov’s view. Faster! Faster! There could be no doubt now about what his remnant of a battalion had to do.

“Advance!” yelled Nekrassov into his throat microphone. “Advance!” The troops themselves realized they were at the sharp end of a gigantic armoured wedge. Nekrassov’s vehicles roared ahead, always onwards, straight ahead only. On the left of his armoured column the rear echelons of a British division were retreating on a parallel route. Nekrassov ignored them. Onwards to the west! And fast! But now the air forces and the forward elements of the tank army seemed to have swerved aside from what he had assumed was the thrust line. They were now separated from Nekrassov’s column. In spite of all the orders strongly forbidding time-wasting minor engagements they had deviated from the main axis of advance. He noted what was happening with dismay. His driver Boris saw him for the first time at a loss.

Sparks flew up from the tracks as BMP clanked and roared their way forward. Without slackening speed the diminished battalion charged through a small red-brick town. The streets were full of refugees pulling small vehicles overloaded with pitiful household gear. Tearful children with frightened eyes ran screaming. Old people who remembered the last war shrank into doorways. Nekrassov’s battalion broke through the panic-stricken crowds which filled the streets, tearing on westwards. The people fled in terror. Nekrassov’s soldiers ignored them, the BMP running over any who stood in the way. To clear this obstacle and push on faster towards the front was all that mattered.

“Don’t curse me!” shouted Nekrassov at the country people as he passed them. “I’m only a soldier. You’re nothing to do with me. But the KGB pursuit battalion will come later. They’ll deal with you.” No one heard him except Boris at the controls of the BMP, on the intercom. No one else would have understood him anyway.

Before nightfall, however, the attack of 4 Guards Tank Army, ordered by the front commander and considered by him to be of critical importance, had come to a halt. There had been a shattering event. On a neighbouring sector, in the Netherlands, General Ryzanov commanding 3 Shock Army, in one of the most dramatic developments of the war, had declared his army the Russian Army of Liberation, sent liaison officers over to NATO and ordered fire to be opened on Soviet troops. The same thing had happened in the Second World War with 2 Shock Army, when in May 1942 their Commander, Lieutenant General Vlasov, ordered the shooting of Chekists and political commissars, and began fighting against communist troops. On that occasion the mutiny had been more or less contained, though Vlasov kept quite an important force in being, fighting against the communists, using captured equipment and supplies, up to the very end of the war, and to his own most cruel and heroic death. This time the regime was going to find the going very much harder. Ryzanov’s force had to be sealed off and neutralized. This meant the withdrawal of other formations from the main effort.

Soviet battalions and regiments in some numbers, cut off deep in the rear of the enemy by the change of front of 3 Shock Army, soon ceased to be effective fighting forces. NATO commanders put this short but welcome breathing space to good use in regrouping for counter-offensive operations. The Soviet High Command’s last hope of a timely resolution to the operations in the FRG (and it was a matter of growing urgency that they should soon be brought to a successful end) now lay in the other two tank armies of the Belorussian Tank Army Group, 5 and 7 Guards Tank Armies. These, however, after savage NATO air attack and civilian sabotage on the railways, were widely dispersed over Poland, with little chance of speedy concentration and deployment into action. To open opportunities for the armour moreover, the enemy’s defences, now to some degree reintegrated, would once again need to be broken through. This was again a task for infantry, with strong air and artillery support, but there was now very little infantry available. It would not be possible to move sufficient fresh infantry formations across Poland quickly enough, for the same reasons that it was not possible to bring about a speedy introduction of the tank armies. Rail transportation had been heavily disrupted and the roads were breaking up.

All this was clear enough at the level of the front command, and at army group and even army level. None of it was known much lower down, in the headquarters of 197 Motor Rifle Division for example, such as remained of it, where staff officers deadened by noise and dropping with fatigue were receiving orders they could not understand and sending off others they knew could not be carried out even if they got through. In the regiments a grim confusion reigned, with half-lifeless robots going through motions lacking either hope or purpose. At battalion level little groups of people clung together, doing what they could.

As for many another this was to be Captain Nekrassov’s last battle. His weakened battalion now came under heavy air attack from US Apache anti-tank helicopters, operating with US A-10 Thunderbolts and as an organized fighting unit was completely destroyed. Some of Nekrassov’s men survived but he did not care. He did not even know. By this time he was dead.”

Chapter 12: The Scandinavian Campaign

Amongst the many documents brought out of Moscow to Sweden by a defector in the confusion of late 1985[9] were certain personal records, of which perhaps the most revealing is that of Colonel A. N. Romanenko, a Deputy Director of Plans in the Soviet General Staff. His notes for 15 August include the following record of a conversation between himself and the Director of Plans, General Rudolf Ignatiev:

“At about seven o’clock this morning, General Ignatiev came into my office with a harsh look on his face.

“Those damned Americans,” he said, “have landed marines in Norway. We knew a force of sorts was coming, but the navy was confident it could break it up. Well, it hasn’t. We’ve got to get forces into south-west Norway quickly, or else the Americans will move against us in Bodo. We’re doing well in the Bodo area but we’ve got to stay there. You have your plan for seizing the airfields around Stavanger and for getting troops into the south — we’ve been through it together — and I now want you to put it into operation quickly. But you’ll have to look at it again, to see if it needs modifying to deal with whatever the Americans have got there.”

Ignatiev said he had already put this to the Chief, who wanted the attack to go in tomorrow afternoon. The Chief reckons it would really shake the NATO governments when they see that we have to all intents and purposes completed the capture of their northern flank.

“Now we can show that it’s hopeless for them to try to stop this,” Ignatiev said. “We shall get real advantage from having secured air command over the North and Norwegian Seas. I know we’ve had heavy losses in the long-range air forces — well, now we’ll make full use of our medium- and shorter-range bombers and our fighter bombers. We should have enough air defence resources to keep the enemy out. But we’ve got to hurry. Can we go in tomorrow?”

All sorts of thoughts had been spinning through my mind as he was speaking — this operation was one that I had worked out myself.

“Well,” I said, “we’ve replaced the airborne division in the Baltic Military District with 7 Guards Airborne Division from the Leningrad Military District. The new one is fresh and ready for use now. We have to find enough air transport to lift the complete division-I think we’ve got them but I’ll get on to the VDV [Military Air Transport Organization] straight away to confirm this. There are assault landing craft still in the Danish islands and there are Ro-Ro [roll-on, roll-off] ships in Rostock and Kiel. Since we have to act very quickly, it will mean using some of the naval infantry and mechanized forces occupying Denmark.”

Ignatiev was clearly impatient and looked at his watch. “Yes, I know all these sorts of things have to be arranged but they aren’t a problem. I want you to get on with the operation at once. We should clear the plan by 1500 hours today, but in the meantime get some warning orders out.”

“There is just one other matter,” I said. “If we are to secure the airborne assault, we shall have to attack the Norwegian airfields at Trondheim — Orland and Vaernes. We can’t really get at these effectively without crossing Sweden. If we are going to cross Sweden it would be better to send the air transport stream that way as well. It will be fifty times easier. Are we going to risk that?”

“Risk?” said Ignatiev. “What risk? Do you think those nervous Swedes will fight to stop us passing overhead? We’ve been overflying them all this last week and they’ve done damn little more than bite their nails. They haven’t fought a war since 1814. They won’t get in our way, don’t worry. Get on with it, fast!”[10]

Although the history of Swedish neutrality — based on the principle of non-alignment in peace with the aim of neutrality in war — went back a long way it was not all that well understood outside the Nordic countries. This was possibly in part because people of other countries have enough problems sorting out their own identity and history without worrying too much about others — especially when they are remote and neutral, the latter term tending to be regarded by some as synonymous with unimportant. If Sweden resented this, as it did, the country had largely itself to blame. Its impressive, passionate, and highly-armed neutrality was masked to the world by the political posturing of politicians from whatever platform they might be on at the time — ‘Third Worldism’, do-gooding, progressive liberalism, or whatever it happened to be. Sweden’s advice to those who, in its eyes, were enslaved to power relationships and alliances was plentiful, often delivered in a high moral tone which many found irritating. It was therefore easy to misread Sweden and fail to see the fierce determination that buttressed its traditional neutrality beneath all the political preaching. Only military professionals, defence analysts and industrial competitors really appreciated the remarkable quality of Sweden’s defence industry and armed forces, backed as they were by very high-grade planning and training and an infrastructure investment which absorbed one of the highest proportions of GNP of any country in the Western world. All of this was based on a comprehensive and well-accepted system of conscription and a sensible structure of reserves. There was much to be learnt from Sweden — not least that anyone taking it on would find it could curl up like a hedgehog and offer a very formidable resistance.

Sweden’s non-alignment was not a weak-kneed opting out of European and world events but a fierce determination to preserve itself, irrespective of the folly of others. It would deter attack by its own armed strength. In a paradoxical nutshell, if Sweden had to go to war to stay neutral then it most certainly would, and it was the turn of the Swedes to be irritated that their position was so little understood, especially in the West where they had so many political and economic associations. From the Soviet Union they did not expect very much, for they realized that in a generally ignorant world the men in Moscow were bottom of the class when it came to other people’s history. They were, after all, too busy cooking their own.

To the Soviet Union, Swedish neutrality was of considerable strategic importance. If Sweden threw in its hand with the West the balance in the Baltic could tilt sharply against the USSR. If war should come and the Swedes stood aside, as they always declared they would, they must understand that their country’s neutrality must not be such as to stand in the way of Soviet needs in the sea and airspace of the Baltic area. Provided that was tacitly accepted there was really no reason why the Swedish people should be unduly disturbed by a major thrust into Europe. The strategic and political analysis sections in the Kremlin thought that Second World War history stood on their side in securing this balance — after all, Sweden had played both ends against the middle and come out unscathed and there was no reason to think that this sort of flexibility could not be brought into use again. Moscow assessed that continuing to play for Swedish neutrality was the best option, although contingency plans for persuasion would need to be laid should the Swedes look like failing to see where their true interests lay. With a measure of good fortune on the Soviet side, and sound practical sense from the Swedes, these contingencies need not arise. But Soviet freedom of manoeuvre in the Baltic, and its plans for Norway, were so crucial to the war plans of the USSR in the Atlantic that the posturing of a few Swedish politicians could not be allowed to stand in their way. Nevertheless, the strategic analysts cautioned, steps that might draw Soviet forces into an unnecessary campaign in Sweden should certainly be avoided.

Swedish comment and pronouncements from politicians, writers and academics had tended, sometimes with rare and much-needed fairness and impartiality, to balance the exaggerations and propaganda of the two power blocs and to illuminate the scene, somewhat naively it was often thought in the West, by adducing innocent motives for some of the Soviet Union’s more questionable acts and particularly its high level of armament. The USSR found this refereeing role valuable, but after a decade of grim events in South-East and South-West Asia and in Africa the Swedes were running distinctly short of whitewash. In particular, the cosmopolitan academic society in Stockholm received a sharp shock from revelations within the vaunted Stockholm Peace Research Institute. This institute, drawing as it did on the intellects and viewpoints of clever men and women from all over the world, could not have been purer in Swedish eyes or further beyond any sort of criticism of its idealistic work. The discovery in the early 1980s that a Czechoslovak research professor in a senior post had, over a period of years, been exploiting the Institute’s worldwide standing by acquiring incidental strategic and technical intelligence and remitting it to Moscow rocked the Swedish establishment to its foundations. The professor departed and the whole affair was played down but the scar that it left was deep.

The scar was shortly to be reopened very painfully by the intrusion in the autumn of 1981 of a Soviet Whiskey-class submarine, which stranded itself on rocks deep inside Swedish waters near the naval base of Karlskrona. The story filled the newspapers and television screens for days and nights on end. Moscow rejected the Swedish protests in intemperate fashion but gave no explanation that would stand up to examination. Sweden stubbornly refused to release the boat until it had made all the enquiries it could, in the course of which it was found — and the information was released publicly — that the submarine was carrying nuclear weapons. Swedish public opinion was incensed both by the incident and by Soviet surliness. Though the vessel was then allowed to go on its way, a seal had been set on dealings between the two countries, one that was to have its effects on subsequent events. Moscow did nothing to try to mend matters. In the next two to three years, Soviet aircraft carried out a programme of minor infringements of Swedish airspace, easily deniable but designed to remind Sweden of its geography and Soviet power.

There was nothing soft-centred or starry-eyed about the regular elements of the Swedish armed forces. Their intelligence, with the advantage of geography and good technology, was first rate and they had no illusions about the Soviet Union in any of its guises. At the same time, they were very far from blind to faults in the Western world. These highly professional men had learned to live with the contradictory tasks of leading and training their forces to the highest pitch of readiness and efficiency to serve the purposes of a perennially dove-like establishment.

It was common ground among them that in the last war Sweden had been as helpful to Britain and the USA as neutrality would decently allow. At the same time they knew, and ruefully admitted, that their neutrality had undoubtedly contributed to the woes of their sister country, Norway, under German domination. Was history to repeat itself with a single change of cast? This was an uncomfortable thought within the Nordic family.

The Swedish defence effort was considerable, the spending per capita and as a percentage of GNP being directly comparable with that of the major NATO allies in Europe. A nationwide call-up was designed to mobilize some 800,000 men and women in seventy-two hours to man defences throughout the country. The air defence was of an especially high order, remarkable for a country of such a small population, based on almost entirely home-grown products like superb Viggen interceptor and attack aircraft, and advanced radars and electronics, in which Swedish industry excelled. Underground shelters and hangars had been tunnelled into the mountain sides.

The navy had taken advantage of a virtually tideless sea and granite cliffs to blast out vast caverns as tunnel-docks for warships. In 1985 Sweden had a dozen modern diesel-electric submarines; four modernized destroyers, twenty-eight missile-armed fast-attack craft; antisubmarine warfare (ASW) helicopters and various mine counter-measure (MCM) vessels. As a former Swedish naval attaché in London had written: The Royal Swedish Navy must be prepared to operate in narrow waters on what may be called a hit-and-run basis, very often at night or in the darkness’.[11] The submarine force would, of course, patrol off the enemy’s bases, to report and attack his forces and to intercept his invasion fleet. In peacetime, as a matter of routine, submarine surveillance would provide intelligence otherwise unobtainable; and in time of emergency this task could be critical.

Thus it was that early on 3 August 1985 the Swedish submarine Sjohasten, on reconnaissance patrol just outside Soviet territorial waters, off the Gulf of Riga, sighted a large and heavily escorted convoy of Soviet amphibious vessels. Lieutenant Per Asling, the submarine’s captain, was not aware of any major Soviet or Warsaw Pact naval exercise. But neither had he been told that war was imminent. His duty, he decided, was to remain undetected, while observing carefully the composition and course of the Soviet force. He would then make a short ‘Most Immediate’ sighting report, followed by an amplifying report giving full details. The first of these signals was handed to the Chief of the Swedish Defence Staff at 0957 hours that morning by his naval deputy, and together they studied the chart upon which the position and course of the Soviet force had been plotted. By noon, when the Council of State assembled in emergency meeting, with His Majesty King Carl Gustaf present, the Sjohasten’s amplifying report had been received. As the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy pointed out, the Soviet force, if it held on course, would pass south of Bornholm next afternoon and could have reached the Baltic exits by daybreak on 5 August. As he spoke, an air reconnaissance report was handed to him. It confirmed that of the submarine. Those Soviet amphibious craft were indeed heading for the Baltic exits. They formed the follow-up force to a division detached from 2 Guards Tank Army which, by dawn on 5 August, had reached the Kiel Canal. Before that, however, there had been much to preoccupy the Swedish Council of State, the Swedish armed forces, and indeed the Swedish people.

A key part of the Soviet plan for the campaign in Norway, which will be described shortly, rested on the amphibious assault on the port and airfield at Bodo. The airfield was an important base for Allied maritime aircraft as well as Norwegian fighters and it was vital to keep it under daily reconnaissance, immediately before and after hostilities began, to supplement the limited intelligence from agents and satellites on which they must otherwise rely. The air route via the Kola Peninsula from the Leningrad area, where the high-altitude but short-range reconnaissance aircraft were based, was over 4,000 kilometres and this would involve three refuelling stops. What was more important was that a mission on this pattern could not fail to be detected by the NATO early warning system. To preserve surprise about the amphibious assault this had to be avoided. The decision was therefore taken in Moscow to send a Mig-25 Foxbat B special reconnaissance aircraft at a height of 25,000 metres every day straight across Sweden from Vaasa in Finland, and such was the importance of the task that the management of the missions was exercised directly at a high level by the Soviet Air Staff itself. The reconnaissance aircraft were unarmed. The Soviets would deal with any whining by the Swedes as they had done in the past.

The first flight was made on 2 August at dawn and repeated on the 3rd. Each time, the battle flight of two Viggen JA-37s swept up the ramp from their mountain hangar at Vasteraas air base and within twenty-five seconds were climbing with full power. But even with their high performance there was much to do and little time to do it. The Viggens could not, in fact, reach 25,000 metres but with the ‘snap-up’ capability of their missiles there was a good chance of at least threatening the Foxbat if they could only get into a favourable tactical relationship with it. With so short a warning time that would be difficult, but less so on the return flight when the limits of the Foxbats, timing could be broadly calculated. That, at least, was how the Swedish Air Staff saw it.

When lodging his vehement protests in Moscow the Swedish Ambassador stressed that the Soviet Air Force was giving the Viggens little option but to engage if these violations continued. In response he was treated to an intimidating tirade about Sweden’s position as a neutral country. The next day was the fateful 4 August. Sweden’s armed forces, now mobilizing, had their hands full absorbing reservists. The Swedish Air Force, the Flygvapnet, was waiting on a Government decision to deploy some of its elements to dispersed road sites, which would of course to some extent disrupt civilian life and movement and might perhaps cause alarm. The Cabinet took the decisive step of ordering maximum air defence readiness, with the battle flights fully armed and cleared to engage any identified non-Swedish intruders without further reference to higher authority. A statement to that effect was made public to the world, but in the main the world had other things on its mind that day. In Sweden an emergency Cabinet of seven ministers was formed and far reaching powers were taken by unanimous agreement. The Flygvapnet, the spearhead of Sweden’s defence, was as ready as it could be by noon of that day although it had to be recognized that its degree of readiness would decline for a while if full dispersal were ordered.

The emergency Cabinet decided that the Flygvapnet should stay as it was for the time being. There was growing relief as the day wore on, with nothing untoward happening in Swedish skies. The wishful thinking of the doves that perhaps the USSR had, after all, heeded the Swedish protests was, however, to be shattered the next morning.

This time the Foxbat approached low over the sea before zooming in a near vertical climb to high altitude, to evade detection by the radar system until it was too late for the fighters to react. But the Flygvapnet Air Defence Command was really on its mettle and, with full authority to engage, was determined somehow or other to destroy the intruder on its way back. Two pairs of Viggens were launched from Uppsala air base to patrol a north/south line centred on Stockholm, athwart the return track to Leningrad from where they knew the Foxbat had come. One pair would be at high altitude and one at medium to low, although it was unlikely that the Foxbat would have enough fuel to pull the low-level trick a second time. Similar blocking patrols were set up with four more Viggen pairs on lines centred on Sundsvall and Umeaa to the north. But the Foxbat pilot had his own good reasons for choosing a southerly track which headed him, with seeming carelessness, near to Stockholm at high altitude and speed.

Guided by ground control initially, the high-level fighters in the southern sector cut in their after-burners to gain the last few thousand feet to their maximum altitude on an easterly interception course which would bring them below and behind the Foxbat. In the underground operations centre all eyes were riveted on this highspeed drama in the stratosphere. The control staffs and senior officers could sense the nervous excitement of the pilots as they eavesdropped on the clipped dialogue with the interception controllers and watched the mesmerizing green strobes of the radar displays in the eerie half-light of the control rooms.

The Foxbat pilot was by now well aware of the Viggens’ presence from his tail-warning radar. What was not overheard in the control room was the dialogue that he was having with someone else. In the unusual circumstances of that day it was not altogether surprising that two radar contacts moving very fast indeed from east to west along latitude 60N were not registered as quickly as they might otherwise have been. The battle flight leader was alerted from the ground but that was all that could be done. A trap had been set to teach the Swedes a lesson and they had flown right into it.

The two incoming Foxbat fighters, among the fastest aircraft in the world, had a height and speed advantage over the Viggens. Even more important, their snap-down Acrid missiles could engage from 45 kilometres’ distance. And they were well informed about the task by their comrade in the west-bound reconnaissance aircraft. Their missiles found their mark just to seaward of the Swedish coast and sent the two JA-37s spiralling towards the sea. Captain Lars Ericsson, the pilot of No. 2 of the pair, fired his ejection seat and blasted his way through the jammed canopy of his disintegrating aircraft. As the seat separated and the main canopy deployed, he saw he was over the sea with a strong easterly wind blowing him back towards the land. There was no sign of his flight leader as he took a quick look round, but the earth was rushing up and although dazed and confused he knew he must get ready for a difficult arrival in a strong wind. He hit hard and was dragged painfully along the ground before coming to rest in a field not far from Uppsala University and his own air base.

The Soviet intention had been to shoot both aircraft into the sea so that the Swedish Government would get the message plainly without having to share it immediately with the public. But that was carrying refinement a bit too far for such blunt methods and with Ericsson under intensive care with a broken back in Uppsala hospital the cat was well and truly out of the bag. The message was all too clear: ‘Be co-operative in your neutrality or take the consequences.’

In the fury and confusion of the assault in the Central Region the importance of the Bodo landing in the Soviet plan, in securing the north of Norway and denying its fiords and airfields to the Western allies, was not immediately clear to the Swedes or anyone else. The pilot of the Foxbat had reported, confirmed with photographic detail, the presence there of eleven RAF Buccaneers, four Norwegian Orion maritime aircraft and sixteen F-16 Fighting Falcons. It was correctly guessed that Joint Allied Command Western Approaches (JACWA) would decide to leave the Buccaneers there for future anti-shipping activity, to which the Soviet amphibious group was very likely to fall prey. With the implementation of their northern plans already under way, and such hard intelligence to hand, the conclusion was obvious — that the elimination of those forces and the denial of the airfield to the enemy was of overriding importance.

The Soviet decision to mount a sizeable attack with high-speed SU-24 Fencers against these valuable Allied assets was inevitable. For reasons of aircraft range (with the added bonus of surprise from a backdoor attack) it would have been operationally simpler to have mounted this across Sweden, but Moscow decided instead that it was better to let the Swedes lick their wounds for a while and take counsel of their fears. Accordingly, the attack was mounted from Murmansk with TU-16 Blinder and Fencer aircraft moved there from the Leningrad area. They were routed clear of Swedish airspace but if in difficulty could cross the tip of it, where it was in any case very lightly defended.

For the next few days the pressure was kept on Bodo, to neutralize it until the Soviet amphibious force made its landing there on 15 August. Reconnaissance flights continued to be made over Sweden, whose neutrality, now under some strain, nonetheless persisted. But the problem of what the country should do was debated intensely by Swedes everywhere, bitter, angry and frustrated by the shooting down of the Viggens that were doing no more than protecting national airspace. This last incident would undoubtedly have had its effect on the decision, strongly recommended by the Flygvapnet staff, to allow a force of thirty NATO fighters to refuel secretly at two Swedish airfields on the night of 13/14 August. These aircraft were engaged on an operation, described in Chapter 11, to attack key bridges in Poland at a critical juncture of the battle on the Central Front. If the operation was to succeed, the attacking aircraft had to approach their targets from the north, rather than fly over a heavily defended area, and for this purpose their routing over Sweden was ideal. Permission was accordingly sought via the recently installed Swedish liaison officer at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) not only to overfly but to take on fuel as well. The Swedish Cabinet — the decision was taken at that level — were divided about it but eventually agreed provided that the landing was at night and the turn-round fast. No Swedish protection would be given, nor could aircraft recover via Swedish airfields unless in distress. Some damaged aircraft did put down in the event, with Soviet aircraft pursuing them. Two of the four Soviet Foxbats that attempted to enter Swedish airspace were in fact shot down by Viggens that were watching for them. Only this part of the incident reached the press; the use of the airfields by the NATO force did not.

While the war thus developed around them, the Swedish Government debated daily the range of options over which they had some control and some over which they could see plainly they were powerless. The left-wing opposition made it clear that they would oppose any policy that took Sweden into the war; and whilst some on the extreme left let it be known privately that they would gladly give assistance to the Soviet Union short of military force, the majority were dedicated to ‘maintaining neutrality in all foreseeable circumstances’ — a phrase used often by their speakers in the debates in the Riksdag — ‘which leaves the left ready to sell out to the Soviets if the going gets too rough’, as a cynic on the Government side is said to have remarked quietly to a neighbour when he first heard the words.

The arguments went on. The news of the American landing in Norway had been coming in on the morning of 15 August and was clutched at with relief as the first sign of a Soviet setback there. It was then that the Soviet Ambassador asked urgently for a meeting with the Swedish Prime Minister, Bjorn Osvald, at 12.15 that day. What happened at the meeting has long since been made public. This is the Prime Minister’s account of it.

The Soviet Ambassador entered and I had at once the impression of a man who had donned a mask; he was so different from the good-humoured person I had met on so many occasions.

‘I have an important message from my Government,’ he said, ‘a message which I ask you to receive and weigh most carefully. It is this.

‘At 1300 hours today, a stream of Soviet aircraft will pass over your territory. Subsequently, there will be other air movements, all of which will be notified in sufficient time to your air traffic control authorities. The Soviet Government means no harm to you in this matter. I give you a guarantee that no aerial or other attacks are to be made upon you providing that…’he looked up from the paper from which he was reading this message ‘… providing that you do not attempt in any way to harm or impede our aircraft. Moreover, the Government and people of the Soviet Union will not forget acts of friendly assistance granted by states which have remained aloof from its struggle for existence.’

There was a pause. It became clear to me that he evidently had nothing more to say. I was almost overwhelmed by this news. He spoke again.

‘Is there any message you wish me to give my Government in reply?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is just this. We have taken the decision to defend our territory — land, sea or air — against anyone, anyone at all, who attacks or encroaches upon us. That, of course, includes the Soviet Union. Please advise your Government not to send their aircraft across Sweden.’

‘You realize this will mean war — with all the terrible consequences for your people?’ he remarked.

‘Yes,’ I replied. I sought to keep my voice calm. ‘It is of your choosing. Now, please hurry to send my reply.’

‘Very well.’ He left the room still, as it were, masked.

I telephoned the Minister of Defence and the Minister of External Affairs while my secretaries summoned an urgent Cabinet meeting. The decision was confirmed. The country was at war.[12]

This did not, of course, imply that Sweden had now become a member of NATO but it did mean a readiness to fight in association with NATO against a common enemy.

The Flygvapnet was naturally at alert status and the orders to defend were sent out immediately. The Viggens took off. Squadrons were drawn in from distant bases. After some three hours the Soviet Air Force had won a qualified victory over the defenders, inflicting heavy casualties. But almost a third of the Soviet transports and their TU-28 Fiddler fighter escorts had been lost or forced to turn back. The remainder had pressed on across the border into Norway.

That evening the Prime Minister spoke to the nation. The Flygvapnet and all the forces involved had performed superbly, he said, and a heavy price had been paid for this outrageous violation of the country’s neutrality. The Cabinet had now decided that the nation must be put on a full war footing. Sweden’s armed forces would defend the country against any further violations. In such grave times, he went on, he could offer no forecasts about what might happen next or where events might lead. Sweden’s record in the terrible events now overtaking Europe was impeccable and he had no doubt that whatever demands or sacrifices might be involved the Swedish people would be true to themselves and the noble tradition of their country. Sweden sought peace between nations above all else. He knew he spoke for every Swede when he said they would fight on for ever to defend their country.

The people took the grave news courageously. The concept of doing all that might be needed to defend the country’s neutrality was fully accepted and as the media traced the casualties of individual families, public opinion against the Soviet Union became embittered. Lesser incursions by Soviet aircraft continued in the next few days, in support of the campaign in Norway. The distinction between defending neutrality and being at war started to blur fairly quickly in the minds of the average Swede and a sense of Nordic kinship grew stronger. Important links were quietly established with Allied Forces Northern Europe (AFNORTH), notably for a complete exchange of early warning information. Whatever neutrality might mean, the Swedish armed forces had no intention of allowing it to prevent them from fighting in the most efficient way they could.

The loss of Jutland on the first day of hostilities, and the consequential loss of Schleswig-Holstein shortly after was due to the combination of an intense chemical attack on Jutland and a coup de main by assault forces concealed in Soviet, East German and some ostensibly neutral merchant ships on passage through the Kattegat. These had made almost unopposed landings in Aarhus, Aalborg and Frederikshavn on Jutland. Zealand had fallen after hard fighting between the reinforced Danish defence and a seaborne assault force mounted from the western Baltic ports. Unexpectedly, Bornholm, its radar and radio resources smashed by air attack, had been left to its own devices until, almost at leisure, a Polish airborne division had fallen upon it. Many of the Allied aircraft in the BALTAP (Baltic Approaches) Tactical Air Force escaped to the Federal Republic of Germany or to Norway. A daring naval operation, covered by air, was mounted by Commander, South Norway, to rescue some of the Danish and British troops from Zealand and in the final phase of the battle for the island. Though four of nine warships and transports were lost, the remainder returned intact to unload in the Oslo fiord. The aircraft and troops from BALTAP were absorbed as reinforcements to south Norway, or moved to reinforce the north.

Commander, North Norway, had been fighting an intense battle from the outset of the war when, as expected, almost all his early warning radars were destroyed and his airfields, ports and principal defence areas were raided frequently and heavily by aircraft based on the Kola Peninsula. The Soviet motor rifle division which crossed the frontier at Kirkenes on 4 August made a more rapid advance than expected through extensive use of heliborne infantry and engineers supported by swarms of ground-attack aircraft, and by heavy and medium artillery firing at maximum ranges with a frequency and weight of shell that bewildered the light forces of Norwegian infantry. As they advanced, a Soviet airborne division captured Andoya and Evenes. A considerable amphibious force, judged to be carrying Soviet specialized naval assault infantry and a motor rifle division, was observed on passage from Murmansk. A further four Soviet divisions were seen by Allied air reconnaissance to be crossing Finland towards southern Finnmark and eastern Troms counties. Tromso airfield was devasted. Only Bardufoss, so inaccessible among the surrounding mountains to the south of Tromso and well defended by air defence missiles since 1984, survived as an air base.

Some looked anxiously to the western horizon for urgent relief: somewhere across the seas the carriers of SACLANT’s (Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic’s) Strike Fleet were active and mobile and must, surely, be moving sooner or later to attack the Kola bases and relieve north Norway. The robust Norwegian general in command of that area knew, however, that he could not immediately count on the appearance of the Strike Fleet: he had to fight a sea/air and land/air battle with the national and Allied forces he had in hand, and such others as CINCNORTH (Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Northern Europe) could strip out from elsewhere to aid him. Fortunately, he had a wide knowledge of local circumstances, a cool head and shrewd judgment.

An early decision was made to maintain Bardufoss as a base for reconnaissance to the east and a forward operating location for air defence fighters. The British Harriers, dislodged from Tromso, were kept in the north, flying from stretches of straight road and maintained from villages in the shadow of adjacent mountains. CINC-NORTH’s Regional Air Commander directed American F-111s from England to attack the Soviet air bases developing at Andoya, Evenes and Bodo. Otherwise, Commander, North Norway’s air effort fell back necessarily upon Trondheim, i.e. Orland and Vaernes airfields. Nord-Trondelag passed into the northern command.

Evenes airfield was recaptured on 6 August by a Norwegian brigade and their comrades in the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Mobile Force, though about one-third of the Soviet parachutists escaped to the lines their compatriots had set up to cover Andoya. This was good news for Commander, North Norway, and CINCNORTH, but each knew that bad news was on the doorstep. The first of the Soviet divisions crossing Finland was rapidly approaching the Norwegian frontier on the Finnish wedge, with another immediately behind. The northernmost invading Soviet division completed its crossing of Finnmark on 9 August, when all three began a concerted drive which was held only by committing every Norwegian soldier from Bardufoss to the north. Next day, the Soviet amphibious force turned shoreward towards Bodo and began to smash a passage through the minefields to a landing near the airfield.

The mine clearance operation was very costly to the invaders, and they suffered, too, from the guns of the Norwegian coastal forts. What triumphed was dogged persistence: the Soviet naval assault force continued to move ashore, even into the heart of Bodo, landing opposite the hotel belonging to the Swedish civil airline SAS from whose shell-broken concrete tower black smoke was rising. Air attack included chemical weapons. The guns of Northern Fleet warships fired with what seemed an unending supply of shells to cover the merchant transports moving to the quay. Warship and merchantman alike were assailed by Norwegian fast-patrol boats and there was further sinking and damage to vessels at sea. Even so, by the evening of 11 August, sufficient Soviet forces were in and around Bodo to constitute two motor rifle regiments with supplies landed to provide for at least a week’s high activity. A Norwegian brigade was redeployed from Evenes and the British Marine Commando from further north joined them to buttress the Bodo sector. The main road, E6, connecting north Norway to the south, was in danger of being cut.

On the 12th, word came of the Strike Fleet’s movement eastward through the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. If the aircraft from the carriers could have intervened in the battle over north Norway on that day, the land defence might have been able to stand its ground. But the aircraft could not yet do so. As a fourth Soviet motor rifle division deployed into Troms, complemented by an air assault brigade, the defence began to feel its lack of numbers and, no less vitally, the dwindling of its supplies, particularly gun and mortar ammunition, so heavily used and with so much lost to air attack. Grimly, Commander, North Norway, ordered the withdrawal of the Allied land forces north of Bodo, while he reinforced the lines checking the Soviet force struggling vigorously to reach the E6. By the 14th, he had pulled his little army back.

En route, several attempts to delay or divert the withdrawal had been made by detachments of the Soviet special forces, wearing Norwegian uniforms, speaking accentless Norwegian. All had been negated by the vigilance and prompt reaction of the Norwegian Home Guard. South of Narvik, for example, one such attempt was dealt with in just under two minutes:

‘Who are you?’ asked the elderly Home Guard company commander at Morsvik, challenging a ‘Norwegian captain’ who seemed to be giving contradictory orders to vehicle drivers. The ‘captain’ showed his identity card and told the Home Guard to mind his own business.

‘Who sent you here?’ The Home Guard was not going to be shaken off.

The answer he received was unsatisfactory to him. He ordered his soldiers to close in from the brief summer darkness to cover the ‘captain’ and his two supporters, who abused and threatened by way of response.

‘We can soon settle this,’ said the Home Guard. ‘Where do you come from?’

‘Kristiansund.’

‘That’s fine, the telephone is working to the south. Give me the name and address of your family or a friend there and we will telephone the local Home Guard. It will only take a few minutes.’

The ‘captain’ sprang into his car and drove off to the south.

‘You’ve let him go,’ said one of the Norwegians deployed on the road.

‘Not really. Ole Nilsen’s section is covering the road down there. There’s no other route. He’ll either stop or be shot.’

There was the sound of rifle fire.

‘Ah, he didn’t stop,’ said the Home Guard commander.[13]

When the field army had withdrawn south, the Home Guard remained behind, drifting into the mountain uplands to continue the war in their own way.

Meantime, just after midnight on 14 August, a staff officer found Commander, North Norway, in a village close to the E6, to give him this news:

‘The Marines have arrived, Sir.’

‘The British commando? Surely, they have already moved south.’

‘No, Sir, the Americans. They are landing now at Trondheim.’

‘With their air wing?’

‘With everything.’[14]

The United States Marines had made many dramatic entries in their distinguished history: none more timely than this. Dedicated in peace to the defence of Norway, a series of events had delayed their despatch by sea and air to their disembarkation area round Trondheim. Some units had been in process of roulement; some had begun deployment to the Middle East only to be halted en route, unloaded and obliged to wait for other transportation back to their bases. But now they were actually forming up on Norwegian soil, the land force together with its important air component. Here was the substance of the counter-attack force that Commander, North Norway, had been seeking to put together. He had already positioned the Canadian brigade groups and Norwegian 12 Brigade — the only two formations that had had a chance to rest and refit during the past twenty-four hours — for such a task but, of themselves, they had insufficient weight of fire power, specialized anti-armour weapons and mobility to destroy the Soviet mechanized forces. With the United States Marine brigade in their midst, they had every chance of accomplishing an important tactical riposte.

At Trondheim, the port and airfields were working to capacity. The Regional Air Commander was already alarmed at the number of aircraft packing Orland and Vaernes bases — air defence fighters and fighter-bombers from the north, the local complement, now also US Marine Corps squadrons flying in. In consultation with the Commanders of South and North Norway, he arranged for some of this mass of machines to move south to the Bergen air base, Flesland, to Sola at Stavanger and Lista. The remnant of a Norwegian F-16 Fighting Falcon squadron was posted to Rygge, the often battered but yet surviving air station at the southern end of the Oslo fiord.

These arrangements were getting under way during the following day, 15 August, just at the time that the Deputy Director of Plans, Colonel Romanenko, having received his instructions from his chief, was sending out orders to put his plan for the landings in south-west Norway into effect with the results that we have seen.

Fairly full details of what had happened had come to CINCNORTH as he returned to Oslo from a visit to Trondheim that afternoon. He had been in the latter city when raids were attempted by Soviet bombers on Orland and Vaernes and had seen these fail. The Soviet raiders, weakened by their encounter with the Swedish Viggens, had entered the Norwegian target area alerted by Swedish radar reports — reports now freely and promptly available from the Swedish authorities — to be defeated by a fighter defence reinforced by the US Marines. The raids on the south-western areas in support of the airborne assault landings had failed similarly. The air transports carrying the parachutists suffered further loss. They eventually landed about two battalions at Flesland and a weak battalion at Sola and Lista, air bases on each of which Ignatiev had expected to settle a strong brigade group. The local field forces, backed by the Home Guard, swept these intruders away by the early morning of 21 August.

On that morning, too, CINCNORTH learned from his colleague, the Chief of the Norwegian Defence Staff, that the Finns had turned upon the Soviet Forces in their country. Since early in August, the Finnish armed forces had been obliged to aid deployment of the Red army in the passage of formations, ground and air, across their large, empty land. Soviet war regulations had been enforced along these lines of communication, arbitrary demands made for resources of labour and material, war measures introduced such as the blacking out of all lights at night. The Finnish people, conditioned by the prudence of Paasakivi and Kekkonen, had complied to some extent with these requirements. But they were also the same sort of people that Mannerheim had led, a people with a clear idea of individual liberty.

When the moment came to turn upon the Soviets, it was not done by a signal from above; indeed, it followed a spontaneous act of indignation arising from the arrogant behaviour of the officers of a Soviet logistic control centre. It was not done so much on the basis of attacking a body of waning power but at a time when the Finns could no longer tolerate the position of manifest subservience to which they had been brought. Small though their numbers were, all but a handful turned to fight the Soviet forces, which had seemed to make them a dependency once more.

This was not quite the last battle for the recovery of territory occupied by the Soviet Union in the northern region. CINCNORTH had gradually been gathering together a land force for the recovery of Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. The Commander, BALTAP, a Danish officer, driven out of Jutland on the first day of war, had been engaged since his arrival in Norway in planning the liberation of these territories. The British and Dutch Royal Marines were concentrated in south Norway on 18 August, with the Danish and British forces recovered from Zealand. Given the depletion and demoralization of the Soviet occupation forces in the Baltic Approaches, this force overall might just secure and sustain a lodgement in north Jutland under air cover from the airfields of south Norway. The prime limitation was shipping, the only amphibious shipping being the remnant recovered to Norway from the German and Danish navies in the first week of August, to which might be added a slender increment of Norwegian landing craft. It was doubted whether the numbers that these could carry in the first lift could hold territory against a counter-attack mounted prior to the return of the second and subsequent ferrying. Much hinged upon the ability of the Danish Home Guard, now operating as a clandestine and deliberately passive force, to co-ordinate uprising with an Allied landing.

Although the enemy were depleted in Jutland, CINCNORTH considered them still a force to be reckoned with. An assault landing at this stage would be very risky. He proposed instead a strong raid. The group of CINCEASTLANT’s warships that had escorted the US Marine sea force into Trondheim were available to CINCNORTH for short-term contingency operations. The F-16 Fighting Falcon force at Rygge had been reinforced from Orland and, in the same deployment from that area, the air bases at Lista and Sola had now a notable air defence and ground strike capability. The intelligence provided by the Home Guard indicated that Frederikshavn was vulnerable to a raiding force of about two battalions and a squadron of tanks. This was now scheduled for the evening of 20 August.

Over the next two days of preparation, the operation seemed to hang in the balance. All the amphibious force was concentrating at Kragero and Kristiansund: could they survive there? Commander, BALTAP’s answer was to put the force to sea; in the circumstances they were as safe in these waters as anywhere. They entered the Kattegat in darkness, a little late, and landed at Frederikshavn early on the morning of the 21st.

There was a brief struggle with the Soviet garrison before it surrendered. Then, suddenly, the occupation force began surrendering everywhere — to the raiders, who remained, and to the Home Guard who emerged in uniforms with weapons. COMBALTAP sent off more units to join the raiders and then seemed to disappear. A week later he met CINCNORTH in Copenhagen as the latter stepped from his aircraft to call on the Danish Government, restored to their offices and the Christianborg Palace. There was a report in a Swedish newspaper that ran roughly as follows:

‘I hear you came down to liberate Zealand personally,’ said CINCNORTH. ‘Is it true that you travelled by train and road through Sweden with the Gardehusar Regiment, and then crossed the Sound, on car ferries?’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said COMBALTAP (a Dane, as will be recalled). ‘You see, it was a race against time.’

‘You mean you were afraid the Soviet troops might…’

‘No, not the Soviet troops. I was just afraid that if I didn’t get a move on, Copenhagen would be liberated by those perishing Swedes!’[15]

He need not, of course, have worried. There had never been any sign of an intention on the part of the Swedes to move into Denmark. Whatever threats lay over Copenhagen, occupation by Swedish troops was not among them.

Chapter 13 War at Sea

“The cruiser Krasnya Krim (in Russian Bolshoy Protivopodochny Korabi, meaning “large anti-submarine ship”) sailed from Sevastopol in June 1985, and after passing through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, spent some days in the Eastern Mediterranean before proceeding through the Suez Canal, down the Red Sea and into the Indian Ocean. The Soviet naval force on station there came for the most part from the Pacific Fleet base at Vladivostok. But the Krasnya Krim had a special mission. After fuelling at Socotra in the Indian Ocean she was to call at the Indian naval base at Vishakhapatnam. From there she would visit Mauritius and then continue round Africa, calling at Angola and Guinea, before returning to the Black Sea early in August.

The Krasnya Krim’s mission was to test the reactions to her presence within the 200-mile Extended Economic Zones and territorial seas of a large number of the coastal states which were signatories of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, signed in the previous year after a series of conferences which began nearly thirty years before.

On board, besides her captain and political commissar and some thirty officers and 500 men, was Soviet academician Yuri Skridlov, who had been a member of the Soviet delegation to the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference, meeting in Washington, in Caracas, in Geneva and again in Washington. A man of honesty and high intelligence and a worldwide authority on international law, Professor Skridlov, who combined a strong personality with a deep, if concealed, detestation of Marxist-Leninist humbug, became much liked and respected by all on board the Krasnya Krim, including the political commissar.

Skridlov introduced a practice of taping items of world news and of regional interest, translating them into Russian and then broadcasting them on the ship’s communication system each evening, with a commentary. Without being openly critical of the CPSU or of the Soviet Union, he nevertheless succeeded in presenting a fair picture of the free world and a faithful account of what was happening in it. The ship’s company of the Krasnya Krim, cooped up for weeks on end, at sea most of the time either steaming slowly or anchored well away from land, was developing a totally new awareness. There was critical discussion of matters which had long been kept out of sight. There was an increasingly vocal expression of discontent with the system under which they lived, compared with the systems operating outside the USSR which they, of course, were either prevented from seeing or were only allowed to see under strict surveillance. The vast majority were young, unmarried conscripts. When the ship left Luanda on 23 July bound for the Black Sea, and home, spirits began to rise. After a short call at Guinea, to fuel, it moved on. It was to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar on 4 August, and the Dardanelles on the 8th.

On 25 July Professor Skridlov’s News Talk suddenly took on a sharper edge. The captain had received a Top Secret signal, whose contents he felt entitled to divulge to the Professor, warning him of strained relations between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. The Krasnya Krim was to increase speed so as to pass the Dardanelles on 3 August. This would mean going through the Straits of Gibraltar on the night of 30 July. The Soviet Commander-in-Chief Navy also ordered the ship to prepare “unobtrusively” for war and gave her a sitrep on the naval forces of NATO that might be encountered, as well as the positions of Soviet warships and submarines. It appeared that the US Sixth Fleet might well bar the way to the Dardanelles.

The events of the next few days on board the Soviet cruiser are by no means clear. What emerges is that Soviet sailors were prepared to take dramatic steps to show their hostility to a tyrannous regime. At 2107 on 30 July the Krasnya Krim, after duly requesting permission from the Flag Officer, Gibraltar, entered British territorial waters and anchored in the Bay. It appeared that the fuel embarked at Guinea was severely contaminated, and it would not be possible for the cruiser to proceed on her way until the entire fuel system had been cleaned. At least, that was what the Soviet High Command was told. It was not what the cruiser’s captain told the Flag Officer, Gibraltar, when he called on him next morning, in company with the political commissar — and the Professor.

They were convinced that world conflict was now unavoidable and that out of it a new Russia would emerge. The ship’s company had been openly and fully consulted and gave their whole-hearted support to what was now proposed. They wished the ship and all in her to be granted asylum, fighting neither against their own former comrades nor against NATO, until the conflict was over and they could see more clearly what part to play in the shaping of a brighter future.

The request was immediately granted, in the first of what was to become a series of defections.

On 10 August a nuclear missile cruiser, sole survivor of the Fifth Eskadra, or Mediterranean Squadron, of the Soviet Navy also raised the British flag and sailed into harbour at Gibraltar, where she gave the shore battery a twenty-one-gun salute and dropped anchor. The ship’s commander, Captain 1st Rank P. Semenov, appeared before the British Governor in his dress uniform and declared that the missile cruiser was placing itself at the disposal of the British authorities, the entire crew requesting political asylum.

“Including the political commissars and the KGB officers?” enquired the Governor.

“No,” replied the Captain. “We’ve strung them up from the masts. Come and see for yourself.” The invitation was declined, the request for asylum granted.

That same day the Soviet nuclear submarine Robespierre sailed into harbour at Boston, Massachusetts, under the US flag. As the submarine had no masts, there was nowhere to hang the KGB and Party representatives. They had therefore been dropped overboard before entering harbour. The Soviet submarine was disarmed and immobilized, with the crew very comfortably interned.”[16]

We must now look more thoroughly at the war at sea. A convenient, if somewhat informal, point of entry into this important topic is the text of a lecture given at the National Defence College in Washington by Rear Admiral Randolph Maybury of the United States Navy in the summer of 1986. He was introduced by the Commandant.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. As you know, we are continuing today with our study of the military operations which took place between 4 and 20 August 1985. Our course has been structured to provide both an “all-arms” conspectus, region by region, and amplifying accounts of the fighting at sea, on land and in the air. Since last winter, when Admiral Lacey addressed us on the naval operations in the Atlantic and the Norwegian Sea — particularly the famous Cavalry reinforcement convoy operation — additional data which have come to hand, and much hard work, have made it possible to present a record of the naval (which includes, of course, naval and maritime air) operations which were taking place concurrently in other areas and theatres. Admiral Maybury, here, has not long since completed this work, and we are most fortunate to have him with us to talk about it. As Deputy Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief US Navy Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR) in London, from 1984 through 1985, he was well placed to see what went on. No doubt he took a hand in things also! At any rate, we’re glad to see you, Admiral — and now will you kindly step up and tell us about it.’

‘Thank you. It’s good to be back at the National War College. When I was a student here, in 1983, the question was “What would happen, if…? Now, the concern is “What did happen, and why…?” The human race came close to destroying itself. History, as mere hindsight, may be of interest, but it is of little value unless its lessons are learned.

‘I have come to believe that where we went wrong — and by “we” I mean the United States and her NATO allies — was in our failure to incorporate the Moscow dimension into our own perception of the dangers to civilization which were implicit in Soviet attitudes, beliefs and actions. We could read, for example, in the writings of Lenin:

Great questions in the life of a people are decided only by force… once the bayonet really stands as the first order of political business, then constitutional illusions and scholastic exercises in Parliament become nothing but a cover for bourgeois betrayal of the revolution. The truly revolutionary class must then advance the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat.[17]

Or the words of one of his disciples in the 1970s:

Our era is the era of the transition from Capitalism to Socialism and Communism, the era of the struggle of the two opposed world systems. The outstanding feature of its current stage is that the forces of Socialism determine the course of historical development, and Imperialism has lost its dominant position in the world arena. The USSR now represents a mighty power in economic and military respects. The scientific-technological revolution currently taking place substantially influences the development of military affairs. In these conditions the military-technological policy of the CPSU is directed towards creating and maintaining military superiority of the Socialist countries over the forces of war and aggression.[18]

‘Reams of such stuff was made available to us, in translation. But still we tended, for practical purposes, to look at the Soviet Union’s problems in the light of our own open, free-ranging understanding, according to which Murphy’s Law rates equally, for truth, with the second law of thermodynamics. A Britisher who came here to talk to us one day tried to make the point this way. It seems that there had been a party at the Soviet Embassy, here in Washington, and that the vodka had flowed freely. Towards the end of the evening the Soviet Ambassador challenged the British Ambassador to a race. The British Ambassador came first. This was duly reported in The Times as “There was a race between the British and the Soviet Ambassadors in Washington yesterday, which the British Ambassador won.” Pravda put it differently: “In a race between ambassadors in Washington last week, the Soviet Ambassador came in second — the British Ambassador was second from last.” ‘

Admiral Maybury then proceeded to present his account of naval operations in four sections: the pre-war naval balance; the naval force deployments on 4 August 1985; the naval operations during the next sixteen days; and the immediate post-hostilities activity.

The following is a digest of what he said.

No doubt the debate will be recalled which continued for at least two decades before the war about the capabilities of the Soviet Navy. It was part of Western, and above all American, concern about the growth of Soviet military power in general. Were Soviet intentions to be deduced from their capabilities? What were their limitations? It is not easy, even now, to find valid assessments in the records. The intelligence community tended to play safe and take no risk of underestimating the threat. Retired officers tended to ‘sound off’, warning the public of the grim consequences of the failure of politicians to make proper appropriations for this or that new weapon system. Various ‘think-tanks’ were given contracts to produce defence studies. Where the concerns putting out these contracts were profit-making, there was a suspicion that the outcomes favoured the point of view of the organization giving the contract. As one sceptic put it: ‘How can you produce an objective study without knowing the objective?’ Obviously, too, the arms manufacturers had an interest in seeing that the Soviet threat, as perceived by the US Administration, and by Congress, matched the particular combat capability that they were in business to sell. Congress itself was not immune from this syndrome. As Admiral Miller, whose own estimate of Soviet naval capabilities stood up better than most, wrote: ‘Often the version of the Soviet threat accepted by individual members is determined to some degree by the impact that version will have on the region and the constituencies they represent. If there is no defence-related industry in their particular area of interest, the charge is made that the version of the threat they consider valid is the one that requires the least financial expenditures for defense.’[19]

The academics who analysed military intelligence data tended to let their particular philosophies influence their deductions; journalists, over-eager to publish what would attract attention, often cared little about the balance of their version; even the active service force commander was apt to be influenced in his judgment of the threat by his own, maybe unique, experience. As to US Administrations, if the President came into office on a platform that promised to reduce the defence budget, it is reasonable to assume that the version of the Soviet naval threat his Administration accepted would be something less than that of a president elected on a platform proposing an increase in the defence budget.

Finally, how much credence could be placed, people wondered, on the books and articles on naval matters that emerged from the Soviet Union itself? Was Admiral Gorshkov’s writing gospel? Was he writing for the NATO intelligence community, to inspire his own navy, to get the generals on his side, or to extract ever greater resources from the Politburo? We now know that Gorshkov believed what he wrote; that it was soundly based upon Marxist-Leninist theory; that the generals neither liked nor believed it; that the Politburo both liked and believed it; and that NATO did not want to believe it. What follows is based upon Admiral Miller’s own assessment of the Soviet Navy, after his period as Commander of the US Sixth Fleet, in the Mediterranean, not many years before the Third World War. As events proved, he was not far out.

As Soviet war deployments will be dealt with separately, indicating the numbers of the principal types of warship available at the start of hostilities, what follows here is confined solely to the aspect of quality. Consider, first, the Soviet surface fleet, other than aircraft carriers. The heavy cruiser, cruiser, destroyer, frigate, and smaller combatant types all included a majority of up-to-date vessels. They were impressive in appearance, quite manoeuvrable and seaworthy; and they were relatively fast and well-armed, primarily with defensive weapon systems. These latter characteristics required compromises in other areas. The number of weapon reloads, for example, was rather small; living conditions for the crews tended to be restricted; space for stores, spare parts, and supplies was limited; and ship construction standards were somewhat lower than was acceptable to most Western navies. The Soviet ships, it was thought, would sink rapidly if hit. In addition, very heavy dependence upon electronics counted against the capacity of the armament to survive attack. Without adequate resistance to electronic counter-measure (ECM), the Soviet ships might find their armaments virtually useless, even if the ships themselves should remain afloat.

In anti-submarine warfare (ASW), the Soviet Navy lagged behind, even in the 1980s. The ships themselves were equipped with sonar; there were helicopters with dipping sonar and fixed-wing aircraft with sonobuoys. But the Soviets had not developed, like the US Navy, arrays of fixed sonars over large areas of the sea bottom, in order to enable hostile submarines to be detected at considerable distances offshore. Furthermore, the Soviet submarines were certainly noisier than those of the US and her allies.

The smaller combatants of the Soviet Navy were, for the most part, fast, missile-armed attack craft. Although readily countered by air attack, these craft were effective in inshore waters, under cover of shore-based fighter protection. Several of the type had proved their value in action in Arab-Israeli and Indo-Pakistani fighting. With the possible exception of the Soviet heavy cruisers of the Kirov class, which being nuclear powered, fast, and well-armed might do much damage on independent missions before being brought to book, the surface-ship element of the Soviet naval threat did not unduly alarm the US Navy.

Submarines were a different matter. Leaving aside for the moment the strategic nuclear ballistic missile-armed, nuclear-powered submarines (SSBN), the Soviets had produced three main types of attack, or general purpose, sometimes called ‘fleet’, submarines. One of these types was nuclear powered and armed with torpedoes and missiles, for both anti-surface ship and ASW purposes. The other two types were armed with anti-ship cruise missiles, one being nuclear powered and the other diesel-electric driven. Within each type there were several classes, the most modern of which could run quietly and deep. In addition, the Soviet submarine fleet included a large number of diesel-electric ‘patrol’ submarines, torpedo armed and capable, as an alternative, of laying mines. Unlike the nuclear-powered submarines, the diesel-electric ones were bound to expose an air induction tube above the sea surface when charging the battery, and this could be detected by radar, especially airborne radar. On the other hand, these submarines were so quiet when submerged that they were extremely difficult to detect by passive means, and active sonar had therefore to be used against them. Active sonar, however, could act as a beacon for nuclear-powered submarines, which were able to proceed at high speed from a distance, closing to missile-firing range while still remaining undetected. They were able to operate in the ocean depths anywhere in the world for as long as the food and the weapons lasted, but they could not safely or effectively operate in the shallow water (200 metres or less) which covers the Continental Shelf. This factor apart, there can be no doubt that the Soviet submarine force posed a severe threat to the warships and shipping of the United States and its maritime allies in being probably able to achieve a successful attack, in the face of the best anti-submarine measures which could be taken, at least once in every three attempts, while on average only one submarine would be destroyed in every five that were detected and classified as a submarine contact.

Soviet naval aviation, on the other hand, had by 1985 hardly come of age. The first nuclear-powered, large aircraft carrier had not yet completed her trials. The four 45,000-ton Kiev-class aviation ships, however, with their complement of ASW helicopters and V/STOL (vertical/short take-off and landing) fighter-reconnaissance aircraft, were judged to be effective in their role. The smaller helicopter cruisers Moskva and Leningrad were thought to be no more than fair-weather ships. Soviet shore-based air power demanded much more respect, however. Admiral Gorshkov had been able to persuade the Soviet Defence Council that he must have both long-range reconnaissance to cover the Atlantic, Indian and Western Pacific Oceans, and a strong force of long-range, high-speed bombers armed with air-to-surface anti-shipping missiles. These were the Bears and the Backfires. Given operational bases strategically placed, NATO and Allied shipping would be at serious risk from this air threat. If bases in North Africa were made available to the Soviet Union, even the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean might be in peril.

An assessment of the Soviet amphibious forces indicated that, despite the well-advertised excellence of their naval infantry, they seemed to lack certain important elements, such as vertical airlift and integral tactical air support. For the intervention role, against light opposition, the force had to be reckoned with, but it could not compare in combat power with the US Marines. Another relatively weak aspect of the Soviet naval forces was in logistic support. There was only a small capacity for under-way replenishment of major fleet units. In peacetime, it was true, forces such as the Fifth Eskadra, in the eastern Mediterranean, were maintained for long periods away from their home bases, but they did this mostly at anchor, maintained by a succession of auxiliary supply ships, merchant ships, and tenders. This did not amount to a capability for sustained ocean operations. What it did mean was that if the Soviet Navy managed to achieve a surprise attack, it could inflict a good deal of damage very quickly. There was also evidence that Admiral Gorshkov had established an extremely reliable command and control system which, although highly centralized, had built-in reserves of personnel and resource. To serve the command a comprehensive operational intelligence system had long been established and was kept in constant practice.

As to the morale and efficiency of the Soviet Navy’s officers and men, there were both pluses and minuses. The high command, and flag officers generally, gave the impression of knowing their business. The commanding officers of ships and submarines, also, were good, although it had been noted that many of them retained command for lengthy periods, or on relinquishment of one command were immediately given another, suggesting a shortage of really competent people. A certain reluctance to use initiative seemed also to be common. Perhaps too much was being demanded of the commanding officers. According to the Soviet armed forces regulations the commander of a unit was obliged ‘to direct combat training and political education of his subordinates and to maintain perfect discipline…He must know the professional, political, and moral qualities of his subordinates, persistently improve their skills and act as their educator in the field of politics and law’. And, although the principle of unity of command was always stressed, in practice the Party’s organization, as represented by the Zampolit (the commander’s deputy for political affairs) was concerned not only with politico-ideological questions, but also with purely military and even technical matters.

The training load for the officers in a Soviet warship was heavy. Most of the enlisted men were conscripts and served for thirty-six months. The training was competitive, in theory. But it was not uncommon for commanding officers to exclude from various drills those officers and enlisted men whose performance might bring down the ship’s score. A surprisingly large proportion of the Soviet warships’ time was spent in harbour too. The standard of combat readiness and weapon-training was not invariably as high as the smartness of the ships might lead one to expect.

To sum up this section, in terms of quality the Soviet Navy was, in itself, a formidable force, but it was dependent upon the proximity of bases — both naval and air — to be capable of matching the US and Allied fleets. Indeed, the outcome of a conflict waged near the Soviet home bases would have been difficult to predict. Fortunately for the Western allies this one was waged far from Soviet home bases.

Admiral Maybury then referred to the quality of the Soviet strategic nuclear ballistic missile force. As would no doubt be recalled, the earlier types of Soviet SSBN were distinctly inferior to the Polaris and Poseidon boats of the US Navy. But by 1985 the Soviet SSBN force was mainly composed of the Delta class, armed with missiles having a range of over 4,000 miles. On patrol in the Barents Sea, or the Sea of Okhotsk, these submarines could range on targets over the entire United States, safe from any counter-measures. Indeed, neither the US nor the Soviet navies were capable of countering their opponent’s SSBN, which retained, accordingly, their unique character as strategic retaliatory systems. Both the British and the French SSBN constituted, in spite of much smaller numbers, formidable second-strike forces. These, too, the Soviets could not counter. They could not ignore them either.

Before considering what is now known of the wartime Soviet deployments, it is as well to look at geography, and its bearing upon the operational concept on which the deployments were based. Geo-politics — ideas of ‘heartland’, ‘rimland’, ‘world ocean’, and so on — are interesting but probably of little practical value in formulating policies. The distribution of usable mineral resources may well determine the political map of the world in the future. But there can be no doubt of the underlying continuity of Russian foreign policy aims.

Tsar Peter the Great in 1725, shortly after his annexation of five Persian provinces and the city of Baku, and just before he died, enjoined his successors thus:

I strongly believe that the State of Russia will be able to take the whole of Europe under its sovereignty… you must always expand towards the Baltic and the Black Sea. You must try to approach Istanbul and India as far forward as possible. You must seek to dominate the Black Sea and be the owner of the Baltic. These actions are most important in order to achieve our future aims. You must also do your best to ensure the collapse of Persia as soon as possible and envisage opening a route through the Persian Gulf.[20]

In 1985 Peter the Great, the mystical-absolutist, might have conceded, had he been aware of events, that the dialectical-materialist usurpers in the Kremlin were not doing so badly. That is, until the fateful day of 4 August 1985, when the Soviet armies were launched into the Federal Republic of Germany. Tsar Peter would have been appalled at the disposition on that date of the Soviet Navy. With the most powerful of its fleets based in the remote areas of Murmansk and Kamchatka and the other two main fleets bottled up, one in the Baltic and the other in the Black Sea, how could Soviet naval power be brought effectively to bear in support of a grand design? Surely the decisive surge westward should not have been undertaken until a combination of circumstance, diplomacy and force had delivered into Soviet hands control of the exits from both the Baltic and the Black Sea?

Great emphasis had been placed upon the application of three principles in order to achieve the military aim of the Warsaw Pact, which was the destruction of the armed forces of NATO and its associates. These principles were: surprise, co-ordination of all arms, and concentration of force. Plans had been in existence, constantly updated, ever since Soviet military power had grown sufficient in relation to NATO to confer upon Soviet leaders the option of using it, if favourable circumstances should arise. It was not necessary in the Soviet Navy to risk compromising the contingency plans by any distribution below fleet commander level, and even then the directive was related to a D-day that remained undesignated until D -5. This ensured that no change in the pattern of Soviet naval activities should give NATO early warning of possible attack. On the other hand, every Soviet warship that proceeded outside local areas had to be fully stored for war, and peacetime deployments must not take major units more than five days’ steaming from war stations. Reconnaissance, surveillance and operational intelligence material had to be provided sufficient to support initial war deployments without augmentation, which might reveal unusual activity. Operational command and control of all warships, merchant ships and fishing fleets outside local areas would be assumed on D -1 by the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy in Moscow, where the First Deputy Commander-in-Chief, as Chief of the Main Naval Staff, was ready to assume the control of operations worldwide.

It seems that the NATO estimate of the main missions of the Soviet Navy in the event of war was not far out. They were: to maintain at instant readiness the SSBN strategic nuclear retaliatory force, and to ensure its security from any counter-measures that might be brought to bear against it; to counter, as far as practicable, the SSBN forces of the USA, Great Britain and France; to destroy or neutralize US carrier air groups, and other major warships; to support the army, both directly by fire power and indirectly by transportation and supply, and by interdiction of enemy military shipping; to interrupt all movement by sea which directly supported the enemy combat capability; and to carry out reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence missions as required in support of the foregoing missions.

From Soviet records it appears that the following force dispositions had been made in order to carry out the requirements of the naval contingency plan. At any moment during the last week of July 1985 there were eight SSBN, each with sixteen or twenty missiles, on patrol in the Barents Sea and five in the Sea of Okhotsk. From these locations, targets anywhere in the continental USA could be reached. In order to protect the SSBN from the unwelcome attentions of potentially hostile ‘intruders’, the Soviets used diesel-electric ASW patrol submarines, exploiting the acoustic advantage they enjoyed, when running on their electric motors, over the nuclear-powered opposition. There were, of course, shore-based ASW aircraft supporting the SSBN operations, and there was also the input from a comprehensive operational intelligence network.

The Soviet Union had come to the conclusion that it was not feasible to counter, completely or directly, the opposing SSBN forces of the USA, Great Britain and France. A certain amount could be done, however, to limit the damage to the Soviet Union which a retaliatory strike by SSBN could cause. The only warships earmarked for this purpose were some diesel-electric submarines — six in the Northern Fleet, and four in the Pacific Fleet — whose task would be to lay mines off the SSBN bases. Certain other counter-measures which the Soviets took were not specifically naval, and need not concern us here. They were not in any case very effective.

It is as well to recall the US/NATO force deployment upon which the Soviet Union had to base its plans — and as has been remarked earlier, the Western powers did not always provide themselves with a valid ‘Moscow view’. By 1985 the US Navy was well into the service life extension programme (SLEP) for its carrier force. This would add fifteen years to the normal thirty-year life of these warships. It was designed to enable the US Navy to have at least twelve carriers in commission for the remainder of the present century. By August 1985 the USS Saratoga and Forrestal had been through the SLEP, and were ‘good as new’; and the USS Independence had been taken in hand by the Philadelphia Navy Yard — that may have seemed tough on the Virginians, but at least Newport News was given the Carl Vinson, CVN-70, to build!

In a well-publicized comment, around 1981, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, said that he was ‘… trying to meet a three-ocean requirement with a one-and-a-half-ocean navy’. It has to be accepted that, over a period of years, it takes three carriers in commission to keep one up front. Hence, in mid-1985 there were permanently on station a one-carrier battle group in the Mediterranean, a one- and occasionally two-carrier battle group in the Indian Ocean and a one- and occasionally two-carrier battle group in the Western Pacific.

None was permanently on station in the Atlantic: a Carrier Battle Group Atlantic would be formed from the forces training in home waters prior to deployment for war. Each of the carriers had an air group of about eighty-five aircraft — fighters, strike aircraft, ASW aircraft, both fixed and rotary wing, and one or two aircraft specially fitted for ECM and airborne early warning (AEW). To protect this floating airfield the US had two or three guided-missile cruisers and ten or so modern destroyers and frigates. Quite often, too, there was a nuclear ‘attack’ submarine in direct support.

The USSR had assumed that the US carriers could launch nuclear strikes, and for this reason had determined that they should be constantly tracked, and targeted by both torpedo and missile firing submarines; and because it was realized that the carriers might take a lot of sinking — or even neutralizing — cruisers and destroyers armed with surface-to-surface missiles (SSM) were also deployed within a day or two of striking distance and developed a pattern of closing in to firing range from time to time. In this way such a movement would not, it was hoped, alert US carriers that war was imminent.

During this last week in July 1985, therefore, there were two missile-armed and two torpedo-armed Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean, all nuclear powered, and all from the Northern Fleet. Off Newfoundland across the line of advance of the Carrier Battle Group Atlantic were positioned three more missile-armed and four torpedo-armed nuclear-powered submarines, again from the Northern Fleet. This fleet also provided to the west of the Straits of Gibraltar two diesel-electric missile-armed boats, and two diesel-electric ballistic-missile boats were stationed within bombardment range of the NATO air bases as Keflavik, Iceland, and Lossiemouth, Scotland. Other submarines were at sea between their patrol stations and home base in Murmansk.

The Fifth Eskadra, cruising or anchored in the general vicinity of the carrier battle group of the US Sixth Fleet, consisted of three guided-missile cruisers, four guided-missile destroyers, and four gun destroyers, all from the Soviet’s Black Sea Fleet. Both the US and the Soviet groups were accompanied, of course, by logistic support and, in the Soviet case, maintenance ships in considerable numbers.

In the Indian Ocean, the Soviets had stationed one guided-missile and three torpedo-attack nuclear-powered submarines to cover the US carrier battle group, but their surface force in that area, consisting of one guided-missile cruiser and three guided-missile destroyers or frigates, tended to remain well out of range.

Finally, in the western Pacific, where there was a US carrier battle group based usually on Subic in the Philippines, the Soviets were able to muster another group of nuclear-powered submarines, one missile armed and the other torpedo armed while, in addition, there was a diesel-electric guided-missile boat on patrol off Yokosuka in Japan.

In addition to the submarines and surface forces tasked to destroy; US carriers on station, the Soviet Naval Air Force maintained specially trained and briefed long-range bomber squadrons, armed with stand-off air-to-surface missiles, based at Murmansk, in the Leningrad Military District, and at Sevastopol and Vladivostok. These were mainly Backfires, in support of the Northern and Pacific Fleets, with the shorter-range Blinders in the Baltic and the Black Sea. The range of both types could be extended by in-flight refuelling. The US carriers and their supporting ships, whose exact positions were always known to the Soviet Union by air, submarine, surface ship and satellite reconnaissance in combination, were liable to air attack anywhere in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the northern part of the Indian Ocean, and in the Pacific from the South China Sea to the west coast of the United States.

We come now to the Soviet Navy’s dispositions for the support of the Red Army and its Warsaw Pact allies. From the 1970s onwards it had been evident that the Soviet amphibious capability had been increasing, and much interest had been aroused in the autumn of 1981 when exercise Zapad was carried out in the eastern Baltic. At the time there were some who believed that the exercise was designed specifically to bring pressure to bear on Poland, at that time suffering from something of a breakdown in political control by its own Communist Party, under pressure from the powerful Solidarity free trade union movement supported by the Catholic church. But in fact the exercise had been planned over a year previously and we now know that it was a rehearsal for the seizure of the Dardanelles. This accounted for the unprecedented bringing together of the helicopter-cruiser Leningrad, a Sverdlov-class cruiser, two Krivak-class frigates and several units belonging to the amphibious forces of the Black Sea Fleet and the Northern Fleet, plus the latest large landing ship Ivan Rogov from the Pacific, while the carrier Kiev, accompanied by two frigates, was diverted to the Baltic from her passage back to the Northern Fleet base from the Mediterranean. In July 1985 strong amphibious forces, well supported by antisubmarine and anti-air defence and by shore-based air-striking forces, were poised to fight alongside the Warsaw Pact land forces in north Norway, north Germany, Turkey, and in the Far East, while Soviet submarines and naval aircraft were ready to interdict NATO support for its land forces in these theatres.

When we look at the Soviet plans for the interruption of all movement by sea that directly supported the enemy combat capability, we must at the same time bear in mind the Soviet emphasis, in operational concept, on the achievement of surprise and the coordination of all arms. It must also be remembered that the entire Soviet and Warsaw Pact merchant fleet, as well as the fishing fleet, were under the operational control of the Soviet Government — which meant, once contingency plans were put into effect, the Soviet Main Naval Staff.

It is now clear that the Soviets had worked out very carefully how and where to apply pressure to the world’s sea transportation system so as to create the maximum disruption in the minimum time, priority being given to denying to the United States and her allies the supply of those imported materials which would have the most immediate effect upon their combat capability.

The rapid growth of the Soviet merchant fleet in the 1970s and early 1980s had not only earned much-needed hard currency, but had also helped to extend Soviet political influence and provide a most valuable auxiliary force to the Soviet Navy. Not the least of its merits was to furnish accurate, comprehensive and up-to-date intelligence of the world’s shipping movements, the cargoes carried, and their destinations. Certain Soviet merchant ships, also, could lay mines, and many were equipped with electronic warfare devices, for both interception and jamming of radio communications. What the Soviets planned to do, therefore, at the outset of hostilities, was to paralyse shipping movement by executing, as nearly as possible simultaneously, a number of operations involving surface raiding forces, submarine attacks, shore-based air attacks, mining by merchant ships, sabotage, radio jamming and disinformation. ‘War zones’, into which non-aligned and neutral shipping would sail at their peril, would be declared in the western approaches to north-west Europe; west of the Straits of Gibraltar; in the Arabian Sea; off the Cape of Good Hope; and in the East China Sea. This concept of the ‘instantaneous threat’ to shipping, rather than the prosecution of a guerre de course — the old-style war of attrition — accorded well with the Soviet politico-military war plan for a rapid seizure of the Federal Republic of Germany, followed by a peace negotiated with the USA, on the basis of a stunning demonstration of Soviet power on land, at sea, and in the air.

The Soviet naval and naval air forces available for paralysing shipping, like those allocated for other missions already referred to, had to be in place, or nearly so, long before war contingency plans were executed. Again, therefore, they were bound to be few in number. Western operational intelligence was naturally most interested, in peacetime, in the movements of the Soviet nuclear-powered heavy cruisers of the Kirov class, two of which were in commission in July 1985 — one, the Kirov herself, with the Northern Fleet, and the other in the Pacific. Their ‘electronic signatures’ were well known to the US Navy — and hence to NATO — as were those of all the other main units of the Soviet fleets. It was not, however, too difficult, when the moment came, for these to be artificially altered, so as to confuse — even if only for a day or two — surveillance and reconnaissance systems. Furthermore, the Kirovs, being nuclear powered and extremely well armed, could operate independently and continuously, at high speed, demanding from the enemy a full-scale concentration of force in order to bring them to book.

Some Kiev-class V/STOL aircraft carriers, of which four were in commission in July 1985, provided the other main element of the Soviet anti-shipping surface force. Two were in the Northern Fleet, including the Kiev herself, and two in the Pacific Fleet. It was normal for either the Kiev or her sister ship the Novorossysk to be operating between the Mediterranean and Murmansk, with occasional cruises to the Cape Verde area, and the west coast of Africa; while the Minsk and her sister ship, based upon Vladivostok, operated between there and Cam Ranh Bay — that bonus to the Soviet union from its support of Vietnam — with periodical sorties into the South China Sea. These carriers were usually accompanied by a pair of the excellent Krivak-class frigates.

It was often assumed, on the Western side, that if war came the Kirov heavy cruisers would join the Kiev carriers, with perhaps additional frigates or destroyers, to form battle groups similar in concept to NATO battle groups. But this view was mistaken. It overlooked the Soviet determination to achieve surprise, accepting the risk of losing perhaps all of their in-place forces during the first few days, or even hours, of hostilities. Besides, why sacrifice the exceptional mobility of the nuclear-powered Kirovs by grouping them with the logistically-limited Kievs and their escorts?

As to submarines in the anti-merchant ship role, only two submarines were kept on station in peacetime with this task in mind. They were both elderly, torpedo-firing nuclear powered boats. One of them patrolled within two days’ easy steaming of the Cape of Good Hope, and the other had a billet within the same distance of Cape de Sao Roque, the focal point off Brazil. It was their job to identify and sink particular ships, designated by Moscow, within hours of the opening of hostilities on the Central Front in Europe.

That, in essence, was the Soviet naval plan. It was a good one, and it very nearly worked.

Admiral Maybury then continued his talk on the basis of the Soviet naval objectives and dispositions already described, with brief accounts of some selected actions, all of which it must be emphasized were taking place at about the same time. He began with the heavy cruiser Kirov.

It was known in CINCUSNAVEUR on 1 August that this ship had sailed from the Kola inlet a day or so before and headed south-west towards the middle of the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap at moderate speed. From time to time, in the past, the Kirov had proceeded into the Atlantic, west of Iceland, and appeared to be acting as target for Backfire strikes from airfields in the Murmansk area; it was good training, also, for the Soviet maritime reconnaissance aircraft and for satellite surveillance. What was not known, on this occasion, was that the Kirov was accompanied by an Oscar-class nuclear attack submarine, keeping station beneath her, so that her noise signature could not be distinguished from that of the surface ship.

By 3 August the Kirov was about 350 miles south of Cape Farewell. Suddenly the US Navy Orion that had been trailing the cruiser detected another echo close to her. The echoes then merged, and after a short while separated. The Orion continued to trail what she felt sure was the cruiser, while the other echo headed south at 20 knots; both echoes were now observing radar and radio silence. It was the Kirov, however, that was heading south. Early on the 4th the cruiser intercepted the British container ship Leeds United, the exact position, course and speed of which had been transmitted to the Kirov by Moscow. The Leeds United never knew what hit her — two SS-N-19 conventionally-armed tactical missiles fired from over the horizon. During the next three days the Kirov destroyed, in the same way, no less than seven Allied ships, all valuable. As none of them managed to transmit an SOS, let alone a raider report, these losses went unnoticed. Kirov’s orders were to continue south towards the Cape Verde Islands where she could replenish with missiles at the Soviet base at Porte Grande. Having already used up all her surface-to-surface missiles (SSM), her capable Captain Fokin decided instead to make all speed back to Murmansk, passing through the Denmark Strait. He knew that the US airfield at Keflavik had been put temporarily out of action by bombardment with submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) specially developed for the purpose, fitted into the old but still operational Golf-class boats. In the event, the Kirov was located by a Canadian Orion, which managed to keep just out of range of the cruiser’s SAM. On 9 August the Kirov was severely damaged by Harpoon attack from the US submarine Dallas, and later sunk by torpedoes from the submarine’s squadron mate, the Groton.

In the Mediterranean, on 2 August, the Soviet Fifth Eskadra came to its regular anchorage in the Gulf of Hammamet, off the coast of Tunisia; that is to say, the surface ships and their auxiliaries did. The submarines — two Charlie II SSGN (submarine, guided missile, nuclear powered), and two Victor SSN — remained in deep water, a pair consisting of one of each type patrolling to the east and to the west of Malta. On 2 August the Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Southern Europe (CINCSOUTH) and the Commander, Sixth Fleet, agreed that it would be advisable for the carrier battle group, which was already at short notice for sea, to sail from Naples and proceed to exercise south-east of Malta. The Soviet Eskadra was, of course, kept under surveillance. However, the electronic deception of the Soviet force was successful, in so far as the guided-missile cruisers Admiral Drozd, Sevastopol and Admiral Golovko with their accompanying missile destroyers were able to weigh anchor after dark on 3 August and proceed eastwards at high speed without immediately being trailed.

The force was located at about 0300 on 4 August by one of CINCSOUTH’s reconnaissance aircraft about 150 miles to the westward of the Forrestal and her battle group. Admiral Lorimer, commanding the Sixth Fleet, immediately ordered reconnaissance to be flown off and a strike readied. At this time both the Soviet submarines of the eastern group were in contact with Forrestal’s battle group and had received orders to commence hostilities at 0400. Sonar conditions, with the warmer surface water typical of the Mediterranean in summer, greatly assisted the submarines to remain undetected. A few minutes after 0400, and before the American admiral had received the order to open hostilities, his flagship was struck by two guided missiles which started fires in the hangar and among the aircraft ranged and armed for the strike. The AWACS aircraft, which had been airborne since 0300, was able to report the incoming missiles as submarine launched, and shortly afterwards

detected a stream of missiles approaching from the Soviet force to the westward. This time the counter-measures had some effect. No more missiles hit the Forrestal, but two of her accompanying destroyers were hit. The fires in the Forrestal herself were being brought under control, damaged aircraft ditched and those which were intact prepared to fly off. A surface striking group was forming up, and the carrier altered round to the north-westward, into wind, to fly off the strike aircraft. This new course, as it happened, took the carrier within torpedo range of the second Soviet submarine, and at 0437 hours she was struck by two torpedoes, one of which damaged her port rudder and propellers.

In the surface-ship action that followed, the entire Soviet force was sunk, but the Forrestal had to seek permission to enter Maltese territorial waters, and was with difficulty brought into Marsaxlokk and anchored. That evening one of the western group of Soviet submarines was sunk by the USS Arthur W. Radford while attempting to get within torpedo range of the carrier.

The US battle group in the Indian Ocean was centred on the nuclear-powered carrier Nimitz. Sailing from Diego Garcia on 2 August, this force set course north-westwards towards the Arabian Sea. The Soviet Indian Ocean Squadron was known to be at Socotra, and it was the intention to get within airstriking range of it as soon as possible. The battle group’s movements were, of course, impossible to conceal from satellite reconnaissance. Using their exceptionally high speed, two torpedo-armed submarines, Soviet Alpha-class SSN, took up an intercepting position which would enable contact to be made with the US battle group at about 0100 on 4 August. Because the US force was steaming at 25 knots, it was unable to utilize its ASW helicopters for screening, and its fixed-wing anti-submarine aircraft, relying upon sonobuoys for submarine detection, were in the circumstances of little value. Once again, therefore, a successful submarine attack was carried out shortly after the opening of hostilities. Fortunately, however, only one torpedo hit the Nimitz, and although it was fairly far aft, the carrier’s speed was reduced by only 4 knots; more importantly, her reactors remained safely in operation. A subsequent air strike on the Soviet squadron was not very successful. Casualties from SAM were heavy, mainly because the one electronic counter-measure (ECM) aircraft accompanying the strike lost power shortly after take-off and ditched. The carrier’s fighters were able to counter, fairly effectively, an attack on the battle group by Soviet Backfires from South Yemen. Honours, one might say, in the Indian Ocean were fairly even during the first few days of the war, although the lack of a dock anywhere nearer than San Diego large enough to take the damaged Nimitz was a serious matter.

The Kirov-class heavy cruiser in the Pacific had followed a rather similar pattern of operation to that of the Kirov herself in the Atlantic. That is to say, she would from time to time sortie from Petropavlovsk and proceed south-eastwards into the Pacific for some days, apparently in order to provide a reconnaissance and strike target for the Soviet Naval Air Force. On 1 August the cruiser followed the usual course into the Pacific. Fortunately, the US submarine La Jolla was on surveillance patrol in the vicinity of Petropavlovsk and the Soviet cruiser had a ‘tail’ as she went on her way. Shortly after hostilities were opened, the Soviet ship was attacked. The stricken cruiser, hit by three torpedoes, sank within twenty minutes.

In the meantime, the carrier Kitty Hawk — one of two in the US Seventh Fleet at that period — which was exercising to the eastward of Yokosuka with her Aegis-equipped cruiser consorts and some units of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Force, had been ordered to intercept the Soviet heavy cruiser as back-up for the La Jolla. But before this group had come within striking range of the Soviet warship the submarine report of its sinking was received in the Kitty Hawk, which then set course with her group to return to Yokosuka.

The American carrier John F. Kennedy, with her battle group, was in Subic Bay in the Philippines on 4 August. Admiral Carlsberg, the Commander, US Seventh Fleet, reckoned that his first duty, if the state of tension should be followed by war, was to take his force to sea and seek out and destroy the Soviet carrier Minsk, sister ship of the Kiev, which was currently using Cam Ranh Bay as an operational base. Accordingly he sailed his battle group from Subic at 1800 on 4 August after having conducted energetic ASW operations along the sortie route. What he did not know was that a Soviet submarine had that morning laid a minefield precisely where the John F. Kennedy would have to go when leaving Subic. The carrier duly detonated one of those mines and had to return to harbour, having first managed to fly off her aircraft. The Minsk’s Forger V/STOL fighters were no match for the strike carried out at dawn next day by the John F. Kennedy’s own air group, flying from the airfield in Manila. The Soviet carrier and two of her group were sunk. Two guided missile cruisers and two destroyers survived, however, and sank several merchant ships in the South China Sea before being interned in Surabaya, Java.

By this time the Kitty Hawk had been redeployed to Subic as flagship for Admiral Carlsberg in place of the damaged John F. Kennedy.

The Soviet submarines stationed off Cape de Sao Roque, to the west of the Straits of Gibraltar, and off the Cape of Good Hope, all sank several important merchant ships during the first few days of hostilities, and all round the world ships were kept in harbour or back from danger zones pending developments. Several vessels struck mines laid a few days previously by Soviet merchant ships. There can be no doubt that the ‘instantaneous threat’ had been successfully put into effect.

The final operation now to be mentioned is the launching by the Soviet armies in the south, together with Romanian and Bulgarian assistance, of a seaborne assault upon the Dardanelles. Rather than make a direct attack in the immediate vicinity of the Bosporus, the Soviet forces advanced by land from Bulgaria — strongly opposed by a combined Greek-Turkish force already deployed against just that contingency — while simultaneously launching a sea and airborne assault on the port of Zonguldak. From there it was intended to proceed westwards along the coast, supported by the Black Sea Fleet, while at the same time threatening Ankara. As is now evident from Soviet records, it was expected that this campaign would induce the Turks to come to terms following the Soviet success in West Germany: These intentions were frustrated owing to the failure to reach their objectives on the Central Front.

One general point should be made before giving an outline — and it will have to be just that — of the naval operations that followed the first two days of hostilities, which is all that we have dealt with in the war at sea so far.

It will be recalled that the Soviet aims, in seeking to occupy the whole of the Federal German Republic within ten days, was to cause the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance and to bring the United States to the negotiating table. The Soviet Main Naval Command deemed it imperative to destroy or neutralize US carriers in a surprise attack at the first possible opportunity. It was this act, more than any other, that gave the war an immediate worldwide character, and perhaps above all else ensured that, even if the Red Army reached the Rhine stop-line on time, the United States would have been very unlikely indeed to negotiate. Quite apart from the fury of the American people at what many saw as almost another Pearl Harbor and the determination of the United States to reassert naval supremacy in the Atlantic, isolationism was no longer, in the 1980s, a valid option for America. The United States was now forced to import oil and strategic raw materials from other continents — and hence had now become truly sea-dependent. Soviet naval predominance around the continents of Europe, Asia and Africa was therefore unacceptable. Yet that is what total US withdrawal from Europe would have meant.

Turning now to the sea/air campaigns that followed the initial surprise attacks, there were five separate, but more or less simultaneous, conflicts being waged within the NATO area as a whole; and of course there were worldwide attacks on shipping, with regional naval activity east of Suez and in the Pacific. The campaigns were: in the Norwegian Sea in support of the Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Northern Europe (CINCNORTH); in the Baltic, North Sea and Channel in support of the Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Central Europe (CINCENT); in the Western Approaches to north-west Europe and in general support of Allied Command Europe; in the Atlantic reinforcement operation; and in the Mediterranean in support of CINCSOUTH.

Taking the Norwegian Sea first, it will be recalled that the heavy cruiser Kirov was sunk on her way back to base in Murmansk after sinking merchant shipping in the Atlantic. Another operation of special interest in progress at the same time involved the carrier Kiev. She had sailed from Murmansk on 23 July, nearly a fortnight before war broke out, accompanied by the two Krivak-class frigates. The group arrived in Cork in the Irish Republic on the 27th for what was presented as a courtesy visit. The ships were reported to be on a training cruise to the Caribbean. The group had of course been tracked by NATO surveillance forces since leaving its home waters as a matter of routine, and it remained under observation after sailing from Cork to the south-westward on 2 August. Contact with the Kiev group was lost, as a result of effective Soviet electronic deception measures, on the night of the 3rd. Luckily, owing to the use of Shannon air base, the subsequent air search was successful in relocating the Kiev on the 5th.

Shannon extended the search radius of French anti-submarine Atlantique Nouvelle Generation (ANG) aircraft, and furnished an invaluable staging point for a squadron of Tornados of the Marine-flieger (the Federal German Naval Air Force) which had been pulled out from Schleswig-Holstein to Lossiemouth and redeployed by Joint Allied Command Western Approaches (JACWA). Accompanied by two RAF Tornado interceptors, with a VC-10 for refuelling, the German Tornados homed on to the Kiev at noon on 6 August. The Forgers from the Soviet carriers had already shot down one of the ANG and one of the Tornados, while SAM from the frigates and the carrier destroyed two more. But the remainder managed good attacks and the Kiev was crippled. One of her frigates was badly damaged also. In the meantime, one of the British fleet submarines, the Splendid, had been sent to intercept. She sank both the Kiev herself and the damaged frigate. The second frigate, having picked up survivors, set off for Cuba but was eventually found by a US Orion operating from Lajes. She did not last long after that.

The main activity in the Norwegian Sea began on 5 August. The British fleet submarine Churchill, on ASW patrol north of the Shetland Islands, sank a Soviet diesel submarine of the newish Tango class (SS) which was on its way to lay mines in the Firth of Clyde. During the next three days there were several submarine encounters with hostile submarines as the first wave of Soviet boats to be sailed after hostilities began reached the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. The exchange rate was favourable to NATO, as was to be expected given the quieter running of US boats and those of the European allies. But seven more Soviet SSN had got through to the Atlantic.

The US Strike Fleet Atlantic, consisting of two carrier battle-groups, entered the Norwegian Sea on 10 August in order to support the Norwegian forces ashore and the British and US Marines who were about to land, in their task of holding the airfields. This was of high importance. There should have been three carrier battlegroups engaged, but when the news came that the Forrestal had been badly damaged in the Mediterranean it was decided to detach the Saratoga, with her group, from the Strike Fleet Atlantic and send her to support CINCSOUTH.

The Strike Fleet’s operations were also intended to give distant support to the first major reinforcement operation across the Atlantic. This consisted of a group of fast military convoys which sailed from US east coast ports on 8 August, heavily escorted. Diversionary convoys were sailed on other routes, and there was a comprehensive deception plan. Even so, the convoys were heavily attacked by Soviet submarines firing missiles from ranges of up to 250 miles. In mid-Atlantic they were also attacked by Backfire bombers from Murmansk, the attacking aircraft launching their missiles from a distance of up to 180 miles. The running battle that developed occupied a tremendous area of ocean. Fortunately counter-measures were not unsuccessful. The number of transports put out of action would otherwise have been much higher. Losses were nonetheless severe. Only thirty-six out of the forty-eight transports which sailed from the USA docked safely in the Channel ports, but the reinforcement they brought was just in time to play a major part in stabilizing the position on the Central Front.

We come now to the end of Admiral Maybury’s presentation to the US National Defence College in Washington and offer some comments of our own.

A more detailed narrative of these operations is, of course, to be found in The Third World War: August 1985, published earlier this year, in the spring of 1987. It covers, also, the air/sea battle around the Baltic exits and the English Channel, where the Soviet light forces, with air cover, tried to interdict the flow of reinforcements and supplies from the UK to the continent of Europe. We have not repeated this story here.

Many mines were laid by the Soviet forces, and sea traffic nearly came to a standstill owing to the shortage of mine counter-measure (MCM) vessels. This was particularly felt in regard to the south of Ireland. It will be remembered that the Kiev and her group visited Cork just before the outbreak of war. During that visit, as is now known, a group of Soviet mine-laying submarines were laying delayed-action mines off Lough Swilly, Bantry Bay, Cork, Wexford, Dublin and Milford Haven. Five ships were to be sunk by these mines. It was only at Milford Haven that MCM were taken and casualties avoided.

Much of the follow-up reinforcement shipping was sent from ports in the Gulf of Mexico. Routed south of the Azores it was then brought in, where possible, to the shallower waters along the European coast. With the extra support available from Spain, as well as that from Portugal and France, this reduced the level of the submarine threat and almost eliminated the threat from the air. Outside the NATO area, where there was no established and practised sea/air operational control of shipping, or proper protection, ocean shipping remained for the most part paralysed, until some degree of confidence had been restored in NATO’s competence to safeguard it. By the end of the second week after war had started NATO’s worldwide operational intelligence system had provided a more realistic assessment of the submarine threat to shipping in the various theatres. Indeed, there is little doubt that the intelligence organization at NATO’s disposal was of critical importance in enabling it to counter a grave threat to the ability of the Alliance to use the sea.

It may be worthwhile to dwell on this aspect for a moment. The advance of information technology had enabled the Western allies to use computers, micro-electronics and telecommunications to produce, store, obtain and send information in a variety of forms extremely rapidly and — until the enemy began to interfere — reliably. Fortunately Soviet interference was rarely effective. Every scrap of data on every Soviet submarine at sea which came within range of any Allied sensors — sonar in ships or helicopters, sonobuoys from fixed-wing aircraft, acoustic devices on the seabed, or radar contact by snort mast (when the submarine was a diesel-electric one) — could be processed almost instantaneously, analysed and compared. The NATO submarine plot would then be updated and the latest submarine report communicated to all concerned. Furthermore, the knowledge that this was being done had in many circumstances the effect upon the Soviet submariners (NATO’s own submariners had a similar respect for the Soviet operational intelligence system) of imposing speed restrictions. The faster a submarine goes the more noise it makes. Even when it is not exactly located every detection of a submarine by the enemy draws the net more tightly round it. SSBN are not embarrassed by such detection possibilities because they do not have to use high speed in order to fulfil their role, and are deployed in remote areas which, at the same time, can be kept clear of ‘intruders’.

It must be added, in order to account for Allied failure, where it occurred, to act promptly and with good effect upon intelligence received, that something was seen to happen which many had warned would happen. This was an inability to decentralize sufficiently to subordinate flag, or in some cases commanding, officers which resulted in what has been described as ‘apoplexy at the centre and paralysis at the extremities’. In a fast-moving situation it is essential to let the man on the spot have the information he needs, and let him get on with the job as he thinks best. By far the most important function of the flag officer and his staff, especially in a shore headquarters, is to avoid the mutual interference of friendly forces — surface ship, submarine and aircraft.

In reflecting upon the outcome of the fighting at sea, it can be said that the greatest Allied shortcoming was the lack of sufficient antimissile missiles, as well as counter-measures to the various types of guidance and homing used in the missiles of the enemy. It was quite obvious, as early as the 1950s, that the age of the guided missile in fighting at sea was upon us. This knowledge was not sufficiently exploited. The weak point in any electronic guidance system is that it can be interfered with by electronic means. Any missile with a generally usable homing system can, by definition, be decoyed and made to home on something other than the intended target. Ultimately, of course, hostile ships, submarines and aircraft must be destroyed or neutralized. In the first instance what matters most is to cope with the missiles, wherever they come from.

By the end of the second week of the Third World War, over 90 per cent of Soviet and Warsaw Pact commercial shipping, including the fishing fleets, which had been operating outside the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Sea of Japan, had been sunk or captured, or had taken refuge in a neutral port. That was the end of Soviet sea power.

Chapter 14: War in the Air

We have already described in detail some of the air battles that raged over the Central Front, for many of these had a crucial effect on what was happening in the land battle. But air power was more important in this war than in any other major conflict; its impact deserves a wider assessment.

Air forces were everywhere involved where fighting took place. Over the oceans and their littoral states the aircraft came mainly from carriers and helicopter ships. The greater proportions were mounted from the US Navy’s big carriers, but the French Foch and Clemenceau and the British Ark Royal and Illustrious were also in the thick of the battles in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. The United States Navy had nearly 1,500 top-class aircraft and in addition to that global force the USAF’s Pacific Air Force (PACAF), with its headquarters in Japan and wings based in adjacent friendly countries in South-East Asia, as well as a wing of Strategic Air Command’s B-52 heavy bombers on the Pacific island of Guam, all played their part in the peripheral battles.

Over the Atlantic the continuous action of the US Strike Fleet carriers has rightly been well publicized; what is less well known perhaps is that on the submarine front Allied maritime patrol aircraft, operating independently or in conjunction with ships and submarines, took a very heavy toll of Soviet submarines. These aircraft, packed with electronic and sonic detection equipment and ingenious underwater weapons, exceeded even their high peacetime promise. But being large and ‘soft’ they were vulnerable on the ground, and on the eastern side of the Atlantic several were lost early on in the war to missile attacks on airfields from distant Soviet aircraft and submarines. Thereafter these aircraft were dispersed in ones and twos along the European Atlantic seaboard to fight a rather lonely war. With ample facilities for rest and eating on board, and a disregard for peacetime maintenance requirements, the astonishing fact is that many of these aircraft and crews spent more than three-quarters of the whole war in the air, landing only for fuel and food.

Soviet Naval Air Force action to interrupt the all-important Atlantic air bridge sent a number of large US troop transports plummeting into the sea with air-to-air missiles from modified Backfires, Bears and Badgers. But despite losses and damage the NATO early warning system held up well and USAF F-15 Eagles from Iceland and RAF Tornados from Scotland were a good match for them. Similarly, when the rather inadequate Soviet Forger V/STOL aircraft tried to intervene from their.Kiev-class carriers, RAF Tornados and US carrier-borne interceptors kept them at bay until the offending mother ships were sunk. Radar and infra-red reconnaissance from high-flying aircraft and satellites in space meant that surprise at sea rested principally with aircraft and submarines.

The United Kingdom and France came under Soviet air attack from the first few hours of the war. Initially it was confined to missiles from Backfire, Bear and Badger aircraft directed at port installations, airfields, and radar and communications centres, as well as government and military headquarters. Although in no way decisive, these attacks sometimes hit the soft centres of important targets such as the hotel-like building housing the British air traffic control centre at West Drayton on the outskirts of London.

In the first days of the war the Soviet Naval and Long-Range Air Forces could not exert a decisive weight of attack on French and British targets from their distant bases. Their losses were high as they ventured down the Atlantic and the North Sea to get into range with their stand-off missiles. It was not until 8 August, when the Soviet Air Force (SAF) had occupied airfields in Schleswig-Holstein and were able to turn larger numbers of SU-17 Fitter and SU-24 Fencer bombers on to French and British targets, that both countries came under really heavy attack. Then US FB-111s, British and German Tornados, and French Jaguars began pounding the SAF’s new-found airfields and their improvised air defences, while Soviet Fitters and Fencers suffered heavy losses in the target areas, as well as being mauled on the way by Belgian and Dutch F-16 Fighting Falcons. The French and British air defence systems were degraded by the gaps torn in the early warning system, the loss of fixed ground radars and airfield damage, but their modern and hardened communications survived well and the airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft proved marvellously adaptable in making good the losses in the ground radar systems. Right up to the end of the war, despite seriously depleted numbers, both French and British air forces were still offering a formidable challenge to SAF aircraft venturing into their air space.

High above the land battle in Germany, the Soviets, with a calculated disregard for losses, swamped the air with their aircraft. The outnumbered, though otherwise generally superior, Allied air forces had to respond with maximum effort. All the pre-war misgivings about what was optimistically called ‘airspace management’ were more than realized. Radars and communications were jammed and close control of fighters from the ground had to be abandoned. The problems of identifying friend and foe and integrating surface-to-air missiles with manned aircraft in the same airspace were so complex and difficult that they could only be met by the simplest of measures. In the absence of a foolproof weapons-locking IFF (identification friend or foe) system both sides inevitably shot down their own as well as the enemy’s aircraft. Broad rules were established within hours by Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE) giving sanctuary height bands for returning aircraft and ensuring that missile fire from the ground was withheld for a few minutes every hour. Although this sometimes gave SAF aircraft an uncontested run to their targets it was the best that could be done in the intensity of the air battle.

At altitude, the US, Belgian, Dutch and Danish F-16 Fighting Falcons, together with the US F-15 Eagles, French Mirages and British and German Phantoms, hacked away at Soviet Fishbed, Flogger and Foxbat fighters in a relentless struggle for control of the air. It was reckoned that Allied air forces exacted a toll of 5 to 2 in their favour. This only just matched the advantage in number of aircraft that the Warsaw Pact had over them. Allied losses soon caused great anxiety to COMAAFCE and his air commanders. To add to their difficulties, fresh airfields and ground facilities had to be set up to the west as forward bases in north Germany were overrun or came under direct ground fire as well as air attack. Although it had never been part of NATO’s declared policy to plan for a withdrawal, discreet re-location plans had prudently been made. So when the need arose, NATO air squadrons quickly found themselves operating from unfamiliar airfields in northern France, Belgium and the UK, where there was still some protection from relatively intact air defence systems. USAF and RAF C-130 Hercules, and French and German Transall heavy air transports, as well as helicopters, did magnificent work moving the airmen and their weapons, technical equipment and specialist vehicles back from exposed airfields. Despite chaos on many of the air bases the Allied air forces somehow kept flying and their challenge to the enemy never slackened.

Pilots and navigators in the fast jets had developed split-second reactions and when battle damage sent their aircraft out of control they fired their ejection seats by reflex. Many were lucky enough to parachute into the arms of friendly Germans who helped them back to Allied territory through gaps in the enemy lines. Some air crew returned on foot as many as four times to claim a cockpit seat and rejoin the battle. This proved a significant factor in offsetting the serious attrition of NATO’s air power as each day went by.

Meanwhile, in the important counter-air operations, RAF and GAF Tornados and USAF FB-111s were hammering away at Warsaw Pact airfields in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, the Tornados flying in the ultra-low mode for which they were designed. These repeated assaults were far from being free of losses, but their specially delivered bombs and mines steadily reduced the enemy’s superior numbers and disrupted the operation of his airfields, thereby redressing the balance in the high- and low-level battles over the front line. These NATO wings and squadrons were also engaged in attacking ‘choke points’ to disrupt and impede Warsaw Pact armoured reinforcements and supplies rolling forward into Western Europe.

After nine days of ferocious air fighting more than half of COMAAFCE’s aircraft and rather less of his air crew had been lost. But the Allied air forces regained the initiative when SACEUR made his historic decision on 13 August to release his dual-capable aircraft to the battle with conventional weapons and to make use of the B-52s standing by at Lajes in the Azores. This was reinforced by COMAAFCE’s parallel decision to commit his remaining reserves, made up of some Italian Air Force squadrons, disembarked French and US naval air squadrons and French and German AlphaJet trainers (which, like the British Hawk, had a useful secondary war role). These forces had been harboured safely, but with rising frustration among their crews, in southern France and Germany.

All the factors that contributed to the Western allies holding the air against superior numbers will only be known when a full study and analysis of the war is completed, but many of the reasons are clear even now. The importance attached to quality of men and machines was more than justified in battle, but it must be said that had the war continued much longer the decisive factor would have been numbers alone. The commitment of the French Air Force to the air war from the outset was undoubtedly of major strategic importance. The French Tactical Air Force (No. 1 Commandement Aerienne Tactique) with its headquarters at Metz in eastern France provided a flexible framework for the tasking and co-ordination of Allied aircraft drawn back from Germany on to French airfields. Without that prompt commitment and ready adaptability, together with the uncovenanted involvement of several hundred French Air Force Mirages and Jaguars and their skilled crews, the margin of success in the air might well have rested with the other side.

Chapter 15: Conflict in Space

“When active hostilities began on 4 August 1985, the space orbiter Enterprise 101, with a four-man crew under Colonel “Slim” Wentworth of the USAF, had already been in orbit on a multiple mission for over forty hours. Photographic and electronic reconnaissance was its initial purpose and, as the orbiter made its regular passes over the Soviet Union ten times a day, an impressive quantity of valuable material had been returned. The spaceship was also, however, furnished with programmes of tapes for broadcasts to the USSR and satellite countries in the event of war, inviting disaffection and revolt. This was perfectly well known, through their own intelligence sources, in the USSR and plans had been made to eliminate Enterprise 101 if the current state of alert were to be followed by hostilities.

Early on 4 August a Soyuz 49 mission set out to intercept. Its fourth orbit brought it to within 150 metres of Wentworth’s craft, just as he had himself gone on visual look-out. A laser beam sweep from the Soviet craft blinded him at once. Further sweeps and attack with minelets did such damage to the craft as to put controlled re-entry into the atmosphere and return to earth out of the question. Only a recovery mission by a space shuttle orbiter could effect the rescue of Colonel Wentworth and his companions, and the damage that had been done to Enterprise 101, particularly to its controls and electric power generators, would result in the failure of life support systems before long. This was, therefore, a matter of urgency.

The Colonel’s wife Janet, a tall good-looking brunette, was with Nicholas aged ten and Pamela aged six in the light and generous living room of the Wentworth home in Monterey, California, listening to the dramatic news coming from the commentator on breakfast-time TV. The family usually had breakfast in the kitchen but they were in the living room now because the bigger TV screen was there. They had heard that the country was at war now but what was uppermost in the minds of all three was that a beloved husband and an adored father was already out there in space.

“He’ll get back all right,” said Janet, clearing the breakfast things, “just like the other times.”

She spoke with more confidence than she felt.

The telephone rang.

“Slim’s in trouble,” said a voice that Janet knew well. A close friend of them all was ringing her from Space Control.

“You’ll get it on the news any time now but I thought I’d warn you. He’s hurt, in the eyes, otherwise he’s OK. The ship is in poor shape but we’ll get him back.”

Almost at once there was some news on the TV screen. Even as Janet put down the phone, the commentator was saying: “One of our spacecraft has been damaged in an attack from a Soviet space interceptor. A rescue mission for its crew is being mounted and should soon be under way.”

“Marvellous!” said Janet to the children. “They’ll bring him back all right. You’ll see!”

There was someone at the door. An officer, who identified himself as coming on orders from Space Control, was with two Air Force men bringing in a TV set of a type Janet had not seen before. It was clearly not a model for domestic use. It looked like service equipment. The officer set it up, plugged in the power and made some adjustments.

“You can talk to Colonel Wentworth now,” he said, “when he comes up. He has been told to call you.”

What did all this mean? Janet found herself in the grip of a terrible fear.

She walked around the strange TV set, not touching it, and called the family friend in Space Control.

“There’s a shuttle going up to bring him out, isn’t there?” she asked. “They said there was.”

“I hope that’s true,” was the hesitant reply. “There aren’t many shots left right now. Everything depends on how the Joint Chiefs propose to use them.”

An hour later he called again. She had not yet been able to bring herself to touch the set.

“Janet, bad news. There’s only one rocket left that can get up there before the life support systems run out. The Joint Chiefs have ordered that shot to be used to replace a critical reconnaissance satellite taken out by Soviet interception.”

“You mean — they’re going to let Slim die, out there, when they could save him?”

“They have only one space shot left,” was the reply, “until Enterprise 103 can be pushed out again. That will take at least three days. With the damage done in the Soviet attack the systems in Slim’s ship won’t last that long. The only shot they have ready to go at Vandenberg is already set to take up the reconnaissance satellite they have to have there and I am afraid there is no way of changing that. The TV set they have brought you will bring in Slim. You can see him and talk to him. Turn it on — but you are going to have to be brave.”

“But… but… the newsman said a rescue mission was being urgently prepared and would soon be on its way. He said that.”

“I am sorry, Janet, truly sorry. That’s only PR to allay public anxiety. You have to be told the truth.”

Janet was silent for a moment.

“What about the others in the crew out there?” she almost whispered. “What about them and their families too?”

“That’s being taken care of,” was the reply. “But time is running on. You can switch on the set now and pick up Slim.”

She did so. There on the screen was Slim, her beloved Slim, one of the only three people in her whole world who really mattered. He was in the cabin of the spacecraft surrounded by all the gadgetry but blundering about in his spacesuit even more than usual and uncertain in his movements. His eyes looked strange.

“Slim!” she said.

“Hello, love,” he said. “My eyes aren’t so good and I can’t see you but my God it’s good to hear you. How are things?”

“Good,” she lied. “Nicholas and Pamela are here. Say hello to daddy, children.”

“Hello, daddy,” came up in chorus.

“That’s great,” was the reply.

Janet watched a weightless, sightless spaceman fumbling about in the cabin. The voice was the same. That was Slim’s voice.

“Janet,” it said, “I love you.”

“Oh, Slim…”

“It can’t last long now, perhaps an hour or so, perhaps only minutes. I love you, Janet, I love you dearly and I am switching off.” The image vanished.

Janet, in her much loved and lived in home, sat down upon a sofa, dry-eyed and too stricken even for grief.

Suddenly a wail came from deep within her as from a dying animal.

“I hate you all!” she shouted and then in a flood of tears snatched the children to her and held them close.

When the war ended, a space mission recovered the orbiting bodies of the Captain and crew of Enterprise 101 and brought them back to earth for burial with military honours in Arlington National Cemetery. The occasion was made an important one. The President sent an aide. Janet Wentworth stayed away.”[21]

In the three decades before the war, with vast investment and marvellous inventiveness from the superpowers, space technology and its applications raced ahead. Apart from well-publicized programmes for peaceful purposes, there was a strong military thrust behind this effort. All space activity had some military significance but at least 65 per cent of the launches before the war were for military reasons only. By January 1985 the Soviet Union had made 2,119 launches compared with 1,387 by the United States. The latter generally used bigger launching rockets with heavier payloads and their satellites had longer lives and wider capabilities.

Among the military tasks performed by unmanned satellites were reconnaissance, by photographic, electronic, radar and infra-red means; the provision of communications, early-warning, navigational and meteorological stations; and finally there were the interceptor/destroyer (I/D) counter-satellites. Manned vehicles like the orbiter Enterprise 101 were reserved for combinations of tasks which were interdependent or where the opportunity might be fleeting or variable. China, France and Britain also had modest space programmes and put up satellites for research and communications. France and China used their own launchers while the British, who were considerable designers and manufacturers of satellites, depended on US launchers, as of course did NATO, which had a three-satellite communications system.

Before the war ordinary people around the world had little idea of what was going on far above them. This was principally because much of it was shrouded in secrecy, but it was also because their attention was only drawn to space sporadically when people were shot up into it and the TV cameras followed their progress. As things turned out, heroic exploits in space did not figure much in the war. Human beings were needed in space for certain tasks and especially so in the early days of the research programme. When it came to military applications they were usually more of an encumbrance than an advantage. There were notable exceptions when multiple tasks needed direct human judgment and control. Colonel Wentworth’s tragic flight in Enterprise 101 was a dramatic example. But in the main space was best left to the robots.

To appreciate what happened in space during the war a little understanding of the governing science is helpful. Man-made earth satellites have to conform, as do natural planets, to laws discovered in the seventeenth century by the German philosopher/scientist Johann Kepler. What is probably most significant in the context of this book is that the plane of an earth satellite (or planet) will always pass through the centre of the earth. Under the inexorable discipline of this and the other laws, the movement of satellites is inherently stable and predictable. They can only be manoeuvred by the thrust of ‘on-board’ propulsive forces, usually in the form of liquid or solid fuel rocket motors. These manoeuvring engines and their fuel have of course to be carried up from the earth in competition with all other payloads. As the fuel is quickly exhausted, manoeuvrability is limited. It has in any case to be paid for at the price of other payloads.

The amount of electric power available to activate the satellite’s systems is another limiting factor. Solar cells can convert the sun’s rays into electricity quite readily but there are early limits to the power that can be generated and stored in this way. That is why satellite radars, which played such an important role in the war, were at some disadvantage. Radar hungers greedily for electric power. It was for this reason that the Soviet Union made use of small nuclear reactors as power generators in its radar reconnaissance satellites. It may be recalled that it was a Soviet satellite, undoubtedly engaged in ocean surveillance, that caused worldwide concern in 1978 when it went wrong and scattered radioactivity over northern Canada as it burnt up on falling back into the atmosphere.

Even without such mishaps a satellite’s useful life does not last for ever. It is largely determined by the height of its orbit and the endurance of its power supply. The exhaustion of its power supply sets an obvious limit to its functional life as distinct from the life of the vehicle. The lives of satellites range from days and weeks to (theoretically) thousands of years, depending on their orbits. Generally speaking, the lower the orbit the shorter the life and vice versa. The height of the orbit is determined by the characteristics of the satellite’s launch and is set to suit the tasks it has to perform. Photographic satellites are usually the lowest and are set as low as 120 kilometres from the earth. At the other end of the scale, the United States nuclear explosion detection VELA (velocity and angle of attack) satellites were pushed out as far as 110,000 kilometres into space in the war.

Although space enables man-made objects to move at fast speeds over great distances in near perpetual motion, everything that moves in space is a captive of Kepler’s laws. Once a satellite is in undisturbed orbit it will turn up precisely on time in its next predicted position above the earth. Manoeuvring can change the height or the plane of the orbit but at the end of the manoeuvre the satellite — unless it is brought back into the atmosphere — settles once again into a predictable orbit. So although the exact purposes of some of the earth satellites were not always known in the years before the war, space was very ‘open’ and all the satellites, old booster rockets and other debris orbiting the world, were monitored, numbered and registered in computers at scientific agencies like the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, England. Indeed, under a widely accepted United Nations convention (with the USSR among its signatories), countries were obliged to notify the launch and leading parameters of every satellite. Within broad limits this was done.

Satellites can be seen by the naked eye at night when they reflect the sun’s light, but more scientifically they are tracked by telescopes, radar, and electronic means. Space activity is so open to observation and deduction that the news that Plesetsk, in the north of the USSR, was the Soviet Union’s major launch complex first came to the knowledge of the world from Kettering Boys’ School in England. A group at the school under the leadership of an enthusiastic science master kept a continuous watch on space and periodically released details of earth satellites that had newly arrived in orbit.

Among many advantages that flowed from pre-war space programmes was the acceptance by the superpowers (because of its scientific inevitability) of the concept of ‘open space’. This removed one of the difficulties in the strategic arms limitation and reduction negotiations (SALT and START), in that numbers of launchers and missile sites could be so easily verified from space reconnaissance. Verification by ‘national technical means’ was the euphemism adopted in protracted negotiations over satellite surveillance. Both sides knew exactly what it meant. Such reconnaissance had its limits: it could not count reserve missiles kept concealed, nor could it penetrate the secrets of the multiple re-entry vehicles within the nosecones of the missiles themselves.

Man’s activities in space in peacetime, therefore, tended to be stable, both scientifically and politically. Indeed there was considerable co-operation. Sometimes this was even political, as when the USSR advised the United States that South Africa looked to be preparing for a nuclear test in the Kalahari Desert. This intelligence was extracted from Soviet Cosmos satellites manoeuvred over the Kalahari in July and August 1977.

Although the methods chosen by the USA and USSR to get into space differed widely in technical ways, the comfortable feeling generally enjoyed by the uninitiated in the West was that the USA must surely be in the lead. This was not obviously so, and in different respects each was ahead of the other. The US put an enormous effort into the Apollo ‘man on the moon’ programme. The USSR, with less fuss, put their Salyut space station into orbit, and by changing crews rotated some forty astronauts through it on different research tasks. Both those ‘men in space’ programmes were very remarkable but they were very different achievements.

Telemetry enables information gained by optical and electronic sensors in space to be transmitted instantly to earth. In the war these systems were jammed, partially or completely, by both sides, using earth and space jamming stations. Space photography, which involved complicated systems of ejecting the film and sending it back to earth for processing and interpretation, was fine in peacetime but took too long in war. On the other hand, the transmission earthwards of its product in this way could not be jammed. The satellite communications system, which had been well established before the war, was invaluable in keeping political and military centres in touch and in the control of a war moving at an unprecedented pace. But here too the effectiveness of the system was degraded by jamming and other interference.

Satellites were destroyed or damaged by limited rather than widespread counter-satellite action; the numbers of I/D satellites was limited on both sides and they were reserved for high-value targets. In the main, these were the electronic intelligence (ELINT) satellites which gained key information about the enemy’s electronic systems and above all his operating frequencies. Some of the satellites knocked out were replaced by new ground launches, but when this was done great care was needed to ensure that the direction of launch, and the location of the site, involved no risk that the launch of the rocket would be confused with an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) attack. This very sensitive and vital discrimination was well within the state of the art and the facilities available for rapid computer analysis; it was also part of the tacit understanding between the superpowers that such a process of replacement would need to go on in war. As space was well stocked with satellites of all types in the months before the war, replacement launchings were not numerous. In consequence, the much slower launching rate of the US system, with its big satellites and big rockets, did not turn out to have the great disadvantage that some of its pre-war critics had forecast.

Destruction or jamming of the ELINT satellites hurt the West much more than it did the USSR. This was because NATO placed such great reliance on electronic counter-measures (ECM) and ECCM (in which they proved to have a substantial but not overwhelming lead) to offset the numerical inferiorities and unfavourable starting deployments they would have at the beginning of a war. Because of this, the ELINT effort in space, the heavy initial Allied air losses, the congestion in the intelligence system, and what we have recounted in chapter 6 as the story of the Gdansk incident were all tied together. It is also why the events in that particular tale, with its interesting human overtones, were so important at the beginning of the war.

With the strategic and military opportunities that spaceflight offered, it was inevitable that the superpowers would turn their attention to counter-satellite systems. They did so as early as the mid-1960s. The Soviet Union demonstrated its ability to make a rendezvous between satellites during their Soyuz/Cosmos programme in 1967 and the US did the same somewhat earlier in the Gemini series. By the second half of the 1970s it looked as if the USSR was firmly committed to a system whereby the interceptor would approach its target in a similar orbit from below to launch minelets at it or to close with the target and then blow itself up. The war showed those deductions to be correct and both methods were used effectively. Satellites are in essence ‘soft’ targets and very little in the way of impact or explosion is needed to put them out of commission. The principal US system depended on a quite low relative speed collision between the interceptor and the target. These interceptors were launched into space from beneath the wings of F-15 Eagle fighters flying at very high altitude in the atmosphere. Both sides used infra-red homing for the terminal stages of the interception.

Direct ground-launched anti-satellite missiles were also considered but discarded, even though the United States did have some initial success in early trials in the Pacific. As with the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system permitted under the SALT 1 Treaty, the problems of target tracking and split-second missile-aiming from the ground proved too complex and costly as a practical proposition. Another possibility was to offset inaccuracy by the use of nuclear warheads in space but this risked some very unattractive consequences in escalatory effects. Anyway, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty banned nuclear weapons from being orbited in space and, although the treaty might not have held in war, it put an effective brake on trials and development in peacetime.

Much science fiction has proved strikingly prophetic, but space-age tales in the pre-war years in which men promenaded weightlessly in space with death-ray guns found no echoes in the real space war. Colonel Wentworth and his crew in Enterprise 101 were put out of action by a Soviet I/D and he was blinded by a laser beam. But it is now known that this was an experimental chemical laser system of limited range and application. The damage done to Enterprise 101’s engine nozzles, power supplies and flight controls was almost certainly caused by small minelets exploded near the orbiter by the Soviet interceptor.

Fiction and fantasy are one thing and scientific intelligence is another and their relationship is a curiously close one. There was another matter brought to public notice from time to time that caused understandable anxiety and doubt. This was, quite simply, the ‘charged-particle beam’. The theory of charging, or ‘exciting’ atomic particles to concentrate great energy in a narrow beam had been well understood by physicists for a number of years. A charged-particle beam would make short work of any earth satellite — but what was more important, it could almost certainly detonate and destroy incoming ballistic missiles if the tracking and aiming problems could be solved. But like fusion energy — so long heralded as our liberator from the bondage of fossil fuels — while the equations were understood the engineering was not.

It was a Soviet scientist — Gersh Budker — who set the ball rolling in 1956 by demonstrating that once the gases in a magnetic field had attained a certain velocity they could become self-accelerating. With broad parity in strategic and space systems between the superpowers in the 1980s there was much to be said for sitting firmly on the lid of this Pandora’s box. It was thought none the less that the USSR was perversely assigning large scientific resources to trying to prise it open, though there was some dispute within the US intelligence community over the extent of the Soviet programme, the timescale within which an operational system could be expected to appear, and what the United States should be doing to develop such a system.

We now know that charged-particle beams were not employed in the war, but international scientists have recently inspected the great Soviet research complex near the Sino-Soviet border that was dedicated solely to this area of physics. We do not know their full findings but it is clear that Soviet scientists were still some way from being able to reduce the cyclotrons used in this research to a size where they could be used in a ground-based system, let alone one in space.

A less well advertised skeleton in the space cupboard was what the scientists called ‘electro-magnetic pulse’ (EMP). In its simplest terms this was the effect caused by gamma rays hitting the atmosphere suddenly after a nuclear explosion in space. The scientists calculated that the associated electro-magnetic surge would destroy or disable electrical and electronic systems across a wide area of the earth’s surface. Furthermore the ‘footprint’ could be controlled and directed to contain the area of impact. All of this could happen without any of the normal blast and radiation effects on earth of a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere. If this was true (and some unexpected side effects in Hawaii after an American nuclear test in the Pacific in 1962 suggested that it might be) the whole system of command and control of a modern war machine could be paralysed.

Because of the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, the observance of which was well monitored from ultra-high satellites, the EMP theory could not be tested even on the smallest scale. That and other restraints, such as the risk of confusion with nuclear strike, kept this genie firmly in its bottle. All that could be said to the claim of a science correspondent in the London Times on 4 December 1981 that two nuclear explosions in space would immobilize NATO was that if the theory was correct then another two could immobilize the Warsaw Pact as well. There was certainly no general defence against this possible danger when the war started in 1985; but at least some protective measures had been adopted by the industrialized countries in the widespread modernization of their communications in the early 1980s. In broad terms this amounted to the hardening of input circuits in key electronic equipment and the increasing use of fibre optics in the main systems for the distribution of power and information. It is quite possible that the communications for waging war could have been seriously damaged by EMP; but it would not have stopped the war and for reasons of calculated strategic advantage neither side was moved to put the theoretical opportunities of EMP to the practical test.