The Third World War

A Future History
August 1985

by Sir John Hackett, 1910-1997

Published: 1978

JJJJJ IIIII

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 … August Dawn – The First Blows

Chapter 2 … The World in 1984
 Chapter 3… Cradles of Conflict – Middle East and Africa
Chapter 4… Awakening Response in the West
Chapter 5… Unrest in Poland
Chapter 6… No Peace at Christmas
Chapter 7… Summit and Aftermath
Chapter 8… Heidelberg, 27 July 1985
Chapter 9… The Invasion of Yugoslavia
Chapter 10 … Soviet Planning
Chapter 11 … Over the Edge
Chapter 12 … NATO Forces
Chapter 13 … The Warsaw Pact Forces
Chapter 14 … The Stage is Set
Chapter 15 … The Storm Breaks on the Central Front
Chapter 16 … Sea Power
Chapter 17 … The Battle of the Atlantic
Chapter 18 … The War in Inner Space
Chapter 19 … Air Defence of the United Kingdom and
Eastern Atlantic
Chapter 20 … The Air War Over the Central Region
Chapter 21 … The Centre Holds
Chapter 22 … Home Fires: The Domestic Scene in a
Televisual Society
Chapter 23 … The Vital Peripheries: Middle East and Africa
Chapter 24 … The Nuclear Decision
Chapter 25 … The Destruction of Birmingham
Chapter 26 … A Devastating Response
Chapter 27 … Reflections on a War
Chapter 28 … The Beginning of the Future

Appendix 1 … British Defence Policy

Appendix 2 … Gorshkov and the Rise of Soviet Sea Power
Appendix 3 … NATO Naval Command Structure
Appendix 4 … The Home Front
Appendix 5 … Deployment of Forces and Equipment
Abbreviations
Authors’ Note and Acknowledgements

* * * * *

[NOTE: The pictures enclosed are very small and unclear, therefore could not be
used.]
 JJJJJ IIIII

Prologue

The publication of this book so soon after the cessation of hostilities between
major participants in the Third World War will mean that much of what it contains
will be incomplete and, even more, conjectural. In the chaotic conditions prevailing
towards the end, in some key centres of power, vast quantities of records
disappeared. Some have since come to light. Others probably never will.
It has nevertheless seemed important to the writers, all of whom played a part
in the events of 1985 and their aftermath, whether in uniform or out of it, to put
on the record as soon as possible some account, however imperfect, of what took
place in a time of such transcendental importance to mankind.
We write as Britons, profoundly conscious of our debt to others. The outcome
could have been vastly different—and very nearly was. The world has stood on the
edge of an abyss. Under providence, through a gradual but significant shift of
public attitudes and the work of growing numbers of men of foresight and good
sense in the last few years before the outbreak—work often done in the face of
vociferous and passionate opposition—it has been held back, but only just, from
destruction. The margin, everybody now knows, was a narrow one.
Much will be said and written about these events in years to come, as further
sources come to light and further thought is given to this momentous passage in
the history of our world. The narrative now set out in only the broadest outline
and, of our deliberate choice, in popular form, will be greatly amplified and here
and there, no doubt, corrected. It seemed to us sensible, however, before these
events move too far into the background of our lives, to seek answers to some
important questions, in the hope that this might lessen the probability of another
catastrophe from which, this time, we would not so readily escape.
The questions are simple. What happened, and why did it happen? What might
have happened, and why did it not?
London, Easter, 1987

Chapter 1
August Dawn – The First Blows

“Black Horse One Zero, Black Horse One Zero, this is Shovel Six.
Confirming Charlie One’s sighting as follows: large armored formation passed
through inter-German border Zero Three Zero Five Zulu approximate brigade in
size. Composed of Papa Tango 76s, Bravo Tango Romeo 62s, and Tango 72s.
Inform Black Horse Six that Shovel is engaging. Out.”
Captain Jack Langtry, Troop Commander, Troop L, 3 Squadron in 11 Armored
Cavalry Regiment was speaking into his microphone early on the morning of 4
August 1985 as he stood on hill 402 at Wildech, looking across the border zone
over the hills rolling toward East German Eisenach. In the dawn light he saw
scores of armored vehicles moving rapidly toward him on both sides of the
autobahn. Langtry knew what this was: the advanced guard of an attacking Soviet
formation. It could not be anything else.
The 11th Cavalry formed the main strength of the V US Corps covering force,
whose job was to give the Corps maximum time in a delaying action. To the north
was Kassel, out of the Corps area. To the south the Fulda Gap opened up,
dangerously close to the border only 15 kilometers away.
Langtry’s fifteen Shillelagh-firing Sheridan light tanks were in hull defilade along
the high ground overlooking the autobahn that ran from the border to Bad
Hersfeld, directly behind him. His three platoons had practised engaging an enemy
on this same route many times. Today it was for real. He gripped his microphone
and heard his voice give the command, “Shovel, this is Six. Engage at will. Out.”
Almost before his hand relaxed on the mike switch he heard the roar of Shillelagh
missiles leaving fifteen tubes, guided on their way to targets silhouetted in the sad
gray August morning.
The Black Horse Regiment were once again carrying the cudgel for their country
as they had in the Philippines, Mexico, Europe and Vietnam.
Beside Langtry, Trooper Earl Waite suddenly exclaimed, “Man! Look at that!”
Nine of the fifteen missiles had found their targets in sudden shattering fountains
of red fireballs and flames.
The Sheridans were already moving to their alternate firing positions when hill
402 seemed to crumble with the impact of Soviet artillery fire. Waite was killed
instantly and two other members of the TAC CP were wounded. Langtry, unhurt,
quickly moved the command party to an observation post 500 meters further west
near Spitzhiitte.
The Soviet armored formation, after pausing for a moment, was now oriented in
his general direction and a unit could be seen breaking off in an attempt to
outflank L Troop. Langtry knew that this would run into the seventeen XM-1s of
the Squadron Tank Company. That was their misfortune. He saw one of 2
Platoon’s Sheridans fly apart when hit by a Soviet anti-tank missile and said
aloud, “Why the hell did he have to silhouette himself on the skyline? Haven’t I
been harping about tactical driving for eighteen months now?” He then heard the
telltale wop, wop, wop of helicopters over the din of battle as the twenty-one TOW
carrying ATGW Cobras of the Black Horse Regiment began a hide-and-seek battle
with the T-72s swinging off the autobahn in the direction of Heiringen.
Somehow, Langtry felt completely detached from the surrounding battle. He
gave his orders as though this was only another field training exercise. His little
tactical Command Post functioned exactly as it had so many times before when
practising for the battle they all hoped would never come.
 “Shovel, this is Six. Execute Alpha 3.” This was the command to fall back to the
next delaying position, the high ground overlooking Lauterbach.
The first platoon was soon on the move and already halfway to their next
position as the second began to disengage. Langtry waved his arm and the three
M-113s of the TAC CP started to move. As the first vehicle crossed the bridge over
the Lauter, there was a tremendous flash. The bridge disappeared. Langtry felt
himself thrown into the air, hitting the ground with a searing pain in his left
shoulder. Two of his three command vehicles were on fire and the third rushing
down the track on the other side of the stream in search of cover. Langtry sat up
and muttered audibly, “Oh God. I hope the XO takes command in a hurry or the
troop will be SOL.” He felt himself passing out. It was 0447Z, 4 August 1985.9“(1-1)

“It was not yet three a.m. on Sunday 4 August and still dark when the
commander of C Squadron of 8 Royal Tank Regiment in 1 Br Corps covering force
in the Central Region received over his radio the order to stand-to. The daily
routine time for stand-to was just before first light. This was clearly something
special.
The line of the low crest 1,000 metres away to the east was dimly visible against
a sky beginning to grow paler. He stood in the turret of his tank glued to the radio,
heedless of the ordered bustle about him as the fourteen other tanks of the
Squadron, with their supporting vehicles, started up to move out into daylight
dispersion.
He took the mug of coffee handed up to him but did not want to eat. It was
impossible in this time of waiting not to speculate on what might lie ahead. He did
manage to remember, however, his promise to make sure that the TV newsmen
were alerted if anything special turned up.
The voice from Headquarters came in again. “Enemy reported on the move,” it
said. “Stand by at three zero minutes’ notice for Bravo.”
All his tanks and other radio outstations would have heard that transmission;
there was nothing for him to add.
“Bravo” was the move to the Regiment’s emergency deployment position, 1,000
metres over the crest, almost on the Demarcation Line. Most of them knew it
already from cautious reconnaissance on foot, with the tanks left back out of sight
to avoid the frontier incident Division was so frightened of.
In less than ten minutes the voice came up again. “Move out now,” it said. There
was a note of urgency in it.
The light was growing as he promptly gave the word to move, on the internal
radio channel, with the order to load, prepare for action and be on the alert.
The tanks lurched once again into life.
His own was approaching the crest, bumping over stumpy ground, once forest,
now felled to open a field of fire, as his Commander’s voice came up on the radio
again.
“Enemy closer than we thought,” it said. “Expect early contact. Report first
sighting immediately.”
His tank topped the crest on the last words, and there opened up before him the
most frightening sight he had ever seen. The open ground below, stretching to a
faintly seen line of trees about 2 kilometres away, was swarming with menacing
black shapes coming fast towards him. They were tanks, moving in rough line-
abreast about 200 metres apart, less than 1,000 metres off and closing the range
quickly. Another line was following behind and a third just coming out of the trees.
The world seemed full of Soviet tanks.
“You might have told me,” he said into the microphone: “Am engaging now.
Out!”
He gave quick orders to the Squadron and to his own gunner, but already a
sudden huge flash seen through his periscope head, followed at once by a great
black cloud of smoke with a heart of flame, like a volcano in eruption, showed
where a forward anti-tank missile launcher from somewhere behind him to the left
had found its first target.
In the same moment he was stunned and deafened by a thunderous blow, as
from some titanic hammer, outside the tank low down to the right, and was
thrown hard against the side of the cupola as the tank slewed round and
shuddered to a violent halt. At the same time a gigantic clang, which seemed to
rend his skull, told of a solid shot skidding off the sloping front plate without
penetrating. The tank’s main armament, its gun, was useless now.
The thing to do was to get the crew out, all three of them miraculously still alive,
before the next projectile brewed them up.
In a daze, trembling like a leaf, he found himself on the ground, not quite
knowing how he had got there, crouching for shelter in a shallow ditch. Roaring
aircraft filled the sky low overhead, hurtling by at lightning speed with rockets
crashing as they passed. Tanks he knew as Soviet T-72s came charging by in what
seemed endless streams, the ground shaking under them and the air throbbing
with the shrill clamour of their tracks. Squat BMP armoured infantry-carriers
followed, guns blazing to their flanks. Flames were soaring into the sky with rich
black clouds of smoke from burning tanks with their ammunition exploding in
them. He could see no sign of any of his Squadron. His own tank crew had
vanished. This was the war they had expected, not knowing really what to expect.
For him, unhurt but alone, helpless and desolate, it already seemed as good as
over.”(1-2)

The following impression of operations of the German and US Air Forces

with Tornado and F-15 aircraft, on the first day of the invasion, is taken from
Parameters, journal of the US Army War College, Fort Carlisle, Fall 1986.
“The first wave of German Tornados was back at base at Norvenich; only one
was missing. It was 0930 on 4 August. The second wave from the same wing of the
GAF should now be well over East Germany, attacking three Warsaw Pact
airfields, while the first wave prepared for a further counter-air mission.
Oberleutnant Karl von Marschall was both exhilarated and relieved that their
first mission of the war had gone so well. He was taking a breather at the entrance
to the hardened aircrew bunker while his Tornado was being re-armed and
refuelled. He had led eight of them in attacks at first light, his target the East
German airfield of Zerbst. He could not say for sure how effective it had been
because it was done before full light at 60 metres with the target shrouded in
dawn mist. But his navigator, who played a key part in the run-up to the target
and co-ordinated release of fire-suppression and denial weapons, had caught a
glimpse of the airfield through the mist and was bubbling with confidence about
the accuracy of the attack. They had gone at high subsonic speed hugging the
ground at 60 metres over the Harz mountains.
Von Marschall felt that perhaps it was as well that the outward part of this first
mission had been flown blind and automated, as they had so often practised
under simulated conditions. The second mission flying the same sort of profile in
clear conditions and full daylight might be finding it a bit hair-raising as they
rushed very low over trees and houses they could actually see. He felt that having
done it once blind, and with all the stimulus and excitement that battle brought,
he could now face it in clear conditions with confidence, and he was eager to get
off the ground and lead another attack. On the way home they had seen plenty of
MiGs above them as they skimmed the trees but none of the Soviet fighters had
been able to bring their guns or missiles to bear on the fast flying Tornados
skimming the ground below. On this first evidence it certainly looked as if the
ultra-low-level mode of operation was going to pay off in the penetration of heavy
air defences. No doubt things would get tougher as the enemy got the measure of
them - but so far very good.
The crash tenders had taken up ready positions by the runway which meant
that some aircraft must be trying to approach under difficulty. He looked up to see
an aircraft quite high to the east making a very steep descent and a few seconds
later an American F-15 pilot smacked his fighter down on the runway very fast
and very hard on one wheel. As he braked a tyre burst and the F-15 swung off the
runway, missing von Marschall’s Tornado shelter by only a few feet before slewing
round with a collapsed undercarriage.
The aircraft did not burn and Karl ran over to see if he could help. The pilot was
unhurt and climbed out with a cheerful grin as he pulled off his crash helmet.
“Hi—Major Dick Gilchrist. I’m from Bitburg. This bird won’t fly for a while. I
want to get back up there again where the action is. Can we get through to Base
Ops Bitburg?” Karl nodded.
“What do you guys do here?”
“Counter-air on Tornados so far,” said Karl.
“Great—keep at it. We’re doing fine up top but there are so many MiGs it’s like
putting your head in a beehive. I downed three and I guess that’s a fair average,
but there are so many that someone’s got to turn the tap off on the ground—I
guess that’s you guys and the RAF in that low-level act of yours.”
They were both eager to swap experiences of the first few hours of the battle. As
they rode in the crash tender back to Wing operations Karl told him of their attack
on Zerbst.
Then it was Gilchrist’s turn. “I was leading the second section out of Bitburg.
Our ground briefing gave us the area of build-up to the north and the scramble
message was the last thing I heard on the radio. Just white noise, and if you could
get a channel free then it was jammed even worse with voices—so we went visual
on hand signals. Believe me, brother, we didn’t need ground control—the sky up
there is just full of MiGs and F-4s and F-15s. My three went down, just like
that”—he mimed it with his hands—“and then something hit my ship hard. The
sonofabitch flashed across me slightly low—it was a wide angle shot and I just hit
the gun button and he rolled straight over. Back at gunnery school they’d be
proud of me, but,” he added ruefully, “not here I guess. As he went down I saw his
tail markings and it was a Belgian F-16 with a MiG 23 right on his tail. I guess it
was the MiG that shot me up. Anyway my left engine was out and my power
controls had gone so that’s what got me in here on such a lousy landing.”
Karl smiled encouragingly as Gilchrist went on. “I felt really bad doing Ivan’s
work for him but I had my own troubles. I sure hope that Beige got out all right—
but—hell, those F-16s aren’t meant to be this side of the SAM belt anyway. If this
is the way it’s going to be, and no radio either, you’ve got to stick in your own air
space or ride down on the silk.”
It was time for von Marschall to join his squadron for briefing. They wished each
other luck. As the airfield defence alert state was still only Amber he left Gilchrist
in the Wing ground-training room. The walls were pasted with aircraft recognition
silhouettes. There were some good ones of the F-16; he thought that might be
helpful.”

“146 Air Defence Battery Royal Artillery had deployed its twelve Rapier
detachments that night along the Hotenberg ridge and out on to the plain to the
east. The task of these detachments was to defend I British Corps Headquarters
which had established itself in the village of Nieder Einbecken. Each detachment
had a launcher, loaded with four slim, matt-green Rapier anti-aircraft missiles, a
target tracker and a complement of four soldiers commanded by a sergeant.
There was no sign of battle—no smoke, no noise other than a muted organ-swell
to the east and north. Sergeant Edwards swung his eye across from the four dark-
green missiles on the launcher to the camouflaged pile that was the tracker, with
Gunner Henry buried in the rubber eye-piece. His gaze turned to the ripening
asparagus field below: hadn’t someone called this the season of mist and mellow
fruitful…
Alarm! The cry from Henry made him swivel and run to the tracker. He dived
into the camouflage as “Target seen!” was bellowed into his ear. With a curse he
disentangled his head from the netting and looked out over the plain. There was
an aircraft approaching, but far too slow and far too low. Something was wrong.
“It’s not hostile,” called Edwards. A Tornado, trailing a white stream of fuel, was
making an erratic course westwards. Uncharitably Edwards swore at the pilot, for
he was way outside any safe lane and too close for comfort to the headquarters. As
the Tornado scraped over the Hotenberg he suddenly felt apprehensive and with
an urgency that suprised him ordered the rest of the detachment to stand to.
Low out of the eastern horizon four silent dots were approaching at high speed.
“Targets seen and hostile!” burst from the tracker. In the far distance two flashes
appeared from the ground. The left-hand Soviet aircraft disappeared in a ball of
brilliant yellow flame but the second missile soared fruitlessly into space.
“In coverage!” yelled Henry. Edwards ordered him on to the centre aircraft of the
remaining three and immediately a Rapier left the launcher. The missile curved
gracefully towards its target and with tremendous elation the detachment watched
a second Fitter scatter itself over the plain in a brilliant burst of fireworks.
Simultaneously the port wing of the right-hand Fitter burst apart and the aircraft,
spiralling downwards, covered the asparagus field with a sheet of oily flame.
Before Edwards could react a second Rapier had left its rails towards the survivor
of the sortie but with a thunder of afterburners the Russian pulled sharply to the
left, frighteningly close to the detachment, and skimmed at tree-top height along
and over the ridge. Their second missile had been wasted.
The action had taken just over two minutes. A quarter of an hour later Edwards
was wondering why the four aircraft had not gone for Corps Headquarters when
he noticed that, low out of the eastern horizon, four more Fitters were approaching
fast.”(1-3)

This account of an action of an ATGW section in a brigade of Guards battle

group was given by its commander and only survivor to R. J. McLintock, who has
reproduced it in his book Micks in Action: With the Irish Guards in Lower Saxony,
Leo Cooper, London 1986:
“…about thirty T-72s and at least twice that number of BMP now west of the
obstacle, sounds of a large force following them—over,” crackled the headphones
into Sergeant Patterson’s half-deafened ears beneath the hood of his sweat- and
dirt-stained NBC suit. He had been awake for more than forty-eight hours; his last
real sleep had been in his quarter near the barracks three nights before. He
silently prayed that his wife and baby daughter had got back to England safely
and jerked his mind back from nameless fears to the present, to the section of
Milan anti-tank guided weapons he commanded in the Irish Guards battle group.
They had deployed and dug for the last two days and this morning the Soviet
attack came in. The war that everyone had said could never happen had begun.
They had been in position on the edge of the now deserted village all day while
Soviet aircraft roared overhead and the sounds of war from the east grew closer,
like an approaching thunderstorm. They had watched pitiful, horrifying remnants
of the covering force withdrawing - vehicles loaded with wounded grinding back up
the main route, always under strafing and bombing. Grim reminders of an
overloaded APC which had exploded 100 metres to their right now hung on the
fence outside the once neat German Gasthaus.
Then came the shelling. For twenty minutes the earth shook and the sky
darkened as tons of explosives crashed around Patterson. One direct hit and his
brother, cheerful young Sean, with Guardsman Nevin, ceased to exist. Nos. 1 and
4 posts had survived. The men at No. 3 post were alive but wounded, with only
three missiles left. With growing disbelief he watched through the dust and smoke
the ragged lines of Soviet armour coming across the battered cornfields - fields
which in the sunshine that same morning had reminded him so much of the Sligo
farm of his youth.
With a black hatred he followed the tanks through his sight -watching and
waiting for the command tank. They had been taught to recognize it, with little
difficulty, by the way it moved. He picked it up as it passed, and with a muttered
prayer fired. He cursed the sweat that ran into his eyes but held the crosswires on
his target while he counted… 8-9-10. A huge flash and the T-72 lurched to a halt,
smoke billowing. He tore his eye from the sight and saw nearby another tank
explode. No. 4 post had scored too.
The next minutes lasted for ever—reload—aim in the thickening dust and
smoke—fire—down on the belly and crawl with gasping lungs to another
position—then reload again—fire. After ten minutes No. 4 post was gone; then
Flynn, his No. 2, was ripped from wrist to shoulder by a splinter.
Only three missiles left now. Patterson looked wearily through the sight and saw
a tank halted, its turret facing him. He dropped with Flynn behind the stones in
the ruins of a barn. The world blew up and went black…
Hours later he came to, the only member still alive of Number One Section,
Milan Platoon, 1 Battalion Irish Guards.”

The report given below of a battery of M-l 07 175 mm self-propelled guns in

action appeared in the Daily Mail on 8 August 1985. It is based on an account
given to the Mail’s reporter by one of the gun detachment.
“The six guns of 1 Medium Battery Royal Artillery were well camouflaged. The
Soviet aircraft thundering overhead showed no interest, apparently intent on what
lay further west. The silence that followed their passage was uncanny. Over the
gun position lay the stillness of expectation—of what, no one knew.
Earlier that morning the Battery had deployed in and around the deserted
village and had been immediately called upon for fire by their OP with the covering
force. They fired continuously, each gun pumping three or four rounds a minute,
every minute. For what had seemed eternity Gunner Wilson’s world had been a
bucking gun, the surrounding clouds of dust and smoke and a stench of cordite so
intense that he could taste it. The concussion and the noise no longer registered
on his numb body. He had become an automaton, very tired, more tired he
thought than at any time in his life. The war was still only three hours old. Now
there was this terrible quiet broken only by the staccato sound of clipped speech
on the gun’s radio.
Tell-tale signals from the Battery Command Post’s radio must have been picked
up by Soviet direction finders and the location of their emitters passed to the
artillery. Sixteen kilometres to the east two rocket batteries were loaded and
trained. Within two minutes 9 tonnes of high explosive destroyed the silence of
Wilson’s village.
Wilson and his friend Mackenzie moved to hump the last of the ammunition.
Mackenzie never reached it, as the village burst into flame, smoke and crashing
noise around them. A more terrifying concussion followed, then a hot blast
carrying flying metal and debris along like feathers threw them to the ground.
Driven by the most primitive of instincts Wilson clawed his way between the tracks
of the gun and pressed himself to the ground, his eyes shut tight; at least its bulk
offered some protection against the inferno outside.
It took him time to realize that there was no noise any more, no guns firing, no
shells exploding. Then he became aware of a persistent gurgling animal wail from
close by. Slowly he lifted his head and with a shudder saw that the sound must be
coming from what was left of Mackenzie, disembowelled by a shell splinter, dying
quickly but noisily. Alone with this frightfulness his fear turned into unreasoning
panic.
The clang of a hatch and the No. 1’s voice penetrated his loneliness: “Quick, lad,
into the gun. We’re moving. We’re not hanging around to cop the next lot.” Hands
clasped his wrists and dragged him into the warm, oily belly of the self-propelled
gun. With a clatter of tracks they moved on west to a new position to get into
action again.”

The following appeared in the German magazine Stern during the second
week of August. It was based on a report given by one of the survivors of a tank
unit of the Bundeswehr in action:
“Unteroffizier Gunther Klaus was standing in the turret of his Leopard II tank,
eating his breakfast. He found it unattractive. A hunk of brown bread with some
cheese on it, a slice of Blutwurst and a hard-boiled egg had just been handed up to
him by his gunner. A canteen of coffee followed. He did his best to eat.
Half an hour before, at 7 a.m., the order had come from the Kompaniechef to be
prepared to move at 0800 hours, but to remain meanwhile in positions of
observation. These were on the high ground south-east of Wolfenbüttel, and Klaus
was a Zugfuhrer, in charge of his own and three other Leopards in 16 Battalion of
3 Panzeraufklärungsregiment.
There had been reports that a Soviet motorized division, having crossed the
border during the night, was moving in their direction. This morning’s first-light
helicopter reconnaissance had not confirmed this. All Klaus had seen was retiring
groups of British and German light vehicles; none had come close enough to be
asked for news. Two of his tank commanders were scanning the arc of observation
for which his platoon was responsible, and shortly he would take over from one of
them.
Just as he was raising the canteen of coffee to his lips, a sharp order came
through his radio headphones.
“Prepare to move in ten minutes.”
He acknowledged the order, passed it quickly to his three tank commanders,
and ordered his crew to prepare for action. Luckily there was still time to finish his
coffee. Ten minutes is a long time in war.
Half an hour later, the position was very different. The whole of his company
was advancing, in the usual tactical order, with two platoons moving to the next
tactical feature about 1 kilometre ahead, supported and covered by the other two
in fire positions. When the leading platoons were in position they in turn would
help the next two forward. No shooting yet—there had been nothing to shoot at—
but every tank was ready to fire as the leapfrogging went on.
“Ganz schnell! Vorwärts!” came a sharp radio order to him as his four tanks
moved carefully forward to the ridge half a kilometre ahead, jinking from side to
side as they went so as to provide a difficult target.
Suddenly the world was full of express trains shrieking past. Enemy armour-
piercing shot! He fired his smoke protective shells at once and changed direction,
telling his platoon to conform, to seek the cover of a small copse ahead to the left.
The sky appeared to fill with huge predatory helicopters bearing strange markings
and, worse, with rockets issuing from their undercarriages. The Leopard next to
him stopped, smoke pouring from it. One crewman scrambled out, another got to
the turret and fell back, a shattered trunk. Of all absurdities, there occurred to
Klaus at this very moment a phrase which had been hammered home to him and
his classmates at the Panzerausbildungsschule so often and so emphatically. “The
great thing about the Leopard tank, which makes it superior to all other Allied, as
well as Soviet, tanks, is its agility. It gives you protection through speed.”
“Speed up,” he yelled through the inter-com to his driver, “and jink for your life!”
Far from speeding up, the tank slithered to a halt as a shuddering jar smashed
it sideways. Klaus glanced down into the turret. It seemed to be full of blood and
roughly butchered meat. There was an ugly smell of burning.
“Protection through speed, eh?” thought Klaus. “Was fur Quatsch ist das!” What
rubbish! He jumped to the ground and ran. A moment later the whole Leopard
exploded in a shambles of twisted metal, equipment, human wreckage and the
indescribable mess of war.”

Accounts such as these show how powerful was the impact of the
thunderbolt which came down in the early morning of 4 August on NATO ground
forces in the Central Region of Allied Command Europe, and the fury in the air. It
was so violent as to leave on most of those who first had to meet it a very deep
feeling of shock. Its effect was stunning. Some of the ground troops who came
through the first day unscathed were by the evening as dazed and disorientated as
the survivors of a savage traffic accident.
Very few of the men now engulfed in the volcanic eruption of ground action on a
modern battlefield had ever before been exposed to anything remotely like it. The
thunderous clamour, the monstrous explosions, the sheets and floods and
fountains of flame and the billowing clouds of thick black smoke around them, the
confusion, the bewilderment, the sickening reek of blood and high explosives, the
raw uncertainty and, more than anything else, the hideous, unmanning noise—all
combined to produce an almost overpowering urge to panic flight. To men in
forward units the enemy seemed everywhere. Their roaring aircraft filled the sky,
ripping the earth with raking cannon fire. Their tanks came on in clanging black
hordes, spouting flames and thunder. The fighting vehicles of their infantry surged
into and between the forward positions of the Allied defence like clattering swarms
of fire-breathing dragons. It looked as though nothing could stop the oncoming
waves. There seemed to be no hope, no refuge anywhere.
Panic here and there was only to be expected. Some lately recalled reservists—
and even long-service regulars—found this sudden exposure to gigantic stress
more than they could bear. Occasionally, under the swift contagion of uncertainty
and fear, NATO units simply broke and melted away—but not often. Men adjust
quite quickly, even to the appalling conditions of the battlefield, particularly where
there is a job to be done which they know how to do and for which they have the
right tools, and above all when they do it under competent direction in the
company of their friends. The first day was a nightmare—but it was far from a
total disaster.
But why was all this happening? What had brought it about? How had the
course of events developed to this point—and what was now to follow?

Chapter 2
The World in 1984
 By the inauguration of the fortieth president of the United States in
January 1985, the world was in transition from the old-fashioned conflict
situations, based on military and political competition for power, towards the
newer ones involving urban guerrilladom and a ‘Third World manufacturing
revolution’—though in some places this was going erratically wrong. North-South
had begun to overshadow East-West.
There were 180 governments in the world. As in 1977, at the time of President
Carter’s inauguration, only about thirty-five of these could realistically expect their
leaders to be replaced by a process of election. The most common way to change a
government was by coup d’état or by dictatorial succession.
But the frequency of coups was growing, and they were often bloody.
Bureaucrats in some communist countries had reason to fear that the habit might
spread to them. The more fearful apparatchiks included some in the Soviet Union,
a country which had for so many decades normally changed its government not by
violent overthrow but by cosy dictatorial arrangement. China, by contrast, was
concentrating on becoming ‘a new Japan’ through economic expansion. There was
already talk of a China-Japan co-prosperity sphere.
The new President-elect of the United States, Governor Thompson, was a
southern (and therefore conservative) Republican. He had been quite unknown
nationally two years before his election in 1984, just as his two-term predecessor,
President Carter, had been two years before his own election in 1976.
Mr Thompson had campaigned energetically against the ‘soft-centred
international liberalism’ of the Democratic candidate, Vice-President Mondale. The
President-elect was, however, worried by his own relative lack of knowledge of
international affairs, and called two prestigious advisers in this field down to his
South Carolina home the weekend after his election. One adviser was the director
of the new United Universities Think-Tank. The other was a previous Secretary of
State, always known as the Ex-Secretary.
The two were asked to set down a summary of their views about the main
challenges that would face the Thompson Administration over (as it was assumed)
the years 1985-93, and to compare these with the challenges that had faced the
USA on President Carter’s Inauguration Day in 1977. The Think-Tank’s report was
to concentrate on the ‘poor South’ of the world, the Ex-Secretary’s report on the
Soviet Union and the ‘rich North’.
During the week after the election of November 1984, and therefore eleven
weeks before his Inauguration Day in January 1985, Governor Thompson received
these two reports.
The Think-Tank’s report displeased him. It seemed, he told his wife, to be
‘written by a computer with a bleeding heart’.

THE THINK-TANK’S REPORT ON THE ‘POOR SOUTH’, NOVEMBER 1984

On President Carter’s Inauguration Day in January 1977 there were 4
billion people in the world, of whom two-thirds (or 2.7 billion) lived in
countries with a median income below $300 a head, while one-third lived
in countries with median incomes above $3,000 per head. About 55 per
cent (or 1.5 billion) of the 2.7 billion people in very poor countries were
below the age of twenty-one. That, indeed, is a major reason why they
were such poor countries. They were, in 1977, nations of children, who
produced pretty well nothing, and of teenagers, who produced little but
riots.
The main change on your Inauguration Day in 1985 will be that those
1.5 billion people will be eight years older than they were in 1977. The
main change on your retirement day in 1993 will be that they will be
sixteen years older. As the 1.5 billion have moved up into the main
childbearing age groups, world population has inevitably risen somewhat
(to 4.5 billion), although fertility rates have luckily continued the decline
they were already showing by the early 1970s.
The poor countries of 1985-93 are no longer nations of children and of
teenagers, but of under-employed cohabiting couples in potentially the
most productive (and militarily effective) age groups, the twenties and
early thirties.
The great majority of this unprecedented addition of 1.5 billion people
to the world’s labor force since 1977 are non-white, and are as literate as,
for example, the Turkish workers in Germany in 1977, when they had an
earnings level of around an annual $5,000 in 1977 dollars. There is no
reason why with a proper technostructure the additional population
should not attain earnings of something like the same standard, bringing
from those 1.5 billion young workers by far the biggest sudden increase in
real gross world product the world has ever seen. The tragedy is that the
techno-structure is not in most places being provided.
The poor South of the world can today be divided into four groups:
1. A few breakthrough countries where real GNP is increasing at 7-12
per cent per annum, but which have also maintained social cohesion.
Apart from the People’s Republic of China, most of these are countries
which have retained free-market economic systems: e.g. Brazil in South
America; Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines in Asia. Many of them
are in East Asia, however, and have therefore been aided by the
remarkable economic growth in China since the death of Chairman Mao,
even more by the coming together of the Japanese and Chinese economic
miracles [see the Ex-Secretary’s report below]. Most of these Asian
‘breakthrough’ countries will want to remain neutral in any big power
struggle, and continue to make money, as the United States did in 1914-
16 and 1939-41.
2. A certain number of unstable right-wing countries: e.g. Mexico and
Argentina in South America, the richer states of the former Union of
South Africa and the capitalist half of the disintegrating Indian Union.
These countries have free enterprise economic systems, and have
generally had quite high economic growth rates in the period 1977-84.
But they have been unable to handle the social problems of the
proletarianization and urbanization of a sizeable part of their labor force,
so urban guerrilladom, muggings in the overcrowded cities, and
corruption in the civil service and police are rife. Their governments are
sometimes unlovely rich men’s dictatorships, which proclaim loudly that
they are loyal allies of the United States, though the United States should
not always be pleased to have them.
3. A group of unstable left-wing countries: e.g. Egypt (and indeed most
other African countries, including Zimbabwe), Bangladesh and the poorer
states of the disintegrating federation of India, and also to some extent
Pakistan. In these countries the governments are generally replaced by
coups d’état, and the ‘new class’ of government technocrats live in
constant fear of these.
4. The only Moscow-communist countries left in the poor South of the
world are now in the Caribbean—led by Jamaica and Cuba. But some of
the ‘unstable left’ countries—of which the most important is Egypt—seem
to be moving towards Moscow. The former communist small countries in
East Asia (Vietnam, North Korea, etc.) still call themselves communist—as
does Chairman Hua’s China—but with the Japanese-Chinese
rapprochement they are merging into the East Asian co-prosperity sphere.
Significantly, the Asian republics of the Soviet Union itself are showing
some signs of restlessness. Their peoples would gain if they could forge
more independent ties with the China-Japan co-prosperity sphere and
loosen their ties with Moscow, just as the states of the disintegrating
Indian Union and former Union of South Africa have loosened their ties
with Delhi and Pretoria.
The real GNP of countries in these four groups and their growth since
1977 clearly indicate that the ‘breakthrough’ and ‘unstable right-wing’
governments have made their peoples much more prosperous in the
period 1977-84. In economic terms, the ‘unstable left’ countries (wholly)
and the Moscow-communist countries (partly) have failed. It would be
better for all the peoples of the world if more countries could be lifted out
of the ‘unstable left’ class into either of the first two categories.
Yet the four most likely flashpoints of trouble in the poor two-thirds of
the world, at this beginning of your presidency, are connected with
possible attempts by either ‘unstable left’ or Moscow-communist countries
to seize or subvert power in ‘unstable right’ countries. We would judge
that these four most probable flashpoints are:
1. In the Middle East. The conclusion of peace with Israel, under the
Geneva settlement during Mr Carter’s presidency, has allowed the Arabs
even more freedom for their internal quarrels. Since the new unstable left
government in Egypt remembers the food riots with which its own
supporters overthrew the former President Samdi, there is a strong
temptation for Egypt to go for the oil of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. This
could be by means of internal subversion followed by proclamation of a
new and immensely rich United Arab Republic (including Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait) which would sponsor a new hard line in OPEC. Egypt has
been angling for some time for Soviet support for such coups d’état in
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, but so far this has been refused. It is quite
possible that a ‘United Arab’ coup d’état would win popular support
among young men in the Gulf, since many of them regard their free-
spending sheikhs as effete pooves, like the rulers of the old Ottoman
Empire. If a new UAR of this kind were ever proclaimed, some people
would say that the consequent threat to world oil supplies would, of itself,
justify US military intervention in the area. We would not advocate this,
but the choice between peace and war, even nuclear war, might
conceivably lie outside American hands. The only stable right-wing
(indeed, ‘breakthrough’) country in the area - the Shah’s Iran - might not
sit idly by. And Iran now probably has a nuclear capability based on
French technology, even though it has never tested a weapon.
2. The communist Caribbean (in which Jamaica is now the leader,
rather than Cuba) and unstable governments of Central America might try
to initiate a coup d’état in Mexico, whose dynamic new president deserves
US support.
3. Black African forces from the ‘unstable left’ countries of Zimbabwe
and Namibia, supported by Cuban and Jamaican and maybe even Soviet
‘volunteers’ landed in Angola and Mozambique, might attack those states
of the former Union of South Africa which have developed right-wing
governments, sometimes ‘unstable right-wing’ ones. By far the richest of
these states are, of course, the three ‘white tribes’ homelands’ of Southern
Cape Province, Eastern Natal and Krugerland (Pretoria-Johannesburg).
But a real prosperity is also being attained by those black-ruled states
and cantons of the former Union of South Africa who have struck up
successful (although so-called ‘Uncle Tom’) economic relations with the
three White homelands. If there is an actual invasion of this area from the
north, the dilemmas set for your Administration will be: (a) economic,
because benign growth spreading from the dynamic area of former South
Africa appears to be Africa’s only hope for a non-oil economic growth area
this century; and (b) military-moral, because the white tribes in South
Africa agreed under the Treaty of Pretoria of 1982 that neither they nor
the black tribes in former South Africa should have substantial military
forces, but that there would be reliance on UN troops on the northern
border (most awkwardly, now Mexican, Polish and Indian troops) and
perhaps some hopes, however ill based, of intervention by US troops.
4 Rival factions and states in the former Indian Union may start
appealing separately to the Soviet Union and China. There might be civil
war again in this whole area of India-Pakistan-Bangladesh.
But the biggest threat to peace may lie in the troubles of the Soviet
Union and its satellites. This is discussed in the Ex-Secretary’s report on
the rich North of the world.
President-elect Thompson received the Think-Tank’s report at the same
time as he was presented with the Ex-Secretary’s report, which dealt with
subjects closer to his heart.

THE EX-SECRETARY’S REPORT ON THE ‘RICH NORTH’, NOVEMBER

1984
 The principal instabilities in the rich North of the world between 1977
and 1984 have come in old-fashioned countries or blocs which have failed
to adapt in time to the new basis of survival. Soviet Russia has shown the
least ability to adapt to a changing world, and Moscow is now beset by
crises to its west, east and south.
Poland and Yugoslavia, for different reasons, are the two most
dangerous flashpoints in the West.
Poland has diverged significantly from the norms of communist society.
Comecon-decreed exports to the USSR are interfering with its standard of
living, while political dogma is preventing the introduction of free
enterprise systems in Polish industry. Polish workers much prefer
employment by multi-national companies, when these operate in their
country, to employment by the Polish state. The state, though the most
powerful employer, is also the most disliked. As Poland goes tomorrow,
Czechoslovakia and Hungary are liable to go the day after.
East Germany is bound to seek a greater political role, proportionate to
its economic superiority in Eastern Europe. East Germany now has a gnp
per head of $4,000 a year, twice European Russia’s $2,000 a year.
Neighbouring West Germany has a GNP per head of $11,000 a year, and
the East Germans know they could have something like this too if they
could ever throw off the yoke of the USSR.
The successful participation by the Italian communists in government
since 1982, and a Popular Front government in France, have frustrated
further advance towards European union and have weakened NATO. But
the Italian experience has also bred unexpected dangers for the Soviet
Union, because it has shown in practice the success of other roads to
‘socialism’, and thus provided encouragement for Poland.
This is a model more likely to be followed than that of the weak new
regime in post-Tito Yugoslavia, which has not been able to resist the
establishment of pro-Soviet cells in Serbia. But Yugoslavia is another very
possible flashpoint, precisely because it is so weak. If there are near-
revolts in Poland or East Germany, I do not think the Soviet Union will be
eager to send in its own troops to put them down. But they might well
engineer (and accept) an invitation from communist cells in Serbia to put
down a so-called capitalist counter-revolution in Slovenia or Croatia.
This would be the cheapest Soviet intervention, designed to show the
Poles and others that the Red Army still can, and will, move quickly and
aggressively when it must. It is therefore all the more dangerous that
NATO has left its policy towards Yugoslavia so vague. At present the
Russians probably feel that a re-assertion of their power in Poland might
lead to reaction from the West (perhaps from West Germany?), but that a
new assertion of power over Yugoslavia would probably bring no Western
response more powerful than protests.
West Germany has been somewhat disillusioned by the disappointing
progress of the EEC and of NATO. The CDU-led opposition is playing for
power in Bonn by reviving hopes of reunification with East Germany.
Internal revolts in Poland and East Germany might now bring a more
positive response from Bonn—a prospect which fills the Soviet Union with
alarm.
The Soviet Union itself is ruled by the last of the Second World War
generation, believing in power for the regime, austerity for the masses and
a foreign bogey to encourage obedience. The government in Moscow is
said to be beginning to be somewhat worried about the possibility of
disaffection in the Red Army; the present generation of educated youth
has no great enthusiasm for three years’ conscripted service under arms.
Moscow is even more worried about the growth of nationalism in the
Asian republics of the Soviet Union, which are looking enviously at the
increasing prosperity of Japan and China.
The fastest economic growth in the years 1977-84 has occurred in
Japan, China and the countries with close trading links with them.
Already in 1950-73 Japan had led the industrial growth league, and it
should probably have been foreseen that China would follow it. China and
Japan share many characteristics. These include traditions of
subordination of the individual to the group in a search for group
harmony; an incredible vitality, which is very different from the attitude in
India, and owes less to material incentives than that in the West; and a
capacity for hierarchical self-organization. China under Chairman Mao
had already provided the groundwork for economic take-off by creating
almost full employment in the countryside. Chairman Hua then opened
the door to the import of foreign technology. It was natural that the main
technology to flow in (including that for increased production of Chinese
oil) should be Japanese.
The China-Japan economic alliance is leading to a sort of political
alliance as well. Although China calls itself communist, it now looks like
becoming a Swedish version of Japan. This is providing a degree of
security in that quarter of the world.
There is no degree of security in the other three-quarters of the world.
Some part of the blame for this must be laid on continuing Soviet-US
military rivalry. Strategically, after eight years of Democratic
Administration in the US and the ineffectuality of SALT, your incoming
Republican Administration must decide how to react to a situation of
Soviet nuclear superiority and an established Soviet capability to destroy
surveillance and communications satellites. The remaining US superiority
is now in long distance intervention capability, in technology in general
and in electronics in particular.
Mutual deterrence is further complicated and weakened by nuclear
proliferation among the feuding Third World countries. Some of these are
going to go nuclear anyway, and both the USSR and the US might see
advantage in providing know-how and intelligence to potential clients
(e.g., ‘unstable left-wing’ and ‘unstable right-wing’ governments) in order
to gain new positions of strength and in the belief that this will give a
better chance to control a nuclear outbreak.
I would strongly counsel the new Administration against such
proliferation, and indeed against any deliberate baiting of the worried
 Russian bear at this juncture. It is possible that a third world war could
be started by mistake, though probably only if two or more of the main
points of instability around the world become critical at the same time.
Reserves of crisis management have dealt satisfactorily with Cuba in
1963 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War in isolation, and even with the
combination of Suez and Hungary in 1956, but none of these directly
involved both superpowers. Our present systems for containing crises
could be overstrained in a multifarious mess in which the superpowers
saw their vital interests engaged on several fronts at once. Simultaneous
crises in, say, the Middle East, Southern Africa and Poland (or Yugoslavia)
would cause just such overstrain.
It is possible that there will be such multiple crises if the Soviet empire
starts to crack under its own pressures. There might even be important
developments in the eleven weeks before your Inauguration Day.

The final words of the Ex-Secretary’s report proved to be prophetic.

Chapter 3
Cradles of Conflict – Middle East and Africa

When asked by his major what history would say about all his comings and
goings, General Burgoyne replied without hesitation, ‘History, sir, will lie!’
Gentleman Johnny knew what he was talking about.
Historians seem likely to fix the beginning of the Third World War as a day in
1985, but as far as the people of Africa and Arabia were concerned it had already
been in progress for more than a quarter of a century. By the summer of 1985 the
war was being conducted in a score of countries with a variety of motives, methods
and participants which was remarkable even in a continent renowned for variety.
Nowhere were the participants so divided, the results so inconclusive or the
military operations so bizarre as in the Horn of Africa.
Events there hinged round Ethiopia. The Soviet Union’s plan for a federation
had of course come to nothing. There was too much to quarrel about. In Addis
Ababa the Soviet puppet General Madkushu had succeeded in retaining power,
but very little else. He presided over anarchy. He had had his greatest rival Colonel
Abnatu executed and in this way had secured his position within the Dergue. But
his position in the country as a whole had never been more insecure. It was no
more than his just deserts. Sudden in his judgements, a revolutionary for the sake
of revenge, a military leader for the sake of oppression, he was singularly well
qualified to fulfil the role of dictator and devastator of his homeland. He had been
given arms and assistance enough by the Soviet Union, but had succeeded in little
more than the terrorization of the central area around Addis Ababa. He had failed
in the prosecution of operations against Eritrea and Sudan, and Kenya’s support,
more real than visual, availed him nothing. Madkushu could not even reassert the
central government’s authority over the dissident provinces of Tigre and
Bagemder. Soviet troops, and Cuban advisers, training teams and troops might
advise, train and assist, but they could not overcome sloth, indifference, tribal
rivalries and sheer incompetence.
In spite of deep divisions within the various factions of the Eritrean Liberation
Front, one figure continued to stand up as the only one likely to command support
general enough to be able to forge some unity—the veteran leader Suleiman Salle.
His strength lay in the support afforded him by the Sudan. Training, weapons,
ammunition and, if necessary, refuge - these were powerful magnets. The other
Eritrean separatists, while no doubt playing their own waiting games, could see no
one else whom they could use to paste over the cracks. Suleiman Salle became the
first President of Eritrea. Elderly he might have been, but the world abounded with
encouraging instances of longevity at the seat of authority. Madkushu may have
condemned him and sworn all sorts of vengeance, but the distractions of DJibuti
and the further separatist movements in Tigre and Bagemder were enough to
prevent his mounting anything other than murderous guerrilla sorties into Eritrea.
Even after Ethiopian reoccupation the Ogaden continued to provide a threat to his
security. How, Madkushu asked himself, could the Soviet Union first support
Somalia against himself and then himself against President Sarrul of Somalia,
when they themselves were such implacable enemies? The answer, of course, was
that it was because they were implacable enemies. If you back both sides there is
a better chance of winning: heads, I win; tails, you lose - it worked very well.
Once the French garrison had been withdrawn in 1977, and with the
compliance of Hassan Guptidan and his Issa supporters, the Somalis had no
difficulty in establishing themselves at Djibuti. In spite of disagreements, the
temporary expulsion of Soviet and Cuban advisers, and capricious fluctuations of
support—in spite, even, of helping Ethiopia against them - the Soviet Union had
returned to Somalia in strength and had continued to supply arms and aid. In
return the USSR exacted absolute security for their air and sea bases at Berbera
and Kismayu. If this was an important requirement in a period of what the world
called detente, it may be imagined with what speed and decision the Russians
fastened their grip upon the Horn of Africa in war. With 10,000 of their own troops
and some 2,000 Cubans redeployed in Somalia, this was not difficult. Equally total
was their control of the other side of the Gulf of Aden, where we shall shortly make
our way.
Apart from West and North-west Africa, the quietest part of the continent,
sandwiched between two large areas notable for their turbulence, was East Africa.
Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi were enjoying not only tolerably harmonious
relationships with one another, but also a degree of internal placidity unknown
since the days of British guardianship. While Tanzania continued to support
FRELIMO and to deploy troops in northern Mozambique, the others did not allow
this harmony to be disrupted by what was happening in Mozambique or to
interrupt their own assistance to the enemies of FRELIMO. It was a game that
everyone played—on both sides. The succession in Kenya of a military council
after Kenyatta’s disappearance from the scene, some years before, was matched in
smoothness by the skilful manipulative powers of Tanzania’s ruler, who, while
accepting Cuban military assistance in the training of his armed forces, resolutely
refused to accept the political advice which was offered with it. Malawi went its
own way, and since the demise of the tyrannical Field Marshal Omotin, even
Uganda, under its newly designed federal government, was beginning to re-
establish a degree of confidence and prosperity, with plentiful Western Aid.
The last rash actions of Omotin in the first years of the eighties had left their
scars, of course. His decision, in a fit of pique and desire for that military glory
which had evaded him in Zaire, Zimbabwe and the Sudan, to invade Kenya was
disliked by all those of his senior advisers whose experience entitled them to an
opinion. But such hostile unanimity did not deter the Field Marshal from
embarking on his own chosen form of Blitzkrieg. At the same time the admirable
and ubiquitous intelligence service built up by the Kenyan armed forces enabled
them to bring about the dissipation of Omotin’s forces and hopes alike. Omotin
based his stroke on the supposed invincibility of his Soviet aircraft and tanks. The
tanks were reduced to flaming dustbins by the skilfully operated Milan anti-tank
guided weapons, the MiGs plucked from the sky by Kenya’s Rapier and Blowpipe
missile systems.
The crowning humiliation was the capture of Omotin himself, not by the
declared enemy but by some of his own people, the Acholi and Langi tribesmen, to
whom he had displayed the utmost extent of his spite and vindictiveness. Trusting
his bulk to an Agusta-Bell helicopter in a supposedly morale-raising visit to his
troops, the morale of both Kenya and his own countrymen was greatly raised by
the news that he had fallen into the hands of his former victims after a forced
landing. They had taken their revenge by blowing him from the muzzle of a 76 mm
gun.
North of East Africa was the distressed and turbulent Horn; south of it lay the
yet unfinished struggle for Southern Africa. One battle—the battle for Zimbabwe—
was over. The white Rhodesians had gone, and in the main had been absorbed
into the Republic of South Africa. The much more serious battle for South Africa
itself had by 1985 not yet got properly under way, in spite of all the skirmishings
and preparations and promises. In Zimbabwe itself, Bishop Zilothi of the United
African National Council had triumphed. He could not have done so without the
allegiance of the powerful Karanga tribe and the former regime’s black troops and
policemen. Nor could the help provided by Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana be
forgotten. Indeed the leaders of those countries were determined that it should not
be. Zambia’s and Botswana’s leaders, both nominal and actual, were easy to
identify; Mozambique’s less so.
The great issue for Southern Africa, indeed for Africa as a whole, was widely
thought to be how and when the confrontation states would subjugate the
remaining white power there. Three of the four states concerned, Mozambique,
Zimbabwe and Namibia, had not only their own resources and experience of
fighting for independence to draw on. Outside support was plentiful and urgent. In
Mozambique, Soviet, Cuban and Somali troops were equipped with tanks, aircraft
and missiles; in Zimbabwe were the amalgamated regular army, guerrilla forces
and police; and in Namibia, Cubans, Nigerians and Jamaicans were well
supported by Soviet advisers and Soviet weapons. On paper it appeared to be only
a matter of time, of where, when and how, rather than whether. Soviet policy had
had an unending run of success in Southern Africa. What was to stop it now?
 But the white South Africans had not allowed the veldt to grow under their feet.
Ever since the formation of Zimbabwe, they had embarked on the creation of a
levee-en-masse to form a kind of Volkssturm, which would combine firepower with
speed of movement, a proper intelligence system with security of military
resources, and a rigorous training cycle. There were two big questions. How would
they find weapons if the US and UK (and possibly even France) denied them? And
what would the inhabitants of the Bantu homelands and the black population
remaining in the white homelands do about it all?
Nor was this last the only question the confrontation states had to worry about.
Their own internal problems were legion. Events in Mozambique continued to
show that numerous and ruthless guerrilla forces were not the monopoly of
Marxists. The Marxist President Sathela hardly knew from one day to the next
whether he would be president in a week’s time. The Soviet military advisers were
strangely indifferent to his apprehensions. Perhaps it was because they were more
concerned—and their concern was to turn into assurance with the arrival of
further Cuban contingents—about the security, for their own subsequent use, of
the new air base at Buzaruto, some 150 miles south of Beira, and of the harbours
at Maputo, Nacala, Porto Amelia and Beira itself. This apart, Sathela was able to
console himself with the thought that his own bodyguard was composed largely of
East German and Portuguese mercenaries. As long as their pay was forthcoming,
his own prospects were at least a talking point.
As for Zimbabwe, the patterns of power and intrigue almost defied even the
Soviet passion for faction and counter-faction, revolution and counter-revolution.
One principal thread was discernible—the uneasy alliance of Bishop Zilothi and
the main guerrilla controllers. How long the alliance would survive raised the
question of the extent to which Zimbabwe would commit itself and its forces to the
struggle for South Africa. This was a matter for the High Command of the
Confederation of Africa South People’s Army (CASPA) to examine.
If enthusiasm for CASPA were to be measured solely by military contributions to
it, Botswana would have rated low among the front-line states. Indeed, she had
virtually no armed forces which could be despatched outside the country. How
different was the capability, if not the intention, of Namibia.
In Namibia SWAPO (South-west Africa People’s Organization) had won, though
not without outside help. The intervention of strong Nigerian forces from Angola
had been decisive. It had enabled a coalition between SWAPO’s leader, the Chief of
the Hereros, and the Ovambos, the most numerous tribe of Namibia, utterly to
destroy the Nationalist Party’s influence, with the result that, as in Zimbabwe,
most of the white population, in this case about 100,000, had gone to South
Africa. SWAPO troops had tasted blood. Admittedly supported by Angolan MPLA
(Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) forces, Cuban troops and the
Nigerians, they had turned out of Namibia a total of 50,000 South African soldiers
equipped with modern weapons and aided by fighter aircraft. They were not likely
to forget it. And they had got their hands on one of the world’s main sources of
uranium. This too they did not intend to forget. Namibia’s president, SWAPO itself
and the bulk of its Ovambo troops were all committed to the crushing of South
Africa, and it was from Namibia and Mozambique that the main invasion forces
would come.
 South Africa itself was to become an important battlefield of the Third World
War, outside Europe, another being the Persian Gulf and southern Arabia. But
South Africa had not been softened by twenty-five years of changing opinions, by
what was thought of as the treachery of the United States and the degeneracy of
Europe. These years had hardened its white population, and had made them
realize that unless US policy changed to the extent of a total reversal no succour
was to be had there. They would have to do it with their own resources, their own
people and their own pluck. They had not wasted time. From the very moment of
the creation of Zimbabwe in 1979 and the loss of Namibia a year later,
preparations had proceeded night and day. The independence of the Bantu
homelands had made it easier, for the strongholds of white supremacy, reliant
though they were on black labour for both urban and rural endeavour, had
shrunk to the white homelands of the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, Natal and
the Cape Province. There were nearly 4 million white people in these provinces,
about half that number of coloured, and a quarter that number Asian; the blacks
totalled some 7 million.
What had been done militarily within the homeland had been done elsewhere by
the Swiss and the Israelis, but by few others. All male and most female citizens
underwent initial training as recruits for six to twelve months. Refresher training
for up to one month each year was the rule for all up to the age of fifty. South
Africa’s regular armed forces were by 1985 about 60,000 strong with reserves
about equal in number. The combined Landwehr/Volkssturm, which could be
mobilized in forty-eight hours, was nearly half a million. Of this well over 100,000
were Kommandos with their own air, armoured and communications units,
organized into brigade-like formations of several thousand each. The Boers were
not going to be caught napping. What is more they had absorbed 250,000 white
Rhodesians and 100,000 white refugees from Namibia, who did not intend to pack
their bags again. They were further strengthened by plentiful volunteers from
Australia and New Zealand.
The antipathy of many in the world outside South Africa to the policies pursued
there towards coloured peoples and the consequent deep reluctance of the US and
British governments to give military aid to South Africa, even in a struggle against
the spreading power of the USSR, meant that no forces from either country could
be expected to come to help her in war, and there was little prospect of significant
military aid from any other Western source. They were on their own. There was by
the end of the seventies no longer even the hope of procuring military supplies in
any quantity from other Western sources. Some were had from France but not
enough. South Africa turned to Japan and her associates in South-east Asia. By
the beginning of the eighties the trickle of military equipment which began to come
in at the end of the seventies had become a flood. Compelled to rely solely on her
own manpower for her defence South Africa had now no need of Western hardware
to equip it.
In Angola there was the greatest Soviet presence and at the same time the
greatest anti-communist activity. The battle for Angola was not yet over. Harassed
by UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola), mauled by Zaire,
Sovietized by Russian masters, and manipulated by Cuban puppets, the reign of
President Ageto had stumbled to a humiliating conclusion, replaced by a coalition
of his rivals, still essentially Marxist, propped up by the Soviet Union and Cubans.
The Cuban and Nigerian military contingents were now increased to 40,000 and
20,000, respectively, with two battalions of Jamaicans. The Soviet advisers
numbered some 15,000 and included radar, communications and industrial
technicians plus port-operating experts. But even all this foreign support could
not alter the fact that UNITA’s forces in the south were growing in strength and
now numbered about 25,000, that Angolan National Liberation Front (FNLA)
forces were still active in the north, and that the Cabinde Liberation Movement,
with Zaire’s assistance, was gaining support. Whatever the difficulties of
establishing absolute control over the whole of Angola, however, the Soviet Union
was clearly determined to keep a grip of what she most wanted—the ports, the
airfields, the jumping off ground for driving through Namibia to South Africa, and
a general area which could be used as a relatively secure base for her proxy troops
to go anywhere in Southern, Central or even West Africa. In strategic terms the
Soviet victory in Angola had been of immense significance. South Africa’s Prime
Minister at that time had seen it as the whirlwind before the storm, as simply one
exercise in a series of exercises aimed at providing bases for black guerrilla troops
and Soviet proxy mercenaries to launch their attack on the final target of South
Africa.
Of all the black African countries and their leaders which most wished to tread
the path of moderation and evolution, Zambia and President Luganda stood out
from all the others. He had wholly supported the creation of Zimbabwe. He was
not sure, even in 1985, that the time had come to deal with South Africa, for he
felt that the African front-line states could not do it without enormous and
prolonged Soviet and Cuban assistance and that to tolerate the presence of these
in Southern Africa on the scale required would simply be to exchange one sort of
subjugation for another. Nor with armed forces numbering a mere 8,000 and
growing concern about Zambia’s borders with Angola, could any troops be spared
from Zambia for the great trek south.
In neighbouring Zaire, in spite of greater resources, both in raw materials and
men, there was little enthusiasm for waging war outside the country’s own
territorial limits. Their experience of communist intervention in the latter 1970s
had not endeared the Soviet Union or her proxy soldiers to the rulers of Zaire any
more than the uses made by these of Katangan rebels. The former president had
long since retired to his retreat on Lac Leman. The new president of Zaire had
been in office for nearly five years; during this time he had reorganized the armed
forces, and had turned more to France and Belgium for economic aid, shunning
the Soviet Union’s attempts to include Zaire in their haul of Marxist states. After
all, with its diamonds, copper, oil, cobalt and zinc, and with its 30 million people,
Zaire was a rich land. Frontier forays had gone on - from Angola, from Congo-
Brazzaville and from Burundi. The army had not succeeded in controlling the
Simba rebels on Zaire’s eastern border. But all in all Zaire had reason to be
content.
Soviet, Cuban and Jamaican influence and presence did not stop short in
Central Africa. They had established themselves almost everywhere in West Africa.
In Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, Guinea itself, Nigeria and Mali, instructors,
advisers and troops at once represented and encouraged the growth of Marxism.
 If we leave aside the strategic value of ports, airfields and communications
southwards, the principal factor in West Africa was, of course, Nigeria, with a
population of some 70 million and armed forces of nearly 250,000. Her army had
tanks and heavy artillery; her navy had frigates and landing craft; her air force
had interceptors, ground attack and transport aircraft and helicopters. What is
more they had battle experience spreading over twenty years—civil war, battle in
Central Africa, the great triumph in Namibia. Guided, equipped and encouraged
by the Soviet Union and Cubans, they would be a force to be reckoned with in the
coming struggle for South Africa. The head of state, formerly Chief of Staff of the
Armed Forces and a declared radical, had in the end found his own presence at
the summit of affairs to be preferred to a return to constitutional rule. The fact
that Nigeria supplied an increasing share of US oil imports was no small factor in
the situation. Nigeria may have been a long way from Pretoria. It did not intend
that distance should muffle its voice or lessen its hostility.
North-west Africa was mercifully free of much of the turbulence which prevailed
in the central, southern and north-eastern areas. Most North-west African states
had had their struggles for liberation from the colonial powers; they had had their
internal struggles for governments of their own; they had had their experiments in
external fishing in troubled waters; they now wanted to be left alone. At the same
time they did not wish to be totally excluded from the luxurious game of not letting
others alone. Morocco was prepared to offer both advice and troops. But the
likelihood of Moroccan troops being deployed as far south as the new seat of war
was not great. In any event, quarrels with Algeria and Mauretania, never far below
the surface, were simmering once more.
Algeria herself was the joker in the pack. She was not willing to risk a single
Berber or a single dinar in a cause that could be of no direct and immediate
economic or political benefit to herself. It was not for nothing that the Algerians
had understudied the French for so long.
Libya was totally different again. Incredibly, Colonel Farouk, Libya’s radical
nationalist leader, had survived. Most of the countries in which he had attempted
to intervene had shrugged off his intervention. He was always seeking out trouble
but never taking up arms; always meddling and threatening, but never acting;
never in battle, but never out of it.
All this was bound up with what was happening in Egypt. President Hassan el
Samdi had long wanted to have a proper hold on his paymasters - Saudi Arabia
and the oil-rich Gulf states. It was not for him but for his successors to achieve
this. When President el Samdi was removed as a result both of food riots and of
public disillusion over the Israeli settlement he was succeeded by the somewhat
unlikely coalition of the Vice-President, Ahmed Mohamed and the War Minister
and Commander-in-Chief, General Aziz Tawfik.
It was almost a repetition of the Neguib-Nasser relationship. Mohamed was the
comparatively respectable front man of the team, even keeping up normal
relations with the conservative ruling families of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Tawfik,
on the other hand, had the wholehearted backing of the younger elements in the
armed forces and of the intelligence services. The latter, chafing at the restraint
imposed on them by the previous government, came forward with ambitious plans
for creating by subversion a new and grander United Arab Republic, to embrace
this time not the maverick Libyans or the ungovernable Syrians, but the sources
of Arab wealth in the Arabian peninsula.
There was one problem: these ambitions could only be realized with massive
Soviet help, both to provide the means of military takeover and to stave off any
American attempt to intervene in favour of the status quo, and to preserve the
supply of Middle East oil to the West. This would be a major change in Egyptian
foreign policy, but Egypt was not renowned for consistency in these matters. The
adoption of Russian support in the fifties and the repudiation of it in the seventies
had been equally sudden and surprising. Egypt had breathed a great sigh of relief
at the ending of the state of war with Israel in 1980. But the resulting relaxation of
military effort had not released enough industrial resources to match the
inexorable increase in population. Moreover, with the reductions in the armed
forces many officers lost their jobs and formed a discontented group, only too
ready to look to new external adventure to restore the power and privilege which
they had once enjoyed.
Peace had not given bread to the masses or adequate employment to the
intelligentsia. Renewal of hostility with Israel seemed to promise no better results
than on previous occasions, especially with the Arab world even more fragmented
than before. The overriding need seemed to be to create, if necessary by force, a
centre of Arab strength to which the other quarrelling factions would gradually be
attracted. Then at least it would be possible for the Arab world to decide where its
future lay. This glamorous objective was held to justify the risks of achieving it
with Soviet support.
It is still not clear whether the Egyptian services spontaneously advocated the
‘reversal of alliances’, or whether it was inspired by Soviet influence, which had
retained a presence in the recesses of Egyptian intelligence even when its more
overt manifestation had been brought to an end. In any event, Tawfik was
persuaded, by economic necessity no less than by personal ambition, and gave
covert approval to a programme of subversion, provided Soviet support could be
confirmed. We shall describe later the Soviet deliberations which clinched the deal.

Chapter 4
Awakening Response in the West

In Western Europe the late seventies had seen something of a shift in

attitudes to East-West relations. Disillusion and disappointment over the resolute
Soviet refusal to make any real concession to Western concern over human rights,
international agreements notwithstanding, probably did as much as anything to
foster the new note of realism. The Russians began to be given more and more
credit for meaning what they had now been consistently saying for a long time,
that Western capitalist societies were doomed to fall before the inexorable advance
of Marxism-Leninism, and that the armed forces of the socialist countries, under
the leadership of the USSR, must expect to play a major part in their overthrow.
 The warning was as clear as any given by Hitler before the Second World War.
The steady build-up of offensive military power in the Soviet Union, at the cost of
much else, was not only wholly consistent with a determination to impose Soviet-
Russian ends upon other societies, by force of arms if necessary. It was hardly
consistent with anything else.
There were those in the West who believed in the existence of a Soviet master
plan for the achievement of world dominion, with every move at every level ordered
in accordance with it. This was fanciful. Its palpable unreality, however, was not
unhelpful to the Soviet interest. The derision it attracted did something to distract
attention from what was really happening, which was nothing less than the
preparation of a position of military strength from which any international
situation could be manipulated to the Soviet advantage.
Soviet policy was one of unlimited opportunism within a wide range of possible
contingencies, for very many of which quite detailed military plans were constantly
kept up to date. It drew strength from two main sources. On the one hand was the
dogma of the dialectic, that capitalism was bound to disintegrate under the
stresses of its own internal contradictions - to which was added the somewhat
puzzling injunction that though this was inevitable it was still the duty of all
socialists to try to bring it about. On the other hand was the endemic thrust of
Russian imperialist expansionism, owing nothing to the dialectic, constant under
any form of rule.
The threat from the Soviet Union to the parliamentary democracies of the West
had, in the preceding thirty years, engaged the serious attention of their
governments. The Atlantic Alliance, with the supporting military structure of
NATO, resulted. Public opinion in the member countries of the Alliance, however,
had long showed some reluctance to support the military measures required to
meet the threat. In this respect the last years of the seventies had seen something
of a change, as a result of which the military defences of the Alliance began to
move out of the highly dangerous conditions of weakness into which, by 1977,
they had been allowed to sink.
The position of the United Kingdom, a country of critical importance to the
Alliance, if only because of its geographical location, was in some ways typical of
the position among the European allies in general and on both counts deserves
particular consideration.
Britain had its own special problems. Withdrawal from empire had been
unsettling. Swift though this had been in the twenty-five years since the Second
World War, insufficient time had elapsed by 1975 to allow of complete recovery of
national balance in the new role of a second-class power with negligible overseas
possessions. An extraordinary obsession in the people of Britain with the
redistribution of wealth, rather than its creation, had done much in the same
period to cripple national enterprise. This had gone hand in hand with the
encouragement of general reliance upon state-provided welfare in place of the
reliance upon themselves which had previously been characteristic of the British,
while there had also been an ugly and unscrupulous exploitation of the politics of
envy. It began to be increasingly clear, however, even to those politicians whose
hearts were stronger than their heads, that national welfare depended on national
wealth, and that the state produced nothing to distribute.
 At the same time the massive burden of British trade unionism began to prove
unwelcome to the working people who had to bear it. Of the desirability of
combination to promote and protect the interests of workers, once the Industrial
Revolution had opened the door to the predatory instincts and the restless,
innovatory genius of an island race of adventurers, there can be little doubt. The
importance of the protection afforded to the workers by the unions, and the benefit
this brought them in earlier days, can hardly be exaggerated. It was when the
blind benevolence of politicians had allowed the unions to move outside the law,
when a proper watchfulness on the union side had given way to unimaginative
Luddism, when reaction and restrictive practices were putting a savage brake on
enterprise, when activities originally intended to improve living standards were
now seen to be doing just the opposite, that the majority of the nation, who did not
belong to trade unions, began to be increasingly resentful of their subjection to the
minority who did.
Although, as events in Britain in the mid-seventies showed, politicians in a
parliamentary democracy can go on governing for some time in a manner
unpopular with the people as a whole, they cannot go on doing this indefinitely.
Attempts at confrontation with the power of the trade unions, made by both the
main political parties, when each in its turn was in power, had been total failures.
Up to the mid-seventies public opinion in Britain was not yet sufficiently aware of
the menace from union power to face the discomforts of standing up to it, and the
attempts of both parties to diminish it were dropped.
After a few years more, however, the British public had had enough. When
prudent men in politics and sensible men in trade unions, of which there were
very many, saw that it was not going to be easy to push the public around much
more, they gently and adroitly let some of the steam out of the situation. Trade
unionism in Britain did not go out with a bang, as some had hoped, nor even with
a whimper. It gradually subsided to a convenient shape and size and continued to
play a very important part in its originally intended role.
What happened over the trade unions was evidence of the refreshing and
welcome spirit of realism and common sense which gradually began to emerge on
every side in British public opinion in the late seventies. A new political
approach—which also demonstrated how politicians will inevitably in the end be
guided by changes in public opinion—was before very long to become evident in
the matter of defence.
These years saw slow but significant changes in Britain. A total addiction to
redistributive economic and fiscal policies, which showed itself in hostility to
profit-making and in penal taxation on industrial enterprise, was gradually being
replaced by more sensible attitudes, which at last permitted an increase in
national wealth. These changes, together with the movement of world trade out of
recession and the revenue from North Sea oil, contributed to some recovery in the
standard of living in Britain and, in no small measure, to a revival of national
confidence.
As the United Kingdom at last began to find a new awareness of national
identity in a post-imperial mode, less began to be heard of separatism in the parts.
Devolution became less fashionable. Less was also heard of any suggestion that
the world owed Britain special consideration, which may have at one time been
justified, let alone a living, which never was. There was less and less support of
what had previously been known as progressive education. There was acceptance
of the necessity for children in school to learn, even when they did not greatly like
it. Variety in educational provision almost ceased to be regarded as sinful,
independent schools were once more allowed to flourish, as so many parents
wished, and even the public schools, their old-fashioned discipline long derided by
radicals who so often sent their sons to profit from it, came under less violent
attack.
The instinct to voluntary service, an instinct rather disliked by the more
extreme addicts of the welfare state, was also seen to have survived, and even once
again began to flourish. Scouts, Guides, St John Ambulance and countless other
voluntary organizations reported sharp rises in recruiting. So did the volunteer
reserves of the armed forces. In universities it began to be quite fashionable once
more to join the Officer Training Corps. There was even a movement towards a
voluntary revival of civil defence, long neglected by government.
In this changing climate of public opinion some scrutiny of Britain’s security in
the world was before long inevitable. More notice began to be taken of what
threatened it. There was more questioning of the extent to which Britain was
taking a proper share in her own defence. It was even suggested, possibly unfairly,
that it might no longer be enough to rest on what some called abject reliance on
the United States.
The British record in the sphere of common defence did not stand up under
scrutiny any too well. At the close of the Korean war in 1952 the proportion of the
gross national product devoted to defence was 11.2 per cent. This was possibly too
much. In the financial year 1976-7 it was 4.9 per cent. This was certainly too little.
Even further reductions were being sought by some. The National Executive
Committee of the British Labour Party (from whose control the Labour government
of the day was content to remain free) was in 1977 demanding a further reduction
in defence spending by one-third.
It is still, as this is being written, too early for a balanced assessment of where
responsibility lies for the dangerously low state to which the defences of Great
Britain had by the year 1977 been allowed to fall. Though historians will probably
agree that no political party is free from serious blame, they are already beginning
to accept that, however regrettable the economies made in the mid-seventies
under the transparent guise of improved efficiency, it was in the defence policies
formulated in the UK Defence White Paper of 1957 that the rot really began. It is
here that the first real signs appear in the sphere of defence of a latter-day British
tendency to duck responsibility and shy off into make-believe, a tendency which
did much to bedevil relations with Britain’s allies in the years that followed.
The basic idea behind the 1957 White Paper was that American strategic
nuclear power was to be the primary guardian of peace in Europe. Britain
contributed her own nuclear bomber force, but beyond that all she was called
upon to do was help provide a conventional trip-wire to identify a major incursion,
which would then be answered by massive nuclear retaliation from the United
States. A very great saving in cost would result as well as a great saving in
manpower. This is, in fact, what happened. The political party in power at the time
was able to go to the country at the next general election as the party which had
freed the nation from military conscription in peacetime.
The baleful spirit of the 1957 White Paper brooded over British defence policy
for twenty years. When the USSR achieved rough parity in strategic nuclear power
with the United States the US moved from the somewhat implausible concept of
deterrence extended over her allies by the threat of massive nuclear retaliation, if
any of her allies were attacked, to a rather more realistic concept of defence at any
level of attack—the concept of flexible response.
To this, which became the accepted policy of NATO, successive British
governments paid lip service, but little more. It was clear that what they relied
upon to prevent the Soviet Union from attacking the West, even with conventional
means alone, was the threat of very early escalation into a strategic nuclear
exchange between the Soviet Union and the United States. Delivery systems for
battlefield nuclear weapons, for which the warheads (numbering some 7,000 in
the European theatre by 1977) remained under US control, were integrated into
the British-commanded Northern Army Group in NATO, as they were elsewhere in
Allied Command Europe. What was emerging as the basis of Allied defence
planning was the concept of the ‘Triad’—the combination of conventional defence,
battlefield nuclear weapons and strategic nuclear action in closely coupled
sequence. This was as fully endorsed in the United Kingdom as anywhere else in
the Alliance. How far it was taken seriously anywhere is open to argument. There
is little evidence that it was ever taken seriously in the UK.
The NATO concept of the ‘Triad’ envisaged the development of sufficient
conventional forces in the forward areas to identify a major aggression and slow it
down, while posing the threat of an early introduction of battlefield nuclear
weapons if it did not come to a halt, followed, if necessary, by strategic nuclear
action. No one knew exactly what would happen when battlefield nuclear weapons
were released, but it was widely accepted within the Alliance that a tactical
nuclear battle could hardly be expected to proceed for long without escalation into
a strategic nuclear exchange. On the other hand, an observer of the British Army’s
deployment, equipment and training policy could scarcely fail to conclude that,
whatever happened, the British did not expect to have to take part in a tactical
nuclear battle at all, or indeed, it may be added (to judge by the dismantling of
their civil defences), in any form of nuclear action whatsoever.
It has been pointed out elsewhere in this book that the policy of the ‘forward
defence’ of the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany, to which more and
more attention had to be paid as the stature of the FRG among its allies grew,
required, if it implied no surrender of West German soil, either enormously strong
conventional forces deployed along the frontier or an immediate nuclear response.
The first was impossible: Allied governments made it quite clear that they were not
prepared to furnish the necessary troops. The second, an immediate nuclear
release, was highly unlikely.
This dilemma in planning the defence of the Federal Republic was of not very
great consequence in the southern half of it, where difficult terrain gave the Allied
forces available there (under American command in the Central Army Group –
CENTAG) some chance of holding a stronger enemy. For the weaker forces
deployed in easier and more open country, under British command, in the
Northern Army Group (NORTHAG), there was far less hope of this. Many would
say there was none, and that the only hope of countering an invasion in the north
by conventional means lay in abandoning what was described as ‘forward defence’
(which looked uncomfortably linear) and fighting instead a battle of manoeuvre in
depth.
Observance of West German susceptibilities over surrender of territory,
however, obliged NORTHAG to plan for a forward battle. If the troops (some of
whom were stationed a long way back in their home countries, in Belgium and
Holland) could be got up in time the attack, under this concept, would be met on,
or near, the Demarcation Line with East Germany. With much greater weight on
the other side, as well as the initiative in choice of time and place, there could
hardly be any chance of holding it there. However it began, the battle was bound
to develop in depth, with the outcome being determined by the action of reserves
held further back for counter-penetration operations in the first place and then for
a counter-offensive.
Such reserves did not exist, even on paper. Why not? Because, the answer
would run, when it became clear that the available conventional forces could not
hold the enemy the situation would be restored by the use of battlefield nuclear
weapons. There was therefore no great need for conventional forces deployed in
depth.
Though the forward location of special weapon stores (in which nuclear
warheads were kept) meant that some would be overrun before the weapons could
be used, there would still be plenty left. Delay in securing their release, however,
was inevitable, even supposing a very early resolution of the agonizing dilemma
which impaled the FRG, in whose territory very many of these warheads, if not
most, would land. The Allied rubric, moreover, enjoined that no release could be
expected before all conventional means had already been tried and exhausted -
that is, in effect, before the conventional battle had been lost, leaving a situation
which could almost certainly no longer be ‘restored’.
The wisdom of locating stores of nuclear warheads in vulnerable forward areas
was brought in question in 1977, when it was pointed out that nuclear attack was
much more likely on fixed, static concentrations than on troop formations in the
field, and that in consequence missile attack from submarine launchers might be
more sensible than from launchers on the battlefield. By 1984 there had been
some reduction in forward holdings but these were still considerable.
Accepting the declared NATO concept of the ‘Triad’, however, and assuming that
tactical nuclear weapons were introduced, a nuclear battle would result. For this
the Russians were equipped and trained. The British (and most of the other Allies)
were not. No major British weapon system in use in 1978, even the newest, offered
plausible protection to crewmen fighting in a nuclear environment. Training in
movement over contaminated ground was rudimentary, equipment for
decontamination and provision for its practice—and even for the acquisition and
dissemination of radiation intelligence -was far from adequate. British defence
policy, in contra-distinction to that of the Soviet Union, clearly embodied no real
requirement to fight on a nuclear battlefield. It even seemed that the British
contribution to the defence of Europe in the Central Region of the Allied Command
contained a deliberate insufficiency, whose purpose was to force on the United
States not so much an early release of battlefield nuclear weapons as an almost
immediate movement into strategic nuclear attack, perhaps on the USSR itself.
There could be no doubt, the argument ran, that the Soviet Union realized this
too. It was here, the British seemed to think, that true deterrence lay.
To British politicians in the seventies, under pressure from some of their
supporters to cut the defence vote at almost any cost, the approach was an
attractive one. It was, in essence, indistinguishable from that of the 1957 White
Paper. Whatever it might now be called, British defence policy was still that of trip-
wire and massive retaliation, disfigured somewhat by claims that economies,
which left front-line troops less capable of fighting, were in fact contributions to
military efficiency. Whether this would remain indefinitely acceptable to the United
States, which was clearly expected to hold the baby, was another matter.
Professional military men in the parliamentary democracies of the West are
generally honest people, loyal to those they serve and reluctant to take part in
politics. Many were anxious and deeply disturbed over the situation here
described. But as long as the public demanded of their politicians nothing more,
and showed little inclination to put up the money for anything better, there was
not much that the military men could do. The difficulty was compounded in
Britain where, although the Civil Service had been allowed greater freedom of
political expression during the late seventies, the tradition that the military must
not debate government defence policy in public was still rigorously applied. It was
paradoxical that in a country where free speech was so cherished the military
remained so firmly muzzled. Nevertheless, in institutes and societies devoted to
the debate of public affairs, with which Britain abounded, some awareness grew
up among responsible people of the real situation and, in particular, of the
dangerously changed character of the air threat to the British Isles and the urgent
need to repair its air defences.
The heart and core of the Alliance remained, as it always had been, the United
States. There, in the mid-seventies, four tendencies began to converge. First, there
was a growing awareness of the true dimensions of the threat. It was accompanied
by none of the hysteria occasionally evident in the early fifties but was nonetheless
impressive. Second, there was increasing impatience with the reluctance of the
European Allies to take a fair share in their own defence—an impatience that grew
more marked as growing prosperity left the European allies with less and less
excuse. Third, it began to be questioned even in Europe whether it would be easy
to persuade any American president to invite the incineration of Chicago, for
example, if the Northern Army Group in Germany were broken through and there
was nothing left to SACEUR but nuclear weapons. Finally, the feeling grew that
flexible response should mean just what it said. This implied that a radical review
of the defences of the Alliance at the non-nuclear level—including the massive
contribution of the United States itself—was overdue.
The European allies did not long remain in ignorance of the trend of opinion on
the other side of the Atlantic and the force behind it. In Britain, which was no bad
indicator of European opinion, the public began to develop a more receptive
attitude. Pressure to make better provision for the air defence of the British Isles,
upon which an American effort in Europe would so much depend, now met with a
more favourable response. In some of the countries whose troops were assigned to
Allied Command Europe, the initiative and example of the United States began at
last to be followed. It was certainly clear in Britain that the public was beginning
to take a positive interest in defence which the politicians could not forever
disregard.
Quite small things often have a decisive effect. SACEUR realized that the lack of
reserves in depth in the NORTHAG area, coupled with the inability of NORTHAG
either to offer a credible forward defence with non-nuclear forces or to sustain a
tactical nuclear engagement, and the near certainty that a breakthrough would
not be at once followed, as the British seemed to hope, by strategic nuclear action
on the part of the United States, set up a dangerous situation. To help correct it
two US brigades were deployed in the sector of the Northern Army Group (which
had hitherto had no US formations under command) where NORTHAG’s reserves
might have been located, had there been any.
In Britain, the implications of this did not at first sink in. When it was more
widely realized that the Americans were doing for the British what the British had
been too idle, too apathetic or too parsimonious to do for themselves, a trace of
public uneasiness was discernible which would almost certainly not have been
evident a year or two before. It was by no means inconsistent with what some
observers saw as a reawakening of a sense of national identity. This was to have
considerable influence on British defence policy.
As the current of public concern over national security began to flow in Britain
at the end of the seventies, it became increasingly clear that the reductions in
defence expenditure to which all political parties had from time to time inclined—
some, it must be said, more consistently than others—and which it had become
part of the ritual liturgy of radicalism always to demand, no longer wholly
conformed to the wishes of the people. The restoration of cuts, and even some
increases, hesitantly begun in the financial year 1978-9, were seen to meet with
public approval. Greater national affluence helped them to be more easily borne.
By 1983 the ceiling imposed on defence expenditure five years before, regarded
then by many as immutable, was already being exceeded by more than two-thirds.
The points at which improvements in provision for the national defence were
seen to be most needed, and where improvements were in fact made the earliest,
were three. There was a reversal of the suicidal tendency to weaken NATO on land
by erosion of the British Army of the Rhine; more attention was paid to the no less
critical situation of the air defence of the United Kingdom; and improvements were
at last set in hand to the country’s ASW (anti-submarine warfare) defences and its
maritime air forces.
This outline of developments in the United Kingdom, seen as an indicator of a
trend, widespread if uneven, in European countries of the Atlantic Alliance at the
end of the seventies, is amplified, in some of its more important aspects, at the
end of this book in Appendix 1. It is enough to say here that a sharper awareness
of the threat to peace from the growing military strength and the persistent
political intransigence of the USSR, on the part of some (but not all) of the
European Allies, was leading, in varying degree, towards improvements in their
contribution to the defence of the West. The consequent condition of NATO, as the
point of decision approached, will be reviewed in Chapter 12.
 Chapter 5
Unrest in Poland

The Third World War was said by many to have broken out in the same
country as the Second, in Poland, on 11 November 1984, the sixty-sixth
anniversary of the end of the First World War. It did not seem like an outbreak of
world war at the time. In fact, many put the blame for the initial workers’ riots in
Poland on what was no more than an incident during the US presidential election
campaign.
During the Thompson-Mondale television debates, both candidates had been
asked whether they regarded the present Polish government as a satellite of the
Soviet Union. Mindful of the Polish-American votes that President Ford had lost in
Chicago and elsewhere through giving a soft-on-communism answer to that same
question in 1976, Governor Thompson had been careful to keep his answer on
what might be called the hawkish side of Mr Mondale’s. One of his aides evidently
feared that he had been too hawkish, and shortly before his press conference next
day was urging an unwilling candidate to find some way of recanting.
By a misfortune which had dogged US politicians’ microphones on other matters
Polish, a microphone inadvertently left live passed on to waiting pressmen Mr
Thompson’s reply: ‘Goddammit, Art, I’m not going to say that I wish to make it
clear that if the brave Polish people rise against their Russian oppressors, then a
Thompson Administration would most certainly leave them in the…’ Suddenly,
realizing that his words were being overheard by newsmen, Thompson ended with
a grin and the words, ‘expletive deleted’.
There was a ripple of amused applause from the newsmen. In subsequent
statements, Mr Thompson was at pains to emphasize that he was threatening
nobody. Nonetheless, he was now to some extent saddled with this overheard
statement—and it would have been politically damaging for him to retreat too
abjectly from it. Indeed, under questioning at a meeting of minority groups in
Chicago, he attempted a counter-attack. He accused the Carter Administration’s
Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski (himself a Pole by birth), of being
‘altogether too ready to sell his native country down the river’. Nobody who
analysed Thompson’s statements could seriously suppose he was encouraging a
Polish insurrection, but there were a good many people (including some in Poland)
who feared that restless Poles who heard what he had said repeated in garbled
form might suppose that that was just what he was doing.
After Mr Thompson’s election as president on the first Tuesday in November, a
memo from the Polish Ministry of Home Security ordered the political police,
assisted where necessary by the army, quietly to round up potential strike leaders
from factories in Polish towns other than Warsaw. The Ministry had heard a
rumour that otherwise some sort of provincial general strike might be called to
mark President Thompson’s Inauguration Day on 20 January.
The rumour was untrue, but the arrests caused a crisis. The political police and
the army tried to arrest workers’ leaders on 11 November, and met with
resistance. In some places shots were fired. In more Polish troops were reluctant
to obey orders and continue with the arrest of workers.
By 12 November factories in several provincial cities of Poland were under
workers’ control, flying the prewar flag of Poland with the communist insignia torn
out. Dramatic visual evidence of these events was provided by a group of
dissidents working in Polish television. In Gdansk, the television station was taken
over and held for some hours by technicians whose sympathies were with the
strikers. Though the government reacted promptly, ordering the police to storm
the station regardless of casualties, the staff were able in the time available to
them to beam pictures of the riots out to Denmark and Sweden. In Sweden the
authorities yielded at once to the threats which swiftly followed both from the
Soviet Union and from Poland. They forbade both the use of the material in
Sweden and its onward transmission. The Danes, on the other hand, passed it at
once to Eurovision. From there it reached stations all over the world, affording
striking and ineradicable proof of the intensity of feeling in Poland against the
regime. One sequence in particular, showing Polish troops standing by while
strikers wrecked a Soviet cultural centre in Szczecin, was more damaging to the
Soviet Union than any.
In Wroclaw and Szczecin, communist party leaders went into the factories to
‘negotiate’. In both places they then tried to break the promises made in the
negotiations and arrest the workers’ leaders. In Wroclaw they failed, and the
communist mayor was shot by the strikers, who also took other communist
leaders as hostages. In Szczecin the Party soon regained control.
The central government then entered into negotiations. It promised no punitive
action against those who had made even the most open shows of defiance,
including those who had shot the mayor of Wroclaw. This promise was honoured
until mid-January. The communist government went on ruling the country, but—
it seemed to some (perhaps to communist mayors especially)—in name only. In
Moscow there was growing concern.
A special meeting of the Soviet Politburo was called for 14 November, together
with the heads of government of all the republics in the Soviet Union. For this
meeting the Kremlin leaders asked Academician Y. I. Ryabukhin, a Harvard-
educated Muscovite sometimes known in the West as the best backroom Kissinger
the Russians had, to prepare a position paper. This was what he wrote, in a
document labelled ‘most secret’.

THE RYABUKHIN REPORT

1. Although President-elect Thompson has said some regrettable
things, he is unlikely ever to countenance nuclear attack on the Soviet
Union, just as we are unlikely to countenance it on the USA. Both
superpowers have to bear in mind the high probability of second-strike
destruction.
2. Despite this, we in the governing structure of the Soviet Union now
face a situation which demands attention. Of the 180 heads of
government in the different countries of the world, about 100 go to bed
every night wondering whether they may be shot in a coup d’état in the
morning. Except in Stalin’s day, men in the top posts in the Soviet Union
have not had to fear that. Now they might well soon be doing so. After
what happened in Poland there is a distinct possibility of coups d’état
against several socialist governments in Eastern Europe. It cannot be
wholly ruled out in some republics of the Soviet Union itself, especially in
the Far East and south.
3. Nevertheless, we should not, at this juncture, send Soviet troops
into Poland to arrest those workers in, for example, Wroclaw, who have
been allowed almost literally to get away with murder. It has been thought
unwise to order units of the Polish Army to open fire on the workers
concerned. There are units of the Red Army which might conceivably also
be reluctant to obey such orders. Only if the Polish government is
overthrown by a plainly revanchist regime, or if similar events take place
in other socialist countries (above all in the German Democratic
Republic), should considerable Soviet forces be sent in to rectify the
situation. Yugoslavia is a different matter (see note on the Yugoslav
situation, below).
4. The position in Poland makes it important that we should put the
Americans in a position of weakness somewhere else, and ensure that
some humiliating retreats have to be undertaken by the Americans during
the early weeks of President Thompson’s Administration. This can be called
a Bay of Pigs strategy.
5. It will be remembered that in the early days of the Kennedy
Administration in 1961 our agents among the so-called Cuban émigrés in
America, who have been in many respects useful, helped to instigate the
bound-to-be-abortive American-backed invasion of the Bay of Pigs against
Fidel Castro, who knew every detail of the invasion plan in advance. This
humiliation of the Americans enabled Soviet penetration of South America
to continue unchecked throughout the Democratic Administration of
1961-8, except that by placing offensive missiles in Cuba in 1963
Khrushchev unwisely pushed the Americans too far.
6. Unfortunately, we cannot precisely repeat the Bay of Pigs, because
the United States is not preparing to invade anywhere unsuccessfully
during the early days of the Thompson Administration. We should
therefore try to set up situations where President Thompson in his early
days will be forced to order or accept a retreat by America and its allies
from a situation created by us.
7. A ‘Thompson retreat’ of this sort should be engineered in order to
check a possible ‘momentum of revolt’ which may otherwise begin to be
felt by the Soviet Union. At risk, if there is no such early retreat, may be
the lives and livelihoods of many who work within the governing structure
of the Soviet Union and its allies. If a ‘momentum of revolt’ were to spread
from Poland, many would indeed go to bed each night fearing that they
might be shot in a coup d’état next morning. There is little likelihood that
the United States will risk the desolation of the planet by nuclear action
simply because we have provoked the President, and it is unlikely to allow
possibly less stable allies like Iran to risk doing so either. On the contrary,
as Thompson has to operate in accordance with a public opinion which
will grow scared much more quickly than our own censor-protected public
opinion will do, he will order retreats at a much earlier stage than we. A
straightforward threat of nuclear holocaust carries little conviction. On
the other hand, to hint at escalation towards it offers great advantage to
the USSR. We should make constant use of this.
8. When we have brought about one or two ‘Thompson retreats’, we
should flatter the new president and move back towards detente. We
should not even insist on keeping all the ground gained for our Egyptian
and other allies (some of whom might become inconveniently big for their
boots) during the initial Thompson retreats. We should also play upon the
President-elect’s vanity by manoeuvring the lame-duck Carter
Administration into taking some of the preliminary steps in preparation for
a possible war before Thompson’s Inauguration Day on 20 January. Then
we should proclaim on Inauguration Day that ‘Democratic
Administrations have always started wars in American history, while
Republican Administrations have always stopped them’, and make
Thompson feel he is a great peacemaker instead of the weak demagogue
he is. This desirable timetable means that we need to move quickly.
9. The five (partly alternative) plans that might be put into effect
quickly are: (a) Operation Middle East; (b) Operation India; (c) Operation
Central America; (d) Operation Southern Africa; (e) Operation Yugoslavia.
We know from our agents in the US that Thompson’s advisers—e.g., in
last week’s so-called secret Think-Tank report and the Ex-Secretary’s
report—are worried about all five of these, and are in the usual state of
capitalist muddle about how to react to any of them. As will emerge, I
recommend only Operation Middle East and Operation Southern Africa. I
am opposed, for reasons I will state, to Operations India and Central
America. I would also not yet implement Operation Yugoslavia. But let us
keep the Americans worrying for a time that we may start any of them.
10. Operation Middle East. Some people in the Democratic Socialist
Republic of Egypt have long wished to arrange coups d’état in the
enormously oil-rich and effete states of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf,
and to proclaim a new United Arab Republic. We have hitherto restrained
them from this. We should now actively and immediately encourage it. A
Middle East planning team should be set up, and make daily reports to
the Politburo each evening at 6 p.m. from now on. Primary (and
attainable) objective: by Thompson’s Inauguration Day on 20 January, the
new president should have to take steps to restrain Iran and to safeguard
America’s oil, jumping humiliatingly through hoops plainly held by us.
Secondary (but more difficult) objective: it will be a very great advantage
indeed if thereafter Egypt remains in command of the oil of a new United
Arab Republic, and we can remain in command of Egypt.
11. Operation India. Some of the Asian republics of the Soviet Union
are frightened that the more successful (and unfortunately more
capitalist) successor states of the old Indian Union may gravitate towards
the China-Japan co-prosperity sphere; this is the so-called policy of
‘turning India into a hundred Hong Kongs’. Our Asian comrades say this
could intensify pressures in the industrializing Soviet-Asian republics to
move the same way, and even ‘bring a coup d’état in Khabarovsk’, where
too many Japanese businessmen are now allowed on day trips from Tokyo
in connection with joint Japanese ventures for the development of Siberia.
It is therefore suggested, under Operation India, that friendly socialist
states of the former Indian Union be encouraged to overrun successful
capitalist neighbours (especially the smaller and most capitalist and most
successful ones); this is the so-called strategy of ‘making those hundred
Indian Hong Kongs into a hundred Goas’. I am opposed to a full Operation
India at this juncture, because (a) I am not sure we would win (we would
be allying ourselves with the weakest forces in the region, not the
strongest); (b) I do not want to annoy China-Japan at this time (it is vital
to keep China-Japan separate from America, instead of unnecessarily
promoting an alliance between them); and (c) we should not disperse our
effort in these next few critical weeks. By all means, however, make the
Americans think uneasily that an operation in India may be in the wind.
Perhaps we should encourage some ‘trade union’ strikes in appropriate
places in capitalist India, and possibly some assassinations. I suggest that
a second-rank KGB planning team be given this responsibility. Objective:
to keep the pot boiling, but not to precipitate any actual changes of
regime, except if some rotten Indian capitalist apples fall off the bough
right into our buckets.
12. Operation Central America. Our Caribbean friends (among whom
Jamaica is now rather more valuable than Cuba) say that the new
President of Mexico is a dynamic and able man, who is dangerously liable
to turn Mexico into a prosperous and breakthrough country. This could
raise the danger of coups d’état against the governments of our Caribbean
allies and the less successful semi-socialist governments in South
America. The Jamaicans and Cubans are therefore eager to arrange a
coup d’état in Mexico in these next few dying weeks of the lame-duck
Carter presidency. I am opposed to Operation Central America on much
the same grounds as I oppose a full Operation India: (a) we might not
succeed; and (b) Mexico is altogether too near America, and an attempted
communist coup d’état there might unite Americans around Presidents
Carter and Thompson, possibly even leading to decisive American action,
while our whole object is to find operations which will produce disunity,
and where America cannot take decisive action because the outgoing and
incoming Administrations will not agree. Once again, however, as with
Operation India, there might be a case for a modified version of Operation
Central America. An assassination of the Mexican president could be
advantageous, done by somebody who cannot be traced to us, while we
express the most effusive condolences to the still capitalist but much
weaker Mexican vice-president, whose vanity will be assuaged by then
acceding to office. A KGB team should report on the possibilities.
13. Operation Southern Africa. The Jamaicans are keen that the
friendly countries in black Africa should extend external and internal
guerrilla war against the ‘white homeland states’ of the former Union of
South Africa and their associated ‘Uncle Tom’ states. There are three
reasons why we should support this action, provided it can be organized
in time. First, the economic success of the ‘Uncle Tom’ states, and the
surprising continuing prosperity of the white homelands, mean that a
process of right-wing coups d’état is liable to spread all up black Africa -
and also, which naturally worries Jamaica, into the black Caribbean.
Second, the white homelands do still follow a baaskap policy in some
respects; many Americans, especially black Americans, will not regard
them as respectable allies beside whom American troops should fight.
Third, the confused military set-up in South Africa should create
advantages for us. We have the capability there to keep on putting the
Americans in very embarrassing situations indeed. With the troubles in
the Middle East because of our operation there the Americans will also be
anxious about the supply lines for oil round the Cape. In addition, I
suggest (for your ears only) that the Red Army ‘volunteer officers’ we send
to Southern Africa should be those whom we could not wholly trust to put
down workers in Warsaw, and whom we would most like to have out of
Moscow. Instead of repeating Stalin’s Red Army purges of the 1930s
(which we have not the power to do), let us send the less reliable officers
to lead bands of black natives wandering over the undefended veldt! The
black natives will stop these gentlemen from being too liberal. It does not
matter much that there will be no time for a coherent military plan,
because Operation Southern Africa will not have a coherent military
objective. The political objectives will be: (a) to put the Americans in an
embarrassing position by compelling lame-duck President Carter to
commit American forces to unpopular pro-white South Africa action, from
which President Thompson will have to retreat embarrassingly; and (b) to
make it clear to the international business world that continued
investment in the white homelands and in the ‘Uncle Tom’ states will not
remain peaceful and profitable for long. At the end of Operation Southern
Africa it would possibly be desirable that at least one of the three white
homelands should pass over to black rule, so as to mark Thompson’s
humiliation.
14. Operation Yugoslavia. If we are to make a move in Europe, it would
be better to ‘capture Yugoslavia’ than to ‘recapture Poland’ (which is not
lost anyway). The arguments in favour of Operation Yugoslavia are: (a) the
weak federal government in Yugoslavia is unpopular with most of the
Yugoslav people, and the various state governments are all unpopular
with the people of the other states; (b) if Soviet troops intervened on the
side of one state against another, we would have some support from the
people (while in Poland we would have practically none); (c) our
communist friends in the Soviet-run Serbian Committee for the Defence of
Yugoslavia want Red Army troops in Yugoslavia (after the murder of the
mayor of Wroclaw, they feel quite naked and unprotected without any
Russians there); (d) in Slovenia and Croatia our troops would be arresting
politicians rather than storming worker-held factories; and (e) a swift
 overnight move of this sort would serve notice to Polish and other workers
that the Red Army is in a high state of readiness and can move very
quickly.
My objection to Operation Yugoslavia at this stage is that it would be
more likely than the other four operations to have wide repercussions.
Indeed, an operation in Yugoslavia has been considered by the Soviet
High Command in the same strategic contingency plan as a move into
West Germany. If we thought that all the communist countries of Eastern
Europe were liable to erupt in coups d’état, which would be followed by
coups d’état in the Soviet Union itself, then I would certainly be in favour
of invasion of either Yugoslavia or West Germany or both. But we have not
reached that situation yet. We have merely reached a situation where it is
desirable to humiliate and discredit President Thompson. Let us start on
this humiliation in the Middle East and Southern Africa.
15. During the operations of the next few weeks we shall need to keep
China-Japan neutral. We must also keep Western Europe neutral,
possibly by intimidation.

It was to be a far from peaceful Christmas.

Chapter 6
No Peace at Christmas

The Ryabukhin plan was accepted by the Politburo, and almost

immediately began to move out of control. The chronology of subsequent events
was as follows:

30 November 1984. Egypt, having renewed a military relationship with Soviet

Russia, overthrows by subversion the governments of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and
Kuwait. It proclaims a new and immensely rich United Arab Republic (including
these countries) and calls a meeting of OPEC heads of government for 7 December.
Iran is invited to this OPEC meeting, which is to be held on neutral territory, but
the new UAR threatens that there could be immediate military action against any
country which interferes in the UAR’s ‘proper sphere of interest’ and which sends
forces to the Trucial Coast and Oman. This is clearly a threat to Iran. Israel is
offered guarantees which ensure her neutrality.
2 December. Rioting, led by students, in Soweto and some other townships
which are capitals of ‘Uncle Tom’ black-ruled states or cantons of the former
Union of South Africa. These are black states that have good economic relations
with the three white South African states and daily send many commuters to work
in them. Some of these riots are put down, with bloodshed, by the local black
police.
3 December. Strikes in Madras, which appear to be politically inspired. A Pan
Am aircraft is hijacked on its way to Singapore and lands in Bangladesh at
Chittagong. The Chief Ministers of two capitalist states in the old Indian Union
and the executives of some American multi-nationals active in Madras are aboard
it. The hijackers announce that they are being held hostage until the demands of
the Madras strikers are met. Two days later American marines (invited, it is
claimed, by Bangladesh) try to storm the aircraft, as the Germans did in 1977 in
Somalia. The Americans fail. The aircraft is blown up with total loss of life.
5 December. At a meeting in Zimbabwe the Organization of Socialist African
States claims that the ‘fascist police’ in Soweto on 2 December used weapons that
were clearly heavier than any allowed to states of the former Union of South Africa
under the Brzezinski Agreement. That agreement is therefore now declared at an
end. The white homelands and ‘Uncle Tom’ states must be dissolved and their
component parts made subject states of a new black-ruled Confederation of Africa
South. Military action will be taken to enforce this.
7 December. At the OPEC meeting the new UAR demands a sharp increase in
the price of oil. It also announces an oil boycott against any country that does not
meet its political demands. These include recognition of the proposed
Confederation of Africa South. There is to be strict boycott against anybody who
aids and abets the white homelands and ‘Uncle Tom’ states. The UAR insists that
majority votes in OPEC are enforceable upon all members, and that the boycott
may be policed by ‘friendly naval forces’, which the newspapers suggest means the
USSR. Iran dissents strongly.
8 December. The Soviet Union proclaims support for the OPEC decision. It also
activates its existing base and missile facilities in Aden. This may be in order to
help enforce the oil boycott.
9 December. An unsuccessful attempt is made to hijack an aircraft carrying
Iranian finance and petroleum ministers from the OPEC meeting home to Tehran.
On the same day there is an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Shah.
11 December. Forays from Zimbabwe and Namibia are made into the former
Union of South Africa. Poland and some Indian states announce that they are
withdrawing their forces from the UN troops on the border. Polish, Mexican and
Indian commanders on the spot declare that they are under UN orders and will
obey these. There are signs that Polish and Indian troops in Africa are more in
agreement with right-wing dissidents at home than with their existing
governments.
13 December. Round-ups of intellectuals and some workers’ leaders are
reported from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia. These do
not appear to be very successful, and reports appear in Western newspapers of
communiques from an organized ‘underground’ in these countries and what is by
now almost an open dissident movement in Poland.
20 December. Black African forces advancing, in some disorder, from Namibia,
Zimbabwe and Mozambique are now known to be commanded by Soviet, Cuban,
and Jamaican officers. These clearly do not have their troops under disciplined
control.
24 December. The UAR announces that it has discovered an Iranian plan to
send forces into the Gulf states. It threatens that if this happens it will take direct
military action against Iran, including air attack on Tehran. Iran threatens
immediate retaliation and asks for US help.
 25 December. In a Christmas message to the world, the ‘lame-duck’ President
Carter proposes high-level discussions with the Soviet Union in accordance with
the Agreement for the Prevention of Nuclear War of 1973, to consider means to
end tensions in Africa and the Middle East. His proposal is that there should be a
standstill of military forces all round the globe in their existing positions. There
should also be a ban on the export of all arms to either side in Africa or the Middle
East. He proposes that the US Navy enforce the blockade of the west coast of
Africa; meanwhile the Soviet Navy should enforce the blockade of the east coast of
Africa and the Gulf, with assistance to be invited from the US Navy. Both
superpowers are to enforce a blockade of arms-carrying ships passing through the
Mediterranean.
26 December. The Soviet Union says it will talk only to President Thompson
after his Inauguration Day on 20 January. It blames lame-duck President Carter
for much of the world’s present ills, but meanwhile agrees that a standstill should
be enforced by both the US and the USSR.
28 December. Iran declares that it is not bound by the standstill agreement.
Acting contrary to US advice, it reinforces its existing troops in Oman and secures
an invitation from the United Arab Emirates to send defensive forces to Abu
Dhabi. Television pictures, secured by an American camera team, of Iranian
troops landing in Oman, and of armoured cars with Iranian markings alongside
Omani troops, are distributed worldwide, and are triumphantly used by the
Russians to support their claims of Iranian belligerency. The USSR says this is a
blatant breach of the standstill, and that US naval forces (which are supposed to
be co-operating in preventing such breaches) have connived at it.
29 December. A Soviet submarine sinks an Iranian transport. A US intelligence
ship is attacked by missiles in the Gulf of Aden.

The Soviet attacks on the 29th can with some justification be called the first
shots of the Third World War. Symbolically they were fired at sea and in Middle
Eastern waters. Both maritime affairs and the Middle East had each been a focus
of intense Soviet interest and planning for many years (see Appendix 2).
Having got over the initial shock of the submarine attack, the Iranian
government set in train measures to assume complete control of the waters of the
Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. The luckless US intelligence ship, limping slowly
towards Mombasa, following a friendly offer of help from the government of Kenya
to the outgoing President in his last days of office, was to be joined by a US carrier
group which had been on passage south in the Red Sea, on a routine relief of the
standing US Navy Indian Ocean Force. Having cleared the Straits of Bab el
Mandeb this carrier group was under orders to carry out an armed reconnaissance
of Aden, where it located and identified beyond doubt the group of fast missile
boats of Soviet origin which had attacked the US intelligence ship. Also reported
was a formidable force of the latest Soviet maritime strike-reconnaissance aircraft.
A request to Washington for approval to strike both fast missile boats and
maritime aircraft was not approved, and the intelligence ship remained, for the
time being, unavenged but still afloat.
It was possible, without too much loss of face, either domestically or externally,
for the US Administration to refrain, with due public claim to be acting in the best
interests of keeping the peace, from taking immediate offensive action in response
to the attack upon the intelligence ship. Instead, the US carrier group made all
speed to join the damaged ship and escort it to Mombasa, while strong protests
were made to Moscow, coupled with demands for an international court of
enquiry, apologies and compensation. Then came news that a Soviet patrol
submarine of the TANGO class had been brought to the surface in the Strait of
Hormuz by Iranian antisubmarine forces and the crew taken prisoner. In short,
the first essay by the Soviet Navy in the actual use of force in support of Soviet
policy had misfired.
After its initial errors, the Soviet naval command (perhaps smarting under a
stern rebuke from the septuagenarian Gorshkov, and acting upon his advice—as
Admiral of the Fleet and even after his retirement, Gorshkov had been insisting for
years on the necessity of Soviet mastery of the seas for the triumph of Marxism-
Leninism) ordered the VICTOR class nuclear-powered fleet submarine which had
been detailed to intercept and trail the damaged US intelligence ship to sink her
by torpedo. This she did, despite the presence of the US carrier group, without
being detected, let alone destroyed. The confidence of the Politburo in the Soviet
Navy’s capacity to act in support of their political objectives was restored. The
naval staff ‘Correlation of Forces’ paper (see Appendix 2) was carefully read. It had
become apparent that naval-air operations involving actual combat differed
drastically from the peaceful penetration of ocean space with propaganda cruising
which the Soviet Navy had learned to carry out in such exemplary fashion since it
first took to the oceans in the 1960s.
Difficulty was experienced by the new Soviet fleet commander in establishing
satisfactory relationships with the various political regimes and armed force
commands in the Middle East. Hitherto the Soviet presence had been based upon
political agreements drafted by the Soviet Foreign Office and covering in great
detail the respective commitments of the contracting parties. Deviation from le
pied de la lettre was strongly discouraged. Everything had to be referred to
Moscow.
When events began to move fast the weakness of this situation became
manifest. Proclamation by the new United Arab Republic of the Red Sea as a war
zone, and the closure of the Straits of Bab el Mandeb, for example, found a
number of Soviet warships, naval auxiliaries and merchant ships in situations,
sometimes at sea and sometimes in harbour, requiring diplomatic intervention
with the national authorities. All that Flag Officer Soviet Middle East Forces
(FOSMEF) could do was report to Moscow and await guidance. From the naval
point of view his authority was similarly circumscribed. Soviet naval and air units
in the Middle East ‘belonged’ to one or other of the main fleets—the Northern, the
Black Sea, or the Pacific. In suddenly transferring to FOSMEF the ‘operational
control’ of a number of surface warships, submarines and aircraft, far away from
their main bases, the Soviet naval high command introduced a number of
command inter-relationship problems, the resolution of which did not come easily
to a commander and staff not bred to the use of initiative in matters of
administration.
Even in the operational field FOSMEF found himself somewhat isolated. He had
been briefed about the Middle Eastern situation before leaving Moscow, but there
had been no time to explain to him precisely what was going on in Southern
Africa. He knew, of course, that Soviet advisers, Soviet weapons and equipment,
and Soviet bases were contributing to the military strength of the Confederation of
Africa South People’s Army (CASPA). But who, precisely, was in command of all
these Soviet activities and forces? What was the directive upon which Soviet
actions were to be based? In desperation the Flag Officer decided to send a senior
staff officer to find out what was going on. The officer, travelling in plain clothes
and using civil airlines, arrived eventually in Beira, where he contacted a member
of the Soviet military mission. But, alas, events had moved too fast. The Soviet
Navy, having started off on the wrong foot, and then made a good recovery, had
nevertheless failed to retain the control of events which effective implementation of
Moscow’s subtle and complex political operations called for.
As evidence built up, and could no longer be disregarded, that a state of
hostilities might at any moment exist between the United States of America and
the Soviet Union, contingency plans on both sides were brought out and dusted
off. The difficulty for the Americans was that in addition to losing an intelligence
ship they had lost the initiative. The Russians, on the other hand, though clumsy
in execution, knew exactly what they were trying to do. Moreover, at this juncture,
although they were deeply involved both politically and militarily in the Middle
East and in Southern Africa, two additional factors favoured the Russians. First,
the satellite status of their allies in the Warsaw Pact, while a prime cause of the
growing dissatisfaction which had done so much to bring about the present Soviet
pressure on the Americans, had always had the advantage of giving them firm
control over all the Pact armed forces, their deployment and operation. Not so with
the Americans. Although continually justified to the American people as being
indispensable to the national security of the United States, the military alliances of
which she was a member, and in particular NATO, had equally been justified by
the governments of their other members to their peoples as being indispensable to
their national security; hence decision-making had to be shared.
The Americans, therefore, unlike the Russians, would have to consult with their
allies about any military action. But this was not all. Unless the Russians chose
deliberately to attack within the NATO area, they could be reasonably certain that
NATO would take no action to come to America’s assistance.
This inherent weakness in the provisions of the North Atlantic Treaty deserves
explanation. When the Treaty was signed on 4 April 1949, the Soviet Union was
not a major naval power. She had begun to establish a strong force of submarines
based upon the Kola Inlet, where they would have ice-free access to the North
Atlantic. But the seas and oceans of the world were not to be treated as extensions
of sovereign territory. All that was needed was to include attacks upon the ships
and aircraft of a member of the Alliance as cause for acting in collective defence,
as with an attack across a land frontier. But surely, it was thought, there must be
some geographical limit at sea. Clearly, the waters adjacent to the eastern
seaboard of the United States had to be included. As to ocean limits, it was
suggested that the boundary be placed at the maximum distance to which
submarines operating from the Kola Inlet were likely to proceed on patrol. The
Tropic of Cancer was chosen as the limit.
 A number of arrangements had been made over the years to mitigate the
unfortunate consequences to NATO of the Tropic of Cancer boundary. Chief
amongst these was the pooling of Allied naval intelligence. This clearly could not
be limited to the North Atlantic Treaty area. After all, wherever in the world the
maritime trade of the member nations was to be found, most of it would sooner or
later have to pass into the North Atlantic. How could measures for its protection
there be co-ordinated without full knowledge of sailing times and routes? And how
could the most economical use of shipping be organized, for the support of peoples
and a war effort, unless a worldwide view of the available resources could be taken
NATO plans provided, therefore, that a Naval Control of Shipping Organization
should be set up, and also a Planning Board for Ocean Shipping. It was through
the members of these groups, acting informally as individuals and in conjunction
with the worldwide shipping community, that an appropriate response began to be
evolved to the Soviet Navy’s activities in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf.
It was the British Ambassador in Washington who first communicated to the
President of the United States the urgent plea of shipowners not to over-react to
Soviet naval provocation. It was pointed out that the Iranians would be bound, in
exercising control of shipping in the Gulf, to ensure that the movement of oil
cargoes to countries other than the United States would continue. The Japanese,
for example, remained almost totally dependent upon Middle Eastern oil. Provided
the oil was not cut off at source—and Iran would not connive at this—all was not
lost. By switching the destinations of many cargoes already on the high seas and
by relying on buffer stocks and alternative sources of supply, the United States
should, it was argued, attempt to ‘ride the storm’. The important thing was to
determine, if possible, the political objectives which the Soviet Union hoped to
achieve by bringing naval pressure to bear on the USA’s Middle Eastern oil
supplies, and to consider its best counters.
The Soviet naval attacks and the Iranian response had the effect of alerting
NATO—already apprehensive of the consequences of disturbances in Poland and
tension in Yugoslavia—to the possibility of a direct connection between events in
Europe and those in the Middle East. Indeed, the NATO Military Committee, in
reporting upon the blowing up of an oil well in the North Sea shortly after Soviet
ships had been in the vicinity, on 3 January 1985, drew attention to it. That the
Russians had denied responsibility and had suggested that the incident provided
‘good reason for Western Europe to keep out of present troubles’ was significant.
The fact that the oil well happened to be British had an effect which may not
have been foreseen by the Kremlin. The action taken immediately by Britain had
the tacit approval of the Political Sub-Committee of the North Atlantic Council,
meeting in emergency session. This was to announce the setting up of a Northern
Seas Environmental Control Agency (NORSECA) by agreement between the North
Sea countries concerned, with an executive situated at Pitreavie, the Maritime HO
of the RN Flag Officer, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and his RAF colleague.
Already known, and well practised, as an Air-Sea Rescue Co-ordination Centre,
and accustomed to conducting operations in concert with both civil and armed
forces authorities around the North Sea, the Pitreavie HQ was able to put into
effect quickly and smoothly the plans for NORSECA, which had been maturing for
some years. The initial phase required the establishment of standard shipping
routes through the North Sea, adherence to which would be mandatory if the right
of uninterrupted passage through the area was to be enjoyed. The routes led clear
of oil and gas installations, and moving fishing zones were also declared, using the
standard medium of Notices to Mariners.
The implementation of this scheme, a possibility for some years, was facilitated
by a major change in the NATO command structure which had been put into effect
in 1983 (see Appendix 3). It had long been recognized that the command
structure, particularly as it affected the naval and air forces in the Atlantic, North
Sea and English Channel, had ceased to correspond to strategic and operational
realities. It was indeed questionable whether it ever had.
Sweden, Soviet Russia, Poland and East Germany, as individual states whose
shipping and fishing vessels were regular users of the North Sea, were invited to
be represented, if they wished, on the NORSECA Council, in addition to the littoral
states. Meanwhile, the British naval C-in-C arranged with his RAF colleague (C-in-
C Strike Command) for armed surveillance of the Soviet group which appeared to
be responsible for blowing up the North Sea oil well.
Elsewhere events had been moving at an equally dramatic tempo.

31 December 1984. Riots take place in East Berlin, with West Berliners
standing on vantage points near the Wall, under full TV cover, cheering the rioters
on. The riots are put down by Soviet troops, taking over almost at once from the
East German police, much more firmly and bloodily than those in Poland the
month before.
It must be observed here that television coverage, which was to play a very
important part in the events described in this book, was in these incidents of such
significance as to deserve fuller treatment.
All television news coverage in advanced countries is undertaken by lightweight
electronic cameras, capable of recording their images on 25 mm videotape, or of
having their material beamed live from the scene. On 31 December ENG
(electronic newsgathering) cameras from many countries were in position at many
places along the Berlin Wall, and were able to secure—and to send out live
throughout the world—shots of the rioting.
One sequence was, however, secured from within East Berlin itself. An
American documentary unit happened to be working on a programme on the
German Democratic Republic. The director, who had won acclaim at the time of
the Vietnam War for his strongly anti-war attitude, had been given considerable
latitude to move about Berlin by the East German authorities. By chance he was
on his way, with his camera crew, to interview an East German trade union leader
when rioters began to threaten the trade union headquarters. His camera crew,
their electronic equipment readily available, had secured some particularly vivid
pictures, many of them in close up, before the police became aware of their
presence. When two plain clothes officers intervened to stop their recording, the
East German driver of the car in which they had been travelling shouted ‘Give me
the tape’, grabbed the roll of recordings, and disappeared into the crowd. The
cameraman, his recordist and the documentary director were immediately
arrested, but the next day the film, smuggled across the wall by dissidents,
appeared on West Berlin screens. The pictures on it made plain, beyond any
possibility of argument, that the rioters were not the usual run of urban
malcontents but men of responsibility and discipline. The film also contained some
ugly shots of East German police firing deliberately into the crowd, and pursuing
and savagely beating the rioters.
The American crew and the director were charged with having instigated the
riots, and, for good measure, with being responsible for the death of two
policemen. The fact that the director had a high reputation as a left-wing
sympathizer added to the irony of the situation, but did nothing to help his case.
The Federal Republic makes no move. There is now some strain between
Western Europe and the United States. The stoppage of the flow of oil from the
Middle East and hindrance to shipping in the Mediterranean is beginning to hit
the EEC, which claims that its own interests in the dispute are not being
considered. The Community asserts a right to import oil from Iran and to complete
freedom of movement for the shipping of its members and insists that it must be a
party to the coming summit discussions.

3 January 1985. The President of Mexico is assassinated.

9 January. The German Democratic Republic now announces the arrest of the
American TV crew. They will be tried on a capital charge of instigating the riots
and murdering two policemen in East Berlin on 31 December.
10 – 18 January. The US declares that it must have more naval forces in the
Gulf in order to stabilize the situation there. A US task force is despatched to
Bandar Abbas.
19 January. Egypt invites the Soviet Union to take control of the Suez Canal.
The US Sixth Fleet effectively closes the northern exit.
20 January. The Inauguration Day message to President Thompson from
Soviet President Vorotnikov is hailed by a frightened world as astonishingly
placatory, and presaging a new detente. President Vorotnikov says:

a. The Egyptian government has today asked the Soviet Union to take
control of the Suez Canal. The Soviet government has said it would wish
to do this only in co-operation with US observers on the spot, because the
sole Soviet object will be to enforce the mutual standstill agreed with
President Carter after his Christmas Day messages. Both the Soviet Union
and the Americans may feel, in their different ways, that the other side
has broken that standstill in the past three weeks. ‘But from the
beginning of your presidency I beg that we should work together on these
difficult issues.’
b. The members of the American TV crew accused of the capital offence
of the murder of policemen in East Berlin are being repatriated
immediately through West Berlin. (At the same time it was revealed that
the driver who had carried away the film, and a number of other
dissidents traced through him, had been executed as being ‘primarily
responsible for the murders in which the American journalists had merely
been participating onlookers’, and that death penalties had also been
carried out ‘on two Polish counterrevolutionaries who had in November
brutally murdered the mayor of Wroclaw’.)
 c. President Vorotnikov urgently invites President Thompson to a
summit meeting, which he hopes will take place ‘during this very first
week you are in office’.

This ‘Soviet plea for a Munich detente’, as the Peking Daily called it, had been
preceded by the following secret communication from Soviet Foreign Minister
Baronzov to the Politburo on 19 January.

THE BARONZOV MEMO

The objectives of our operations in the Middle East and Southern Africa
have now been achieved. We are in a stronger position than we dared
originally to hope. In particular:
1. We have now re-asserted our control in Poland and East Germany.
Although we have executed counter-revolutionaries there, some American
newspapers will easily be persuaded to say that, because we are returning
the US television crew, we are being conciliatory. The Polish and East
German counter-revolutionaries have learned that the West will not
support them during a Thompson presidency; Thompson is thus revealed
to them as a broken reed. If there is trouble in Poland or other Eastern
European socialist states in 1985 or 1986, it will now be easier to
intervene in Yugoslavia, if needed, and to implement existing plans for the
invasion of West Germany. It will be clearly shown that the regime in the
Soviet Union cannot be shaken by subversion and coups d’état.
2. We have seized a very strong position in the Middle East. The North
Arabian (i.e., Saudi Arabian and Iraqi) oil supply is now in Egyptian
hands. We must ensure that this continues to mean in Soviet hands.
Israel has been neutralized under guarantees which should for the time
being be honoured.
We can allow the Iranians to send oil to the United States and Europe,
across sea lines that we should increasingly be able to command, because
there will be a sufficient scarcity of it to put the capitalist countries at a
severe disadvantage. Their own capitalist laws of supply and demand
mean that the price of oil will stay very high. This will speed the march of
these countries towards reliance on nuclear energy, though we can agree
with, stimulate and support the many sincere environmentalists in those
countries who say that this form of energy is dangerous and immoral.
They will argue that it is especially dangerous and immoral for nuclear
technology to come to poorer countries, so these poorer countries will
have to rely increasingly on those who control the North Arabian oil
supply, that is, on the Egyptians and the Soviet Union. We can also use
the oil weapon to increase our control over the economies of socialist
countries in Europe, especially Poland and the German Democratic
Republic. We should be highly conservationist, and not allow anybody to
have too much oil from Arabia. One of our main objects in the summit
negotiations with President Thompson should be to try to extend our hold
 over Arabian oil: if possible, not just Saudi Arabian and Iraqi oil, but oil
from some of the Lower Gulf states as well.
3. The settlement in Southern Africa is much less important. From a
political standpoint we could make concessions to the Americans there,
and leave the Cubans and Jamaicans in the lurch. This is a matter for the
Politburo to decide in consultation with the Ministry of Defence.
The Soviet Foreign Office wishes, through me, to put on record its
appreciation of the efficiency and daring shown by the Soviet armed forces
in the past three difficult weeks—in the Middle East, in Africa, in the
North Sea and in East Berlin. The heavy expenditure on the armed forces
in the past decade has made Soviet foreign policy much easier to
implement at this critical time; it has therefore been fully justified.

In this last sentence Minister Baronzov had a point.

Chapter 7
Summit and Aftermath

Preparations for a summit meeting continued, but, by tacit mutual

consent, at a rather slower tempo than that originally demanded by Moscow. As a
first step the US and Soviet Foreign Ministers visited their respective allies in
Europe. The Secretary of State found Western European opinion torn between two
opposing anxieties. In spite of the North Sea, West Europe was still heavily
dependent on Middle East oil. From this point of view, therefore, they hoped that
the United States would secure the reopening of the oil route by firm action in the
Gulf, the Indian Ocean and Southern Africa. But they were reluctant to advocate
this too openly because they feared the obvious American rejoinder: ‘If you want
the oil as much as we do, come and help us get it.’ Very few of them had any
significant capability for military action outside Europe. Most of them pleaded the
old argument that NATO’s area of responsibility was limited to Europe and a
defined area of the North Atlantic—north of the Tropic of Cancer—and that the
action was likely to lie outside those limits. They were faced, not for the first time,
with this basic inconsistency between the terms of the Alliance and the real
situation on the ground. The line of demarcation on the continent of Europe was
better defined and had a history of thirty-five years of stability, due to the
concentration of NATO defence on the maintenance of that line as inviolate. But if
the causes of tension were outside, where no clear lines existed, and if the tension
spread around the world until Europe was encircled by conflict, could the states of
Western Europe afford to stay in their tight little laager?
Alternatively, the question was put with some irony from the American side: if
the Europeans can’t or won’t help to keep the oil producers free and the sea lanes
open, will they do more in Europe and the Atlantic so that US reinforcements can
in some part be diverted from Europe to other areas more immediately at risk?
 At this point the other latent anxiety of the Europeans began to show itself more
clearly. If the US, with direct or indirect help from Europe, took a strong line with
the Soviet Union or its Middle Eastern or African supporters, and if this action
were successful, would not the Soviet Union be tempted to restore its overall
situation and acquire a major bargaining counter by attacking in Europe? This
might be particularly tempting if US forces in Europe were to be reduced, or if it
was known that fewer US reinforcements were available.
Europe’s will to win and power to make decisions were further sapped by
internal developments. The Community, now enlarged to include Spain, Portugal
and Greece, had taken some steps towards the common production of military
equipment, but had not yet acquired the institutions necessary for the formulation
of a common foreign policy or for more effective pooling of military forces in the
field. Moreover, Western Europe had not yet fully decided how to live with Euro-
communism. In Italy the Communist Party had gained ground by its reputation for
restoring law and order, but its very success, and its participation in government,
made it more vulnerable to the corruption of power. On the other hand, being now
about as powerful as it wanted to be in Italy, without having full responsibility for
all the country’s problems, the Party was no more inclined than before to a Soviet
takeover, and therefore maintained, in those uneasy years of peace, a reasonably
satisfactory degree of Italian participation in NATO.
In France, on the other hand, now under a Popular Front government, the
balance of political forces was more precarious. The French Communist Party was
still divided between those who maintained the purity of dogma above all and
those who saw a modicum of flexibility as required both to keep alive the
floundering unity of the left and to win back more votes from the post-Gaullist
right. France’s ambivalent attitude to common defence seemed still to suit most
political persuasions, but there was much greater divergence on how to handle the
crisis of the early 1980s. The nuclear power programme had been limited by
environmentalist protests, and even in its reduced form the stations were not fully
on stream. Possessing very little native oil, France was heavily dependent on
imported energy. With the East-West frontier now bisecting the Middle Eastern
suppliers, would oil be more securely acquired by private deals with the USSR and
Egypt, or by backing the US counter-offensive to re-open traditional routes? Or
would a crafty combination of the two be best—negotiations tous azimuths, as it
were?
The United Kingdom, at the peak of its oil production, was less sensitive than
others to a threat to external supplies, and even the return to comparative
prosperity and a Conservative government had done little to diminish the
parochialism of the seventies.
In Germany the wilder excesses of the urban left had been contained, not
without difficulty and with much soul-searching about the increasing power of the
police. Disillusion with the European Community helped to foster a revival of the
historic belief that in the long run economic prosperity would depend very largely
on the development of markets and supplies in Eastern Europe. The industrial
and commercial pre-eminence of the Federal Republic in Western Europe was
matched by that of the German Democratic Republic in the East. Some more
daring politicians were tempted by this coincidence to wonder what they might do
together. The majority, while still rejecting dreams of even an economic pan-
German superpower, nevertheless accepted the importance of maintaining the
advantages which accrued almost imperceptibly to a people who had a foot in
either camp. While it might be dangerous to envisage a removal of the barrier
between them, the sharpening of its prongs by renewed East-West conflict would
be decidedly uncomfortable.
So the Secretary of State did not gather a very united or determined impression
of European feelings from his tour of some of the more important Western capitals.
The United States would as usual have to go it largely alone in the Middle East
and the South Atlantic, and would no doubt be blamed for the consequences if
things went wrong—though perhaps a rather longer exposure than usual to the
rough and tumble of world politics and to the shortages and privations resulting
even from the present situation would encourage the European doves to grow
some beaks and claws. The position papers flew thick and fast in the State
Department and the options remained irritatingly open.
The Soviet Foreign Minister did not fare much better in his rather more
perfunctory tour of Eastern capitals. These countries saw their painful gains in
economic prosperity endangered by Soviet brinkmanship. They found it hard to
believe Soviet warnings about an energy shortage by the end of the century, which
could only be remedied by laying hands directly or by proxy on a large slice of
Middle Eastern oil supplies—upon which was based Soviet support for Egypt’s
incursion into Arabia. They feared that Soviet moves towards a war footing would
put further and intolerable pressure on the supply and price of consumer goods,
including food. They pointed out—in vain—that while the Soviet secret police had
to deal only with a handful of known intellectual dissidents, they (in Poland, for
example) were faced by a movement much more widely and solidly based on the
workers’ expectation of a standard of living that would approach first that of East
Germany, then that of West Germany. Except in most aspects of military
technology and the technology of space, the gap was increasing between the
inefficiency of Soviet production and the far greater technical and managerial
skills of East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Western methods
and Western technology were increasingly seen as more relevant and more
desirable. The example of Euro-communism in the West suggested that Party
cadres could restore some of their tarnished popularity by keeping their distance
from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
So, when the Secretary of State and Foreign Minister Baronzov met at Geneva at
the end of January 1985, each had to look not only at his interlocutor across the
table, but also, even more searchingly, over his shoulder at the silent ranks of his
allies and supporters. A week was spent agreeing on the agenda for their meeting
and a further two weeks on that for the summit. At last it was settled that
President Thompson and President Vorotnikov (the offices of President of the
USSR and Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) had by
then long been firmly unified) should meet on 15 February to discuss all threats to
peace and any situation likely to lead to nuclear hostilities.
Political observers and media commentators were puzzled and divided over the
mood of the participants and the prospects for peace or war. Each side had
stepped further into the uncharted sea of confrontation than any of their
predecessors since Cuba and the Berlin blockade. The point was, did they find the
temperature to their liking? Each had found a keen front man—the US in Iran and
the Soviet Union in Egypt—but both were aware of the instability of such
protagonists. Their more solid supporters were more than usually hesitant. In one
respect each had a similar requirement: to be sure of energy supplies from the
Middle East until alternative sources could be established. Public opinion in the
US still felt that abundant cheap energy was a god-given right of the American
people. They had elected Thompson in the belief that he would be better at getting
it for them than Carter had been at persuading them they didn’t need so much.
Vorotnikov had other preoccupations. The Russian people could be relied on to
accept what they were given, but with Eastern Europe the choice was more
difficult: either to advance more quickly towards Western consumer standards, or
to restore the somewhat eroded dictatorship of the CPSU and enforce acceptance
of a lower standard. The former would require more oil, the latter more Soviet
troops. Both, with the growing threat from China, might be in short supply. A
foreign bogey would, as usual, encourage compliance, but a bogey in the Indian
Ocean might be inadequate for the purpose.
After two days of recrimination and brinkmanship, the result emerged - one that
should perhaps have been more easily predictable: peace with honour. The
standstill was confirmed; the control of oilfields remained as it was, that is, Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq stayed with Egypt and the USSR, Iran and the Lower Gulf
stayed with the West. There was to be no supply of arms to either side in Africa or
Arabia (significantly, there was no reference to Iran, Cuba or Jamaica); mutual
notification of naval movements was agreed, with exchange of satellite
photographs to confirm it; and there would be a resumption of SALT and
negotiations for MBFR (mutual and balanced force reductions).
In fact no one was satisfied with what they had got, but some were more
dissatisfied than others. Thompson made much of having snatched peace out of
the jaws of war (with a confused memory of a Churchillian antithesis mixed with a
phrase of Chamberlain’s), and of the time won to build more ships and develop
indigenous oil resources. He did not actually wave a piece of paper from the White
House balcony, but the general atmosphere had more than a hint of August 1938.
The Soviet Union started building pipelines and oil terminals to move her new
oil north instead of south, its former direction. More important in the short term,
the Soviet leaders devoted urgent attention to the means of restoring Soviet
authority in Eastern Europe, penetrating the communist parties in Western
Europe, and guarding their frontier republics against the growing presence of
China. The build-up of Soviet military strength continued.
The Chinese were perhaps the most disappointed of all. In the uneasy triangle of
forces so accurately forecast for 1984 by George Orwell they had hoped for much
from the sharpening of US-Soviet confrontation in the Middle East and Southern
Africa. They feared little from the US. Their doctrines led them to believe in the
ultimate victory of their system over capitalism. They could afford to wait for
history to produce its inevitable result. But rivalry with another seat of
communism was different. There was nothing in holy writ to show how this would
turn out. Besides, even in an age of rockets, a land frontier seemed a good deal
more vulnerable than several thousand kilometres of Pacific Ocean. The standstill
agreement at the US-Soviet summit deprived China of the good fortune which had
seemed to be coming its way in an intensified struggle between the two rival
superpowers. The ensuing reassessment showed China still a long way behind in
nuclear potential and conventional sophistication. Numbers of men seemed hardly
to make up for these deficiencies. It was necessary to seek some other way of
compensating for the Soviet predominance in armaments.
The home front in the USSR—or at least in the Soviet areas contiguous to
China—seemed to offer a possible target. It would have been dangerous for China
to invoke nationalism as a subversive slogan before Sinkiang and Tibet had been
fully brought under control. Now the risk of regional insurgency was far less there
than in the Soviet republics in central Asia. Moreover, there were elements from
many of these Moslem people, ethnically and linguistically Turkish, living in
China’s far west. With a modest growth of cultural freedom and with economic
development springing from Japanese investment in the new co-prosperity sphere,
it should not be too difficult to create centres of attraction in China for the Uzbeks
and the Kazakhs. A movement for real autonomy in the Soviet republics on the
Sino-Soviet border could have enormous advantages for China, at least in
providing another preoccupation for Soviet policy makers, in drawing off Soviet
troops who might otherwise be threatening China, and in creating suspicion as to
the loyalty of units recruited in those areas.
Meanwhile, back in the West the phoney peace was beginning to wear thin. It
goes without saying that neither the US nor the USSR trusted the other enough to
make any real attempt at disarmament. On the contrary, Warsaw Pact
preparedness increased at the same rate as before while NATO continued to make
some modest improvements. Political skirmishing was resumed. Three elements in
particular contributed to the build-up of instability: oil, the Middle East and the
Balkans, none of them new but each spreading its effects like secondary growths
after an unsuccessful operation.
The disruption of oil supplies and the resulting shortages all over the world were
like a running sore, making calm thought more difficult, leading to internal and
international tensions, distorting economies and increasing unemployment. The
new patterns of distribution were fragile and susceptible to political uncertainty.
The control of the North Arabian supplies by the Egyptian-dominated UAR was in
these circumstances hardly a guarantee of stability.
This was the sixth attempt at Arab union in which Egypt had been involved. All
the previous ones had failed after longer or shorter periods. The few centres of
population in Saudi Arabia could be controlled by military force. The association
with Iraq was more uneasy. The age-old cry of Arab unity was tarnished by the
only too visible presence of Soviet technicians at the oil fields and the ports. Even
in this day and age the old hatreds between Sunnis and Shias were likely to erupt
when Saudis and Iraqis were too closely intermingled. Arab unity is a dream which
has inspired some of the noblest thinkers of that race, but in actual history Arab
division has been more constant and more influential. The personal rivalries of
Arab politicians have always fed on the discrepancies of tribe and dogma and
social stratification.
The new union had stalled before accomplishing its full purpose. With all the
Arabian oil (especially if Iran had dissolved into chaos, as Arab propagandists had
persuaded themselves would happen) the Arab union might have stood a chance
of real independence. It might even have held the superpowers to ransom, from
the moment when Middle Eastern oil was seen to be essential for their survival.
But now, with Arabia only half won, and with Iran resurgent and better armed, the
divisions of the Arab world were compounded by the contest between Soviet
Russia and America. Imperialism was back under other names, and it was no
wonder that disillusion had set in.
Assassination was not far behind. The association between the Shias in Iraq
and the godless Russians provoked a resurgence of that orthodox fanaticism
which had claimed so many political victims in the past. The murder of the
Egyptian Prime Minister not only left a power vacuum in the Council of the Union,
but caused ripples and echoes among the Moslem subject races of the Soviet
Union, already wooed by China.
A new government was patched together with military participation, but the
seeds of doubt had been sown in the Politburo about the viability of control by
proxy in so vital an area. Plans were made and forces earmarked for a more direct
Soviet intervention. Equipment, clothing and warlike stores appropriate for hot
climate operations were issued, and an urgent programme of modification to
vehicles and weapons put in hand. Crash courses in Arabic were undertaken and
encyclopaedia articles rewritten to prove the fundamental compatibility between
the social principles of Islam and those of Marxism-Leninism.
Meanwhile, a new crisis began to develop nearer home. After Tito’s
disappearance from the political scene Yugoslavia had survived the succession
problem in the first instance with less difficulty than had been forecast. Inevitably
the regions had obtained a little more power and the economic arrangements in
each region had diverged a little more from the general norm, mostly leaning even
further than before towards the market economy, but the basic federal
organization remained more or less intact. Now, however, the general difficulties
caused by oil shortages and price increases added to the latent tensions between
the richer north and the poorer south of the country. The non-aligned group of
countries, of which Yugoslavia and Egypt had been founder members, had been
brusquely reduced by Egypt’s acceptance of Soviet tutelage. As the path of non-
commitment became narrower, Slovenia began slipping off to the West and Serbia
to the East.
West Germany had for some time seen Ljubljana as one of the gateways to the
development of the more intensive trade with Eastern Europe which its industry
seemed increasingly to require. The Slovenian provincial administration responded
to West German advances with an alacrity that went beyond merely commercial
advantage and suggested a vision of a new Balkan Switzerland where East and
West could meet on equal terms. The central government took fright at this
separatist trend and sought to redress the balance by turning a blind eye to pro-
Soviet groups which had always been in existence and had lately been sharpening
up their capability for agitation against just this eventuality. Their danger signals
to the CPSU lost nothing in transmission. The restoration of orthodox communist
control in Yugoslavia was now moved up to quite near the top in the Kremlin’s list
of objectives.
 Chapter 8
Heidelberg, 27 July 1985

It was a warm summer afternoon in Heidelberg. The visitors from the

Committee on Armed Services of the United States Senate were listening with close
attention to the Chief of Staff of the United States Army in Europe (USAREUR).
The press and TV crews were absent.
‘As I am sure was made abundantly clear this morning in the Commanding
General’s opening address and the informal group briefings which followed,’ the
Chief of Staff was recorded as saying, ‘this visit is warmly welcome in USAREUR,
from top to bottom in the whole command. It is evidence of the interest and
support we have increasingly been able to count on in the United States as
international tension has mounted further south and as we in this command have
steadily improved our state of readiness.
‘What I have to say is classified but, as you have wished, it is on the record, and
I know you will bear with me if it is occasionally on the technical side.’
He turned to the map.

Dispositions in CENTAG are known to you, and I have at this stage no

further comment on them. It is a matter for regret that the recommendations of
the Nunn-Bartlett Report in 1977 and of the Annual Defense Department Report
of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld for the Fiscal Year 1978, could not, for reasons
of finance, be fully acted on. Nevertheless, there has been steady progress since
the period of dangerously low levels of readiness during which these reports were
rendered—progress which is at least to some extent, if in varying degree, reflected
among our allies—and the US Army in Europe is today in better shape than at any
time in the last ten years. Progress at this rate, other things being equal, could
within two years put the Alliance in a position of unquestioned security against
any conventional attack from the Warsaw Pact.
Nuclear armaments will be covered at another time. I shall deal now with
conventional equipment.
The XM-1 tank, three times as effective as the M-60 it is replacing, is widely in
service throughout the command. The Mechanized Infantry 86 Combat Vehicle,
whose earlier introduction would have doubled the effectiveness of our infantry,
regrettably is not. Its stabilized auto-cannon for fire suppression and its two
under-armor ATGW (TOW or Hellfire) with a 3,000-meter range and a 90 per cent
first-hit probability would be invaluable. It has, of course, been accepted for
service and we have some, but not enough.
On the other hand we have through the improved Tacfire a 50 per cent
improvement in automated artillery fire direction, plus battery computers, and the
extended range ammunition for 200 mm and 155 mm tube artillery, with which it
can now reach out thirty to forty kilometers. This much improved counter-fire
capability has helped to correct a grave weakness on the CENTAG front. The
weakness I refer to is our difficulty in switching fire support laterally, given an
enemy possessing the initiative in choice of attack axes and a terrain not always
friendly to lateral movement on the ground.
We should have welcomed the phased array artillery-locating radars for counter-
battery use, and above all a general issue of the cannon-launched guided
projectiles with initial laser guidance, which are effective against tanks. As you
know, however, although these items have been accepted into service, full funding
for production has so far been withheld. We are rather more fortunate in the
provision of artillery-delivered scatterable mines, for delivery once the pattern of
an attack has been revealed. These are now coming into the theatre.
For air defense it is satisfactory that our inventory of third generation air
defense missiles is virtually complete to scale, with Patriot for medium and high
altitude, Roland for medium and low, and Stinger for low as well, replacing Redeye.
We need more anti-tank helicopters with a day-and-night and a 3,000-meter
stand-off capability. There are some, but we need more. We also need, as has often
been pointed out, many more ATGW, to be mounted on special purpose vehicles
and preferably under armor on MICV [Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicles], in
order to withstand the enemy’s suppressive fires, which we understand are certain
to be very intense. What we really need in US divisions in the Central Region is an
aggregate of at least 1,000 major anti-tank weapons in each, made up of 300-plus
mounted in tanks and 700 ATGW to be otherwise deployed. We have the tanks. We
do not, in these numbers, have the ATGW.
At corps and division level we have been greatly in need of much improved
intelligence, reconnaissance and target acquisition systems. Improvement in these
last two years there has been. Signal intelligence has benefited from better
methods and much better equipment. We have a good range of remotely-piloted
vehicles for surveillance and target acquisition, together with some provision of
airborne moving target radars, both helicopter and fixed wing, and radar locators.
The degree of visibility we now have over the battlefield will greatly help the
interposition of our smaller forces on the main axes of enemy effort and the
development of effective battlefield interdiction operations.
The effectiveness of our intelligence on the battlefield has sharply increased with
the introduction of the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System [JTIDS]. We
are still running this system in. It has never yet taken a full operational load and
we shall not know how best to exploit it until it has. But in this, as in other fields
where electronics are of vital importance, we are conscious of an enormous
potential which is a powerful source of confidence at every level.
I am glad to be able to report improved operational procedures and capabilities
for joint air-land warfare. Joint action is now effective in reconnaissance and
surveillance operations, to a lesser extent in suppression of enemy air defenses,
battlefield interdiction and electronic warfare, but above all in joint control of close
air support using artillery forward observers with laser designators.
The drawdown of theater stocks in support of operations elsewhere by other
nationalities (of which those by the Israelis were at one time typical) have long
since been made good, as you know. Prepositioned stocks of equipment for
reinforcing units are complete, and there will be little difficulty in bringing up to
combat level, for example, the heavy divisions expected at an early stage. One of
these is even now in process of being lifted in. Ammunition stocks are now up to
scale and, even more important perhaps than that, negotiations with the FRG,
actively pursued in 1980 for the re-siting of certain major installations east of the
Rhine, were successfully concluded nearly two years ago, and vital stocks are now
no longer so likely to be denied to forward troops by interruption of lines of
communication. Similar advantages will be generated by the substitution of a
theater line of communication through the Low Countries for that through
Bremerhaven in north Germany, though this is not yet complete and the new air
defense problem it has thrown up has not yet been completely resolved. Movement
towards fuller integration of Allied logistic systems has made progress. We are
fortunate in having fewer problems here in CENTAG in this respect than they have
in NORTHAG.
I have further to report continual improvement in command and control
systems, in air defense and control, and in measures to avoid surprise.
Finally I have to report, in answer to two questions raised by Senators, that
although, of course, French national policy is still to remain outside NATO, the
participation in our own planning of command and staff of II French Corps with its
two divisions and supporting troops stationed in the FRG is close, if highly
confidential. The two US brigades that were deployed in north Germany to make
good weaknesses in depth in NORTHAG have now been redeployed because
NORTHAG has recently taken encouraging steps towards the remedying of the
weaknesses there. Each of these US brigades is the basis of one of the
reinforcement divisions which will form a very important element in the regional
reserves now being developed by AFCENT [Allied Forces Central Europe].

The Chief of Staff came to an end and stepped aside. The Commander-in-Chief,
the Commanding General of the United States Army in Europe, then rose. He was
a tall, good-looking man in his middle fifties, trim of figure, clean-shaven, well-
groomed, with dark hair just beginning to turn grey. His manner was quiet, his
speech deliberate. ‘All generals are always on the stage,’ said Frederick the Great,
who knew a good deal about generals. The C-in-C USAREUR was no exception. He
was playing a part and knew it, and because he was his own producer and was an
efficient, intelligent and quite ambitious man it was a very well produced part, as
well as being well played. He was also, like very many generals, a brave, sincere
and selfless person. He knew what was required and he knew a good deal about
how to get it done.
Your army in Europe [he began] is in better shape than anyone, I think, has
realized, especially the Russians.
The Vietnam experience is out of our system. We are rejuvenated and
modernized. Our indoctrination to battle has been pressed hard.
The main focus of the US Army’s doctrine and training has been for these
several years past the Central Region of NATO—right where we are now. Almost
every combatant member of the officer corps of the United States Army has served
at least once in Germany. We know the terrain. We know the weather. We know
our enemy.
US divisions have been optimized for combat in Europe against the tank-heavy
forces of the Warsaw Pact. They have been trained to believe that even when
outnumbered they can win.
 Our tank crews have been taught to shoot first and to hit with the first shot, 60
or even 70 per cent of the time, out to ranges of a mile or more.
Combat teams of infantry and tanks, working closely together, have been
trained to use the rolling terrain and hill country in our sector, with its plentiful
forests and towns, for cover and concealment.
Our troops have been exercised against forces set up to represent most closely
Soviet strength, equipment and tactics.
Colonels and generals are expected to fight moving, active battles, always
seeking an advantage from the use of terrain, surprise and mobility.
Generals are expected to concentrate defending forces in front of the main
thrusts of the enemy so that the fighting troops do not have to meet a greater ratio
of strength against them than three or four to one.
Colonels have been taught to fight in forward defense alongside their German
allies.
The captains and their troops have learned that modern weapons in the defense
can and should inflict losses on an attacker, in comparison to their own, of well
over three to one. They have learned, in short, that a successful defense against
considerable odds is possible.
It is with convictions and tactical concepts such as these that the US forces in
the Central Army Group are prepared to meet a Soviet attack.
Let me only add a word about our German allies. The two German corps in
CENTAG are of similar strength and composition to our own. Some of their
equipment is of the same pattern as ours. Most of it is of their own design. They
have lately in service, for example, a new tank, the Leopard II.
It represents a different tank philosophy from that upon which our own XM-1 is
designed, or the British Chieftain for that matter, but I can tell you that it is very
good. All their equipment is good. The German Army has also made great headway
in the organizing and training of Home Defense units of the reserve. These can be
expected to play a very important part in the defense of their country, particularly
against internal dangers.
We are very close to our German allies. Joint German-American tactical
exercises, war games, demonstrations and discussions have led to a remarkable
unanimity between two national armies whose last battle experience in Europe
was against each other.
There are, of course, differences between us, some small, some not so small.
There is, for example, the greater reliance placed by US forces on air support. The
greatest difference, whose significance only battle will reveal, is that a war here
will be fought among Germans in Germany.
If the Commanding General had it in mind to say more, he did not say it. The
door of the briefing room opened and a staff officer hurried in, handing to the
General a slip of paper in what had become a highly charged silence.
‘I am informed,’ said the General, ‘that Soviet troops crossed the frontier into
Yugoslavia in some strength a few hours ago.’
The senior Senator rose.
‘General,’ he said, ‘you will have enough to do without having us around here.
It’s about time we all got home, anyway.’
 Chapter 9
The Invasion of Yugoslavia

The situation in the early summer of 1985 was fraught with crises and
uncertainties of many kinds. The year had begun with the Soviet exercise in the
use of military power to achieve political ends in the demotion of the US from its
world role. The resulting instability had, however, shown up at least as many
weaknesses on the Soviet side as on the American. And the Russians had to fear
that all these sources of anxiety might culminate together in some way—Chinese
pressure in the central Asian republics, the collapse of the Middle Eastern house
of cards, Yugoslav tendencies to move closer to the West, and the cumulative
effects on the Soviet-controlled regimes in Eastern Europe of an oil shortage,
higher food prices and increased military effort at the expense of civil
consumption.
The comparatively cautious policy hitherto pursued, which might be described
by the slogan ‘proxy and periphery’, had not yet produced the promised results.
The attempt to turn the Eurasian landmass into a base for worldwide naval
operations had suffered the inescapable setbacks of geography and temperament.
The choice now lay more clearly between accepting an unwelcome and even
humiliating return to previous spheres of influence, and making violent and rapid
use of the remaining real Soviet assets in the shape of its truly formidable
conventional attack capability in Europe and its ruthless ability to suppress
dissent wherever the Red Army was present.
The West was not wholly unaware of the debate now being conducted in the
Kremlin. The belief that one of the Soviet options must be war in Europe,
including the recapture of Yugoslavia, had led at last to a real effort to make good
deficiencies in the conventional forces available to Allied Command Europe in
NATO and in the all-important air defence of the United Kingdom as the
bridgehead for US reinforcements. (For the action taken to improve the UK defence
capabilities, see Appendix 1.) Means of counter-action in Yugoslavia were
depressingly small, but at least from the Western political point of view conditions
were more favourable. The Italian Communist Party, whose general allegiance to
NATO had remained somewhat qualified, could be relied upon (it was hoped) to
support the defence of an independent communist regime finding its own way to
socialism against the forcible imposition of Soviet control. Yugoslavia was
historically a prototype of Euro-communism and geographically a bastion against
Soviet pressure to conform. Some preparations could therefore be made by US
forces in Italy to counter a possible pro-Soviet coup supported by Red Army troops
from Hungary.
In the final stages of the Soviet debate, opinion varied as to whether Yugoslavia
should be dealt with in isolation or whether there should be a Soviet advance on a
broad front in Europe. Those advocating more general action not only emphasized
the importance of prosecuting Soviet foreign policy as a coherent whole but saw
this in particular as bringing a series of advantages. Acquisition of the greater part
of Western Europe would extend still further the glacis hitherto provided only by
the communist states of Eastern Europe. It could remove, perhaps for years, the
possibility of US action on the Western flank. It might be best to do this before
China was ready, before the Soviet position in the Middle East deteriorated too
greatly, and before improvements in NATO defences went much further. It would
allow, and indeed necessitate, strong measures against those in Poland and
Czechoslovakia who were now demanding not only freedom of expression but also
cheaper food. The destruction which war would cause in both Germanies would
buy a further breathing space before the German problem once more posed a
threat to the Soviet Union. In a major conflict with NATO Yugoslavia would be
unimportant and could be dealt with en passant. Limited Soviet action in response
to an appeal for help from within the country was in any case attractive. Effective
US counter-intervention was unlikely, but if it took place it could be used to justify
a more general attack upon the West through Poland, East Germany and
Czechoslovakia.
In the end events as usual took control. The Soviet-inspired Committee for the
Defence of Yugoslavia staged an abortive foray into Slovenia, precipitating a
collision between the Slovenian provincial government and the federal government
in Belgrade. The Committee called for Soviet help. At the same time some bakeries
closed in Gdansk and Dresden due to diversion of fuel to factories producing
military transport, and the resultant riots threatened to get out of hand. Soviet
reaction was seen to be unavoidable. The hard-liners won the day.
Meanwhile, the manoeuvre season had arrived. The Soviet command was
staging two major exercises, one in Hungary and one of unprecedented size in
East Germany. The Final Act signed at the Conference on Security and Co-
operation in Europe required the notification of manoeuvres over a certain size
and encouraged states holding them to invite observers from other countries. The
Russians played this in two ways. On grounds that they were of relatively little
importance they failed to notify the Hungarian manoeuvres, believing that these
might be the first to be converted into the real thing, but notified the German
exercise through the normal channels.
On 27 July 1985 a Soviet airborne division in an unopposed landing secured
the approaches to Belgrade. At the same time a Soviet motor-rifle division from
Hungary crossed the Yugoslav border on the Budapest-Zagreb road, followed by
another. The pro-Soviet Committee was recognized as the provisional government
of Yugoslavia, and Yugoslav frontier forces, after a short engagement, were quickly
obliged to withdraw towards Zagreb. The Soviet plan was to occupy Zagreb and
thence link up with the airborne troops east to Belgrade and fan out west to
Ljubljana. Meanwhile, the exercises in East Germany intensified, with more
formations moving forward from the Western Military Districts of the Soviet Union
through Poland.
The NATO side, in spite of many warnings, had failed to make specific provision
for this kind of threat in Yugoslavia. That country had remained the ‘grey area’ par
excellence. It was not covered by the NATO commitment to automatic defence. But
equally the West had not renounced interest in what happened there, as they had
by implication in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The continued
neutrality of Yugoslavia was obviously a Western interest of prime importance. But
it is difficult to guarantee a country whose foreign policy is based on non-
commitment, as Britain and France had found with Belgium prior to 1939.
Therefore greyness was made a virtue: the very uncertainty of Western reaction
was made a principle of deterrence.
The grey chicken now came home to roost and NATO had to decide - or rather
the USA decided, with reluctant Italian acquiescence, while NATO tagged along. In
the hope of favourable Yugoslav reaction, and in view of all the long history of
Italian-Yugoslav conflict, it was vital to avoid the use of Italian forces. But after
some days of furious diplomacy in Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, US marines
and airborne forces from Italy were able to make unopposed landings at Rijeka
(Fiume), Ljubljana and some of the Dalmatian islands. What was much more
serious, within twenty-four hours they were in action against Soviet airborne and
armoured units.
At this stage the US government still harboured a final hope that they might be
able to isolate events in Yugoslavia from the wider European scene, and above all
that they might be able to limit the impact upon American public opinion of any
fighting there. They called for an immediate meeting of the Security Council. They
ordered their commanders in the first instance not to move beyond the boundaries
of Slovenia, and, to prevent the inflaming of opinion in the United States, to put an
immediate ban on all television coverage of their operations.
But they were too late. They had counted without the enterprise of a resolute
Italian television cameraman, Mario Salvadori. He was not employed by the official
Italian television service, RAI, but by an international newsfilm agency. He had at
one time lived in the States. In Italy he had made good friends among the
American marines, whose peacetime manoeuvres and parades had provided him
with useful material when other news was scarce. He happened to be at their base
when the alert began, and his friends took him along ‘for the ride’ when they were
airlifted to Ljubljana.
It was thus decreed by chance that one of the first encounters between Soviet
and US forces in the Third World War took place under the eye of a television
camera. With his portable and lightweight electronic equipment, Salvadori was
present at the first contact, when Soviet forces thrusting into Slovenia came face
to face with American marines on the outskirts of Kostanjevica, between Ljubljana
and Zagreb. Three Soviet tanks, moving forward in the confident belief that no US
forces had yet reached the area, were surprised by a unit of US marines whose
armament included Milan anti-tank weapons. All three tanks were very quickly put
out of action by first-shot strikes, and a company of Soviet infantry on a hillside
beyond the town was swiftly recalled to redeploy in a stronger position
immediately to the rear. At the same time Soviet strike aircraft carried out a rocket
attack on the Americans, causing some very ugly casualties.
Much of this Salvadori, a daring and intelligent cameraman, recorded on tape. It
was action material of extraordinary drama. The high quality of the ENG pictures
gave a sense of reality and vividness greater than any in film pictures of Americans
in action in the now distant Vietnam War. The destruction of the Soviet tanks, one
of which blew up within a 100 metres of the cameraman’s position; the shocked,
drawn faces of Russian prisoners being escorted to the rear; and the spectacle of
the Soviet infantry suddenly withdrawing, so that the whole of the small hillside
seemed to move, conveyed in sharp, almost exultant terms the information that
the Red Army was far from being invulnerable. The trained military eye might have
noted that the Soviet infantry, in their sudden rearward move, were providing a
model of how to carry out the very difficult operation of a withdrawal in contact,
under fire. A military observer would certainly have recognized that three tanks do
not constitute a significant force. But this small action, if only because it was
small and readily grasped, came over as a clear US victory. Only the pictures of
the mutilated victims of the rocket attack, one screaming in agony, were a
reminder of the cost.
Salvadori was not only a skilled cameraman. He had had long experience of
outwitting officialdom. He quickly made his way to Ljubljana, without disclosing
the contents of his recording, and managed to get a lift on an aircraft back to Italy.
There, through his agency, the material was transmitted by satellite throughout
the world. It was in the hands of the American networks before the White House or
the Pentagon were even aware of its existence. The networks, moreover, knew that
the material had already been circulated widely, not least to the Iron Curtain
countries, who had helped themselves unhesitatingly to the satellite transmissions
of the agency. So into the homes of the American public went, unplanned,
uncensored, almost unedited—except for one peculiarly hideous shot of a marine
whose face had been blown away—these scenes of the first clash between the
Russians and the Americans.
With acute anxiety the United States authorities awaited the reaction of their
own people. To their relief, and also to their surprise—as indeed to that of most
commentators in the press—the result was not one of dismay or fear, but of anger
and pride. There was anger at the sufferings inflicted by the bombing, seen so
close upon the screen, but there was also an upsurge of pride at this spectacle of
Soviet troops being held in check and even withdrawing. In an instant, without
formal declarations of war, the American public felt themselves to be at war, and
some fundamental instinct for survival welded them together. The battle of
Kostanjevica was a minute operation in the huge waves of fighting which were to
follow; Salvadori’s pictures were to be outdone by miles of more dramatic, more
terrible coverage. But few recordings of this first television war were to have such
an influence. There could be no doubt now, not only in the minds of the American
public, but in the world at large, that the Soviet Union and the United States were
involved in a shooting war. And the first recorded glimpse of it had been a glimpse
of Soviet troops on the run.
This incident was easily presented to the Warsaw Pact countries as what some
at least of the Soviet hawks had been waiting for, the ‘attack’ by the West on a
communist state. It was the momentum of events, however, much more than the
actual incident itself, that now took charge. Soviet forces were joined in battle with
troops of the United States. This was the stupendous, almost unbelievable event
that brought into brutal reality what had so long been feared. The Soviet Union
and the United States were in combat action against each other on a battlefield.
The chocks were out. The huge military mass of the USSR was already beginning
to move down the slipway. There could now for the Soviet Union be no possible
alternative to the launching of the full invasion, already well prepared, of Western
Europe, and the advance to the Rhine, for the destruction of the Atlantic Alliance,
and the removal of the threat from US ‘imperialism’, operating from the forward
base of Federal Germany.

Chapter 10
Soviet Planning

The year 1984 had seen some difference of view in the Kremlin on the most
profitable method of exploiting the USSR’s very considerable position of military
strength. The difference was in the last resort no more than a matter of emphasis,
but it had been evident for some time and was not without importance in the
subsequent development of events.
The older men, all with experience of the Second World War, continued to see in
Germany the most persistent and dangerous threat to the long-term security of
the Soviet Union. They fully recognized the enormous strength and influence of
capitalist America, the other great superpower, and the potential danger it
embodied. Unless the United States disintegrated under the stresses of capitalist
contradictions, of which it had to be admitted there was at present little sign,
there would at some time have to be a reckoning with her. But the danger from a
re-armed, industrially powerful West Germany, eager for revenge, was both more
immediate and more real, both in itself and in its catalytic influence on the
countries of the West. These older men tended to see external problems more in
terms of Europe and its extension in North America than of the outer world. They
were at least as much Russian as Marxist-Leninist, and in some cases more so.
The younger men, none of whom had been old enough to take any part in the
Second World War, thought more in terms of the rest of the world than of Europe,
and even there, though they were fully alive to the danger from Germany, did not
regard it as the whole core of the external problem. They were uncompromising
Party men, born and brought up under the system, completely devoted to it and
wholly conscious that it was the sole condition of their being who and what they
were. They were at least as much Marxist-Leninist as Russian, and in some cases
more so.
Such difference as there was, it must be repeated, was only one of emphasis.
There was no disagreement on the persistent threat to the system from the
capitalist-imperialist world, with West Germany playing a major role under the
leadership of the United States. Nor was there disagreement on the high
probability of a future threat from China, on the dangers of heresies in national
communism, on the absolute need to keep the Party supreme and watertight, or
on any other fundamental issue. There was also complete agreement on the
inevitability of the ultimate triumph of the system everywhere, on the necessity to
exploit every external opportunity to advance the Soviet interest, on the wisdom of
tactical manipulation in the short term to secure greater gains in the long, and on
the paramount necessity for a dominant position of military strength abroad—at
the cost if necessary of damping down progress at home—as a fulcrum for the
lever of Soviet political power.
 The differences lay chiefly in the choice of areas of exploitation. The old guard
were inclined to look towards the centre, towards the manifest contradictions of
developed capitalist societies and the unstable relationships between them. The
younger men looked more to the periphery, to the opportunities offered among
developing societies and the relations not only between these societies but also
between their own developing world and more developed countries.
There was no shadow of disagreement on the necessity to neutralize West
Germany at some time, by military force if necessary. Centralists put this higher
on their list of priorities, perhaps, than the others, and might have been more
inclined to pre-emptive action. It was agreed policy to impair the coherence of the
Atlantic Alliance wherever possible; to reduce or offset the military strength of
NATO by any means that offered; and to maintain a military capability at sufficient
strength and readiness to ensure that any crisis in central Europe, up to and
including full-scale warfare, could be managed to Soviet advantage.
Politically the years since the re-arming of West Germany (which had to be
recognized as a major setback) had seen considerable improvements to the Soviet
position. The departure of France from NATO was a great gain. The Vietnam War
had been a useful distraction. There had been advantage in the existence of some
movement in the United States towards a degree of disengagement in Europe; in
the financial and economic difficulties of the United Kingdom, particularly where
balance of payments and budgetary difficulties had combined to reduce troop
deployments in continental Europe—and also, peripheralists might say, in the
British withdrawal from the East; in the strong growth of left-wing elements in the
politics of every one of the Atlantic Allies; in a general decline among Western
democracies in public interest in defence; and in certain other developments. The
pursuit of detente had been helpful to the Soviet interest, and negotiations on
arms limitation and force reductions had brought small but useful gains.
A very highly classified planning document, given a strictly limited circulation in
the Kremlin in October 1983, which fell into Allied hands after the fighting was
over, throws a sufficiently clear light on Soviet policy in relation to NATO to justify
the inclusion of a summary of it here.

Subject: Removal of the threat from NATO to the security of the USSR in Europe.
This could be achieved in the following way.
Rapid military defeat of AFCENT, with the simultaneous elimination of
AFNORTH and AFSOUTH, followed by an advance to a voluntary stop-
line: Hook of Holland-Nijmegen-Maastricht-Saarbrucken-Trier-the Rhine-
Basel. The intention of the USSR to stop on this line without entering
French territory will have been made abundantly clear worldwide. It is
assumed that a government of the Popular Front will continue to be in
power in France when the action takes place and that, in spite of not
unimportant differences between France and the USSR, there will be
sufficient reluctance on the part of the French to become involved in
hostilities with the Soviet Union to ensure an adequate response to the
pressures that can be brought to bear. It can therefore be expected,
though of course not guaranteed, that French forces will not participate in
these operations.
Once the FRG has been totally occupied its neutralization can be put in
hand on the usual lines under accepted procedures. The complete
collapse of the North Atlantic Alliance can be confidently expected to
follow from its failure to prevent this from happening. Bilateral
negotiations can then be opened with the USA. Other ex-allies can for the
time being be ignored.
A firm decision to act along these lines will only be taken in the light of
the prevailing situation and in relation to all other relevant developments,
though complete military plans will be kept up to date for this
contingency in itself. Nevertheless, certain factors bearing on choice of
time should be kept in mind.
A resounding military victory over the West, followed by the dismantling
of the FRG and the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance, will reinforce Soviet
hegemony within the Warsaw Pact and weaken divergent national socialist
movements outside it. Current tendencies suggest the advisability of
achieving this fairly soon. It might be unwise to delay it beyond 1987.
NATO countries have recently initiated some improvements in
‘defensive’ preparedness. These are at present modest, but the
maintenance of the same rate of expansion will in time set constraints on
Soviet freedom of action. In five years’ time the achievement of the military
objective will be considerably more difficult.
Although it has been consistently and warmly denied in the West, we
think there are plans to open offensive operations at some time against
the Warsaw Pact with an attack on the German Democratic Republic. The
Federal Republic is clearly having considerable difficulty in overcoming
the reluctance of some of the Allies but might still succeed in staging an
attack not later than 1986. The policy of ‘forward defence’ makes no sense
from a military point of view unless it involves action well to the east of
the frontier, and it can be taken as no more than a cloak for the planning
of an invasion of the GDR, possibly already far advanced.(10-4)
China does not yet present the major military threat which can be
certainly expected to develop later. NATO must be reduced before this.
What requires urgent attention now, however, is the Chinese action, with
powerful US support, to stimulate dissidence in the Asiatic republics. This
is sharply on the increase. It would appear that unless the question of
NATO can be resolved before the autumn of 1986 a deteriorating security
situation in the Military Districts of Central Asia and the Far East, and
possibly in those of Siberia and the Trans-Baikal as well, might offer
distraction from Europe and considerable temptation to the FRG to exploit
the position.
There would thus clearly be advantage in action to eliminate the FRG
and ensure the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance not later than the summer
of 1986. The course of events, particularly in the light of a possible
requirement to intervene in Yugoslavia, may compel earlier action, and
arrangements for mobilization will, of course, be kept under constant
review.
The greatest relative advantage to the West, as NATO studies confirm,
will be if the Warsaw Pact can spend fourteen days in the mobilization
process as against seven days for NATO. It should not be difficult to use
summer exercises to conceal the first seven days. The utmost use will
have to be made of deception arrangements, nevertheless, to indicate,
once we are seen to be mobilizing for a possible attack, a date for it later
than any that might be chosen.
In spite of some recent improvement in NATO’s state of readiness,
including arrangements to deploy two to four additional divisions in an
emergency, further reinforcing formations cannot be expected to arrive in
the European theatre, once hostilities have started, before D+16 at the
earliest. Naval and air interdiction can be expected to reduce, but not
entirely destroy, their effectiveness. It will be important to secure the stop-
line before the arrival of major reinforcements.
Even more important, in the matter of duration of operations, is the
question of nuclear release. The USSR will make it clear beyond any
possible doubt that use of radiation to any significant degree in offensive
weapons of war will be regarded as an open invitation to discard all
restraints on nuclear warfare. Escalation into strategic exchange, to use
the Western mode of expression, will certainly follow battlefield
applications.
There will unquestionably be doubts and hesitations in the Alliance
over the initiation of nuclear release. Widespread unwillingness to allow
the use of battlefield weapons on Federal territory can be counted on in
the FRG, for the effect of battlefield weapons there would only differ in
degree from that of strategic attack on the homelands of the USSR and
USA. The USSR can count at the outset on a high superiority in non-
nuclear capability. This would be largely offset if battlefield nuclear
weapons were introduced. It would therefore be foolish in the extreme for
the USSR to resolve NATO’s doubts on their introduction by introducing
them first.
The earlier that military operations in Europe can be brought to a
successful conclusion the lower will be the probability of the
neutralization of Warsaw Pact conventional superiority by the arrival of
major reinforcements or the introduction of nuclear weapons. The
conclusion from a close study of all these considerations is that the stop-
line should be reached not later than the evening of D+9. The military
plan will be framed accordingly.
The essence of the military plan to implement this policy, which can
now be recognized as of quite unique importance in the study of the Third
World War, has been distilled from captured documents and is
summarized below. It deserves careful consideration.
Invasion from a standing start from normal locations, though attractive,
is for ground forces of the Warsaw Pact not practicable. Even with
exercise cover, and with an excuse for military movement in the shape of
real or imaginary internal security difficulties in satellite countries, it
would not be possible to count on complete surprise. Some degree of
precautionary preparation on the part of NATO would have to be counted
on. This could be expected to include the flying-in of the personnel of
certainly one heavy division from the United States to marry up with its
pre-positioned equipment, and possibly of two, and the partial deployment
to its emergency positions of much of AFCENT, including the Dutch and
Belgian corps in NORTHAG and some of the entirely new II British Corps.
It would also include the alerting of air defences. NORTHAG continues to
offer the most attractive point of decisive entry, in spite of the lack of
depth in the CENTAG sector, because of the inadequacy of reserves to
fight the battle in depth which will inevitably develop in the NORTHAG
sector. Forward deployment (adopted in the FRG for purely political
reasons) has made a main thrust against NORTHAG particularly inviting.
The cover plan must firmly indicate a date for the opening of the
offensive not earlier than D+9 or 10. The actual offensive on D-day will
thus catch the defence not yet prepared for it.
On the night D–1 there would be widespread attacks by undercover
forces (some 400 KGB-controlled cells are already deployed) on suitable
targets in the FRG, stiffened by expendable Soviet airborne units. Shortly
before first light on D-day airborne formations, making the best use of
undercover forces, would seal Hamburg, make good Bremen airfield and
seize crossings over the Weser; if possible, over the Rhine as well. The
securing of Bremen airfield as an airhead would be indispensable. The
success of other airborne operations would be a bonus.
Just before first light on D-day, and synchronized with the widest
possible interference with US space reconnaissance satellites, an air
operation of the very highest intensity, using both high explosive and
chemical munitions, would be launched simultaneously against the Allied
air force bases and control systems and the movement of AFCENT’s land
forces to their main defensive positions. When the full shock of this had
taken its effect, and a favourable air situation had been achieved, the
weight of air effort would be shifted to direct support of a general offensive
along the entire AFCENT front, exploiting both normal mass-attack tactics
and deep penetration action, the latter intended primarily to pre-empt
NATO anti-tank suppressive action. In ground action chemical weapons
would be employed at army commanders’ discretion, with the emphasis
on nerve gases, persistent or non-persistent. Airborne assaults on
suitable targets, especially airfields, air defence sites, headquarters and
obstacle crossings would continue. All ground force operations would
have maximum tactical air support.
2 Guards Tank Army with two Polish divisions and some GDR troops
would attack on the north of the NORTHAG sector, 3 Shock Army in the
south of the same sector, followed by 20 Guards Army, with two GDR
divisions under command.
8 Guards Army would attack on the CENTAG front, objective Frankfurt,
1 Guards Tank Army further south, objective Nurnberg.
 One Polish and two Soviet divisions would move northwards through
Schleswig-Holstein into Denmark, supported as necessary. The main
thrust into AFNORTH would be out of the Leningrad Military District
through Kola in the first instance. The follow-up would be by rail through
Finland. All effective resistance in AFNORTH should cease by D+6, though
difficult country may delay the southward advance in Norway.
By first light on D+l armoured columns in the north must reach the
Dortmund-Ems Canal, making good all Weser crossings north of Minden
soonest thereafter. In the CENTAG area Giessen must be secured, to
develop an attack on the Frankfurt-Mainz complex, already under heavy
pressure from the east.
Air-portable formations operating on the ground out of Bremen airhead
should secure river crossings into Holland for rapid consolidation by
following armour. Airborne troops will be used to extend the depth of the
penetration in Holland. It is imperative to seize the Hilversum radio and
television complex intact at the earliest opportunity. By D+2 resistance in
Holland is expected to be minimal. All Holland is to be occupied as far
south as the River Waal by D+6.
While strong pressure continues on CENTAG from the north-east and
east, the main effort will now be in an offensive north to south along the
west bank of the Rhine. This is expected to be decisive in the outflanking
of CENTAG and destruction of AFCENT.
There must be maximum exploitation of refugee movement everywhere.
Civilian casualties are wholly irrelevant and may even be advantageous.
Towns and cities are to be bypassed wherever possible for subsequent
attention.
Berlin will be contained. Its early capitulation can be counted on when
AFCENT breaks.
Resistance can be expected to continue in difficult country, such as the
Harz, Spessart, Schwarzwald and Thuringer Wald and the Bavarian high
country. This can be masked and ignored. It is also likely to continue in
Rhineland and Ruhr cities. Here it must be ruthlessly eliminated.
NORTHAG can be expected, when its forward defences have been
penetrated, first of all to take up positions roughly east and west along
the Teutoburger Wald, no doubt hoping to deny crossings across the
Lower Rhine by a manoeuvre battle in depth. They will have insufficient
troops for this, and there is no hope of their succeeding.
When the north-south offensive begins to develop NORTHAG can be
expected to regroup, in an attempt to check it, on an east-west position
west of the Rhine, between Bonn and Maastricht. No chances can be
taken here. There will unquestionably be sufficient fresh Warsaw Pact
formations and air resources to break through. At least three hitherto
uncommitted divisions from 20 Guards Army will be available for a start.
Success in this operation will lead to the rolling up of CENTAG from the
rear and the collapse of the NATO defence of the Central Region.
 This must be complete by D+7, at which time the only permissible
pockets of continuing resistance (disregarding Berlin, if it has not yet been
ordered to capitulate, and Hamburg) will be in the Bavarian Alps.
On D-day three Soviet divisions, from Hungary and Czechoslovakia, will
start moving through Austria into Italy. No Italian resistance is expected.
This force may also, if necessary, furnish means of opening a flank attack
on CENTAG through Bavaria.
It is to be assumed that political pressure on the French government,
with the guarantee that Warsaw Pact action will proceed no further than
the stop-line, will cause France to refrain from hostile action and
withdraw II French Corps from Germany.
The collapse of AFCENT (as well as the elimination of AFNORTH and
AFSOUTH) will reduce Allied Command Europe to impotence and cause
the disintegration of the Alliance. The United States will accept a ceasefire
on or very soon after D + 8, after which discussions can be initiated.
The neutralization of the Federal Republic of Germany, with the
liquidation of hostile elements among the people and such population
transfer as may be necessary, together with the dismantling of industrial
plant for removal, or its destruction in situ, for all of which instructions
have already been prepared, will proceed forthwith.

The plan for the invasion of the Central Region of NATO by the Warsaw Pact, of
which this is a summary, assumed as a necessary condition a high degree of
continuing control over the countries and peoples of Eastern Europe. This was
quite likely to be threatened.

Chapter 11
Over the Edge

I: Dispositions in CENTAG
By 2 August 1985 the four corps composing the Central Army Group in the
Central Region of Allied Command Europe were already in their forward position
in the CENTAG sector. This ran from near Kassel in the north, at the junction with
I Belgian Corps on the right of the Northern Army Group, to the Austrian frontier
south of Munchen.
The four corps of the Central Army Group lay from north to south as follows: III
German, V US, VII US, II German.
II French Corps, stationed with some supporting army troops in south-west
Germany, was still not under command to Allied Command Europe. It was not
even certain how the French government, given its pronounced left-wing
orientation in the recent past, would, in the event of hostilities with the Warsaw
Pact, regard its obligations under the Atlantic Treaty. Relations between the
French General Staff in Germany and CENTAG, however, were close and cordial,
and communication between the two, though discreet, was fairly free.
 At the end of July the personnel of an armoured division, the first of the
divisions earmarked for USAREUR, had been flown in from the United States. By
nightfall on 2 August it had almost completed the drawing of its prepositioned
combat equipment, including more than 300 XM-1 tanks. Some of its units, at
least, had fired-in their guns at Grafenwohr before dispersal in the area north-
west of Wurzburg, under command to V US Corps.
It was V US Corps’ sector, running north and south through Fulda, which was
considered critical in CENTAG. The Demarcation Line with the East bulges out
here in a bold westward curve towards the bend in the Rhine near Frankfurt-am-
Main, at its closest no further from Frankfurt than 100 kilometres, with only
another forty kilometres to the Rhine. Furthermore, in the hill country of the
Thuringer Wald there is an important gap around Fulda itself, with the terrain
becoming ever more readily negotiable as it opens down into the Rhine-Main plain.
The distances are all short here. There is not much ground to trade for time and
little opportunity for mobile operations.
The area forward of the Fulda valley favoured the defence, offering ample choice
of good positions for tanks and ATGW, with considerable depth to their fields of
fire. Unfortunately the distance from the Fulda valley to the frontier is no more
than fifteen kilometres.
Behind the Fulda valley to the west is the high mass of the Vogelsberg, to the
north the wooded country along the autobahn through Bad Hersfeld to Kassel, to
the south the inhospitable terrain of the Hohe Rhon. As a good example of the
course of events in a critical sector we shall be giving considerable attention to the
action of V US Corps. Its commander’s mission was simple: to keep the Soviet
forces east of the Frankfurt plain and as close to the border as possible.
Lieutenant General Harold J. Selby, Commanding General of V US Corps, was
an old hand. Just too young for service in the Second World War, he had got into
the Korean campaign right at the end. Later on he had seen plenty of service in
armoured cavalry in Vietnam. His total of seven years’ service in Germany had
included, besides a tour on the operations staff in HQ AFCENT, command of a
regiment and of a division before he was given the command of V Corps in 1983.
Each of his two original US divisions had been increased in strength to 15,000
men with over 300 tanks each and nearly 500 ATGW. In addition to the armoured
cavalry regiment deployed along the border in the corps sector there was a further
squadron of armoured cavalry in each division. Besides the self-propelled 155 mm
and 8-in divisional artillery, each division also had an additional artillery group
and nearly fifty anti-tank helicopters. His third division, newly arrived in Germany
but containing many officers and men with previous experience in the theatre, was
at lower strength and had not yet shaken down, but it was by no means without
promise.
The two forward divisions knew their areas well. Each was so disposed as to
take care of one of the two most likely axes of attack -to the north of the
Vogelsberg through Bad Hersfeld and Alsfeld into the plain north of Frankfurt, and
south of the Vogelsberg through Fulda and down the Kinzig river valley through
Hanau towards Frankfurt. The corps commander expected action on both axes but
was convinced that one or the other would be chosen for the main effort. He knew
that his overriding task was to establish the direction of the main thrust before the
smaller force opposing it was overwhelmed.
Intelligence here was critical. Since his arrival in the corps the Commander had
made a minutely detailed study of the terrain and planned a very thorough
intelligence operation covering every approach. What he could not cover with his
own sensors he asked to have covered for him by CENTAG. To help him find out
what he wanted he relied on the reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence
resources available at every level of responsibility, from intelligent young men with
binoculars and a radio in a hole on a hill far forward to the input from highly
sophisticated satellite systems in space. The Joint Tactical Information
Distribution System (JTIDS) had been designed to handle a vast volume of
intelligence material coming in from sources as varied as satellite systems,
reconnaissance vehicles, both manned and unmanned, ELINT (electronic
intelligence), SIGINT (signal intelligence) and battlefield surveillance of all kinds,
and to funnel it all into processing centres for analysis, correlation, assessment
and distribution. The corps commander, however, was too old a hand to place
exclusive reliance on processes not within his total control and on systems
vulnerable to counter-measures. His principal instrument for the assessment of
the enemy’s intentions was to be the strong engagement he intended to fight in the
covering force area up against the border, forward of the Hanau and Fulda rivers.
His final judgment, which, like all fighting soldiers, he knew must in the last
resort be purely intuitive, whatever aids he had, would depend on his
interpretation of that action.
The armoured cavalry regiment on the border was a powerful brigade-sized
armoured force in its own right, basically of light tanks, now reinforced by a
medium tank battalion and a mechanized infantry battalion, together with self-
propelled artillery and attack helicopters. Commanders in the covering force had
been ordered to destroy leading elements in engagements which should either be
opened at extreme range or be held down to very short-range ambush; to force the
enemy to commit strong reserves and deploy his artillery; and to give no ground at
all except to avoid the imminent certainty of encirclement and total destruction.
Small armoured task forces had reconnoitred and in many cases prepared some
hundreds of excellent battle positions before the battle began. The Commander
was entirely convinced that in the action of the covering forces lay the whole key to
success in his main battle. If this action was conducted as he intended, it would in
his view both identify the main thrust and give him a little time to organize his
response to it. At the same time it would slow down the Soviet surge just enough
to cast doubt on the invincibility of the total armoured offensive. This, he thought,
could pay a big dividend.
The course of events was to suggest that he was right.

II: The View from Rheindahlen

The G3 (General Staff – Operations) Duty Officer in Headquarters, Northern
Army Group, still in its peacetime location at Rheindahlen in northern Germany,
finished entering in his log the routine call at the half hour to AFCENT, while his
two juniors in other corners of the map room were already putting together
material for the next, and turned again to the letter to his wife. It was just after
three o’clock on the morning of the first Sunday in August 1985. The night had
been warm and thundery; a brief rainstorm about midnight had done little to
freshen it.
There had not been much to report to AFCENT. Most of what was important had
gone earlier in the night—reports on the army group’s state of readiness, the
dispositions at last light of its five component corps,(11-5) tank and gun states,
arrival of reserve units and of reinforcement personnel, the intelligence SITREP,
and so on.
The general alert ordered in Allied Command Europe on the news of the
airborne invasion of Yugoslavia and the follow-up by two Soviet motor-rifle
divisions out of Hungary, resulting in an almost immediate clash with US marines,
had done curiously little to change things in the Central Region. Events had been
moving towards a general alert for some days, though the weight of evidence
suggested that an attack by the Pact in the Central Region, if it ever came off,
would be most unlikely before the beginning of September and scarcely possible
much before mid-August.
A good deal of intelligence material had been coming into the Ops room during
the night from the ‘I’ staff of the British Army of the Rhine (whose C-in-C was also
Commander Northern Army Group) but not a lot of it was new. Reports continued,
of a sort that had now grown familiar, of preparations in clandestine cells (of
which some hundreds were known to exist) for strikes at military and civil
communication centres and at other key points throughout the Federal Republic,
and for the giving of help to Soviet parachutists coming in on Rhine and Weser
bridges. There was the usual wild disagreement on target date and wide
discrepancy in detail.
What had not been in doubt for several weeks now, even since before the
Yugoslav crisis, was that if the ‘exercises’ of the Group of Soviet Forces in
Germany, now in progress on a scale far larger than any yet seen, were not in fact
a full mobilization for war they were a very passable substitute for it. There had
been the usual notification through the head of the Soviet Military Mission to C-in-
C BAOR (NORTHAG, as a NATO command, was not recognized by the Russians) of
the intention to hold manoeuvres, and of the area in the GDR that would be
closed, but the areas were of quite unusual size and the exercises were to be of
exceptional duration. It was explained by the Soviet Mission that these were
‘readiness exercises’, normal, but gone through only at long intervals.
The crisis in Yugoslavia and the Soviet intervention there, though neither could
be described as entirely unexpected, now threw a clearer light on events. To bring
the whole Warsaw Pact gently and unobtrusively, as far as this was possible, to a
war footing before an initiative in Yugoslavia (now seen to have been planned some
time before) made very good sense. The response of the West to a Soviet attempt to
force a disintegrating Yugoslavia back into the system might not be easy to
predict, but it was unlikely to be accepted as tamely as the subjugation of
Czechoslovakia seventeen years before. Of all the possible reactions, an invasion of
the Warsaw Pact by NATO could hardly be seen as likely, however useful the
possibility of it might be to the USSR for propaganda purposes. It would be
important, all the same, for the forces of the Pact to be fully prepared, whether for
defensive action against a Western attack or for the more likely contingency of a
pre-emptive offensive.
It was in June that the rumours reaching Western intelligence of increasing
activity among undercover left-wing groups in the FRG began to receive some
confirmation from more trustworthy sources. It was clear that plans existed for
sabotage on a considerable scale, and even for operations that made little sense
unless they were to be supported by military action from the other side.
In early July the evidence began to harden. An action date some time in mid-
September was being indicated. But though it was still doubtful whether much
could be achieved by sabotage cells acting on their own, there was still no firm
indication that a major initiative by Soviet armed forces was intended, the
‘readiness exercise’ notwithstanding.
The Federal Republic of Germany was not unnaturally the first major Allied
power to take the aggregate of these reports really seriously, considered in the
context not only of current military activity in the Warsaw Pact but also of the
confused and threatening situation in Yugoslavia. The United States began to do
so at about the same time, and so did Belgium.
The United Kingdom was rather harder to persuade. There had been no alert for
several years—not, in fact, since Tito’s departure from the scene—and the British
did not entirely believe what they were being told, largely because they did not
want to. The false detente had had its effect. Enough had recently been done
within the Alliance, it was generally thought, to prevent the Russians trying
anything on. Whatever modification there had been of recent years in British
public opinion, the habit of self-deception, persistent for so many years in Britain,
was clearly hard to shake off.
The Dutch were even more reluctant to believe anything so uncomfortable. The
Norwegians and Danes flatly rejected the evidence, while the French, still members
of the Atlantic Alliance though not, of course, of NATO and now under a
government of the Popular Front, kept their own counsel.
Troop movement by the GSFG (Group of Soviet Forces in Germany) into the
designated manoeuvre area began in a spell of good summer weather in the first
week of July. Information coming out of East Germany to the West was, as usual,
plentiful, and it soon became apparent that these exercises were going to be
conducted on a very massive scale indeed - much larger, even, than had been
expected. The Red Army and Air Force certainly seemed to be playing it, as the
saying goes, for real. Ammunition, fuel and warlike stores were being moved up in
actual tonnages. At the same time, in the Soviet Union itself, the arrangements for
recall of reservists seemed to be getting a complete work-out and the men were
joining their units. The same thing appeared to be happening in all the Warsaw
Pact countries.
It was the New York Times that first aroused really widespread misgiving in the
West by reporting that what was going on in the Warsaw Pact looked mighty like a
mobilization. Two days later the Frankfurter Allgemeine came out bluntly with the
statement that that was just what it was. On the same day a journalist regarded
by some as the bane of Whitehall and by others as its only hope, a man called
Jardine Snatcher, told the world under banner headlines that he was defying D-
notices to let it be known that the British Chiefs of Staff had exercised their
constitutional right of access to the Prime Minister in order to call on Mrs Plumber
in No. 10 Downing Street and tell her precisely that.
Meanwhile, outside Europe, disquieting developments, referred to elsewhere in
this book, were causing increasing concern throughout the Western world—above
all, not unnaturally, in Washington.
Relations between the United States and the communist bloc in the Caribbean
were more than usually strained and getting worse. Events in Southern Africa and
the Middle East seemed to be moving towards not one crisis but several. In all
three areas Soviet activity was open, marked and increasing. One-third of the
Soviet submarine fleet was known to be at sea. Units of it, with support vessels,
had been reported not only off Cuba and Jamaica but also at Alexandria and in
North African waters, as well as off Malta and in the Arabian Gulf. Units of the
Black Sea Fleet were known to have been moving in some numbers through the
Straits into the Mediterranean. What was no less significant was that Soviet
combat aircraft were widely deployed in the Caribbean, as also in Libya, Malta,
East Africa and Syria, while there was much movement of transport aircraft.
In the USSR the harvest was expected to be even more disastrous than those of
the previous two years and critical foodstuffs were known to be scarce. The
measures which, in the recent past, had produced waves of unrest in Poland and
Romania and even in parts of the Soviet Union itself-in the Ukraine, for example,
and in Georgia - were likely to be repeated. Yugoslavia, meanwhile, was on the
brink of civil war.
Kremlin-watchers were pointing out the propitious opportunities for Soviet
exploitation that were opening up in many different places at once. They were also
adding gloomily that if ever there was a time when the Soviet Union needed foreign
adventure as a distraction from domestic discontent this was probably it. Of the
two prime potential adversaries, moreover, China was not yet ready for a major
military enterprise and NATO, though something had been done in the past few
years to remedy some of its better known defects, had still not recovered from
more than a decade of neglect. Kremlin-watchers had said all that, of course,
before. One thing at least was clear: time was not on the side of the Soviet Union.
Looking back on events, it became clear to Western observers later that, with
the less noticeable preliminaries embarked on a good deal earlier, full mobilization
in the Warsaw Pact had begun on or about 14 July. Though no public
announcement had been made in Moscow the indicators were enough for the
Secretary of State to advise President Thompson on 18 July that Soviet
mobilization must now be accepted as a fact. The same advice was given to heads
of government in all member states of the Alliance at about the same time. In the
three major partner countries in NATO, the United States, the United Kingdom
and the Federal Republic of Germany, defence chiefs urged mobilization at once.
Only in the Federal Republic was there immediate agreement.
The President of the United States, terribly aware of his unique responsibilities,
was reluctant to raise the temperature. He got through on the hot-line to the head
of government in the USSR (with some delay—it was several hours before the
Soviet President could be brought to the instrument) to make emphatic
remonstrance and to urge the cancellation of all further warlike preparations.
Surprise was expressed in response to such concern. What was happening in the
GDR was only an exercise, of which appropriate notice had been given. Practice
mobilizations—carried out only rarely because of the cost - were indispensable to
the efficiency of armed forces. When this one was over it would not need to be
repeated for a long time. It was hoped that the President of the United States
would not encourage panic reaction. The best service to the cause of world peace
would be to quieten the manic howls of fascist revanchists in West Germany.
These were increasing daily and causing growing concern in the USSR.
Under mounting pressure from the National Security Council and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and with clear indications that public opinion was moving strongly
in favour of mobilization, the President gave the order on 21 July. The Federal
Republic had begun its own mobilization the day before. The United Kingdom did
not follow until the 23rd, and even then with some reluctance. It was not at first
clear whether the trade unions—no longer the dominant force in the governance of
Britain they had been in the seventies, but still powerful—would co-operate. There
was the expected chorus of left-wing disapproval; a good deal of hard bargaining
and wheedling was needed before the go-ahead could be given. Even then only a
modified form of mobilization was ordered in the first instance. Parliament, hastily
recalled from recess, quickly passed a short enabling Act to make possible certain
preparations (such as the embodiment of voluntary reserves) constitutionally
dependent on full mobilization. The reserves began to be called up.
Following an emergency meeting of the NATO Council, mobilization in every
other member state of the organization was ordered at about the same time. It had
long been a structural flaw in NATO, becoming increasingly apparent in the
seventies, that there was no general agreement on the timing of response to alert
measures by individual governments. Each retained a high, if varying, degree of
discretion. It was fortunate that there was now too little cause for doubt to permit
procrastination.
The position of France was uncertain. Though still a signatory to the North
Atlantic Treaty she had not been for some twenty years a member of the military
organization. Her Popular Front government was unlikely to welcome the
possibility of hostilities with the Soviet Union. SACEUR (Supreme Allied
Commander Europe) tried in vain to discover what orders would be given, in the
event of hostilities, to II French Corps in south-west Germany. At least, with
reservists being recalled in France, deficiencies in personnel and equipment were
being made good here, as they were elsewhere, while the relations between the
French command and staff in Germany on the one hand and CENTAG on the
other continued to be close. Elsewhere, Switzerland, Sweden and Austria were also
recalling reservists and bringing their forces to a higher state of readiness.
Almost as difficult for the Americans and British, and for the Canadians too, as
the decision to mobilize was the question of whether to order the repatriation of
dependants of service personnel in Germany, and other civilian nationals, and, if
this was to be done, when to do it. This had always been seen as a critical
indicator of whether hostilities were expected. London and Washington both gave
forty-eight hours’ notice of evacuation on 23 July. Movement of civilian nationals
began on the 25th—in part directly by air to their home countries, in part by road,
in the first instance to staging areas, in Holland for the British and in Belgium for
the Americans and Canadians. Evacuation was everywhere complete by the 30th.
 Meanwhile, throughout the whole European theatre NATO formations were on
the move to their operational positions. The headquarters at their different levels—
of CENTAG with its American commander at Heidelberg, of NORTHAG under
British command at Rheindahlen, of AFCENT with its German commanding
general at Brunssum in Holland, and of SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters Allied
Powers in Europe), with its American Supreme Commander (SACEUR) and his
British and German deputies, itself at Mons in Belgium—were all due to move to
war locations, with staggered timings, in the next few days. Advance parties had
manned these locations already and tested communications.
Main headquarters were still in their peacetime locations only because of the
exceptionally heavy administrative load in the build-up period. This was a great
burden on communications and staff alike, and was best handled through
permanent signal channels, with normal staff accommodation and office facilities.
There was still thought to be time, if not a great deal. D-day, if the Russians really
meant business, was not expected before the second half of August at the earliest.
The Allied air forces were, of course, able to respond quickly by the very nature
of their medium. The increasing period of tension and general mobilization had
given ample time for the Central Region air forces to assume a full war posture.
They had had years of experience under the stringent conditions of SACEUR’s
periodic tactical evaluation tests. These tests, called at no notice in peacetime,
required the bases to go to a full war footing as if under threat of conventional and
chemical attack. The time taken to raise the whole force to a full combat state was
monitored and evaluated by an independent team of inspectors. What they had to
do now was therefore well rehearsed and would be carried out to a less demanding
timescale. From their war headquarters the commanders of 2 and 4 Allied Tactical
Air Forces had been monitoring, with not a little satisfaction, the progress as the
bases told-in their generation rate of combat-ready aircraft and the tote boards on
the walls steadily filled.
By midnight 3 August 90 per cent of the aircraft of Allied Air Forces Central
Europe were serviceable, armed, and protected in hardened shelters. During the
last week reactivated UK bases and US airfields in 4 ATAF had been receiving a
continuous stream of reinforcement aircraft which had been flown across the
Atlantic, usually refuelling in the air. So far, very good; but General Donkin, the
Commander Allied Air Forces Central Europe, had much to ponder.
He was well satisfied with the success of the aircraft generation and the
reinforcements - but then he had expected all that to go well because it had so
often been rehearsed in peacetime exercises and training. His mind was now
turned to the adverse factor which had always existed in the military balance:
namely that when at full war strength the numerical advantage still favoured the
Warsaw Pact in the ratio of approximately 2:1. Tactical surprise had been
sacrificed by the Warsaw Pact it was true, but they would nevertheless enjoy the
initiative in calling the first shots. Furthermore, SACEUR had ordained that 20 per
cent of the nuclear-capable aircraft must be held back and preserved for the time
when nuclear strike operations might be necessary. The Air Commander was
sanguine about the superiority of his airmen, aircraft and weapons. He knew they
would give the highest account of themselves if called to battle. But the uncertain
factor, and the critical one, was what the losses would be and whether there would
be the numbers left after several days’ fighting to hold the line until the ground
forces were reinforced and able to take on the full brunt of the land battle.
Out of the window of the Joint Headquarters building housing HQ NORTHAG
and HQ 2 ATAF, which also held HQ BAOR and HQ RAF Germany, both soon to
run down and become base organizations, the Duty Officer looked down into the
brightly lit forecourt. Blackouts, such an important feature of the Second World
War in the defence of large and important targets, had little significance in an age
of precision-guided weapons.
Long lines of vehicles stood partially loaded in readiness for the move to the
operational location the following night. The Duty Officer watched a Dutch sentry
moving slowly down one of the lines. His hair was rather long, the Duty Officer
observed, even for a Dutch soldier.
It was only a month or two ago that a parade had been held here to celebrate
the thirtieth year of use of these admirably designed buildings, built, like the
agreeably laid-out cantonment around them, out of Occupation Costs not long
after the Second World War. The comfortable married quarter in which the Duty
Officer was now living by himself stood among trees already well grown.
He had sent off the rest of the family’s belongings the day before, to where his
wife was staying in her mother’s house in Surrey. They would be thinking about
the eldest girl’s eighth birthday, only a week away, for which, as a special treat,
she was to be taken to London to see The Mousetrap. He had been taken to see it
on his own eighth birthday. Later on in the day he would be sleeping in the
strangely empty married quarter for the last time, before moving out to join up
with the headquarters in its operational location. He knew those caves only too
well from exercises and had always disliked them.
He picked up his pen to go on with his letter, first filling in the date he had left
out before. It was 4 August. There were signs in the sky of a new day.
The telephone rang.
He answered it and heard the familiar voice of the British Liaison Officer at I
German Corps.
It was urgent and agitated.
‘Parachutists!’ it said, ‘Russian parachutists on…’
The voice abruptly died.
Several direct-line telephones were jangling in the Ops room at once. He heard
shouts in the building. There were shots outside, the noise of helicopter rotors, a
violent explosion.
He threw the switch of the alarm system and unhooked the direct line to
AFCENT and in that moment looked up.
A Russian soldier was standing in the doorway.
The Duty Officer was getting to his feet and reaching for the pistol lying by the
gas respirator on the table before him when the Russian shot him dead.(11-6)

Chapter 12
NATO Forces
 The structure and strength of the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, as they stood against those of the Warsaw Pact in the summer of
1985, must now be examined.
Attempts on the part of the Atlantic Council to prescribe to Allied governments,
in the early days of the Alliance, what force goals they should meet had long been
abandoned. Member states had always, in fact, put up no more than what they
thought they could afford, usually claiming in self-justification that nothing more
was necessary.
In actual structure NATO was still in 1985 much as it had been for the past
twenty years. Except for some adjustment in the matter of naval and tactical air
command (to which detailed reference is made in Appendix 3) there had been little
change.
At the head of the Alliance of the fifteen signatory states stood the North
Atlantic Council, meeting at ministerial level in normal times at least twice a year
but with permanent representatives at ambassador level meeting constantly. The
senior military authority in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the peacetime
military structure which was such an important and unusual feature of the
Alliance, was the Military Committee, composed of an independent chairman and
a Chief of Staff of each Allied country except France, which had withdrawn from it
in 1966, Iceland, which had no forces, and Luxembourg, which was represented
by Belgium. The Military Committee was in permanent session with its own
military staff. There were two Supreme Allied Commanders, SACEUR for Europe
and SACLANT for the Atlantic, both American, and the Cs-in-C of the Joint Allied
Command Western Approaches (JACWA) who were British. Under SACEUR were
three regional commands: the northern, AFNORTH, with a British Commander-in-
Chief; the central, AFCENT, under a French C-in-C until France’s withdrawal from
the integrated military organization in 1966 and thereafter under a German; and
the southern, AFSOUTH, under an American admiral.
In peacetime there were under AFNORTH, which took in Schleswig-Holstein,
Denmark and Norway, the assigned forces of Norway and Denmark and one
German division. There were plans for reinforcements from the UK, Canada and
elsewhere, if they could be got there in time, in an emergency.
Under AFCENT were the Northern and Central Army Groups, NORTHAG and
CENTAG, the first under a British, the second under an American, commander.
Also under AFCENT was AIR-CENT, which provided centralized control of the two
Allied air forces supporting NORTHAG and CENTAG.
Under AFSOUTH, commanded by a US admiral, came the assigned Italian and
Turkish forces (and, as long as she remained a member, the forces of Greece) with
the US Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean also earmarked, though not assigned.
There was an overall air command (AIRSOUTH) but two subordinate naval
commands and separate commands for ground defence in Italy, under an Italian
general, and, in the south-eastern part of the area, including Turkey, under an
American.
In spite of the great importance of the flanks the critical area of NATO on land
was clearly the Central Region, covering the Federal Republic of Germany up to
(but excluding) Schleswig-Holstein and the Federal frontier with the Low
Countries. It was in the Central Region that NATO’s greatest concentration of
ground and tactical air forces was gathered, facing those of the Warsaw Pact
across the Demarcation Line which separated West and East Germany, then
followed the Czechoslovak frontier down to neutral Austria on the south-eastern
flank.
All the regular forces of the Federal Republic (organized in three corps and
twelve divisions, with sixteen armoured and fifteen armoured infantry, two
mountain and three airborne brigades) were assigned to NATO in peacetime. The
six Territorial Army brigade-sized groups established for Home Defence were not,
until a lengthy argument came to an end in 1985; then these too, with the three
Territorial Commands of five Military Districts, came under SACEUR. They were to
play an important part in the war, though they could have been even more
effectively used if they had come under Allied command rather earlier. Two
German corps (II German and III German) were under command to CENTAG, the
other (I German) to NORTHAG. About half the Federal German Army (the
Bundeswehr) of some 350,000 were conscripts on a fifteen-month term of service.
Germany had, however, paid considerable attention to the problems of
mobilization and of making reinforcements speedily effective. In the mid-1970s a
Standby Reserve had been created, which the Defence Minister could call up in
emergency without prior recourse to Parliament, and plans had been made for a
number of cadre formations to be quickly expanded to war strength. The
Territorial Army of about half a million men not only provided the Territorial
Commands referred to above, but also defensive, support and communications
units throughout the country, relieving the regular forces of all but the forward
tasks. The training of reserves was reasonably good, taking advantage of the local
and professional knowledge possessed by reservists and of the fact that the more
difficult combat posts requiring highly skilled men could be filled by regular
personnel, with reservists to assist them. Equipment was also good. Over half the
Bundeswehr’s tanks were the new Leopard II with Chobham-type armour, giving
much better protection against ATGW, and the advanced, smooth-bore, 120 mm
gun. New ATGW were issued widely, to the Territorial Army as well as to regular
forces. Artillery was modernized, and included new US SP (self-propelled) guns
and the FH-70 medium gun jointly developed with Britain and Italy, thus
providing for largely standardized ammunition. Helicopters provided ATGW
support and battlefield mobility. New multiple rocket launchers enabled minelets
to be sown in the face of advancing enemy tanks. All in all, the Bundeswehr was a
well-found force, with the advantage of being on its own ground and highly
motivated to defend its own homes.
The United States Army in Europe numbered some 200,000 men, all but 10,000
of these in the US Seventh Army in Germany, whose C-in-C was also
COMCENTAG. The reintroduction of the draft in the United States, to which
reference is made elsewhere (see Chapter 14), had by 1985 rescued the US Army
from a highly dangerous position in relation to reserve manpower. If we do not
count the Berlin Brigade the US Seventh Army was organized in two corps, V US
and VII US. The four divisions and three additional brigades on station in the late
seventies had been augmented by two more brigades, upon each of which the
balance of a complete division could be built up in an emergency. The tank
strength available to US forces in the Central Region (including tanks in the
stockpile) approached 3,000, of which the greater part was by early 1985 the new
XM-1, a remarkable tank, with a low silhouette, Chobham armour and advanced
new armour-piercing ammunition.
As early as 1978 the United States had taken steps to build up its air
reinforcement capacity, so that by 1983 five divisions (two to be built on the
brigades mentioned above) could be airlifted to Europe within ten days, to join up
there with their already stockpiled equipment. Plans were put into operation at
about that time to disperse stockpiles, so as to reduce their vulnerability and
make ammunition and other stores more quickly available to forward troops.
The XM-1 was typical of the advanced equipment that began to reach the US
troops in Germany in the late seventies and early eighties. At the same time new
ATGW began to come into service, including ‘fire and forget’ missiles, with fully
automatic terminal guidance, for use from helicopters. The US Army had always
laid great emphasis on the use of helicopters, which fulfilled a variety of roles, not
least the provision of battlefield mobility. Artillery had been strengthened by the
introduction (if only in small numbers) of the cannon-launched guided projectile
(CLGP), which gave it a real anti-tank capacity. To the greatly increased firepower
were added improvements in target acquisition through the use of RPV (remotely-
piloted vehicles) giving instantaneous information. Close air support, with the
emphasis on anti-tank action, was much improved with the deployment of the A-
10, which began in 1978. The equipment of other tactical aircraft with PGM
(precision-guided missiles) gave a much enhanced stand-off capability against
land targets. Finally, the air defence of troops in the field was steadily thickened
with the introduction of new SAM (surface-to-air missiles) and automatic guns.
The British forces assigned to NATO and stationed in Germany were embodied
in the British Army of the Rhine, whose C-in-C was also COMNORTHAG.
Excluding the 3,000-strong force in Berlin, they numbered 52,000 at full
peacetime strength and were now organized in four armoured and one artillery
division with an additional brigade-sized formation (5 Field Force), all under I
British Corps. Earmarked for deployment from the UK in an emergency was the
newly formed II British Corps, adding another 30,000 men.(12-7) Main battle tanks,
including those in stockpile, now numbered 1,000, all Chieftain with the improved
engine, though not all with Chobham armour.
Other equipment, though initially introduced very slowly, enabled most major
weapons to be modernized by the early 1980s. ATGW, built jointly with France and
Germany, spread throughout the regular and TAVR forces of the UK after a rather
hesitant beginning. At long last the air defences of British troops in the field
became as good as those of the Bundeswehr and US forces in Europe. Improved
reinforcement arrangements, made possible by the increase in the availability of
equipment and reserves, gave commanders the additional advantage of being able
to replace battle casualties quickly.
With the new equipment and new organizations and tactics to match, morale in
the British Army of the Rhine, not at its highest in the 1970s, was now fully
restored.
Of the Dutch forces in the Northern Army Group (I Ne Corps) only one armoured
brigade and one tank and one reconnaissance battalion were located in Germany,
the rest being held back in Holland. Of the 75,000 men which constituted the
whole strength of the Dutch Army, more than half (43,000) were conscripts, doing
no more than fourteen months’ service. It had long been hoped in NATO that the
Netherlands would be persuaded to station more of its assigned forces further
forward, nearer to their emergency defence positions. The international tensions of
late 1984 succeeded where previous arguments had failed and, though the false
detente of the following spring tended to put the movement into reverse, the centre
of gravity in the deployment of I Netherlands Corps in the summer of 1985 was
further forward than it had ever been before.
The position of the Belgians was not dissimilar, though the conscripted element
in the army (23,000 out of 62,000) did only eight months’ service if posted to the
Federal Republic of Germany, where there were stationed in peacetime one corps
and two divisional headquarters, with one armoured and two infantry brigades, as
opposed to ten months if serving in Belgium. I Belgian (I Be) Corps, with some 300
Leopard I tanks, like I Netherlands Corps, with some 450, was under command to
NORTHAG. Both corps had received a good deal of new equipment, notably APC,
ATGW and air defence weapons. In both cases, however, the supply of new
weapons to the reserve formations and battalions that would reinforce them was
limited, as was the training carried out by reservists.
In addition to the major national formations Allied Command Europe also
included the Canadian Brigade Group which had become by late July the
equivalent almost of a small division.(12-8) An all-regular force, its quality was
high. Old hands in other Allied countries (particularly among the British), who
recalled their experience with Canadian troops in the last world war, saw with
satisfaction that in their technical skills and their robust and disciplined approach
they were, in the changed circumstances of today, as good as ever. The Group was
stationed in the CENTAG area, not far from the French divisions.
Though France had not been a member of NATO since 1966 II French Corps, of
two divisions, with corps and some army troops nearly 50,000 strong, continued
to be stationed in Germany, with close military liaison with CENTAG. Three
mechanized divisions in France formed the balance of the First French Army, to
which the French divisions in Germany belonged. The equipment of the five
divisions in the First French Army was modern and good and included battlefield
nuclear weapons held inside France, under French control. Little of the equipment
was standardized with NATO however, raising potential problems in supply. In
addition to the Forces de Manoeuvre, of which the First French Army was part,
France disposed of Territorial Defence Forces (Defense Operationelle du Territoire,
or DOT) some 50,000 strong. These had a very important role, among others, in
the defence of key points in metropolitan France against disruption by sabotage
and against civil disorder.
On the southern flank, Italy (twelve months’ service for 120,000 conscripts in an
army of 218,000) disposed of twelve divisions (three armoured) with a mixed
inventory of tanks. Though Greece’s membership of the integrated military
organization had been somewhat conditional since 1974, she continued to have
some military links and had modernized most of her mainly conscript army (28-30
months’ service) of twelve divisions (one armoured), largely with French
equipment, and, it must be admitted, with an eye on Turkey rather than the forces
of the Warsaw Pact. Turkey (twenty months’ service) could field twenty-two
divisions (one armoured and two mechanized) in an army of 375,000. Differences
between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, sharpened by competition for Aegean oil,
had by the beginning of the eighties grown somewhat less than in the years before.
The curtailment of military aid from the US to which this had given rise (it was
resumed in 1982) had inevitably reduced the war-fighting capability of both
countries, though this had latterly begun once more to improve. Turkish
equipment was generally somewhat elderly and in an indifferent state; mobility
was limited and it had not been possible to reach a high level of training.
To this brief account of NATO ground forces must of course be added something
of how the tactical air forces stood, since in any battle their operations would be
indivisible. Here not only the aircraft stationed alongside the ground forces have to
be reckoned with, but also those that could operate in a given sector from
immediately outside it, as, for example, from the United Kingdom or the western
Soviet Union, or from aircraft carriers that might be in the vicinity, or—though
this applied more to Soviet forces—medium bombers that could be flown from
relatively distant airfields.
An accurate tally of air strength is therefore not easy, because of its inherent
flexibility, but, taking ground-based fighter aircraft as the main yardstick, NATO
deployed for operations in the critical central sector—excluding French forces—
some 2,800 aircraft, compared with approximately 4,500 deployed by the Warsaw
Pact. This numerical disparity had long presented a problem and still did. It was a
problem compounded by the relative ease of reinforcement enjoyed by the Warsaw
Pact, by an insufficiency of forward airfields on the Allied side, and by some
difficulties in inter-operability, caused by the variety of different aircraft in use in
NATO air forces.
There had, however, been a marked all-round improvement in NATO tactical air
strength in the previous few years. Several first-class new aircraft had been
introduced, embodying the most up-to-date technology. For the air superiority role
the American F-15 was better than any other fighter, both in its performance and
in its armament. It was admirably complemented by the lighter F-16. Both were
greatly assisted in their task by the ability of AWACS (airborne warning and
control system), belatedly introduced in the 1970s, to detect intruding aircraft and
control the operation of our own. For strike missions the Tornado, with its ultra-
low flying capability, presented the Warsaw Pact with severe problems, as did the
Jaguar and the smaller AlphaJet and Hawk ground-attack fighters. The adoption
of increasing numbers of aircraft developed and built in co-operation by two or
more allies was beginning to give more flexibility to NATO air operations, with a
higher degree of inter-operability.
The quality of the new aircraft was more than matched by the weapon systems
they carried, tailored to what were seen to be the essential tasks of stopping the
Soviet tanks and cutting off the flow of immediate reinforcements to the battle
area. Precision-guided weapons, cluster munitions and the all-important
electronic aids were given great emphasis.
The decision by the United Kingdom to provide once more a proper defence of its
own airspace, described in detail in Chapter 19, helped the tactical air forces to
solve two of the problems mentioned above: first, it provided protected airfields
that enabled aircraft to be diverted to as well as based in the United Kingdom,
thus easing the operational difficulties posed by an insufficiency of airfields;
second, it enabled reinforcement by fighter squadrons from the United States to be
carried out more safely, taking advantage of the steps that the United States had
put in train to make her large reserves of aircraft rapidly available.
The Soviet Air Force had, of course, been increasing its own ground-attack and
deep strike and interdiction capability for some years, which posed severe air
defence problems for the NATO forces, ground and air. Furthermore, the Soviet
Union’s own dense air defence made the task of NATO aircraft much more
difficult. Despite this, NATO air commanders had some confidence that the quality
and versatility of their aircraft, the edge that their weapon systems and electronic
warfare capability gave them, and the higher training standards of NATO airmen,
would all go a long way to redress the numerical imbalance with which they had to
contend.
A very important change in the command structure of NATO air forces had been
the setting up, under the Central Region, of a Commander Allied Air Force Central
Europe (COMAAFCE) in 1976. This greatly increased the flexibility of the Allied air
forces and enormously enhanced their effectiveness.
It was technology, however, that was the principal key to the marked
improvements made to NATO forces in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Weapons
systems were now more effective and more versatile than they had ever been and
tactical concepts and organizations had been improved to make the best use of
them.
When the new NATO strategy of ‘flexible response’, introduced in the middle to
late 1960s, was first discussed, it signalled the wish by the United States, in the
face of her own increased strategic nuclear vulnerability, to have more defence
options in Europe than an early recourse to the use of nuclear weapons. Her
European allies were initially reluctant to downgrade the nuclear element in
deterrence—seeing this as the important link between the United States and the
European battlefield—and unwilling to improve their conventional forces to the
level that the new strategy demanded. This reluctance persisted generally until
nearly a decade later, when concern at the steady and continuous increase in
Soviet military capacity slowly began to make itself felt, first among conservatives,
then almost right across the whole spectrum of public opinion. The steady erosion
of the military balance in Europe, coupled with an assertive and opportunistic
Soviet foreign policy, notably in Africa, led by the late 1970s to the growth in
almost every Allied country of a political climate more receptive to the claims of
defence spending.
This new mood of caution towards the Soviet Union (following as it did one of
rather euphoric expectations about detente, now disappointed) had coincided with
a sudden surge in military technology, both nuclear and conventional. In the field
of theatre nuclear weapons, the enhanced radiation weapon (the ‘neutron bomb’)
offered the West the possibility of suddenly nullifying the Soviet tank advantage
while inflicting less civilian casualties than would be caused by nuclear weapons
in the existing armoury. At the same time new, very-small-yield nuclear weapons
(‘mini-nucs’) began to be introduced and others were modernized. The possibility
of basing deterrence primarily on nuclear weapons once more began to find
adherents—though not, it must be said, among governments, who were treading
warily. This was partly because there had also been rapid advances in
conventional weapons technology. Dramatic improvements in accuracy of attack
and miniaturization of components and vastly increased explosive yields (such as
from fuel-air weapons—the so-called concussion bombs) made it possible to
contemplate engaging with conventional weapons targets (such as aircraft
shelters, that could hitherto only have been destroyed with nuclear weapons.
The debate over strategy—and with it over the allocation of resources—
continued to a varying extent for some years, and in a sense a compromise was
gradually adopted: the strategy of flexible response was retained and new
technology was used to enhance the strength of the conventional forces, but the
theatre nuclear armoury was modernized as well, on the theory that if the new
nuclear weapons were known to be more effective and thus more usable the Soviet
Union would be less likely to provoke their use. So both aspects of deterrence,
conventional and nuclear, were strengthened.
The maintenance or restoration of the Western technological edge was accepted
by all Allied governments as the primary means of stopping the military balance
from deteriorating further. The ability of the NATO defences to hold against attack
from massive Soviet tank forces, possibly able to attack with warning measured in
hours rather than days (sometimes termed a ‘standing start’, to denote an attack
that could be made without the need for reinforcement), was also seen to be
reliant on the use of technology, but to require improvements in readiness as well.
With this increased readiness should go an increase in the number of
reinforcements available, largely through making better use of reserves.
With the assistance of a judicious push from the new Carter Administration in
1977, the NATO Allies began to stir themselves. Some weapons, such as ATGW
and SAM, had proved so effective in the October War of 1973 in the Middle East
that the need for them was self-evident. They began to come out of factories in
Europe and the United States in increasing numbers and to be bought by every
Allied country. More advanced weapons, such as PGM (precision-guided missiles)
for air attack against a variety of targets, found their way first into United States
air forces, then into others. The cruise missile, with its astonishingly accurate
guidance and relative cheapness, caught the imagination, both for its possibilities
in the theatre conventional role and as a potential nuclear weapons carrier,
perhaps—in some cases—instead of existing QRA (quick-reaction alert) aircraft.
Besides all this, great efforts went, with rather less publicity, into esoteric
electronics such as ECM (electronic counter-measures) and ECCM (electronic
counter-counter-measures). The miniaturization of electronic components made
possible improvements in weapons and techniques (in command, control and
intelligence gathering and dissemination, for example) that had been unthinkable
a few short years before. In the innovative capability of the Western electronics
industry lay the ability to keep technologically ahead of the Soviet Union, which
was handicapped by its more cumbersome system of development and the absence
of commercial competition in a collectivized, state-controlled industry.
Hand in hand with interest in new weapons went thinking, both evolutionary
and revolutionary, about the new tactical organizations, or changes in old ones,
that would be needed to get the best out of them. All the major Allies experimented
with new divisional establishments. The United States and Germany made them
larger; Britain and France made them smaller. All aimed to get more firepower for
less men. Similarly, studies were made of the possibilities of using the new small
but powerful weapons to give reserve forces a strength and mobility they had never
had before, so that they could be deployed to give defence in depth and backing to
the heavier regular forces in the forward area.
Thus, in the late 1970s the overhauling of the NATO defences so long sorely
needed was put in train at last. It was often done hurriedly, sometimes reluctantly,
occasionally without sufficient thought, and was not in the event enough wholly to
deter the Soviet Union. But it happened, and was to prove the West’s salvation.
The spur was the lengthening shadow of the Soviet forces in Europe. As so often
before, the Soviet Union proved the best recruiting officer for NATO.
There were, of course, still weaknesses. Two of the most serious lay, as always,
in the overall numerical superiority of the forces deployed against the West, and in
the low level of standardization in the equipment of its own forces. The first, giving
the Warsaw Pact an overall advantage in the Central Region which (though it can
be variously calculated) was certainly not less than two and a half or three to one,
was made more serious by the ability of the attacker to choose his own points of
attack and develop there, at will, a very much greater relative advantage. The
second stemmed from the understandable tendency of free and independent
countries both to consult their own economic interests in the procurement of
military hardware and to reflect their own military philosophy in its design. The
Chieftain and the Leopard, for example, were both very good tanks, but of different
kinds. The XM-1, newer than either, was different again.
Ideally all armies should have had the same type of tank or truck or gun. Such
a solution was rare. Instead the Alliance put its immediate efforts into what it
called inter-operability—the ability to operate with each other; to have common
radio frequencies, for example, if it were not possible to have the same sets; to
have the same calibre guns and rifles, using the same ammunition, if not the
same weapons. Much was achieved in this direction, notably with artillery and
tank guns, in fuel and in other supplies. Operational procedures were not as
difficult to harmonize as policies in the procurement of hardware, and NATO had
gone far, in spite of language difficulties, in developing a common practice. But
they were still, in this very important respect, some way behind their enemies.

Chapter 13
The Warsaw Pact Forces

In the Soviet Union at the end of the year 1984 there were rather more
than 4 1/2 million men and women under arms. The ground forces furnished 170
divisions, of which half were now always in the category 1 state of readiness, that
is to say, not less than 90 per cent complete in personnel, fully armed and
equipped up to field service scales, and with a complete provision of all supplies
(including fuel and ammunition) for four days’ sustained action. Forty-five
divisions (twice as many as in the sixties, though not all in category 1) were
deployed close to the Sino-Soviet border and some thirty more in the southern
regions of the USSR.
Of more immediate concern to NATO were the thirty-two Soviet divisions—
sixteen tank and fifteen motorized, with at least one (and perhaps more) airborne,
all in category 1—stationed in European countries of the Warsaw Pact. These
formed four groups of forces—army commands, in effect—one each in the German
Democratic Republic (Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, or GSFG), Poland (the
Northern Group), Czechoslovakia (the Central Group) and Hungary (the Southern
Group), containing in total over half a million men and 11,000 tanks, with some
8,000 artillery pieces and over 1,000 integral aircraft. The Sixteenth Air Army, also
deployed in the GDR, represented no more than the spearhead of the available
tactical air resources. In the western USSR were seventy more divisions (a third of
them tank divisions), of which only a few were kept constantly in category 1, but
from which further reinforcement was readily available.
In addition to the Soviet forces in Central Europe, the Warsaw Pact countries in
the Northern Tier (the GDR, Czechoslovakia and Poland) deployed a dozen tank
and a score of motorized divisions of their own, all organized, armed and trained
on the Soviet model, while in the Southern Tier (Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania)
the one tank and five motorized divisions of the Hungarian Army were also
available. The military importance of Hungary in the Pact, it may be said in
passing, had recently lain mostly in its exclusion from the Central Front in any
discussions with the West on theatre force reductions. Forces to be withdrawn
from the Central Front could therefore be conveniently retained intact by simply
moving them into Hungary. It was in large part this (among other reasons, which
suggested that there was little point in continuing so unprofitable a dialogue)
which had caused discussions on reductions eventually to be allowed to lapse.
Although the armed forces of the Pact satellites were organized on Soviet lines
and similarly armed and equipped, with an identical operational doctrine, there
existed in the Pact something less than the 100 per cent standardization and
inter-operability which was sometimes, not entirely correctly, envied in the West.
There were language difficulties for a start, but perhaps more important were
divergences in equipment. These became more marked as newer types were
introduced into Soviet divisions but by no means always into those of other Pact
countries. There was also no universal mobilization system in the Warsaw Pact,
any more than there was in the Atlantic Alliance. It must also be emphasized that
the Warsaw Pact, as such, embodied no war-fighting structure comparable to that
of NATO, and thus lacked both some of NATO’s strengths and some of its
weaknesses. The forces of component countries of the Warsaw Pact were
regarded—and used—as integral parts of the forces of the Soviet Union.
Up to the outbreak of hostilities the question of the political reliability of the
forces of the satellites was much debated in the West. It was to become clear from
the outset, however, that there could be no doubt at all as to the loyalty to Moscow
to be found in Warsaw Pact forces at the higher and medium levels of command.
The attitude of the non-military masses in these countries and the response to
higher military command at lower levels of responsibility, not least among the
rank and file, was to prove a different matter.
 The quantitative level of forces facing the Central Region of NATO in 1984 had
not greatly increased over the past few years. Nevertheless, even with the recent
increases in the strengths of Allied in-place forces, there was still an immediate
superiority in Pact divisions of almost three to one. There was also on the Soviet
side, it need hardly be added, the capability to concentrate swiftly with little
warning, resulting in a very marked superiority at chosen points. This, according
to Allied expectation, could be as high as twenty or thirty to one in each of four or
five separate thrusts. A critical element in the battle was to be, as had been
expected, the comparative success rate of Pact penetration as against the speed of
Allied regrouping to meet the main thrusts once these had been identified. In the
north of NATO’s Central Region in northern Germany, where Allied forces were
weaker, lateral movement was easier. In the south, where Allied forces were
stronger, it was more difficult. In both sectors the choice of thrust lines for the
attacker was to some extent constrained by the nature of the ground. The threat of
an overpowering concentration of strength by an assailant with the initiative
nevertheless continued to be, as it had been from the beginning, a major
preoccupation on the Allied side. It was here, in Allied thinking, that air power had
a crucial part to play.
More important than any recent increases in Warsaw Pact strengths were
innovations and improvements in equipment and important development in
warlike practice. These went hand in hand and should be treated together.
In the mid-sixties Soviet military thinking, while recognizing that warfare would
continue to be dominated by nuclear weapons, began to move away from the
concept of land operations as inevitably and inescapably nuclear from the outset
and to consider the possibility of an initial conventional phase. There thus began
the study of what has been described as the non-nuclear variant. At no time had it
been accepted in the USSR that nuclear and non-nuclear operations could be
distinguished in kind and that a ‘firebreak’, as some called it in the West, could be
conjured up between them. All operations of war, in the Soviet view, lay in a
continuum. The concept of a nuclear ‘deterrent’ which could ‘fail’, with its ‘failure’
followed by active warfare, was foreign to their thinking. All known weapons of war
were available for use as policy dictated and occasion demanded. Nevertheless, it
began to be accepted that a major war might open on conventional lines and that
non-nuclear operations could easily be prolonged.
In any case, the massive application of armoured strength remained for the
Soviet Union the primary means of resolution on the battlefield. Up to the mid-
sixties the tank was still the trump card, whether the game was to be played with
nuclear weapons or not. But a new complication developed. As early as 1964
Khrushchev was shocked to see how vulnerable the tank had become to guided
missiles. Within a few years it was clear that Soviet generals had acknowledged a
qualitative change in armoured warfare. The Arab-Israeli War of 1973 aroused a
great concern for the future of the tank and triggered off an urgent search for
means of neutralizing anti-tank defences. The Minister of Defence, Marshal
Grechko, himself took a leading part in it.
The greatest weakness in armoured formations lay in their infantry component.
The introduction into the Red Army of a new and very much better infantry
combat vehicle, the BMP, was an important step towards its correction. This was
not only a personnel-carrier but also an armoured fighting vehicle of considerable
firepower, mounting an ATGW and a 73 mm anti-tank gun in the turret and
carrying RPG-7 anti-tank grenades. But the BMP, intended to bring forward the
infantry for the neutralization of anti-tank defences, was itself vulnerable to anti-
tank fire from the sort of weapons likely to be deployed against it in depth. This
could be expected even on the nuclear battlefield for which the BMP was designed.
The solution was sought in a combination of suppressive artillery and air attack,
on the one hand, with high-speed manoeuvre in deep penetration—the so-called
‘daring thrust’—on the other.
The concept of ‘daring thrust’—bold action in depth by a force of combined
arms—though similar to that of German Blitzkrieg in the Second World War, was
not, it was claimed, modelled on it but harked back to Tukachevsky and the
officers purged with him by Stalin in 1937. Up to 1975 it was generally accepted
that high-speed operations in depth, whether the battlefield was nuclear or not,
would be mainly used to exploit openings blasted out by massed frontal attack.
Since then it had been increasingly taught that the openings could themselves be
created by high-speed manoeuvre, which would also furnish the means of
suppressing, by pre-emptive attack, the threat from guided weapons and anti-tank
guns to the following tanks. Surprise and swift manoeuvre were the twin keys to
unlock the defence and, though the Russians never lost their respect for mass, the
tendency in the late seventies was more and more to relegate the massed frontal
attack to second place.
The premium placed on surprise implied that an attack on NATO would be so
timed as not to allow the deployment of NATO anti-tank defences at their
maximum density. Thus, though it would not necessarily be carried out solely by
in-place theatre forces, it was unlikely to be preceded by a long period of deliberate
full mobilization. There was also heavy emphasis on battlefield mobility to exploit
tactical surprise to the maximum.
What had for a long time been described in Western terminology as the
‘encounter battle’ - and latterly by some as the ‘meeting engagement’—now began
to take a very important place in Soviet military teaching. A critical part would be
played by anti-tank weapons offensively deployed. These would be introduced by
combined arms groups based on motorized infantry regiments in BMP, which
would open the way for the entry of heavier forces of armour to decide the issue.
This required resolute action by relatively small combat teams of combined arms
operating with a greater degree of independence, and with more organic and ‘on-
call’ fire support, than had hitherto been normal in the Red Army. The self-
propelled gun began, at least in part, to furnish what was required: direct fire, as
called for, controlled at a lower level than that of division.
Something of a tactical revolution was now taking place, associated with
changes in organization and equipment which were in part cause and in part
effect of what was happening. The divisions facing NATO in the Central Region had
all been furnished with BMP exploitation regiments by the late seventies, and it
was at this level of command, the regimental, that the integration of different arms
increasingly took place instead of, as hitherto, at divisional level or even higher.
The Red Army now faced several unfamiliar problems. Integration of different
arms at lower levels for fluid operations made unusual demands on command,
control and communications. Even more important in its longer-term implications
was what was likely to be required of junior commanders. Now that the battle
could no longer be pre-planned higher up, with all foreseeable tactical situations
resolved in stereotyped battle drills, qualities were needed at quite low levels of
command which it had never been the business of the Red Army to develop. The
boldness of initiative and independence of judgement demanded in junior
commanders by the new tactics were possibly quite common in the competitive
societies of the capitalist West; they were not qualities intentionally developed
among subordinates in the USSR.
The methods of any army reflect the patterns of its parent society. The Red
Army was moving into a war-fighting method demanding patterns of behaviour
quite sharply at variance with those prevalent in the parent system. It was to face
here a growing difficulty.
Logistic support also posed problems. Soviet practice had long rested on the
principle of offensive action in mass to seek a swift tactical resolution. Formations
would be replaced as necessity dictated. When exhausted and depleted they would
be withdrawn for fresh ones to take their places; they would not be replenished
and reinforced for further sustained action, as in Western practice.
Warfare in the Middle East had shown that intense operations with modern
equipment resulted in an unprecedentedly high rate of consumption of stocks. For
category 1 divisions in the GSFG, stocked to combat readiness, there was now
provision for two to three days’ further fighting, dumped in forward positions. This
would have to be brought forward if a frontal assault on the NATO defences
carried attacking formations through into any significant degree of penetration. As
for ‘deep thrust’ operations, these demanded an altogether different kind of logistic
support - in swiftly moving self-contained columns, capable of keeping up with the
advance and looking after themselves in a fluid battle. At the beginning of the
1980s logistic tactics rather like those being practised in British armour in BAOR
in the fifties (before the blanket of massive retaliation (see Chapter 4) had fallen
over the last sparks of armoured experience from the African deserts in the Second
World War) were being studied - on exercises of course, in the Soviet mode, rather
than in the conference room, and with an input from more recent combat
experience in the Middle East. The BMP was modified as an armoured logistic
vehicle, and, in the three years preceding the outbreak of hostilities, the handling
of armoured replenishment columns, protected by a highly mobile anti-tank and
air defence, became an important feature of Red Army manoeuvres.
Meanwhile, the offensive capability of Soviet armoured and motorized
formations continued to improve. All category 1 and many other armoured
divisions had been re-equipped by 1980 with the 40-tonne T-72 tank, with its high
velocity 125 mm gun and laser rangefinder, its low silhouette, rugged construction
and NBC protection. A newer and better tank, the T-80, with spaced armour,
ATGW and an improved 125 mm smooth-bore gun, was also beginning to come
into service. The T-62, whose gun had so disconcerted Israeli armour in 1973, was
now being finally phased out.
In the motorized infantry of which each tank division now had one regiment to
three of tanks, the proportion in motorized infantry divisions being reversed) the
mechanized fighting vehicle BMP-76PB -fast, quite heavily armed and NBC-
protected—had completely replaced the earlier models of personnel-carrier. A still
newer infantry combat vehicle than the BMP began to appear in the GSFG in
1977: the MTLB, with improvements which included a 76 mm gun. Seven new
infantry regiments appeared in that year in the GSFG, at first mounted in trucks,
soon to be replaced by MTLB. By 1982, ten regiments had been similarly
converted. Self-propelled artillery in 122 mm and 152 mm calibres was widely in
service for forward deployment, though there was still some inclination towards
the traditional Soviet use of massed artillery (now strengthened by the 180 mm
piece, in answer to the American 175 mm M-107) for indirect fire controlled from
further back. Saturation fire was effectively thickened by an improved version of
the well-tried BM-21 122 mm rocket launcher, throwing missiles of fifty-five
kilograms sixteen and a half kilometres from forty tubes on one vehicle.
Air defence organic to the division now incorporated large numbers of the new
SA-8 surface-to-air missile launcher for very low-level defence, in addition to SA-7,
SA-9 and SA-10, together with SA-6 and SA-3 for medium-level defence and SA-4
and SA-5 against high-level attack, as well as a liberal provision of guns, of which
improved ZU-23s were the backbone.
In the anti-tank inventory, now of even greater importance in the offensive
concept of the deep thrust, the 76 mm SPG-9 had replaced earlier recoilless
weapons, though the familiar RPG-7 anti-tank grenade launcher, somewhat
improved, was still in service. So were the wire-guided ATGW, though early models
of more sophisticated weaponry, aiming at matching the ‘fire and forget’ systems
already considerably advanced in the West (in which pre-set guidance and
terminal homing removed much of the combat pressure on the operator), were now
coming into service.
Offensive thrust had been increased by improved assault engineer resources,
more and better bridging, and more effective amphibious vehicles and ferries. Mine
clearance and swift automatic mine-laying capabilities, either on the ground or
from the air, had developed greatly as the implications of fluid operations in depth
were more fully explored.
Operations of this sort, indeed, had come more and more to dominate Soviet
tactical thinking in a time of unprecedented experiment.
In a very wide area of debate on the conduct of the land battle one single issue
stood out as more important than most. It concerned the basic organization of
field formations.
Was the division moving towards a uniform grouping of all arms, from which
task forces could be quickly thrown up appropriate to the task in hand? Many
senior officers advocated this. Or should the distinction be maintained between
divisions heavy in tanks with an infantry component and motorized infantry
divisions with integral armour?
This was no mere arid question of military organization. Behind it lay, as is
often the case with matters of military organization, a further question of profound
political importance. The supporters of the more conservative approach (and they
were very numerous) included those who recognized most clearly, however
disinclined they might have been to say so explicitly, that the qualities demanded
of junior leaders in fluid operations in depth were simply not those inculcated
under the Soviet system, that such qualities were in fact actively discouraged. It
deserves reiteration that independence of higher authority in a subordinate, and
reliance on his own interpretation of a situation and his own initiative, instead of
on the rule book and superior guidance, were completely alien to the system. Such
an approach, too widely spread, could endanger the whole political structure of
the Soviet Union. The Red Army was scarcely the right place to foster it, even in
the most carefully chosen juniors. The thought was one which many senior
officers found disturbing.
Whatever problems of command may have been emerging in the Red Army, the
centralized organization and control of air forces that air power classically
demands really fitted in rather well with the Soviet political and social system.
Nevertheless, if land forces were to operate with flexibility and initiative from quite
low levels of command, depending on how the battle developed, the air forces
might need to be able to act similarly and to learn to switch rapidly to autonomous
reaction. This, they knew, Allied airmen were well able to do. Certainly, they
realized that in a massive offensive the ether would be heavily jammed and that
close control from headquarters a long way further back, where the situation in
the air and on the ground could not be known from minute to minute, might not
work too well. Their aircrew, moreover, were the cream of the military technocracy.
There was perhaps even more cause for unease on their account than in ground
forces in the long term if there should ever be a military need to take their blinkers
off. For the time being, however, pre-planned targets for a setpiece offensive were
the order of the day, and the generals and their planners had more tangible and
appealing matters to contemplate.
In the last ten years the Red Air Force had achieved an entirely new order of air
capability. From about 1970 onwards it had become apparent to uneasy Western
observers that the men in the Kremlin had woken up at last to what air power was
really about. A trend had been started which was quite as significant for NATO as
the emergence of the Soviet Union as a global naval power. The Alliance’s counter
to the numerical superiority of the Warsaw Pact ground and air forces had always
rested to a large degree on the high quality of its air power, chiefly in the ability of
NATO air forces to bring heavy concentrations of fire to bear with extreme rapidity
and accuracy at any point in the battle. Even if the Allies had had sufficient
reserves to match an all-out Warsaw Pact offensive on the ground, the problem of
the defensive alliance was that those reserves could not arrive in time to conduct a
coherent forward defence against a surprise, or near-surprise, attack. In Allied
strategic thinking air power filled this gap, offering as it did the ability to strike
hard and repeatedly at the choke points along the frontier of the two Germanies
through which a Soviet land offensive would have to squeeze. At the same time
tactical air power would be projected strategically, in the sense that large numbers
of American tactical aircraft would fly into Europe from the United States in times
of crisis. The concept of Allied air power holding a front against an offensive in this
way, provided there were enough aircraft to do it, was valid and reassuring,
especially since the performance of modern Allied tactical aircraft, and the
effectiveness and accuracy of their weapons, had climbed exponentially on the
back of commercially competitive Western technology to achieve a capability
undreamt of in terms of the Second World War.
 In the Alliance this superiority had long been comfortably thought of as a state
of grace that would endure forever, almost irrespective of the effort that the
Western world put into it. But now things were beginning to look rather different.
Soviet combat jet aircraft had made their first appearance in the Korean War. By
1970 all of this first generation had been withdrawn from service except for a
handful operated by the satellite countries. The second generation originating in
the late fifties and early sixties reached its peak front-line strength in the early
seventies. By the beginning of 1985 only about 10 to 15 per cent remained in
service as the third generation took over. This generation had made its debut in
1970 and its numbers had risen steadily ever since. The Soviet Air Forces now had
aircraft of broadly comparable performance to their Allied counterparts, although
the latter were still reckoned to have the margin in detailed capability in all
circumstances, especially where this was dependent on electronic and weapon
technology. Numerically the Warsaw Pact air forces had for long outstripped those
of the Allies; now a broad parity in performance was also in sight. But that was
not the end of the matter. With more research and development effort devoted to
military technology by the Soviet Union than by all the Western powers put
together, there was plentiful evidence of a fourth generation of aircraft coming
along, to include specialized air-superiority fighters to match NATO’s F-15s and F-
16s and land-based V/STOL aircraft. Nothing very much was known of these in
detail except that they were waiting in the wings. They seemed likely to appear on
stage from 1986 onwards.
By the beginning of 1985, Western analysts concluded that the strength of the
Soviet tactical air armies in western Russia alone had increased since 1970 by
over 30 per cent. The Naval Air Force was climbing on a similar curve, and there
had been a vast increase in both strategic and tactical airlift, the number of attack
and assault helicopters attached to the infantry having been almost trebled since
1970. The Soviet Air Force generals could look back on their own successful
programme with every bit as much satisfaction as Admiral Gorshkov could look
back on that of the Soviet Navy. In truth, it rather irritated them that the Admiral
and his navy got so much of the limelight when the record of the air force was
every bit as spectacular. In twenty-five years their unremitting efforts had
increased the range and war-load capacity of the Soviet Air Forces by a staggering
1200 per cent.
This meant that Soviet aircraft could now range into the Atlantic and attack
targets throughout NATO Europe’s rear areas, including the United Kingdom -
targets that hitherto the West had considered immune from serious air threat.
Moreover, they had the combat range for evasive and tactical routing, and for feint
attacks. The air generals had been the architects of a vast, balanced air arm that
had now significantly narrowed the West’s previous qualitative superiority. It
almost goes without saying that in numbers it went far beyond what could
conceivably be needed purely for defence. If things continued to go its way the
generals could look forward to a not too far distant time when they could
confidently challenge Allied air power and its ability to protect the strategic
deployment of NATO’s reserves in an emergency. This would be a war winner. It
was a professionally satisfying prospect.
 With equal satisfaction they watched and listened throughout the seventies as
military men and informed commentators in Western Europe tried to warn their
countries about the critical part that air power had to play in defence of Allied
security and the way the reassuring margin that had so long shielded the Alliance
was all the time being narrowed. ‘None so deaf as those who will not hear’ might
well have been their cheerful comment, until 1979 when the United Kingdom
embarked on major measures to expand the Royal Air Force and especially to
increase its air defence component (see Appendix 1). Most of the Allies were
similarly engaged in stepping up their defence effort, but the RAF air defence
interested the generals particularly because the United Kingdom had a special
place in their strategic plans. Its expansion programme was not welcome to the
Kremlin or to the Soviet air generals, but they consoled themselves with the
thought that they had really had a splendid run while the West, of its own
deliberate choice, was looking the other way. Furthermore, their own experience,
over many years, of the huge industrial and training effort needed to build up or
increase a modern air force, caused them to wonder if the British government
might not be in for a surprise when it found how long its plans would take to
mature.
In the realm of space the Soviet Air Forces had recognized the military
application of space vehicles for communications and reconnaissance from the
earliest moments of their space programme. The USSR-USA competition initiated
by the Soviet Sputnik some thirty years earlier had been a long-playing space
spectacular for all the world to watch. Although the engineering approach of the
superpowers was often different, and US reliability was always superior, in general
terms the Soviet Union had acquired capabilities which matched those of the USA.
These had proved very valuable in peacetime and it now remained to see what
their importance would be in war.
There was another vital matter, upon which little of much significance was said
in the Red Army, perhaps because so very little was known about it. It concerned
the very nature of nuclear warfare. Though the recent tendency in Soviet military
thinking had been to accept that a major war might open with non-nuclear
operations, and that these might even be prolonged, it must be emphasized again
that nuclear and non-nuclear warfare had never been regarded in the Red Army’s
philosophy as alternatives. Each fitted in as an element in a total war-fighting
capability, to be exploited as policy and occasion demanded. As we have clearly
seen, the Western concept of ‘escalation’ out of conventional warfare into nuclear,
and of further ‘escalation’ from battlefield nuclear action into strategic, had no real
equivalent in the Soviet Union, still less the notion of a ‘firebreak’ between
successive steps. Though a non-nuclear variant had been studied and fully
prepared for, it had never ceased to be widely expected that a major campaign
against NATO would probably open with massive attack in depth by nuclear or
chemical weapons, or both, to be followed by swift and violent exploitation by
formations (which would be largely armoured) attacking off the line of march. With
nuclear weapons, penetration was expected to reach a depth of some 120
kilometres in a 24-hour period. Equipment in Red Army divisions was designed for
action on an irradiated or chemically dangerous battlefield. Outside the combat
zone, if a strategic response from the other side brought the homeland under
attack with nuclear weapons, there was at least provision—not total but far
greater than any until quite recently seen in the West—for the protection of some
of the more important elements in the population, for the maintenance of essential
services and for the continuance of the war.
If, on the other hand, advantage were to be seen in a non-nuclear offensive, if
Western battlefield nuclear weapons could be smothered or blinded and important
results could be obtained even before NATO, without the stimulus of their use on
the Warsaw Pact side, could reach inter-Allied agreement on the release of such
weapons, this possibility too would be considered. Apart from the reduction in
scale of the threat to the homeland and the absence of collateral nuclear damage
in the theatre (which might or might not have its advantages), the principal effect
of a non-nuclear opening to the land battle would be a slowing up in the rate of
advance. Instead of covering 110 to 120 kilometres in a day the assaulting
formations would be doing well if they managed forty.
But whatever was said, planned or done about nuclear operations of war,
whether by hard-headed realists in the East or by commentators in the West
ranging from homespun tacticians to far-out philosophers, one thing was
universally true. Nuclear weapons of war had never yet been used on the
battlefield and nobody, anywhere, knew what would happen if they were. Even
within an integral concept of total war-fighting, using all means at choice, the
decision to use this one would need very careful consideration indeed. The harder-
headed the realists having to make the choice, the more carefully would they be
inclined to reflect on the possible—but completely unpredictable—consequences.
The West’s increasing preparedness to defend itself was throwing an even harsher
light upon this very important consideration.

Chapter 14
The Stage is Set

Shortly after 0400 hours on Sunday, 4 August, it became clear to the

Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and was at once made known throughout
a world waiting in an agony of suspense, that the Warsaw Pact had opened a
general offensive against the forces of the Atlantic Alliance. The invasion of
Western Europe had begun.
To some the news brought a curious sense of relief. At least the uncertainty was
over. For many others, particularly in the governments and armed services of
Allied countries, it raised the anxious question as to whether enough had been
done for NATO’s defences since the seventies to repair the damage of the locust
years. Could the West, in fact, survive? To most who heard the news, at least in
Europe, it brought only grim and unhappy forebodings.
The Soviet intervention in Yugoslavia, and the swift and forceful response to it
from the United States, that conjunction of miscalculation and mischance in
which could now be seen the spark which set off the general explosion, seemed
almost to be forgotten. More important things were at stake. The very future of the
human race might now become the issue.
From the outset the world was swamped with Soviet claims, flooding through
every possible channel of communication, that this was no more than defensive
action, to which the Warsaw Pact had been driven by neo-Nazi ambitions
supported by capitalist imperialism.
‘It has long been clear,’ the announcement proclaimed, ‘that the new Nazis are
set on the reunification of Germany by force and the subsequent domination of
Europe as an early step to world supremacy. The policy of "forward defence",
which is self-evident military nonsense if it does not mean action by the FRG east
of the Demarcation Line, has never been more than a thin cloak for the firm
intention to invade the GDR as a first move towards the dismemberment of the
Warsaw Pact and the destruction of the USSR. The change of name from
Vorwärtsverteidigung (Forward Defence) to Vorneverteidigung (Frontal Defence) has
done nothing to disguise the nakedness of an essentially aggressive policy. Plans
for the invasion are now, in total authenticity,’ as the announcement put it, ‘in
Soviet hands, and their authors will in time be brought to justice. Meanwhile, it
has become abundantly clear that there is no time to lose in cutting out the Nazi
canker. Otherwise all hope will vanish of a lasting peace in Europe.’
The Soviet message to the world went on to give assurances that the purpose of
the Pact’s action was first to restore peace in Yugoslavia, where troops from the
capitalist West had invaded a socialist country, and at the same time to suppress
the true source of disturbance to world peace. This would necessitate the
occupation and neutralization of West Germany but no more than that, except for
such other action as military security demanded. The integrity of French territory
would be especially respected, and the French government was urged to allow its
military forces no part in resisting those of the Warsaw Pact. The Italian
government was ordered, in rather more peremptory tones, to consult its socialist
conscience and permit no resistance to Soviet troops compelled to enter Italy.
‘It is very much hoped,’ the announcement proceeded, ‘that the United Kingdom
will see the unwisdom of supporting its old enemies against its former allies, and
above all that the United States will recognize the dangers on the one hand from a
revival of Nazi adventurism and the fervent hopes for an enduring peace cherished
in the Soviet Union on the other.’
Reference was then made to nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union, the statement
said, saw no need at present to make use of its very powerful armoury of nuclear
weapons in the prophylactic action now going forward.
‘Any significant use of radiation as a weapon of war, however,’ the statement
went on, ‘either against troops of the Warsaw Pact or against their homelands,
from whatever source, will result in the abandonment by the Soviet Union of all
restraints in the use of nuclear weapons and full-scale counter-attack to any
depth found necessary. The cities of the NATO countries will face in that event a
dreadful end.’
Such was the Soviet message to the world, put out first at 0400 hours, Central
European time, on 4 August 1985, and continually repeated in the days that
followed. It was made known in many different ways, in many different lands and
in many different languages. It was heard with feelings varying from rapturous
hope to blank despair, and greeted with responses ranging from warm welcome,
which was rare, to raucous derision, which was not.
In Europe, on 4 August 1985, even after only a week of NATO mobilization, the
Allied Command was in a far better condition to meet an emergency than could
have been possible a very few years before. Several months of spurious detente in
the first half of the year had certainly done something to slow down the rate of
improvement in NATO’s preparedness; indeed in some respects it had almost
brought it to a halt. Illusory hopes that the leopard had this time changed its
spots had been freely aired. There had even been repetition of the whimsical claim,
so often heard in left-wing groups in Britain, that there could never be any
question of changing spots, for the animal had always been in fact immaculate,
and that the enormous offensive capability of the USSR had been developed simply
to protect its own progressive way of life and the freedom of the peoples it had
liberated.
The voices raised for so long among the British left wing, and from their ill-
assorted allies among the die-hard disengagers in the USA, urging a sharp
reduction in military spending and the withdrawal of troops, had recently been
listened to with growing scepticism. It was therefore possible, even in the months
of false detente in the spring and early summer of 1985, to proceed, against this
chorus, at least with those defence programmes whose suspension would increase
domestic unemployment. Improvement in the air defences of the United Kingdom,
for example, went on. It was even possible in the USA, though only by the
narrowest of margins, to retain the Active Forces Draft.
There is no need to dwell here on the political and social stresses generated in
the United States in the years 1979-81 over the reintroduction of the draft, nor to
recapitulate the stormy history of the passage of the appropriate legislation. We
are more concerned with its consequences, as seen in Allied Command Europe in
1985, and with the sobering reflection that without it no book like this, placing on
record as it does the manner of the free West’s survival, could ever have been
written.
It is just worth recalling, however, as a helpful reminder, that the US Army was
in 1977 facing a critically dangerous position in the virtual disappearance of its
reserves. When public disenchantment with the Vietnam War resulted in the end
of the draft and the creation of an all-volunteer army, a sharp decline in paid-drill
personnel (i.e. personnel actually carrying out reserve training) set in. By 1977 the
Army’s National Guard and Reserve were 100,000 under peacetime strength. The
Army’s Individual Ready Reserve—the pool of trained men to fill up units and
replace combat losses—was dropping so fast that by 1982 it would at this rate
have been 360,000 short of mobilization requirements. The back-up Selective
Service System was in such ‘deep standby’ that training of drafted personnel could
not start until four months after mobilization and no trained men to replace
combat losses could be expected to reach Allied Command Europe until three
months after that.
A scheme produced by the US Army to spend $750 million a year on a Reserve
Component Readiness Improvement Package (RCRIP) was rejected. Schemes for a
Reserve Component Draft, or for an Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) Draft, were
found to be unworkable. The only real alternative was an Active Forces Draft, with
exemption for Reserve Components and IRR volunteers. Without it, within a few
years, the US Army would only have been able to go to war when the war was over.
American public opinion in 1977 would not have accepted reintroduction of the
draft. A Gallup poll in that year showed that 45 per cent of all Americans were
against it, with a count as high as 82 per cent of all males between eighteen and
twenty-four years of age.
Gradually, however, as elsewhere in the Alliance, the realization began to spread
that the Russians meant what they had so often said and knew exactly what they
were doing. In spite of the most strenuous efforts of those who refused to recognize
the threat, or argued that if there were one it did not matter, or even claimed that
they welcomed the chance of living under a Marxist dictatorship (whether anyone
believed them or not), the awareness grew in the United States that a time could
come when truly vital decisions would have to be made, and that it would be very
foolish for the nation to surrender in advance all power of choice.
Soviet international diplomacy, uncompromising and unconciliatory as ever,
was not unhelpful to those in the West who sought to make the danger better
known. The Active Forces Draft was introduced in 1982. By early 1985 the
reserves, though with some way still to go, had passed above crisis level. The US
Army in Europe was no longer in such a state that, in the event of a military
showdown with the Warsaw Pact, it would face early and unavoidable disaster
because of a lack of trained manpower.
The position of France, critical to the whole question of the survival of the
Alliance, must now receive attention. In the long history of Soviet maladroitness
and miscalculation since the Second World War nothing—not the free elections so
rashly allowed in Austria in 1946, or the swift re-arming of West Germany by the
USSR’s recent allies in response to Soviet threats, or yet the alienation of Marxists
outside the Soviet Union or the antagonization of China or the ineffective meddling
in the Middle East—nothing at all in an impressive record of political ineptitude
proved to be a more spectacular and costly failure than the confident attempt by
the Soviet Union to persuade France to renounce her obligations under the
Atlantic Treaty.(14-9)
The earlier Brussels Treaty, to which France also still belonged, was even more
categorical about affording military aid to a victim of attack.
The II French Corps, stationed in Germany, embodying two enlarged divisions
now, with supporting troops, up to full strength, was put by the French
government at SACEUR’s disposal even before the Soviet announcement. In fact, it
came under command to AFCENT at midnight on 3-4 August. The corps was to be
followed in a matter of days by the first of three further mechanized divisions from
the First French Army. From 4 August the French Tactical Air Force was ordered
to support French forces on the ground as SACEUR might determine. French
ports, communications, military installations and, above all, airfields and airspace
were at the same time made available to the Allies.
If France had stayed in NATO, or come back in good time, a French army group
located in southern Germany and fully integrated into AFCENT might so have
strengthened the whole Central Region as to deter in real terms—without nuclear
shadow-boxing—a Warsaw Pact invasion. It was too late to think about that now.
What gave real cause for satisfaction and solid ground for hope was the very active
unofficial contingency planning which had long been a feature of relations between
the French General Staff in Germany and CENTAG.
The onset of war in Europe posed a particularly cruel problem for Turkey. She
was recovering from deep economic gloom, but her armed forces had been
weakened by the restriction on equipment supplies from the US. This ban had
been imposed by Congress, contrary to the wishes of the US Administration, on
the occasion of the Turkish action in Cyprus in 1974. Some partial mitigation had
occurred in the late seventies but full re-supply had only been arranged three
years before the present outbreak. Turkey had for some time been making it clear
to the US and to the other Allies that the performance of her Alliance
responsibilities would have to be made proportionate to her reduced capability. It
said much for the steadfastness of the Turkish character, as well as for their
historic fear of Russian aggression, that they did not go further in their reaction to
Congressional displeasure. Relations with Greece had begun to recover from the
low point reached at the time of the Cyprus affair and the argument over sea-bed
rights in the Aegean, and it was largely the progress made in patching up this
quarrel which finally led Congress to authorize the resumption of full
equipment deliveries. But three years was a short time in which to make good the
deficiencies and catch up with the new types of weapon systems which had
meanwhile become available.
The growing threat during 1984 of Soviet action from the north and Soviet
influence in Egypt from the south had further helped to cement the improvement
in Greek-Turkish relations, and thus paved the way for Greece to resume active
participation in NATO planning and co-operation, which had also been interrupted
in the aftermath of the Cyprus affair.
The circumstances leading to the actual outbreak of war in Europe proved
particularly unfavourable for Greece and Turkey, however. Egypt’s move into
Arabia had disrupted some of their oil supply and emphasized the Soviet presence
in Syria and Iraq, which were Turkey’s neighbours to the south and east. The
outbreak of hostilities in Yugoslavia brought increased Soviet troop concentrations
into the Balkans and enhanced Bulgaria’s role as a potential jumping off point for
a drive to the Straits or the Aegean.
Nevertheless, Soviet policy also faced a dilemma. The rugged terrain of the
Anatolian plateau was not of much use to them, but passage of the Bosphorus
and Dardanelles might be crucial to their success in driving America out of the
eastern Mediterranean. No doubt sufficient forces could be concentrated in
Bulgaria to force back the Turkish First Army from Edirne and open the way to
occupation of Gallipoli and the Bosphorus approaches—even if Istanbul itself, now
peopled by 4 million Turks, would be a most indigestible mouthful. But any such
moves, even accompanied by airborne landings, would give plenty of time for the
blocking of the Straits by demolition, mines and blockships. Even with control of
the shores of the two waterways these obstructions could take some vital weeks to
clear. Since this was intended by the Soviet planners to be the period within which
the whole European operation would lie, the disadvantage of armed attack on the
Straits loomed rather large.
Soviet planners were necessarily aware that the Montreux Convention, which
since 1937 had regulated the right of passage through the Turkish Straits, almost
totally forbade this right to the warships of belligerents. After the beginning of
operations in Europe they would hardly be able to claim not to be in this category,
even if no formal declaration of war had been made. Some of them were inclined to
assume that, faced with the threat of overwhelming force, the Turks would have
no alternative but to accept a bending of the Montreux rules and allow Soviet
warships continued passage. Others, who knew Turkey better, argued successfully
that this could by no means be relied on and that Turkey was fully capable of
living up to her obligations even at great cost to herself. They pointed out that it
would do the USSR little good to be in Istanbul if the Bosphorus was blocked.
Moreover, apart from Turkish action, it would not be difficult for US aircraft even
from the western Mediterranean to make passage of the Straits by Soviet warships
exceptionally hazardous.
It was therefore finally accepted by the Soviet command that the only safe
course was to get their ships out first from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean.
Once there they would have shore facilities in Alexandria again since the Egyptian
volte-face. They could hope for the use of Malta and the seizure of a harbour in the
course of the Yugoslav operation. There might even be a chance to settle old scores
with Albania and re-occupy the submarine base at Valona, from which they had
been rudely ejected when Albania joined the Chinese in 1961. The ships would
thus not be as dependent as formerly on periodic return to Black Sea ports for
refitting and supply. Civilian merchant shipping from the Black Sea could no
doubt fill up the supply gaps, and their passage through the Straits would pose
much less risk of Turkish reaction. In the spring of 1985 there was, therefore, an
unusual amount of Soviet naval tonnage leaving the Black Sea for the
Mediterranean, for manoeuvres, trials and transfer to other stations; by the
outbreak of hostilities in Europe all the units required for naval operations in the
Mediterranean had already passed through.
There was of course a risk that these movements would seem to imply a Soviet
intention to prepare for a European war and stimulate precautions in the West. By
routing almost all the ships first of all to Alexandria, however, the Russians strove
to give the impression that they were still concerned primarily with the Middle
East and the Indian Ocean.
When finally hostilities began and the Russians succeeded in penetrating Italy,
causing the removal to Spain of all that was possible of AFSOUTH’s infrastructure,
as well as its headquarters, the possibility of active participation by Turkey and
Greece was drastically curtailed, since only long-distance US air support with help
from the Sixth Fleet would for the time being be available.
It was not the first time in Turkey’s history that she had been left almost alone
to face her great neighbour in the north. As so often in the past, the Turkish
government made it quite clear that while their intentions were not aggressive, no
Turkish territory or Turkish rights would be conceded without fierce resistance
and if necessary sacrifice. Frontier forces were reinforced and preparations
ostentatiously made for blocking the Straits should this prove necessary. Local
animosities were forgotten in the face of greater danger, and Turkish and Greek
forces linked up in Thrace to confront Bulgaria, while the remaining Greek forces
strengthened their northern border against any possible incursions from
Yugoslavia or Albania.
 The threat of attack from the Warsaw Pact side was a very real one and gave rise
to deep apprehensions. In the end, however, the Russians did not find it worth
while to divert forces for this purpose, believing no doubt that if all went according
to plan in the centre and west they could complete their mastery of the Balkans
and of Turkey at greater leisure thereafter. The political and military weaknesses
of NATO’s south-east flank had been repaired just in time to make it possible for
the flank to hold, even in considerable isolation. It was rash of all concerned to
have left the remedial measures so late.
Since the central issue was in the first instance to be the survival of the Federal
Republic of Germany, and since the first great land battle would take place on
German territory, it is important to take a further look at the Federal Republic’s
land forces.
The three German corps embodied sixteen armoured brigades (each with three
battalions of tanks, one of armoured infantry and one of armoured artillery),
fifteen armoured infantry brigades (each containing two tank and two armoured
infantry battalions, one of Jager infantry and one of armoured artillery), with units
mostly organized broadly on US models, together with two mountain and three
airborne brigades. They were on the whole in very good shape, well officered and
well equipped. In an army in which roughly half of its regular strength of 350,000
were conscripts, the general level of troop training was not as high, or as even, as
that of an all-regular long-service force like the British. Units had on the whole
been kept up to strength rather better than the British, however, and there had
been fewer reorganizations in the interests of economy (always presented
politically in Britain as improvements in military effectiveness) and a more realistic
approach by the Federal government to the provision and maintenance of
equipment. The Bundeswehr had thus suffered less from its politicians than its
brothers-in-arms in Britain, where cynicism and insularity had long traded on a
depth of good will and loyalty in the country’s armed forces that few governments
of any party had done much to deserve.
Of two major improvements brought about in the army of the FRG in the five
years before the outbreak of war, one was structural, the other operational.
The first concerned reserves. Three Territorial Commands, each of five Military
Districts, had been created. In these commands six Home Defence Brigades
formed the fighting core of a reserve force with a peacetime strength of some
63,000 (including 30,000 conscripts still working out their reserve service) and an
ultimate full mobilization strength for the Territorial Army of half a million. The
Federal government was not at first inclined to place these resources under NATO
command. They represented, it was argued, the last armed forces available to the
Federal Republic as a sovereign power and should remain at its disposal alone.
Arguments for undivided command in time of war proved more persuasive. Events
were to show the wisdom of assigning these reserve forces, at least on
mobilization, to SACEUR.
The second improvement reflected a change in outlook on the best method of
defending Federal territory. ‘Forward defence’ on the frontier could hardly mean in
military terms anything other than a defence forward of the frontier, a point
Warsaw Pact planners were not slow to take. The clearest alternative was defence
in depth, trading ground at the best possible rate for the time needed to set up a
counter-offensive. This, though it made good military sense, was hardly popular
with politicians publicly dedicated to the total defence of the integrity of Federal
territory.
The rapid development of anti-tank techniques, the increasing urbanization of
much of West Germany and the growing size of the FRG’s military reserves
suggested another approach. A network of squads of reservists, locally drawn and
armed with ATGW, was incorporated into the operation of the covering forces
along the frontier.
A concept had been gradually gaining favour in the Federal Republic since the
end of the seventies under which a defence against attack from the East would be
organized in three tiers. These would comprise a frontier defence almost entirely
composed of Jagd Kommandos (tank-hunting and skirmishing units), with
powerful counter-penetration forces in depth in what was described as
Raumdeckende Verteidigung (spatial defence) and an area of Heimat Schutz (so-
called Homeland Defence), depending mostly on territorial forces, in further depth
behind that.
The covering forces deployed by AFCENT would still be expected to fight a
delaying battle forward. In the late seventies the proportion of troop strengths in
forward corps assigned to fight the covering-force battle had been some 30 to 50
per cent of the whole formation, all along the front of the Central Region. New
tactics in NORTHAG, appropriate to the terrain, had enabled forward corps to
reduce this to some extent. The full covering-force concept, however, was still to
prevail in CENTAG where lack of depth made it important to give away as little
ground as possible.
In NORTHAG, British experimentation was proceeding on lines closely related to
the new concept now under discussion in Germany, with light anti-tank defences
exploiting the possibility of ATGW deployed far forward. The system of frontier
defence thus created, with counter-penetration forces deployed in further depth,
was beginning to be thought of, by many British and some German officers, as a
possible replacement for, or at least a modification of, the full doctrine of ‘forward
defence’, however the term was interpreted, which had hitherto prevailed. It was
still largely experimental, but over several years of continuous exercises it had
been showing considerable promise.
Where the most important advances had been made in preparations to defend
the Federal Republic, however, was without any question in the organization of
home and civil defence—including the protection of vulnerable points and
attention to the problem of refugees—and in the better use of reserves.
Of the other Allied forces deployed in the Central Region on 4 August 1985 (in
addition to their most powerful component, those of the United States), I Belgian
and I Netherlands Corps in NORTHAG were almost up to strength (though the
training of reservists in some units gave little cause for confidence) and were
already, at least in part, deployed forward. Pressure within NATO over the years to
increase the long-service content in these formations, thus placing less reliance on
reserves, and to deploy a higher proportion of them within the Federal Republic
near their battle stations (and less in their adjacent homelands) had met with
incomplete success. I Belgian and I Netherlands Corps were not the strongest
links in the NATO chain.
 The embryonic II British Corps, composed in part of reserve units manned by
former long-service regulars and in part of regular units, had been due this year,
as it happened, for the first time to carry out a full formation exercise, with troops,
in BAOR. It was building up in north-west Germany. Its equipment, stockpiled in
advance but not yet fully up to scale and, where reserve units were concerned, not
always of the latest type, had already been drawn. Its personnel embodied a
considerable level of experience, fortified both by a leaven of regular units and by
judicious cross-posting from I British Corps. The morale of its reservist soldiers
was high.
The much strengthened Canadian Brigade Group, in the rear of the CENTAG
area, was held in the Central Army Group reserve.

Chapter 15
The Storm Breaks on the Central Front

Active hostilities opened first of all in inner space, very shortly before 0400
hours, Central European time, on Sunday, 4 August 1985, with widespread and
clearly very carefully prepared attacks on US communications and surveillance
satellites. The Soviet interference capability was known to have developed
considerably since the resumption of a programme temporarily discontinued in the
USSR in 1971. The extent of its development came as an unpleasant surprise.
Airborne relay stations of the US Air Force, already deployed, took up some, at
least, of the communications load, though with a high initial degradation of
efficiency. The sudden removal of large areas of satellite surveillance cover,
however, was to be much more acutely felt than reduced communications
capability. The latter could be largely replaced at short notice by other means.
Satellite surveillance could also be restored in time, but that would take longer.
A few minutes later, at about 0400 hours, massive air and missile attacks,
using both high explosive and chemical munitions, on airfields, headquarters
locations, logistic areas and Hawk and Nike air-defence sites, heralded the
opening of a major Warsaw Pact offensive on the Central Region of NATO. At the
same time under-cover parties, as many as 300 or 400 in number, moved in to
attack civil and military communications centres, government offices, fire, police,
railway and generating stations, and key road and railway bridges. Almost
simultaneously NATO forward troop locations came under heavy air and artillery
attack along the whole length of the forward edge of the Central Region’s battle
area.
Surprise was nowhere complete: NATO troops in forward positions were already
alert. The expectation that an attack, however likely, would not take place just yet
had some effect, at least initially, in reducing the effectiveness of protective and
defensive measures in rear areas, but even here the numerous, widespread and
carefully prepared strikes by under-cover parties met with gratifyingly little
success. It was just not possible, as Kremlin planners had very sensibly realized,
to prepare a sudden attack on so many points at once with complete surprise.
They had therefore sought concealment in deception planning, particularly in
terms of timing. It proved to be ineffective. A few discoveries of under-cover attacks
on the very verge of delivery, together with other unmistakable signs of what was
imminent, served to set off a general alert among Federal German police and
territorial forces already standing by at short notice. Damage there was, even
serious damage, but the first armed clash between the Warsaw Pact and the
territorial defences of the Federal Republic resulted in at least 75 per cent failure
and something of a boost to civil morale. (The attack on HQ NORTHAG noted
above was, in spite of initial penetration of the HQ building and some casualties, a
total failure, like very many others.)
Though Allied forces everywhere were already dispersed, as far as possible, in
an anti-nuclear posture (with all its inconveniences), no nuclear attack was
anywhere reported. Warsaw Pact forces, on the other hand, confident that nuclear
release by the NATO defence was at this stage most unlikely, were able to operate
with only that degree of dispersion required against conventional air attack, which
was much less.
Chemical agents were used in the attack from the start, but only on some
sectors of the front. They were not used against the two US corps, perhaps
because USAREUR possessed integral and effective chemical offensive weapons of
its own. US policy had consistently been that US troops would retaliate in kind if
attacked with chemical agents but would not use them otherwise. The Soviet
commanders seemed to have taken this threat seriously and did not use chemicals
against any formation in CENTAG.
In the NORTHAG sector none of the national corps possessed a chemical
offensive capability. This position had persisted in the 1980s despite the growing
strength of the argument that possession of a retaliatory capability would be a
relatively unsophisticated and economic means of discouraging recourse by the
Soviet Union to chemical weapons, whose use by them would further add to the
Warsaw Pact’s non-nuclear superiority. There was now widespread use by the
enemy of chemicals to support attacks against NORTHAG, principally launched in
BM-21 rockets. These equipments operated in battalion groups of eighteen which,
when fired in unison, were able to land 720 rockets on a square kilometre within
fifteen seconds. The warm weather was ideal for the use of non-persistent agents
such as HCN. This has a hazard duration of only a few minutes at 10°C in
moderate wind conditions with rain, of at 15°C in sunny conditions with a light
breeze. Soldiers not wearing respirators within the target area died within a few
minutes of inhaling the vapour. The agent evaporated so quickly that Soviet
assault troops would be able to move through the target area with only minor
precautions. Despite peacetime training, Allied casualties in forward areas as the
offensive opened were considerable.
At the same time, major airfields were attacked with chemical agents (usually
mustard, or G- or V-type nerve gases) delivered by missiles, each one of which
could put down sufficient of a persistent agent to cause severe disruption over the
whole airfield complex. Ground crew were forced to wear full personal protective
equipment to carry out maintenance and aircraft refuelling and re-arming. This
severely handicapped their performance and increased aircraft turn-round times
significantly.
 Major logistic installations and communication points, where large numbers of
the civilians operating them had no protective equipment, received similar
treatment. Physical removal of persistent agents was virtually impossible while
further missile attacks maintained a high level of lethal contamination. Such
attacks upon airfields and logistic installations caused more prolonged disruption
than sustained high-explosive bombardment.
Even a minute quantity of a highly toxic agent such as HCN, either inhaled or
absorbed through the skin, was capable of causing death within a few minutes
unless prompt medical attention was available. Medical services soon overloaded
with battle casualties were severely taxed to cope with casualties caused by
chemicals as well.
Constant precautions and the wearing of appropriate personal protective
equipment quickly reduced the casualty rate. Excellent personal protective
equipment had been available to I British Corps since the middle 1970s and had
been rushed into service by other European NATO countries just in time to prove
its value. Without it, very heavy casualties would have resulted from chemical
agents delivered against forward troops not only by rocket launcher and FROG
missiles but also by conventional artillery and from spray tanks mounted on
ground-attack aircraft.
The Warsaw Pact attack had also been preceded by very extensive ECM and
anti-radar activity from the Eastern side. This was initially by no means
ineffective, but was very soon seen to be quite dramatically inferior to the
resources in electronic warfare available to the West.
In rather less than an hour after the opening of initial preparations for the land
offensive, four powerful armoured thrusts, each on a divisional front led by an
advanced group of mixed arms in regimental strength, had moved through swiftly
prepared gaps in the frontier defences into the territory of the Federal Republic.
The form of the attack, when it came, was by no means unexpected. Preceded by
light forces operating as far ahead as the terrain allowed, the first wave in the
main assault on each axis was made up of the T-72 tank regiments of the
armoured divisions, operating on divisional fronts never more than eight
kilometres wide and sometimes as little as two, depending on the nature of the
ground. The leading tank battalions were closely followed by motor-rifle companies
in their BMP armoured combat vehicles (sometimes no more than 100 metres or
so in rear), whose chief purpose was known to be to suppress the opposing anti-
tank defences. Following closely behind the tank divisions were the motor-rifle
divisions, each consisting of one armoured regiment and three motor-rifle
regiments, which were prepared to exploit the breakthrough which such a heavy
concentration of armour in the lead could hardly fail to achieve. Turning off the
line of march into encounter battles their purpose was to sweep opposition out of
the way and thus allow the tank and motor-rifle divisions in the next echelon,
piling on into the battle, to maintain the impetus of the advance.
The general offensive in Europe opened in accordance with the subsequently
recovered plan whose substance has been given above. Though this plan was not,
of course, known to Allied intelligence in detail until after the war, the pattern of
the offensive caused no great surprise. SHAPE expected, for example, that heavy
pressure would initially develop along the whole front, followed by major
concentrations to break through at selected points as well as very numerous
probing operations to find and exploit opportunities for deep penetration. It was
realized that the verification by NATO commanders of the main axes of thrust at a
very early stage would be of the greatest importance. Where, for example, would 3
Shock Army be directed? South-west, to follow through behind the initial
onslaught by 8 Guards Army, in a drive for Frankfurt? This would tax CENTAG
severely. Or westwards against NORTHAG? This could be more dangerous still.
The considerable loss of satellite surveillance was a severe blow, even if in part
offset by intelligence from other sources. Reconnaissance in any depth in such a
hostile environment was difficult enough for special unmanned air vehicles relying
on their small size and radar reflection to evade enemy defences. For manned
aircraft, operating singly on deep penetration missions without the benefits of
defence suppression and adequate electronic counter-measures, it was an
extremely difficult and dangerous task. But the strategic importance of identifying
the main axes of the thrust was such that it had to be tried, tried, and tried again,
no matter what the cost.
The Allied tactical air forces and air defences, already on full alert, had
responded to the opening of the offensive at once. They concentrated initially on
both defensive and offensive counter-air operations to reduce Soviet air activity,
and to strive for a tolerable air situation over the battle and behind the battle area
in AFCENT airspace. COMAAFCE’s (Commander Allied Air Forces Central Europe)
assessment of priorities in the first few hours of the conflict is discussed in detail
in Chapter 20 on the air campaign.
The picture that began to be clarified in HQ AFCENT on the late afternoon of 4
August, out of the flood of information coming in, can be described as follows.
At the northern end of the Central Region Bremen airfield, so recently, ironically
enough, protected by a US brigade, was in Soviet hands. It had been seized by one
of the very few fully successful fifth-column actions, followed up by airborne
infantry. A Soviet air-portable division, under very strong air cover, was now
building up on the airhead thus formed. Three divisions out of 2 Guards Tank
Army, slowed down but not stopped by the action of covering forces which had
been furnished by the Americans to strengthen the forward defences of the Dutch,
were fighting their way towards the Bremen airhead through I Netherlands Corps.
One Soviet division out of 2 Guards Tank Army had turned up northwards in the
direction of Kiel, followed, it appeared, by two Polish divisions, one armoured, one
motorized. The 6 Polish Airborne Division was also known to be concentrated in
the north, with special deep penetration troops from Neuruppin, units from the
East German Willi Sanger Special Services organization and naval specialists.
The city of Hamburg, masked by a strong Red Army force to the south of it
across the Elbe, was apparently being bypassed for the present. The Hamburg
Senat had urged strongly that the Allies declare Hamburg an open city, which
meant that no troops of any origin would be allowed to enter and, since its use
was denied to both sides it would not be attacked by either. Under strong pressure
from the FRG, this was soon agreed by the NATO Council. The Soviet attitude was
not made known.
 Refugee movement from the relatively thinly populated areas of north
Niedersachsen was already considerable. There was here an unwelcome foretaste
of what lay in store further south.
In the centre of the NORTH AG area a strong armoured column from what was
almost certainly 3 Shock Army had been launched on a two-divisional front, with
four more divisions in the follow-up. It was moving westwards, in the direction of
Hannover. Movement behind it along the same axis was observed from 20 Guards
Army.
On the Central Army Group front to the south of NORTHAG an armoured
column from 8 Guards Army with two divisions up was driving at Frankfurt, which
lay only 100 kilometres from the Demarcation Line, but with difficult country in
the Thuringer Wald to be crossed on the way. Four more Soviet divisions were
known to be following up the first two.
Further south on the CENTAG front another column, again with two divisions
up and four following, almost certainly from 1 Guards Tank Army, was pressing
towards Nurnberg.
Chemical attack, heavy in NORTHAG, not used in CENTAG, had a varying
impact: the Americans, who did not have to face it, were, with the British,
technically best prepared to meet it, the Germans and the British stood it best, the
effect on the Belgians was mixed and that upon the Dutch on the whole rather
bad.
The main result of chemical attack was less the infliction of casualties, which
were never intolerably high after the initial attacks, than the severe constraint on
physical activity occasioned by defensive precautions, particularly the wearing of
respirators and cumbrous protective clothing. The performance of combat infantry
was degraded under full precautions by as much as 60 per cent. Mobility was
reduced in avoiding contaminated areas. The requirement for chemical
reconnaissance took time and units were frequently forced for lack of it to fight in
a contaminated environment. Similar constraints applied to headquarters. Staff
officers under threat of attack had to work in protective equipment, including
gloves and respirators, with a significant degradation in command and control.
On the opening day of the offensive Soviet ground-attack aircraft also used
napalm against forward Allied units. Fortunately most were well spread out and
casualties, where they occurred, although gruesome, were small in number.
Attacks were also mounted against tanks and some tank losses resulted. Allied
tank commanders had been taught to drive straight through any napalm attack
and, generally speaking, tanks which continued to motor on in this way drove
themselves out of trouble. The target against which napalm was used to greatest
effect was soft-skinned, that is, unarmoured vehicles, which stood a poor chance
of survival against it. Quite heavy casualties were sustained in soft-skinned
transport in the opening days of the offensive.
Although Allied formations had no answer to napalm attacks other than to
redouble their vigilance against low-flying aircraft, such attacks tended to lessen
in frequency and intensity as the Russians found that the damage being caused,
particularly against Allied tanks, did not warrant the high cost in aircraft.
Although sporadic attacks continued throughout the following days the use of
napalm was not regarded by the Allies as offering a major hazard.
 No nuclear weapons, by the end of the first day, had as yet been used on either
side. The Soviet declaration notwithstanding, SACEUR had felt obliged by the
uncertainty of the situation to withhold some of his strike aircraft—chiefly F-111s,
Buccaneers and Tornados—from the battle for possible nuclear action. Their
absence resulted in a slight but significant increase in Soviet numerical
superiority in the air.
Whether in the air or on the ground, it was chiefly forces of the Soviet Union
which had been so far engaged. Three Polish divisions with some East German
specialists were known to have moved into Denmark. One tank and two motor-rifle
divisions of the East German Army had been in action against NORTHAG. No
troops from any country other than Poland and East Germany in the Warsaw Pact
had yet been identified in action.
Without any doubt the most important development of that first morning of
open hostilities in Europe was the declaration by the French government of its
intention to carry out to the full its obligations under the Atlantic Treaty. France
was now, therefore, in a state of war against the Soviet Union and its allies in the
Warsaw Pact.
II French Corps in Germany, some 50,000 strong, when assigned to Allied
Command Europe and placed by SACEUR under command to the Commander-in-
Chief, Central Region (CINCENT), was in the first instance put into regional
reserve, with a warning to be in readiness for a move forward in Bavaria. Three
further French divisions, of the smaller size which had resulted from a
reorganization at the end of the seventies (8,200 men in armoured divisions, 6,500
in infantry), were under orders to move in from France forthwith. The mobilization
operation, which would in due course produce fourteen divisions more, was
already under way. Particularly welcome was the addition of the eighteen fighter-
bomber squadrons of the French Tactical Air Force, even if only to be used—on the
first day at any rate—in support of French formations. More important than
anything else for the immediate future, however, was the availability of French
ports and airfields and the massive and quite invaluable increase to the theatre’s
depth, particularly in the matter of airspace.
The French nuclear capability was retained firmly and exclusively in French
hands.
Though the intervention of the French gave a degree of encouragement to the
Allies whose importance it would be hard to overestimate, the situation on the
ground in the Central Region at nightfall on the first day was far from promising
(see Situation Map). The covering forces along the entire forward edge of the battle
area, with the exception of those to the east of Frankfurt between Alsfeld and
Bamberg, had been driven back. In the north, sheer weight of numbers had
enabled the enemy to push regiment-sized groups of all arms, very strong in tanks
and armoured infantry, almost invariably moving mounted, with powerful tactical
air support, round centres of NATO opposition that had been effectively pinned
down south of Hamburg. These groups were now driving on to link up with the air-
transported Soviet units which were deploying out of the Bremen airhead. Soviet
airborne infantry units with light support were in their turn feeling forward to
seize crossing points over the River Weser, against determined but not always well
co-ordinated opposition from units of I Netherlands and II British Corps.
 In the North German plain armoured units from I German and I British Corps,
extricated with some difficulty from encirclement, were now regrouping north of
Hannover to face the main threat pressing down upon them from the north and
east. The North German plain was no longer the wide open tank-run it had still
been held to be (perhaps even then no longer correctly) a decade or so before.
Villages had become townships, offering opportunities for anti-tank delaying
action which the Germans and the British had been quick to seize, developing
tactical practices already referred to which had much in common. Operating in
small and inconspicuous detachments, with Milan ATGW and the recently
introduced (and long overdue) replacement for the Carl Gustav recoilless rifle, the
British had shown a special aptitude for what they called ‘sponge’ tactics. It was
remarkable how regularly distributed the villages and small townships of
Niedersachsen were, with groups of habitations separated from each other by
some 3,000 metres. The British practice, which was very like that of the German
Jagd Kommandos, was to install a platoon of infantry, organized to man two Milan
ATGW and otherwise armed only to protect itself, in the last houses of the village,
with another village similarly garrisoned, very little further away than the effective
range of a Milan missile, which was about 2,000 metres. The leading tanks of a
Soviet column would be allowed through unmolested. The third, or fifth, or
seventh would be attacked and destroyed with the first shot. If BMP were far up
with the leading tanks, several of these would be sent up in flames as well. Before
an effective clearance operation could be mounted against it the NATO platoon
would then be withdrawn, perhaps by a previously reconnoitred route, for similar
action in the next village. It was here that the German Jagd Kommandos were
particularly effective, for most of the men in them were locally resident reservists.
Both in the urban development of the North German plain and, with
appropriate adjustment, in the hill country of the Harz, these tactics began to
show promise, even on the first day, of a significant capacity for the absorption of
armoured impetus. The depth of the enemy’s penetration by nightfall on the 4th
had certainly not been as great in the NORTHAG sector as he must have hoped. It
was still great enough, nonetheless, to put the army group’s ability to retain its
balance in some doubt.
In the NORTHAG sector, as elsewhere in the Central Region, another serious
problem was emerging. An immense, sprawling swarm of civilian refugees from the
towns and villages of Niedersachsen was already beginning to cause the difficulties
that had long been foreseen - and feared. It was greatly to the Soviet advantage to
increase disorder wherever possible, while trying to keep clear the main axes of
their advance. Ground-attack aircraft maintained a ceaseless rain of machine-gun
fire along these axes, with small anti-personnel fragmentation bombs, the Soviet
intention clearly being not so much to cause casualties (though they minded little
about these) as to drive refugee traffic off any roads they intended to use.
Armoured engineer equipment moving with leading tanks swept derelict civilian
vehicles to one side without noticeable loss of momentum to the advancing
columns. The tanks themselves were driven without hesitation through groups of
people vainly struggling to get clear, charging on at high speeds over human
wreckage already pulped by vehicles ahead of them. Some side roads soon became
jammed, and Allied troops were being seriously impeded by a chaotic mass of
pedestrians and vehicles which it was nearly impossible, in spite of heroic and
efficient work by German police and Home Defence units, to control.
In the CENTAG sector, with III German Corps on the left under pressure and
pinned down, it had become clear by early afternoon on the 4th that a major thrust
directed towards Hersfeld was developing on the left of V US Corps, with a
secondary effort through Fulda towards Hanau, along the Kinzig river valley and
the ridges running south-west to the Rhine-Main plain. The covering force of
reinforced US armoured cavalry had used its anti-tank weapons and artillery
admirably from first light onwards, making good use of favourable terrain to slow
the enemy’s advance. It had even been found possible to turn the great numbers of
the enemy’s vehicles to his disadvantage by blocking defiles which it then took
time to clear. In this the F-15 aircraft of the US Air Force, having already
established a clear superiority in air-to-air action, were particularly effective,
operating in a secondary ground-attack role.
In the CENTAG sector, too, very good use was being made of German Jagd
Kommandos, deployed far forward in well-sited localities. In CENTAG, however, the
emphasis was laid more on the actual stopping—or at least delaying—power of the
armoured covering force. The terrain, for one thing, was in general closer, more
thickly wooded and more up-and-down than in the north, and thus more
favourable to the defence. For another thing, it was dangerously short of depth.
There was no ground here to be traded for time.
Time-consuming actions had been fought, with very considerable loss to the
enemy, before Fulda at Hunfeld, in front of Schlitz, and south-east of Hersfeld.
Fortunately for the defence the weather was clear and the maximum range of
ATGW could be exploited. The covering force on this part of the CENTAG front
exchanged losses with the attackers at a rate in their own favour of nearly five to
one, but they were obliged in the process to yield some fifteen to twenty
kilometres.
With III German Corps on their left fighting hard and giving very little away, the
brunt of the attack on 4 August in the CENTAG area was met at about 1600 hours
by the armoured division on the left of V US Corps. Four Soviet tank regiments
ploughed into the two brigades on the left of the division, the motorized infantry
companies, mounted in their BMP, coming along close behind the leading tanks.
Another tank regiment and a motorized infantry regiment followed up. With nearly
100 T-72s leading, the Soviet attack ran into a network of anti-tank fire which the
enemy’s heavy artillery preparation for nearly an hour before, and the best efforts
of his tactical air support, had been unable entirely to suppress. The leading US
battalions were forced back several kilometres through their own anti-tank
defences, but as these reduced the impetus of the assault it was possible to regain
some, at least, of the ground lost. By nightfall the two leading Soviet divisions had
gained, in the event, a few kilometres, but with very high losses. Pressure
continued through the night. When the attack was resumed with a new ferocity at
first light on the 5th, by two fresh Soviet divisions which had passed through the
first in the hours of darkness, it was met by the combined strength of two US
divisions, of which one was from those most newly arrived, and brought to a halt,
at least for the time being, after relatively shallow penetration, just forward of
Alsfeld. The V US Corps front now extended from Alsfeld in the north to
Schluchtern in the south.
On its right, further south, VII US Corps had faced a major attack on the
opening day, following exactly the same pattern, on the Meiningen-Schweinfurt
axis along the River Main near Wurzburg. Again, ground had been lost, but the
effectiveness of the anti-tank defences had prevented a decisive breakthrough.
Further south still, II German Corps was fighting a stubborn rearguard action
in the area of Nurnberg, giving away no more ground than was absolutely
necessary in the expectation of the early arrival of the French. There was little
enough they could do. The action of covering forces in the Bayrischer Wald had
gained too little time to prevent the Russians from bouncing a crossing over the
Danube. As night fell powerful armoured columns of the Soviet 1 Guards Tank
Army were bypassing Munchen to the north. The next hope of stopping them, at
this southern end of the Central Region, would be along the River Lech.
In spite of the splendid news from France, with the First French Army moving
eastwards to strengthen the southern flank and the French Tactical Air Force
already in action ahead of it, the day, 5 August 1985, ended in uncertainty and
gloom.
It was by now clear that at any one of half a dozen points at once, on either
army group front in the Central Region, the Russians could develop a high degree
of local superiority in armoured and armoured infantry attacks, under massive
artillery and air-to-ground support, and would press any advantage with the
utmost vigour and complete disregard of casualties. Soviet momentum was
maintained by heavy concentrations of armour and firepower on narrow fronts;
flanks were largely ignored. With the weight of the attack and the determination—
even the recklessness—with which it was pressed wherever it took place,
penetration at one or more points was inevitable. Swift exploitation by troops of
the second echelon would then follow hard on the heels of the first. Immediate
counter-attack from the Allied side was in the early stages rarely possible. The
Russians made no attempt to consolidate ground. It was hard to find a moment,
however fleeting, when they could be caught off-balance. Counter-attack often
simply ran head-on into the armour of the next wave and was smothered almost
before it had got under way. Even the concentrated fire of Allied divisional and
corps artillery could for the most part only attenuate somewhat the force of
attacks pressed with such violence and in such numbers, with so high a disregard
for loss. Air-to-ground attack, in this first forty-eight hours, was nothing like as
plentiful as the corps and subordinate commanders would have wished, but the
Allied air forces were, on CINCENT’s express order, being used to counter the
enemy’s air forces both in the air and on the ground in an endeavour to establish
a tolerable air situation in addition to their continuous pounding of ‘choke points’
now in rear of the main battle.
It was only rarely that the attacks of Soviet tanks and armoured infantry could
be stopped. Tanks would almost always get through, and fresh waves of attacking
armour would move in behind them. Equipment for equipment, sub-unit for sub-
unit, man for man, the NATO defence was by no means inferior to the attacking
forces. In one important respect at least, that is in almost every aspect of the
whole field of electronic technology, NATO was already showing up better. On the
first day, however, the defending formations were simply being swamped by
numbers, dominated and driven on by blind faith in the doctrine of the total
offensive.
But even on the first day weaknesses began to appear in the way the Russians
fought their battle. The handling of armoured infantry provides an example which
deserves attention, for it was to be of critical importance.
The BMP, improved but still essentially the same machine, had originally been
evolved as an armoured infantry combat vehicle for use in exploitation of nuclear
action. Its chief purpose was to move in swiftly to overwhelm, by mainly mounted
attack, whatever NATO defences still survived the nuclear attack, travelling in
close company with the tanks whose further action would resolve the battle. To
maintain the impetus of the armoured advance some protection of the tanks by
infantry was indispensable. But the BMP was itself highly vulnerable to anti-tank
attack. The precision-guided missiles now deployed by NATO in very considerable
numbers showed that mounted attack was often suicidal. The toll of BMP on the
first day was heavy.
The Red Army had long recognized that in the non-nuclear battle mounted
action for motor infantry was not always feasible, though it was certainly worth
trying, particularly in the first assault. The alternative was to dismount the
infantry for an attack on foot against such NATO anti-tank defences as survived
the suppressive fire of artillery and air forces. In the event, well-located Allied
missile launchers survived, even on that first day, in considerable numbers.
Dismounted infantry had no hope of keeping up with tanks moving at their best
speed. When motor-rifle infantry were prevented by anti-tank fire from going in
mounted, therefore, the whole attack slowed down.
We have seen how Soviet tactics for the penetration of hostile defences in the
non-nuclear variant of the land battle had latterly come to depend upon
manoeuvre at least as much as on massed frontal attack. Manoeuvre by mounted
infantry demanded both tactical surprise and effective suppression of anti-tank
defensive fire. In the battle of the Central Region neither, for the Warsaw Pact, was
complete, even on the first day.
Professor J. Erickson, one of the best informed and soundest observers of the
Soviet military scene, had said in 1977: ‘Above all the Soviet command will pay the
closest attention to the loss-rate in the first 10-15 km of the advance…’ These were
prophetic words.
A battle drill to deal with the differing requirements of each combined arms
tactical engagement had proved, for the Red Army, impossible to find. When
should the infantry dismount? How were the varying speeds of tank, BMP, SP gun
and foot soldier to be related? How was the fire of tank, BMP, SP gun, divisional
artillery and helicopter gunship, with tactical air support thrown in, to be co-
ordinated? The command responsibilities formerly held in the Red Army at
division now devolved in greater measure than before on the regiment, which was
akin to the Allied brigade, but the heaviest load of all lay on the battalion
commander. In a reinforced motor-rifle battalion with a minute staff of four
officers, one NCO and eight men, he would be attempting to control a force some
700 strong, with a company of thirteen tanks, a battery of six guns (or even a
battalion of eighteen), a mortar battery, anti-air weapons, an ATGW platoon,
reconnaissance and engineer elements, thirty BMP, sixty light machine guns and
356 assault riflemen. It was a tall order.
The Allied maxim was a simple one, even if to follow it demanded fortitude: stay
put, keep your head down, and go for the commander. He was not all that difficult
to locate. The information coming in from many sources, processed in JTIDS and
almost instantaneously disseminated, could often pinpoint centres of command at
divisional and regimental level. They had then to be attacked, which was rather
less easy.
At lower levels the problem was simple. Junior commanders on the NATO side
had been taught to look for the command tank. Its behaviour pattern at company
level, for instance, gave it a quite unmistakable signature. The temptation to take
the easiest shot first was one to be resisted. Take out the command tank; this
would not stop the attack but it would at least blunt the follow-through. Battalion
command was harder to break, but to take that out was even more rewarding.
Few junior commanders, in the heat and confusion, the clamour and horror, the
fear and growing weariness of those battles on the first days, would perhaps have
thought of putting it quite that way, but what they were trying to do was to
uncouple the parts of an interdependent whole. This would not stop the onrush.
To do that in the case of 3 Shock Army would have meant the elimination (or at
least the neutralization) of some 120 artillery batteries and 2,800 armoured
fighting vehicles (AFV). To hold a single breakthrough on one axis would have
meant accounting for some thirty batteries and 800 AFV. What was already just
beginning to happen, however, if not on the first day at least towards the end of
the second, was the emergence of a hope in those Allied commanders whose
nerves were strongest that, if wedges could be driven between the main elements
of the Soviet combined arms operation, the enemy might just be prevented from
breaking all the way through to the Rhine. There was also now a growing
awareness on the other side that to reach it in nine days might not be easy.
What was also beginning to emerge was that a battle seen superficially at the
outset as a mainly armoured offensive against an anti-tank defence was becoming
more and more a contest between firepower and counter-measures. In an older
terminology it would have been called an artillery battle between battery and
counter-battery; in newer terms it was seen as a battle between rival arrays of
electronics.

On the 5th, after a night in which the pressure had been hardly less than
by day, the advance went on. In the north the enemy secured crossings over the
Weser north of Minden and leading elements were reported moving west towards
the Netherlands. I Belgian Corps had been pushed back west of Kassel; I British
Corps was still fighting in the outskirts of Hannover and, in the built-up areas and
the hill country of the Harz, exploiting with German reservist Jagd Kommandos
the advantage of the ‘sponge’; I German Corps was established east and west along
the Teutoburger Wald; II British Corps was extending its left westwards to the
Dutch frontier, behind which reserve formations were hastily preparing defences
in low-lying country now being flooded.
On the CENTAG front the first of the newly arrived US divisions, which had
already fought such a valuable action, had been withdrawn from V US Corps to
join the strong Canadian Brigade Group in army group reserve. The First French
Army, taking II German Corps under command, had now assumed responsibility
for that sector of the region which ran from Nurnberg south to the Austrian
frontier, coming for the time being under command to CENTAG, with which
French ties, as has been seen, were close.
By the evening of 5 August further enemy attacks had opened a salient on the
left of III German Corps, in the extreme north of the CENTAG sector on the Corps
boundary with the Belgians, and a Soviet thrust was developing towards Giessen.
This was checked by flank action from the V US Corps between Alsfeld and
Schluchtern. It was perhaps significant that the leading divisions in the enemy’s
assault were now more often motor-rifle than tank divisions, and powerful probing
for weak points was tending more and more to replace the massive armoured
assault of tanks in the first wave. The Allied tactic, at unit level, which was
essentially a matter of striving wherever possible to separate the tanks from their
supporting infantry, was clearly paying off.
Further south the anti-tank defences of VII US Corps, with strong artillery and
increasing tactical air support, had just been sufficient to contain a major attempt
to break through south-east of Frankfurt where pressure was again building up.
From Nurnberg southwards the situation was confused, but what information was
available suggested that the First French Army with II German Corps was still
more or less in control along the Lech.
Over the next five days of bright, clear weather, as growing French strength in
the south did much to stabilize the right flank, it became increasingly clear that
the main effort would continue to be made in the north. The boundary between
the two army groups had been moved up to give the Kassel area, with command of
the much weakened I Belgian Corps, to CENTAG. After very hard fighting had held
up a determined attempt to push down to Frankfurt through Giessen,
COMCENTAG now believed that he had a good chance of holding an area whose
forward edge would run from Kassel down through Alsfeld to south of Wurzburg. If
the Soviet 3 Shock Army had been put in behind 1 Guards Tank Army the outlook
would have been different, but it had been committed to the attack in the north.
By 7 August the continued enforcement of chemical defensive measures upon
NORTHAG was beginning to cause concern, and pressure from field commanders
for some form of retaliation grew. In theory a nuclear response had always been
considered a possibility, at least by the British, but at this stage SACEUR was in
no doubt that such a response would be an irrational risk. He was, however,
prepared to see chemicals used in retaliation; indeed, authority for their use had
already been delegated to local US commanders. SACEUR thus felt able to offer
some chemical support to NORTHAG. It presented no problem to COMAAFCE to
allot a squadron of US Air Force F-4 Phantoms equipped with spray tanks to 2
ATAF, while a quantity of US 155 mm chemical ammunition was released to the
gunners of the British and German divisions of NORTHAG. This capability was put
to immediate use.
The Phantoms attacked second echelon and reserve Soviet divisions with
extensive and heavy concentrations of persistent lethal agents. These attacks
forced Soviet units into unplanned moves. The personal protective equipment used
by Soviet soldiers was not suitable for prolonged wear and under continued attack
by persistent gases grew almost intolerably irksome. It was less easy for
NORTHAG formations to use the US 155 mm chemical ammunition. It only slowly
became available, for the logistic problem in drawing the ammunition from US
locations caused delay, while Allied forces were unskilled in its technical and
tactical use. The overall effect of the use of chemical agents against the Soviet
offensive was nonetheless welcome. Protective clothing and equipment taken with
Soviet prisoners was found to be rougher, clumsier, worse-fitting and considerably
less effective than that of the Allies—which was itself a great improvement on what
had been available only two or three years before. Red Army troops suffered in
consequence more serious casualties from the same weight of attack. Their less
flexible command and control procedures were more easily impeded. On balance,
Soviet commanders considered a chemical exchange to be to their disadvantage,
and since the Allies adhered to the rule of only using chemical agents in retaliation
their use on the battlefield, as distinct from the rear areas, soon declined.

Refugees were posing an acute and growing problem in the south, as in the
north. Large numbers of people from Augsburg and Ulm had moved in the
direction of Stuttgart, and a rapidly increasing mass of frightened people was
building up in the vicinity of Karlsruhe. The same sort of thing was also happening
where crowds fleeing from Nurnberg and Wurzburg, augmented by refugees from
smaller places, were bearing down on Mannheim. From the Frankfurt area there
was a good deal of movement in the direction of Wiesbaden and Mainz. The
general picture was one of a widespread and virtually uncontrollable flow from
east to west, much of it on foot with possessions piled on vehicles drawn by
animals or pushed or dragged by hand, with a chaotic jumble of motor vehicles of
every description, more and more of them abandoned as petrol supplies gave out.
At the Rhine crossings the pressure was tremendous; to keep the bridges open
was putting increasing strain on Federal German police and territorial troops.
Disorder was increased by determined Soviet air attack, both at low and medium
levels, of which some at least always got through the defences. The importance of
maintaining freedom of movement across the Rhine for the Allies, and of blocking
it for the Warsaw Pact, was fully realized on both sides. By the fourth day some
success began to attend the strenuous efforts of Federal German police and
territorial troops to establish control over refugee movements and divert them into
areas of open country east of the river. This did much to relieve pressure on the
Rhine crossings but could not prevent serious interference with the movement of
troops and other essential military traffic.
To the north of the Central Region AFNORTH was proving a tougher proposition
for the Warsaw Pact than many in the West had expected, perhaps because few
had much experience of the very great difficulty of movement from north to south
in Norway. By 4 August the Allied Command Europe (ACE) Mobile Force of seven
battalions with supporting troops had been put in by air and deployed north of
Narvik. A Royal Marine Commando came in from Britain by sea and other Allied
reinforcements arrived by sea and air to strengthen and support Norwegian
national forces deployed in north Norway.
Advanced elements of a Soviet motor-rifle division crossed into Norway from the
Kola peninsula on 4 August. A second was already moving westwards through
Finnish Lapland, directed on Narvik. The fact that the Soviet and Finnish railway
systems were integrated meant that no movement problem hampered the early
follow-on of eight to ten more Soviet divisions. Soviet air superiority was complete.
The relative strengths of ground troops in AFNORTH did not, however, give a
true measure of the Warsaw Pact advantage. It was less than it looked. The
strength of the defence lay in the very great difficulty of deployment for offensive
action, even with a favourable air situation. It was, in fact, only the action of a
Soviet amphibious force in effecting a landing south of Bodo on 10 August that
was to compel a southward redeployment of Allied forces to protect the land line of
communication through north Trondelag and Nordland. By 15 August a firm Allied
defence was based on Trondheim, which was unlikely to be seriously threatened
so long as a delaying action continued to be successfully fought in the north.
To the south of the Central Region, HQ AFSOUTH, with a hastily put together
Italian government in exile, had moved on 6 and 7 August to Spain. The Italian
peninsula was now entirely under Soviet control, though with no great strength in
Red Army troops.
The Italian and US air elements based in Italy constituting 5 Allied Tactical Air
Force, after their initial operations, found themselves overtaken by the virtual
disintegration of the NATO Southern Region. The wings and squadrons were faced
with a fleeting chance and those aircrew who had serviceable aircraft took it by
flying to Spain and the south of France where they were subsequently used as a
general reserve of tactical air power for the central battle, chiefly in the south of
the Central Region.
Holland came under Soviet occupation as far south as the River Maas by 10
August, the seat of government having removed to Eindhoven. The last remnants
of a Dutch defence of the frontier had been dispersed in an action near Lingen on
the 8th, and thereafter only floods caused by the opening of the dykes and an
active civilian resistance had stood in the invaders’ way.
On 10 August the right-hand corps of the Northern Army Group, I British, was
still in being, though battered, in the area round Paderborn. Its anti-tank defences
had been its salvation. The tactics of the ‘sponge’ had been highly successful.
Small infantry detachments manning ATGW were still lying up in built-up or hilly
country, waiting for the vulnerable flank, always trying to reduce the impetus of
the enemy’s advance by hampering the follow-up and interfering with supply. The
concentration of attack at all levels, by every means, on communications,
command and control was paying off handsomely. One guided missile could
destroy one tank. A single hit on a divisional command post could impose
confusion and delay upon a hundred. Even where physical disruption was not
possible (and, with the methods currently in use, nodal communication points
could quite often be located and destroyed) interference with communication
almost always was. It was remarkable how far such interference could reduce the
effectiveness of an enemy accustomed to close control by superiors.
To the left of I British Corps, I German Corps was still established along the
Teutoburger Wald, offering so great a threat to the enemy’s advance from east to
west as to invite a major effort very soon to push it out. On its left, in turn, stood II
British Corps, forced back to positions south and west of Munster, with one US
brigade under command on the west bank of the Rhine. The remnants of I
Netherlands Corps, which had taken very heavy punishment in the past few days,
were strung out further west towards Nijmegen.
By the evening of the 11th, I German Corps had been put under such severe
pressure from the south and west as to be no longer able to hold the high ground
on either side of the Minden Gap. NORTHAG’s main preoccupation was now the
defence of the Ruhr and Rhineland and the prevention of a breakthrough on the
west bank of the Rhine in the area of Venlo.
In the Central Region the Warsaw Pact invasion had not, it is true, achieved the
swift and overwhelming success planned for it. If it had not been completely
successful, however, the shortfall so far lay only in the timetable. Allied Command
Europe was facing a serious position which was now growing critical.
It was on 13 August that SACEUR made known two decisions which can now be
seen, among the many difficult problems before him in those momentous days, to
have been truly critical to the outcome of the war in Europe. The first was a final
refusal to endorse any of the urgent requests of his subordinate commanders for
the release of battlefield nuclear weapons. The second concerned the commitment
of reserves.
Speculation would be idle on how long any Warsaw Pact offensive into the
Central Region of Europe could have continued under the thunderous threat of
national revolt, soon to be looming, as we shall learn, in the Red Army’s rear. What
is beyond doubt is that the Allied counter-offensive, shortly to be opened by the
forces of the Central Region northwards towards Bremen, was to set up a
completely new operational situation for the Pact to face on the land battlefield. To
bring this under control was clearly not impossible for the Pact forces. Of the huge
military resources available to the Warsaw Pact, relatively little had as yet been
lost. But regrouping would be needed on a considerable scale. There was already a
growing uncertainty in the rearward political infrastructure, with increasing
threats to the security of lines of communication, and a discernible decline in
confidence in the reliability of non-Soviet formations. Divisions expected to follow
up for the maintenance of offensive momentum were more and more being kept
where they were, to safeguard the very lines of communication along which they
should have moved. These and other related factors were to combine to render less
and less stable the basis on which the operation of containing the Allied counter-
offensive and regaining offensive momentum, once this had been lost, would have
to rest. A real check to the forward impetus of the invasion of West Germany could
not therefore be regarded as only a temporary setback. It was likely, in all the
circumstances, to mark the beginning of something much more important.
It was the Supreme Allied Commander’s decision, at a time of great uncertainty,
to commit his theatre reserves that made this all-important check possible.
The Allied position in the Central Region at nightfall on 12 August was not very
good (see Situation Map). The French command in the south—now the Southern
Army Group (SOUTHAG), with II French Corps and II German Corps under
command, together with a division’s worth of Austrian troops—was under heavy
pressure along the line of the Lech. Here and there it was losing ground. North of
the present boundary between SOUTHAG and the Central Army Group (CENTAG),
which now ran from Karlsruhe through Bayreuth, with its three corps and some
eight divisions, was in a similar situation. It was just holding on to an area whose
forward edge ran from west of Kassel to Wurzburg and was hourly expecting
attack by fresh formations.

A great blow to CENTAG during the day had been a direct hit from a
missile on its Main HQ in the field. The mobile tactical HQ further forward was
unharmed, but unhappily the commanding general was in Main HQ at the time
and was killed outright. He was replaced by the commander of V US Corps, whose
vigorous defence in the Fulda area on CENTAG’s left, the hinge of the whole army
group’s position, had been of such vital importance.
The new Commander of the Central Army Group and Commander of the United
States Army in Europe was already a familiar figure on television screens on both
sides of the Atlantic. It was an appointment as popular with the American public,
to whom he had in a few short days of intense exposure become something of a
folk hero, as it was in the command he now took over.
To the north of the Central Army Group NORTHAG was deployed in a great bow,
with a position running first of all northwards from west of Kassel to within twenty
kilometres of Hannover, which was now in enemy hands. Thereafter, the forward
edge was much as it had been for the past few days, running south-west along the
Teutoburger Wald to Osnabruck, then westwards to the Rhine near Wesel. It was
here on the left that most ground in NORTHAG’s sector had been lost, in spite of a
determined defence by II British Corps, disposing of one US brigade and some
Dutch units in addition to two divisions of its own. West of the Rhine the key
Venlo position was still holding. There was no doubt at all that it would soon come
under very heavy pressure.
In theatre reserve SACEUR was holding the heavy US division withdrawn in
pretty fair shape from V US Corps on the second day of the battle, the second US
reinforcement division now less one brigade, two more US divisions married to
their prepositioned equipment in the first few days of August, one fairly strong
German division, one rather weaker British division, the Canadian Brigade Group
of almost divisional strength, and some other troops amounting to about a division
all told.
These, adding up in the aggregate to only some seven divisions’ worth, were all
nominally under command of the Central Army Group, but with the firm
instruction that none must be committed by CENTAG without the Supreme
Commander’s authority. They were located largely in Hessen and the Rhineland.
Most lay east of the Rhine. The main Rhine bridges, surprisingly enough, were still
in service, though only through a major effort on the part of Allied air defence and
truly heroic work by army engineers.
Pressure on the Supreme Allied Commander from subordinate commanders to
release troops from this reserve had already been considerable, and was now
growing. To all requests, however pressing, SACEUR had invariably replied that
army groups must manage with whatever local reserves they could find. Inevitably
there had followed urgent insistence on the release of battlefield nuclear support,
as the only possible way of preventing collapse, if no reserves were to be made
available.
The Supreme Commander knew the mind of his Commander-in-Chief, the
President of the United States. The President would go to almost any lengths to
avoid nuclear attack on the cities of the United States. It was not easy to see how
this could be avoided once the battlefield nuclear exchange had begun.
Among the European Allies, opinion on the use of battlefield nuclear weapons in
this confused and highly dangerous situation was divided. Understandably the
Federal Republic was against it. The United Kingdom was in two minds. The
Belgians were in favour, the Dutch against. The French reserved absolutely the
right to decide their own nuclear policy but undertook not to use any of their
considerable nuclear armoury, battlefield or strategic, without prior consultation.
Meanwhile, Warsaw Pact air attack, conventional and chemical, on the home
countries of the Allies, begun on 4 August, continued unabated, though with
varying intensity. In the Federal Republic and to a lesser extent in the Low
Countries it was hardly to be distinguished from tactical interdiction. In France
and the UK it was more strategic in character.
French ports, communication complexes and military installations had suffered
considerably from it, though not to the same extent as targets in the UK, which
were more important to the US war effort and more readily accessible. There had
been no bombing of French cities and it seemed probable, for the present at least,
that France would not use her strategic nuclear capability unless there were. But
the United Kingdom, in spite of the best efforts of its air defences, was taking a
pounding as the battle in the Central Region approached a climax.
It was perfectly clear to SACEUR that if there was any possibility at all that the
military position could be held back from total disaster without nuclear weapons it
was his plain and compelling duty not to press the President for their use. He was
also aware that if he did press for nuclear release his request would almost
certainly be granted.
SACEUR was alone and on the spot, and he knew it.
Shortly before midnight, Central European time, on Monday 12 August, the
President came up on a voice channel. Satellite communications had not yet been
fully restored and visual channels were still far from reliable, but it may also have
been that the President preferred an exchange by speech alone.
‘Can you do it?’ he asked.
The question was a very simple one but nothing more was necessary.
There was a momentary pause.
‘It all depends,’ the Supreme Commander answered, ‘on what is happening in
the Atlantic - and whether the air bridge holds.’
‘The air bridge still seems to be holding,’ was the response. ‘We shall know what
has happened in the Atlantic in a very few hours.’
What was known already was that four transatlantic convoys bringing from the
United States almost the entire heavy equipment and the remaining personnel of
two complete corps, already largely lifted in by air, had set out on 8 August and
had very soon run into persistent and determined Soviet attack, both from
submarines and from the air. Losses were already heavy. Nearly a fifth of the
transport shipping had been sunk, with considerable loss to escorting naval
forces. Many survivors had been rescued but the sum of the equipment lost—the
XM-1 tanks, SP guns, APC, soft-skinned transport, electronic equipment and,
above all, munitions, especially for air force weapons and anti-tank and anti-air
missiles—represented for the time being a quite serious, if happily only temporary,
setback to the Allied war effort.
The personnel for these reinforcing formations, numbering in all some 70,000
officers and men, had already for the most part been moved in over the air bridge
to the United Kingdom and northwestern France. Considerable use had been
made of impressed civilian air transport, and here too there had been losses.
Nearly a tenth of the passenger-carrying aircraft bringing over US military
reinforcement personnel had been brought down into the sea. The rescue rate of
survivors had been high, but this nevertheless represented a setback too.
Troops on the ground in Western Europe were now waiting for the equipment, in
all its huge complexity—from a main battle tank to some tiny triumph of electronic
micro-processing—without which they could not even approach the battlefield, let
alone fight on it. How much of what was wanted would arrive, and what
formations SACEUR would be able to put into the critical battle now being fought
for the future freedom of the Western world, depended largely on how soon the
shipping making its way eastwards across the Atlantic could be brought under
land-based air cover from Great Britain and France, within the UK Air Defence
Region.

Chapter 16
Sea Power

The course of events at sea, immediately following upon the Warsaw Pact
incursion into NATO territory on 4 August 1985, is not easy to follow in detail. The
overwhelming need to preserve secrecy about their intentions, and the full
exploitation of surprise, were reflected in the sparseness of Soviet and Warsaw
Pact records, when these became available. On the NATO side it was all that the
exiguous staffs could do, once war seemed imminent, to begin to put into effect
the complex Alliance plans which had been prepared for just such a contingency.
The detailed record disappeared with the miles of telex tape which had to be
disposed of as quickly as it accumulated; critical decision-making by telephone
and closed-circuit TV was also lost to the record; only the main features of the
naval and maritime air operations can be established with reasonable certainty.
From the start-line to 2 Guards Tank Army, on the Elbe near Lubeck, to
Flensburg, at the Baltic Exists, is 150 kilometres. By dawn on Monday 5 August,
the Russians were there, and the Kiel Canal was in their hands.
The reorganization of the main NATO naval command structure (see Appendix
3) had been the occasion for a thorough review of the maritime aspect of NATO
strategy, its concept of operations and its plans. The NATO Joint Allied Command
Western Approaches (JACWA) had called for reaffirmation by the NATO Military
Committee, the NATO Council of Ministers, and finally the NATO governments, of
three cardinal elements in NATO strategy. First, that there would be no change in
the determination of NATO to offer the stoutest possible resistance on land, as far
forward as possible. Second, that NATO would remain flexible in regard to the use
of battlefield nuclear weapons. Third, that the primary maritime task of NATO
would be to ensure the safe and timely arrival in Europe of seaborne
reinforcements and supplies from North Africa and elsewhere.
JACWA, in developing their plans, had to bear in mind certain considerations
arising from the new command structure and relevant to NATO strategy. These
were:

1. The fundamental purpose of NATO, as a military alliance, was to preserve

the territorial integrity, political independence and economic strength of its
member states.
2. The major member of the Alliance, the United States, had national
security requirements of critical importance besides those of NATO. In
particular, her strategic nuclear weapons were not, except for a few SSBN
(submarines, strategic ballistic nuclear), committed to NATO.
3. The British Polaris SSBN force, though it was committed to NATO, could in
certain circumstances revert to British national control.
4. The major problem of command and control (apart from disruption of the
electronic environment in wartime) would be to conduct operations effectively
across the interfaces between JACWA and SACLANT to the west and north, and
between JACWA and SACEUR to the east and south.
5. It had become glaringly obvious that if the margin of Warsaw Pact
numerical superiority over NATO continued to increase in all arms,
accompanied by technological equivalence and even advantage in some cases,
the initial shock of Pact aggression in Central Europe might well carry its forces
to the Baltic Exits and the North Sea coast. The lack of depth in the NATO
defensive position on land, therefore, would necessitate, in the early stages of a
conflict, the inclusion of the British Isles as the ‘rear area’ for the Central Front.
Later, Britain would become a springboard for the counter-offensive. The closest
possible understanding between command at sea and on land, between JACWA,
SACLANT and SACEUR, would therefore need to be established and maintained.
6. In order to get the essential seaborne supplies and reinforcements from
North America safely to Europe when required, SACLANT and JACWA would
have to co-ordinate their strategy and operations closely, and give each other
full support at all times.
7. The special character of the Western Approaches command, comprising
naval forces (surface, air and submarine), maritime air forces and UK air strike
forces, would have to be continually borne in mind. It was to be a 3-D team. The
key point was that warships move at about 500 miles per day, aircraft at about
500 miles per hour; but whereas aircraft can stay on task for a few hours only,
ships and submarines can stay at sea for weeks.
8. It was forty years since there had been a major war at sea. How would the
complex array of weapon systems, counter-measures and counter-counter-
measures work when the shooting started? There would be surprises. The fog of
war might well obscure valuable lessons to be learned from the first
engagements with the enemy. The Operations Analysis teams would have to be
given every opportunity to find out exactly what had happened. There would
 probably be heavy casualties on both sides. It would be just as important to
know why we were successful as why we had failed.

It had been the usual practice, in drawing up NATO plans, to consider first
‘the threat’. JACWA decided, instead, to begin by looking in some detail at what
the Command would have to do, first of all during any period of warning that
NATO might have of an impending Soviet or Warsaw Pact attack, then during the
first two or three days of hostilities. As far as the opening phase of a war was
concerned, they considered how SACLANT and JACWA could achieve sufficient
ascendancy over the Soviet Navy, in the Atlantic and elsewhere, to ensure the safe
and timely arrival in Europe of the seaborne military supplies and reinforcements
essential to sustain SACEUR.
Turning over in their minds the broader aspects of maritime strategy, JACWA
recalled a useful division of the maritime task which the British naval and air force
staffs had once jointly set down in a War Manual. It contained lessons learned in
the UK from the Second World War, not all of which had been applied. Maritime
warfare, they had written (the word ‘maritime’ had been introduced in order to
include the naval tasks of the RAF), comprises two separate but complementary
functions:
1. The management of sea use: the organization and movement of shipping; the
loading and unloading of cargoes; the control and defence of ports; and the
manning, training and maintenance of naval forces.
This is predominantly a naval responsibility.
2. Combat with hostile naval and air forces: offensive and defensive operations
of all kinds in support of the maritime aim, including direct support of land forces.
This is predominantly a joint naval and air responsibility.

As to strategy, what were the forces involved? The naval and air general-purpose
forces immediately available to NATO and the USSR, for operations in the North
Atlantic and Western Approaches (to which the contribution of non-Soviet forces
would be negligible), would normally be of the following order:

Category NATO USSR

1. Carrier strike fleet 1 0
2. General purpose support groups 3 2
3. Escort groups 4 2
4. Fleet (nuclear-powered) submarines 44 60
5. Patrol (diesel-electric) submarines 40 40
6. Escort and patrol ships (other than those included in 1-3 above)
52 64
7. Maritime strike aircraft (two-thirds carrier-borne)
300 250
8. Maritime patrol aircraft 50 50

Both sides would have a number of logistic support ships; amphibious ships
and craft; mine counter-measure ships and auxiliaries. The Soviet Northern Fleet
would also include upwards of twenty-five fast missile craft.
 There were, of course, in addition, the large Soviet and Warsaw Pact naval and
naval air forces in the Baltic, which the naval and air forces of the Federal German
Republic and Denmark would have to oppose. In the Mediterranean there were the
United States Sixth Fleet and a large part of the French Navy. The Italian, Greek
and Turkish naval forces were also earmarked for NATO and would, provided their
governments remained staunch, fight the Soviet Navy effectively.
The attitudes of the various governments in North Africa, as well as their
capability to support Soviet naval operations, would be of critical importance. The
relinquishment by the British, in the 1970s, of a naval presence in the
Mediterranean, to be replaced partly by the US Navy, partly by Allied Forces South
(AFSOUTH), had proved to be a weakening step.
Considering strategy, therefore, first of all during the hoped for warning period,
JACWA foresaw five main tasks:
1. To put the Western Approaches command on a war footing.
2. To step up reconnaissance of Soviet and Warsaw Pact naval and naval air
activities.
3. To inaugurate measures to control and protect shipping.
4. In conjunction with CINCNORTH, SACEUR’s major NATO commander in
Oslo, to protect the oil and natural gas installations in the North Sea.
5. To ensure the safe and timely movement of all sea traffic between the UK and
the Continent in support of SACEUR.
So far, little in the way of strategic thinking was needed. Once hostilities began,
however, the options for decision would open up, as, under the impact of enemy
action, the demands upon inadequate forces began to come into critical
competition.
In the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars JACWA’s predecessors (with the warm
approval of the British Admiralty) had proceeded at once to sea with their fleets ‘to
sweep the enemy from the seas’. Many thousands of miles of largely unproductive
steaming had worn out both machinery and men. Valuable ships had been
torpedoed, or sunk by air attack, without inflicting even equivalent losses on the
enemy. JACWA, as a team, had a most compelling reason for rejecting this
precedent. With so few forces at their disposal, and no reserves from which to
make good losses, the only offensive operations which could be justified were
those which promised to reduce, at once, the level of the threat to NATO’s aims.
It was evident that the most potent enemy forces were the sixty nuclear-powered
general purpose submarines (SSN) of the Soviet Northern Fleet, together with the
250 Backfire maritime strike aircraft also based in the Murmansk area. JACWA’s
first two offensive operations, therefore, were as much SACLANT’s as JACWA’s.
But the system of integrating functional commands ensured clarity of purpose, of
command, and of control. The British Flag Officer Submarines was, in the NATO
structure, both Commander Submarines, Eastern Atlantic, and Commander
Submarines, Western Approaches. His RAF equivalent, the Air Officer
Commanding 18 Group, was Commander Maritime Air, Eastern Atlantic, and
Commander Maritime Air, Western Approaches. The deployment of NATO
submarines on anti-submarine patrol was therefore to be carried out without
delay. And the launch of a powerful maritime air strike against aircraft on the
ground and air installations in the Murmansk area was planned to take place at
the very earliest moment possible after the outbreak of hostilities.
The British naval contribution to NATO had been augmented, during the period
1979-85, following a sudden, eleventh-hour awakening of public opinion to
Britain’s extreme vulnerability to attack upon her seaborne trade and supplies—a
vulnerability now felt almost as much by the other NATO countries in north-
western Europe. The most important elements in the emergency naval programme
were:
1. Three escort carriers. These were container ship hulls fitted with ‘ski-jump’
flight decks and containerized aircraft control and operations modules. Carrying a
mix of V/STOL fighter-strike-reconnaissance aircraft, and ASW helicopters, these
28-knot ships, built to merchant ship specifications, were good value for money.
2. Four additional improved Sheffield-class fleet frigates.
3. Twelve corvettes of a new type, for fast patrol ship duties.
4. Six additional mine counter-measure ships.
5. Five small patrol (diesel-electric) submarines.

This naval construction programme was feasible, despite Great Britain’s poor
economic performance in the 1970s, because her shipbuilding industry, other
than in designated warship building yards, was very short of orders and the extra
jobs were warmly welcomed. It seemed a preferable alternative to building
merchant ships, at a loss, for Soviet satellite countries, to be employed in cut-
throat competition against the merchant fleets of the United Kingdom. The shape
and size of the Royal Navy in the mid-1980s was appropriate, therefore, to the two
main functions of the UK maritime task, namely, sea-use management and
combat with hostile forces. This pattern had become accepted, also, in the other
NATO navies, so that the mix of forces achieved overall had gradually moved
towards the optimum.
The strategy of SACLANT, as it had evolved under a series of most able
incumbents of the post, by 1985 comprised three main elements: first, to maintain
in readiness the US Navy’s strategic nuclear forces, and ensure that no Soviet
operational development could upset the strategic nuclear balance; second, to act,
with his conventional forces, as vigorously as possible to reduce the threat from
Soviet conventional forces to NATO’s seaborne supplies and reinforcements; third,
to give direct assistance, as appropriate and feasible, to both SACEUR and JACWA
in their operations.
SACLANT’s assessment of the combat capability of various types of naval and
air force had led him to base his concept of operations on the judgement that the
supersonic homing, guided or programmed missile, whether launched from land,
surface warship, submarine or aircraft, was the main danger to naval forces and
shipping at sea. But it was a danger to which some effective counters were already
in operational service. The hoary ‘axioms of action’—above all surprise,
concentration and economy of force—had to be borne in mind. Owing to the
inability of submarines to operate submerged in large groups, in the way, for
example, the U-boat ‘wolf-packs’ were able to operate on the surface in the Second
World War, it would today be difficult for a submarine attack to saturate the anti-
missile defences of a well-ordered escort or support group. Maritime strike aircraft,
on the other hand, could carry out a heavily concentrated attack, which might
temporarily overwhelm the defences.
It was with these considerations in mind that SACLANT’s operations were
planned. It was essential, as a basis for them, to exploit two capabilities, which
had been developed in recent years, to provide early warning of impending attacks.
The first of these concerned submarines. The knowledge of Soviet submarine
dispositions and movements painstakingly built up in peacetime had been
augmented by the use of the surface-towed array surveillance system (STASS),
operated in a number of suitably stationed patrol ships. These monitored the noise
made by submarines underway, especially when they exceeded modest speeds.
The information so obtained could be fed into the total submarine surveillance
system, with corresponding improvement in its reliability and comprehensiveness.
The second important system was the airborne warning and control system
(AWACS), operated in large patrol aircraft. This could provide long-range warning
of low-flying aircraft or missile attack, and hence help to offset, to some extent, the
danger of defences being overwhelmed by the weight of a surprise missile
onslaught.

The Soviet Naval Staff, in planning the naval operations which would
support ‘defensive action’ by the Warsaw Pact, if that should prove necessary,
were quite clear in their minds about what had to be done. The Soviet Navy had to
show that its contribution to the achievement of the Soviet Union’s political goals
could be more than just supportive of the ground forces’ campaign. By
concentrating upon the isolation of the north-west European battlefield, it could
not only help the Red Army directly but also do much to weaken the commitment
of the United States to Western Europe. The main tasks of the Soviet Navy,
therefore, during the first ten days of hostilities, would be to:
1. Maintain the Soviet Navy’s strategic nuclear forces intact and at readiness,
whilst limiting as much as possible the damage which could result if NATO were to
unleash strategic nuclear warfare or tactical nuclear warfare at sea.
2. Help the ground and air forces to seize and keep open the Baltic Exits, and
the Kiel Canal.
3. Support the ground and air forces in the invasion of Norway from the north.
4. Destroy as many NATO warships, submarines and naval aircraft as possible,
in the Arctic Ocean, Norwegian Sea, North Atlantic, North Sea, English Channel
and Baltic. Outside these areas, in the Atlantic south of the Tropic of Cancer and
elsewhere, NATO forces, or the forces of NATO member states, would only be
engaged when hostile action seemed to be inevitable, or had already begun.
5. Interdict all sea traffic between the United Kingdom and the Continent.
6. Neutralize or destroy the North Sea oil and gas installations.
7. Maintain freedom of movement for Soviet submarines in the Greenland-
Iceland-UK gap, whilst denying this to NATO submarines.
8. Prevent shipping, and especially military transports, from reaching NATO’s
European ports.
9. Get all Soviet and other Warsaw Pact ships, including fishing and research
vessels, into friendly or neutral ports before their capture or destruction.
 NATO’s warning of imminent attack by the Warsaw Pact had been brief.
Much reliance had been placed upon detection of the increased deployment of
submarines from the Soviet Northern Fleet, based on Murmansk in the Kola Inlet,
into the Atlantic. The Soviet naval command was aware of this. Although, under
reasonable excuse, there was a movement of surface shipping from the Black Sea
through the Bosphorus and the Straits (see above), no change was permitted in
the pattern of submarine movements during the three weeks prior to D-day, 4
August 1985. There was, in fact, no need for it. Of the sixty nuclear-powered
general purpose and forty diesel-electric patrol submarines in the Northern Fleet
immediately available for operations, about one third were always at sea on a
variety of tasks. They were primarily concerned with surveillance - of the US and
UK strategic nuclear submarine forces, and of major US naval force movements
and exercises. The submarines invariably went on patrol ready in all respects for
war. They could remain on task, once hostilities broke out, until they had used up
all their weapons, or were running short of food and (in the case of the diesel-
electric submarines) fuel. What did happen, on 4 August and during the next few
weeks, showed that, although the efficiency of the Soviet submarine force had
improved a great deal since the Second World War, the anti-submarine measures
of the Atlantic Alliance had done so too.
The situation at sea was uncannily reminiscent of the early months of the
Second World War. Something like a ‘Blitzkrieg’ in Central Europe, accompanied
by supporting naval operations; submarine attacks on shipping in the Western
Approaches; sporadic attacks, submarine, surface and air, on Allied shipping
worldwide; the bottling up, capture or destruction of the merchant shipping of the
continental power, the Warsaw Pact, by Allied naval forces.
There were differences between then and now. These were, first of all, politico-
military. Unlike Germany in 1939-40, the Soviet Union in 1985 was firmly
established in the Middle East, and in both West and East Africa. On the other
hand, the United States in 1985 had not stood aside, as in 1939-41, when Great
Britain and the Commonwealth stood almost alone against Nazi Germany. The
United States was now, from the very outset, at the head of a great alliance of
countries formed for the purpose of supporting each other if attacked on land or -
but here was the rub - if any of their ships or aircraft were attacked in the Atlantic
north of the Tropic of Cancer (the southern limit of the NATO area) or in the
Mediterranean. Outside these specified sea areas, unfortunately, the Alliance
could not operate as such.
The rapid growth in the number of independent nation states since 1945, most
of them with sea coasts and maritime interests both commercial and naval, had
added correspondingly to the complexity of war at sea.
The best that NATO could do had been to set up NATO Shipping Councils at the
world’s main ports. These consisted of representatives from the shipping and
forwarding agents of NATO countries, as these existed in each place, together with
diplomatic representatives of the nations concerned. Communication between the
NATO Planning Board for Ocean Shipping and NATO naval authorities made it
possible for NATO to organize and protect its shipping outside as well as inside the
NATO area. This was no substitute for the worldwide system of naval commands
and shipping control officers by means of which Great Britain and her maritime
allies had conducted the ‘sea affair’ in 1939-45, but it was better than nothing.
Better, indeed, than the over-centralized Soviet system. The advantage of flexibility
and initiative enjoyed by the NATO Shipping Councils was in stark contrast to the
difficulty the Soviet Union’s representatives had in obtaining permission to act, as
they so often felt that the situation demanded, in the light of local knowledge of
rapidly changing circumstances.
The second set of differences, in the general conditions of the war at sea,
between the Second World War and the Third, was technical. The most important
new factor was the advent of nuclear-powered submarines. Able to go two or three
times round the world without having to refuel or replenish, and not having to
show any part of themselves above water (except momentarily for navigation or
communication purposes), these were potent instruments of sea power. That is to
say, they were potent instruments of sea power in the negative sense, namely, of
the power to deny the use of the sea to a hostile country or coalition. To the
positive side of sea power, submarines could contribute a good deal less. A French
naval officer had aptly described nuclear-powered, missile-armed submarines as
‘myopic and brutal’. In placing such reliance upon a huge submarine force as the
main instrument of her putative sea power, the Soviet Union underlined, one
might think, its own ‘myopic and brutal’ character. For the quintessence of sea
power, exemplified par excellence by the British Empire in its hey-day, is the
positive contribution which it can make to peaceful and growing international
trade. Maritime strike aircraft, although the reverse of myopic, were if anything
more brutal than submarines. The latter at least could operate, in certain
circumstances, with due regard for humanity, using minimum force and helping
survivors to safety. This a shore-based aircraft could never do. In 1985, therefore,
the Soviet Union at last had to face certain facts. The possession of enormous
ship-sinking power, together with a huge merchant marine directly controlled from
Moscow, was no substitute for the carrying power of the West’s ships, freely co-
ordinated, under the protection of the Allied navies of the maritime governments
whose flags they flew.
This realization did not come easily or quickly to those members of the Politburo
and the CPSU who had backed Admiral Gorshkov’s line for so long. Why is it, they
demanded to know, that every single Soviet or Warsaw Pact ship has been ordered
into port? What is the Soviet Navy doing? Supporting the Red Army’s operations in
central and northern Europe, yes. Supporting ‘fraternal’ wars in the Middle East,
yes. But what about the seaborne supplies needed by our socialist brothers in
East and Southern Africa, in West Africa and the Caribbean? As to the
Mediterranean, why is it that our shipping, and that of so-called neutral and
friendly governments, remains immobilized?
‘Do not be impatient, comrades,’ replied the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet
Navy. ‘Once our gallant Red Army has imposed peace in north-west Europe, and
the Americans have come to the negotiating table, you will see how Soviet sea
power can become paramount, even as our armies have triumphed on land. You
will see that it will be the Soviet Navy which has gained the victory.’
 Chapter 17
The Battle of the Atlantic

The first naval action of the Third World War was between two submarines,
one British and the other Soviet. They met in the Shetland-Faroes gap, which,
with its extension to Iceland and beyond to Greenland, would be the main naval
battleground of the war. The following account of what happened, which sets the
scene for the war at sea, is taken from Submarines at War by J. Heller, published
by Sidgwick and Jackson, London, in 1987.

“Up periscope.” Commander Peter Keene, Royal Navy (“P.K.” to his fellow
submariners), grasped the handles and began to sweep another sector of the
horizon. A clear, blue sky. Calm sea. Nothing in sight so far. It would not be true
to say that P.K. was nervous, let alone uneasy. But he was keyed up. He had been
in command of HMS Churchill for nearly a year. The nuclear-powered boat had
been in refit when he was appointed in command. He had brought her through the
comprehensive post-refit trials and “work-up” programme. She was in good shape,
with a first-rate crew. But now he, and they, and the Churchill, were facing the
ultimate test. It was 5 August 1985. When they had sailed from Faslane two days
before, Great Britain was still at peace. Now she was at war. P.K. felt his mind
working overtime. Surely he should be feeling, not just keyed up, but different in
some way. He must think. Has everything—but everything—been done to make
ready? There must be no mistake. It is them or us.
“Down periscope—sixty-five metres.” It had taken P.K. some time to get used to
ordering the depth to keep in metres. But it was over ten years since the Admiralty
charts had been made metric and the fathom had dropped out of the language.
P.K.’s orders were to establish anti-submarine patrol in an area between the
Shetland Islands and the Faroes. He would be well clear of other NATO
submarines. Because of the prevailing water conditions he had decided to remain
in the “surface duct”; this would also enable him to come quickly and quietly to
periscope depth to classify any sonar contacts there might be. There were still
some trawlers at sea, and possibly other surface vessels.
“Control room—Sonar.” The watchkeeper’s voice came over the intercom. “Red
three two, sir—contact.”
“Action Stations, Number One,” ordered P.K. “Bring all tubes to the Action
State. Periscope depth.” The boat angled slightly upwards and levelled off. “Up
periscope.”
Keene gazed intently, moving the periscope a little to and fro either side of the
bearing. Then he clicked the handle to give “low power” magnification and swung
quickly right round and back to the original bearing.
“Down periscope.”
In the Control Room men had moved to their Action Stations. As nuclear-
powered submarines spent almost all their time dived, the hallowed cry “Diving
Stations” had been discarded in favour of the more descriptive “Action Stations”.
But to a submariner the “dangers of the sea” were always more to be feared than
the “violence of the enemy” … or were they? The next few minutes would tell.
“All tubes at Action State, sir,” came the report from Jake Bond, the Torpedo
Control Officer.
“Bearing Red three oh, sir, diesel H.E.,” from the Sonar Room.
“Up periscope.” P.K. looked on the bearing, then, as before, a few degrees either
side. “Nothing in sight on the bearing. Could be a submarine ‘snorting’. He may
have just begun to. Could be close. Number One, pass the word that we are
attacking an enemy submarine. Down periscope.”
Tom Richardson, the First Lieutenant, called, “D’ye hear there?” on the intercom
and passed the word.
“Bearing Red two eight, sir. H.E. increasing. Classified submarine. Diesel. Two
forty revs, sir. Eight knots if it’s a Tango class.” It was the Chief Sonar Operator
now. Gordon. An excellent man.
“Port twenty. Stand by One and Two tubes. Pilot, let me have a range as soon as
you can. Steer three zero zero.”
The Coxswain repeated back the order. The Control Room was very quiet now.
Everyone was at his post. The tension was building up.
“I’ll take another look,” said the Captain. “Up periscope.”
“Bearing Green four three,” came from the Sonar Room. “Moving right.”
“Range five thousand two hundred, sir,” said Harry Clay, the Navigator.
The Captain aligned the periscope on the bearing. “Bring her up, Number One, I
think there’s something there… YES! By God, and she’s close. Down periscope,
sixty-five metres. Switch to sonar. Range three thousand. Number One tube—
Shoot!” P.K. moved to the Fire Control Panel.
“Torpedo’s running, sir,” said Jake Bond.
“Good,” said P.K. He had carried out scores of dummy attacks on friendly
submarines in the course of his training. He had seen many Tigerfish anti-
submarine torpedoes fired, for practice. Some had run badly. He gazed intently at
the illuminated panel, ready to guide the torpedo if need be. He could hardly
believe it. There was his torpedo—a homing torpedo—moving straight out towards
the target. A minute went by. It seemed eternal. Half a minute more and then from
the Sonar Room:
“Acoustic contact!” Followed, after an agonizing pause, by, “Tonk!” A faint
metallic thud was heard.
“Damn!” said Keene, in an agony of dismay. “Something’s wrong. The torpedo
hit but didn’t explode…”
“Control Room—Sonar,” Gordon’s voice broke in, “H.E.’s stopped, sir! I think we
got him. That was an explosion! Last bearing Green five seven.”
“Good,” said P.K. “Periscope depth. Up periscope.” Once again P.K. examined
the bearing. “Bring her up, Number One.” The Captain swung right round,
examining the horizon, then came back to the original bearing. “There’s nothing
there. That Tigerfish did its stuff, after all. It didn’t sound like it, though. Pilot, get
a report ready: ‘Have sunk Tango class submarine in position so-and-so.’ We’ll
check for survivors or wreckage, or any other evidence. But I don’t think there’s
any doubt. That’s one down and three hundred and two to go.” “
 ‘Churchill reports torpedoing a submarine—a Tango—twenty miles north
west of Herma Ness, sir!’ was the first bit of heartening news of the war for the
Joint Allied Command Western Approaches. It was given to them, in their
capacities as Cs-in-C Eastern Atlantic and Commander Maritime Air, Eastern
Atlantic, at the first morning ‘briefing’ of the war, deep underground at Northwood,
Middlesex. The Flag Officer Submarines, who since 1978 had been located at
Northwood, was, as they said, ‘somewhat chuffed’ as his Chief Staff Officer made
the report. ‘Are you quite sure that it wasn’t one of ours?’ was the question asked,
simultaneously, by the Admiral and the Air Marshal. They were greatly relieved to
be assured that it was not. ‘No doubt at all. It was a diesel-electric boat, and there
were no NATO ones anywhere near.’ The discussion which ensued, regarding
Soviet and NATO submarine dispositions, revealed that the avoidance of mutual
interference between NATO’s own submarine forces, and between NATO surface
and air anti-submarine forces and NATO submarines, would be a serious problem.
This had been expected, but its resolution would continually govern the operations
of all NATO naval and air forces.
Turning to current operations it was reported that the First Support Group
(formerly STANAVFORLANT—Standing Naval Force Atlantic) was on its way, at
best speed, towards the Norwegian coast. In about twelve hours it would reach the
limit of shore-based air cover from the UK. The fast transports, carrying
reinforcements for the northern flank, had sailed from the Forth and were
expected to rendezvous with the First Support Group shortly.
The air strike planned against Soviet installations on and around the Kola
peninsula on the outbreak of hostilities was launched from UK bases, and timed
to achieve a co-ordinated on-target time of 1100 hours GMT. The force consisted of
thirty-six Tornados and sixteen Buccaneers. The latter, venerable though they
might be, had been retained, refitted and re-armed, in the maritime role as they
were superseded by Tornados in the more complex and demanding Central
European overland role. They were well respected for their performance, handling
qualities and robustness—‘Not built, carved out of the solid!’ noted one pilot with
affection.
The targets were four Soviet Naval Air Force (SNAF) airfields on which were
based the bulk of the Northern Fleet Backfire force. ‘Destroy the aircraft and close
the airfields’ was the objective, and a tall order at that. The flight profile was
straightforward: to fly with tanker support as far towards the Lofoten Islands as
prudence (with regard to tanker survival) would permit, then to carry out an
overland low-level penetration. The Tornados would recover to Britain with tanker
assistance, the Buccaneers would refuel at Bodo. The attacks would open with
anti-radar missiles fired at stand-off ranges by the Tornados to damp things down
a little, and would then be pressed home with area weapons against runways and
aircraft installations. Gun and rocket fire would then, it was hoped, finish off any
unscathed aircraft.
And so it went, broadly. Remarkably, the Russians seemed, if not unprepared,
at least surprised. Although no firm evidence has come to light, it has been
suggested that they had assumed some form of tacit quid pro quo with the
Americans, whereby neither would launch an attack upon the homeland of its
adversary until escalation was approaching strategic levels. If so, it was an
expensive assumption. A calm analysis—the immediate claims exhibited the usual
optimism of war—showed a score of sixty-one Backfires destroyed and many
damaged, which was certainly more than had been hoped. But there had been a
cost: five Buccaneers and nine Tornados were lost during the attacks. Sadly, all
but one of the remaining Buccaneers were caught on the ground at Bodo during
their recovery by a massive Soviet attack on that airfield.
The three maritime radar reconnaissance squadrons of RAF Vulcans had been
occupied in routine surface surveillance of the North and Norwegian Seas and the
Eastern Atlantic for weeks. The scale and intensity of their operations now
increased, co-ordinated with sea surveillance squadrons of USAF working in
WESTLANT and the Greenland-Iceland gap. The loss of satellite surveillance of the
Atlantic at the outbreak of hostilities placed an increased burden on their
activities. Their first major customer appeared on the evening of 4 August, when a
Vulcan detected what seemed most likely to be an amphibious landing group
rounding the North Cape. One Vulcan squadron was now devoted to a round-the-
clock surveillance of this group, working in co-operation with Norwegian fast
patrol boats.
Anti-submarine operations in EASTLANT to clear the sea for Strike Fleet,
particularly the vital gap between Greenland and the UK, for long a major role of
the Royal Navy, had also been under way, on a surveillance basis. Now they were
in earnest. Three ASW (anti-submarine warfare) groups of the RN, supported by
Dutch and Norwegian surface units, combed the ocean, co-ordinating their
operations with the RAF, USAF and Royal Norwegian Air Force maritime patrol
aircraft based in the UK, Iceland and Norway. Air defence cover was provided by
an escort carrier, land-based fighters from the UK supported by tankers, and AEW
(airborne early warning) Nimrods. Further west, Iceland-based F-15s would cover
the operations. Whatever their quarry, Strike Fleet or convoys, the Soviet
submarines had to be detected, and hopefully destroyed, here in the gap.
As far as sea management was concerned, the proclamation by the British
government of a state of emergency, a week previously, had been indispensable. It
had enabled the Naval Control of Shipping to be instituted, the reserves to be
mobilized, and a large number of dormant appointments to be activated, setting
up Naval Officers-in-Charge at all the major ports. Mine counter-measures had
been started, on the pathetically small scale which was all that could be done with
the derisory forces available.
The first JACWA briefing, which followed that of EASTLANT, was dominated by
reports, many of which came in by telephone and teleprinter during the meeting,
of heavy fighting in northern Germany and the Baltic Exits. A desperate message
from the Commander Allied Forces Baltic Approaches (COMB ALTAP), at Karup in
Denmark, was typical:

‘To CINCNORTH, for information to JACWA:

‘1. Soviet ground forces with air support are attacking Aarhus.
‘2. Minelaying in Great Belt and Langeland Belt 50 per cent completed.
‘3. All operational naval forces ordered to sea. Submarines will patrol in
Kattegat. Surface forces are to engage hostile surface forces as opportunity
 offers, retiring on Stavanger for replenishment. Operational control now with
Allied Commander Naval Forces Scandinavian Approaches.
‘4. Understand Danish government now en route to UK by air.
‘5. COMBALTAP with elements of staff expects to leave Karup by air shortly
for Kolsaas.’

It soon became clear, from Soviet declarations, that the political aim of
Warsaw Pact military action was to overrun and neutralize the Federal German
Republic, then call a halt and seek negotiations with the United States. Pact
operations in the northern area of the Central Region had certainly gone according
to plan. Despite spirited resistance by NATO forces, most of the Soviet’s territorial
objectives had been gained. Sheer weight of numbers saw to that. The Baltic Exits
were to all intents and purposes in Soviet hands, though the main channels had
been closed by mines; the North Sea coast as far west as the Hook of Holland was
also under Soviet control; and sea traffic between the United Kingdom and the
Continent was under constant and heavy attack from large numbers of Soviet light
forces. These had been sent through the Kiel Canal (an attempt to block it was too
late) and operated night and day under strong fighter cover.
Western Approaches naval and air combat forces vigorously opposed this threat
to vital cross-Channel communications. German and Dutch frigates, and a few
Danish fast patrol boats (FPB), transferred by SACEUR to JACWA’s operational
control, made many successful attacks. The handful of FRG Naval Air Force
Tornados which had been evacuated to the UK bolstered those few RAF Tornados
and Buccaneers that could be spared by JACWA from operations in the Norwegian
Sea. At this point the RAF Hawks, now liberated from their training tasks and
armed with guns and rockets, came into their own and were launched into the
war. Over this mixed force presided one squadron of Vulcan MR (maritime
reconnaissance) aircraft, withdrawn, after long debate, from the Norwegian Sea, to
feed the vital target information to the attackers, seaborne and airborne. The
Soviet forces suffered heavy damage in the intense struggle, but again their
numerical advantage was taking its toll: as far west as Boulogne the Grishas,
Nanutchkas and Osas of the Soviet Baltic Fleet were joined on the bottom by more
and more NATO ships.
On land the NATO forces were fighting back desperately, and the decision of
France to play her part in the Alliance had given rise to some hope in the councils
of NATO that the Soviet intentions might, at the eleventh hour, be frustrated. The
anguished debate over the use of nuclear weapons and the decisions taken have
been recounted elsewhere. Recent improvements in NATO’s defences had allowed
S ACEUR to stem the flood. But if the tide was to be turned, all would depend on
the safe and timely arrival of the seaborne reinforcements. The prospect of
successful ocean transit could to some extent be assessed in the light of certain
naval and air operations which had been taking place in the Atlantic and the
Norwegian Sea simultaneously with the debacle in the southern North Sea and the
English Channel.
The First Support Group had, since the 5th, been supporting the attempt to
reinforce northern Norway, where the airlifted ACE Mobile Force had been engaged
since late on the 4th in resisting the powerful Soviet invasion through Finmark.
Bodo had been rendered unusable, first by Soviet attack and then by the
Norwegian response to the invaders, and the Allied forces were struggling to hold
the line at Trondheim.
The Soviet amphibious group detected on the evening of the 4th had since been
subjected to a vigorous assault by Norwegian naval and air forces and JACWA
Tornados from the UK. By the 7th it was a much depleted Soviet support group
that moved on south to reinforce their paratroop comrades.
But the fortunes of war turned again to the Russians that morning when their
fighters, now operating from Norwegian airfields in the far north, destroyed first
one, then in swift succession two more, of the Vulcan MR aircraft providing the
vital surveillance of the Norwegian Sea. The Russians were quick to exploit the
confusion which gripped, albeit temporarily, JACWA’s coverage of the surface
scene.
On the night of 7 August a NATO submarine reported that, in about the latitude
of Trondheim and near the meridian of Greenwich, it had attacked with Harpoon
missiles a Soviet force of fast transports escorted by surface ships, on a course
which would take it to the Faroe Islands. A V/STOL Harrier III aircraft, one of four
carried by the new escort carrier Argus, which had recently joined the First
Support Group, had been flown off for a search to the north and west and the
Soviet force had been relocated. The NATO submarine, having used up all its
missiles, had been unable to destroy more than three of the Soviet ships, one of
which was a troop transport. JACWA therefore ordered a strike, with six Tornados,
the most that could be mustered, against the Soviet force. This succeeded in
damaging another transport and an escort ship. The Soviet force then turned back
towards Norway. The battle for the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap had been joined,
and NATO had won the first round.
One feature of the action was the interruption of ship-to-shore, aircraft-to-ship
and aircraft-to-shore communications, both Soviet and NATO, resulting from
interference with communication satellites. Secondary channels had been used,
but a certain amount of luck, on both sides, had proved effective. There might well
have been complete loss of control by the respective shore-based HQs.
Soviet reaction to the failure of their operation against the Faroes was not long
in coming. They had already observed by satellite, and confirmed by air
reconnaissance, the approach of the First Support Group and the Norwegian
reinforcement convoy. On D + 5, therefore, twenty Backfire maritime strike aircraft
were sent to attack the NATO force. Fortunately, owing to Bodo being out of
action, these bombers had had to fly from airfields near Murmansk, and their
transit had been reported. Some fighters from the UK were therefore able to
intercept the second and third waves of Backfires and a total of five were
destroyed. Three ships of the NATO troop convoy were hit, one of them sinking,
and two ships of the First Support Group were put out of action, including the
escort carrier Argus. In consequence, the organic ASW capability of that force,
mainly consisting of helicopters, was much diminished. Maritime patrol aircraft
were hurriedly transferred from their relentless beat in the Greenland-UK gap, but
two Soviet submarines supporting the amphibious group were able nevertheless to
get in attacks on the damaged ships, all of which were sunk. A NATO submarine
similarly dispatched the damaged ships of the Faroes raiding force.
 Rather more one-sided was the Soviet attack on the North Sea oil and gas
installations. Appreciating that the most vulnerable, and least easily defended,
elements in the supply from wells to shore were the pipelines on the sea-bed, the
Russians had decided to cut these. It was not difficult to do this, except in the
southern North Sea, which initially was not readily accessible to the attackers. In
the north, six diesel-electric submarines, approaching via the deep water off the
Norwegian coast, were deployed to predetermined positions, where they released
special underwater manned vehicles, to locate and destroy the twelve most
important pipelines. By using delayed action charges, the submarines were able to
withdraw without detection.
Three of them, operating in the shallower areas, also laid mines in the
vicinity of the pipelines, where the destruction would occur. Two NATO patrol
ships, sent to investigate the explosions on 8 August, struck mines and sank. In
order to distract attention from the submarine operations, sporadic air attacks,
using stand-off missiles, were carried out on some of the oil and gas rigs
themselves. The UK air defences took a heavy toll of the elderly Badgers used by
the Russians for these attacks.
The final major event of the war at sea, during the opening phase of the Warsaw
Pact onslaught, was the declaration by the Soviet government on 9 August that
the Western Approaches was a War Zone, into which shipping of any kind entered
at its peril. The only neutral countries within the War Zone were Sweden and
Finland. The Swedes were told that the inconvenience they would suffer would not
last long and that the action had been forced upon the Warsaw Pact by the
aggressive intentions of NATO. The Soviet objective of neutralizing the Federal
German Republic would soon be achieved. The correlation of forces made this
inevitable. As to Finland, it was hardly necessary to seek her compliance.
The declaration of the War Zone was not regarded by the Soviet Union as
sufficiently emphatic of itself. Certain of her submarines, which had been ordered
to take up patrol positions and at all costs to remain undetected, were therefore
ordered to attack with tactical missiles, after careful identification, certain
important ships - oil tankers, container ships and dry cargo ships belonging to
European NATO countries. Sailing weeks earlier from distant ports, along
standard ocean routes, these ships had been ordered to continue at full speed,
some towards the North Channel and some towards St George’s Channel, where
they would be met and escorted into harbour. Ships which were more than five
days’ steaming from Western Approaches coastal waters had been turned towards
the nearest NATO friendly or neutral port or anchorage, to await further
instructions.
Late on 9 August reports reached JACWA that two large oil tankers, two
container ships and two dry cargo ships had been attacked without warning with
submarine-launched missiles. The positions given, four in the Bay of Biscay and
two west of Ireland, could not immediately be reconciled with the plotted positions
of any Soviet submarines, as deduced from the various anti-submarine detection
or surveillance systems. If ever the gravity of the Soviet submarine threat to
shipping had been doubted, such doubts were now speedily removed. Against
nuclear-powered submarines, aided by satellite and aircraft reconnaissance, even
the fastest merchant ships were sitting ducks.
 The first thing to do, having established that Commander Western Approaches
South (COMWAS) was organizing the search for survivors and sending tugs to the
damaged oil tankers (neither of them had yet sunk), was to order any other NATO
merchant ships approaching the declared War Zone to turn back. The next was to
consider, with SACLANT, the implications of these attacks. The situation which
now faced the maritime commanders, in the Atlantic and the Western Approaches,
was critical. It was quite obvious that unless SACEUR could be certain of being
reinforced by fresh combat forces from the United States by 15 August, he could
not throw in his final reserves on the Central Front within the next four or five
days, and thus stand some chance of holding up the Warsaw Pact advance to the
Rhine.
A group of military convoys, with a speed of advance of twenty-three knots, had
sailed from Halifax NS on 8 August. They could be disembarking troops and
equipment in northern French ports by the 14th. But there were strong indications
that a wave of Soviet submarines, which had sailed from the Kola Inlet on 4
August, was now crossing the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. Denial of the Faroes to a
Soviet raiding force had fortunately helped to maintain NATO anti-submarine
surveillance of the key area, and three more Soviet submarines were known to
have been destroyed, two by NATO submarines operating independently and one
by a combination of air and surface forces. On the other hand, at least one NATO
submarine had failed to report on leaving her patrol off the North Cape. In two
days’ time, it was estimated, there would be twenty-four Soviet nuclear-powered
submarines in the North Atlantic.
Had time permitted, at least some of the vital initial convoys could have been
routed south of the Azores, where they would have been beyond the reach of
Backfire maritime strike aircraft from Murmansk. The effective radius of these
aircraft was about 4,000 kilometres. As things were, there was really no choice but
to assemble the most powerful escort and support forces available, and fight the
convoys through by the shortest route across the Atlantic. It was expected that
NATO submarines operating to the north of the gap would further reduce the
number of Soviet submarines reaching the convoys. Most important of all, US
Strike Fleet Atlantic, supported by maritime aircraft based in Iceland and northern
Scotland, would cover the whole operation. If Soviet Backfires could attack
convoys in mid-Atlantic, the US Strike Fleet could pulverize the Soviet Northern
Fleet base from a position in the Norwegian Sea. Its approach, plumb through the
middle of the gap, could not of course be concealed from Soviet reconnaissance.
Nor could it be ignored by the C-in-C Soviet Northern Fleet. The battle of the Gap
would be quite unlike Jutland, or Midway. But battle there would be.
Once again, the question of ‘to use or not to use’ nuclear weapons in the war at
sea had to be faced. It was the opinion of the naval commanders that, on the ‘form’
so far, the use of nuclear depth charges or nuclear warheads or torpedoes would
by no means show gains commensurate with the risk of escalation. As to nuclear
strikes on the Soviet bases in the north, only if nuclear weapons had finally been
resorted to on the Central Front would these be carried out.

SACLANT had been under less pressure from minute-to-minute, hour-to-

hour and day-to-day events since the war broke out in Europe on 4 August than
his Western Approaches colleagues. The departure from Halifax NS four days
before of the group of fast military convoys which formed part of Operation
CAVALRY could not possibly have gone unobserved and unreported; and the route
which the convoys took could not be varied much. It was not surprising that a
fierce battle was taking place, the outcome of which would be critical for events on
the Central Front. Operation CAVALRY had to succeed.
SACLANT had been under no illusions about the losses which the Soviet
submarines might inflict, with their horizon-range and stand-off missiles.
Measures had been taken, therefore, to limit the effectiveness of the Soviet ocean
surveillance satellites and air reconnaissance. Since the destruction of three of the
Conakry-based reconnaissance Bears on the 4th—old models, but carrying a
somewhat rudimentary and hitherto unsuspected air-to-air capability -three more
Super-Bears had been removed. But indications of increased Soviet submarine
movements had been reported by the four STASS ships on patrol. It looked as if
the Soviet Submarine Commander had ordered his force to concentrate ahead of
the CAVALRY convoys. Each of these consisted of twelve ships, stationed in three
columns of four, with an escort group, including an escort carrier, disposed
appropriately in the vicinity. Some distance away was a powerful ASW support
group, consisting of a light aircraft carrier (with V/STOL fighter-strike-
reconnaissance aircraft and anti-submarine helicopters embarked), two anti-
missile cruisers and four ASW frigates. It had been intended that a second ASW
support group should take station astern of the convoy formation, because
submarines can attack with missiles from any direction - unlike in the days of
torpedoes, when ‘limiting lines of approach’ for effective attack put a premium
upon the submarine pelting ahead and then ‘lying in wait’ for his targets. But a
submarine attack upon a support group, as it formed up in Hampton Roads, had
seriously damaged the carrier and sunk a frigate. The remainder of the force had
been told to ‘get that goddam’d submarine’ and were still hopefully and
energetically pursuing one or two sonar surveillance system (SOSUS) reports
which could have been the culprit.
For the first two days of the transit, US and Canadian MR aircraft operating
from Newfoundland would support the convoys. For the last two, RAF MR aircraft
based in south-west England would take over. For the perilous two days in mid-
Atlantic, the best that could be hoped for from the shore would be spasmodic
cover from the already over-stretched US Navy Air Force Orion MR aircraft at Lajes
in the Azores.
The Commander Strike Fleet Atlantic, entering the Iceland-Faroes gap on 10
August, was extremely thankful to have had the protection, during this transit, of
fighters from Newfoundland and Iceland. These were maintained by air-to-air
refuelling, and operated with the AWACS aircraft in continuous attendance. There
had been a strong westerly wind, and the need to operate fixed-wing aircraft from
the carriers would have slowed him down. As it was, he had made a speed of more
than twenty knots. What worried him was the absence of submarine contacts.
Several Soviet submarines had been plotted, according to STASS and shore-based
intelligence reports, in the general area of his advance. He had hoped to detect at
least some of these with his helicopter searches and bring them to action. How
else could he carry out his mission of reducing the submarine threat to the
convoys, now en route to Europe?
But the Soviet submarines were under strict orders to concentrate on the troop
convoys. They had no time to lose. There were in any case other forces waiting to
engage the US Strike Fleet. By 11 August, therefore, no less than eleven Soviet
submarines were within 150 kilometres of the CAVALRY convoys and disposed on
their line of advance. Then came the first attack, with salvoes of horizon-range
supersonic cruise missiles. Sixteen missiles arrived over the convoys, fired within
twenty minutes by two CHARLIE-class nuclear-powered submarines. Eight of the
missiles were decoyed away from targets. Of the other eight, two hit one of the
transports and one hit another; two more hit one of the escort carriers, which blew
up and sank at once; and three more each hit one of the frigates in the same
escort group. The Soviet submarines which would be first to engage the convoy
formation had orders to attack the escorts and support groups. Half an hour after
the submarine attacks one of the leading support group’s helicopters was quickly
joined by a second and, taking it in turns, the pair between them dropped four
anti-submarine torpedoes, to be rewarded very quickly by an explosion in the sea
beneath them. Just as this occurred a frigate at the far side of the formation was
struck by a Soviet missile and lay dead in the water. The next attack took place
four hours later. Once again sixteen missiles arrived in salvoes of four, within a
few minutes of each other. Once again half of them found a target. Another
transport and two frigates were hit, and badly damaged. It seemed that, owing to
the very high speed of advance of the convoy, the screening helicopters with their
dipping sonar could not give adequate coverage far enough from the main body of
the convoys. The next two attacks, again each consisting of salvoes of four
missiles, came within two hours. They were again directed at the support group
and succeeded in putting the light carrier temporarily out of action and sinking
one frigate. This ship had the misfortune to be struck by a missile which had been
successfully decoyed from another target. It was satisfactory, however, from
SACLANT’s point of view, that a number of missiles had been destroyed by the
Aegis anti-missile system with which the entire support group was equipped.
Furthermore, both the attacking submarines were being hunted, and one of them
was soon sunk.
The progress of the CAVALRY convoys across the Atlantic was of course being
followed by C-in-C Soviet Northern Fleet, and by Soviet Naval Headquarters in
Moscow. Although reports were incomplete, it was evident that heavy attrition of
the NATO escort and support groups had been achieved. It was now time to
launch the air strike, planned to coincide with the attacks of a third group of
submarines, this time under orders to concentrate fire on the convoys themselves.
Unfortunately for the Russians, the US Strike Fleet Atlantic was now approaching
the Norwegian Sea. A Soviet surface striking force, together with its anti-
submarine support group, which had sailed from the Kola Inlet on 10 August,
would not be able to engage the US Strike Fleet for another twenty-four hours. By
that time heavy air attacks could have been launched against the Soviet northern
bases. C-in-C Northern Fleet therefore proposed to despatch an annihilating
Backfire strike against the Strike Fleet. He was overruled by Moscow: ‘We do not
expect Strike Fleet Atlantic to use nuclear weapons at this stage. Our primary aim
is to destroy the CAVALRY convoys. Two-thirds of available Backfires are therefore
to be launched against the NATO troop convoys. Our submarines in the Norwegian
Sea must be concentrated against the Strike Fleet Atlantic, with diversionary air
attacks only, until our surface striking force can come into action.’
The forty Backfires consequently sent by C-in-C Northern Fleet to attack the
CAVALRY convoys were routed individually to a rendezvous point midway between
Newfoundland and the entrance to the English Channel. The approach of the
Backfires to their targets was not detected in time for a fully effective air defence
disposition to be taken up by the CAVALRY convoy escorts, several of which were
busily engaged in prosecuting submarine contacts. The Backfire attacks, with AS-
6 air-to-surface missiles, therefore caught the NATO force at something of a
disadvantage. The Aegis-fitted support group was racing to position itself with the
main body of the convoys. The casualties were heavy. Seven transports were hit,
four of which sank quickly. The loss of life was appalling. Of the eighty AS-6
missiles launched by the Backfires, from ranges of 220 down to 160 kilometres, no
less than thirty reached a target. The escorting warships suffered as well as the
transports. Only the fact that in some cases two, or even three, missiles hit the
same ship limited the number of escorts sunk or damaged to five. Fifteen Backfires
were destroyed.
Within two hours of the Backfire attack, the next submarine attack took place.
This was less successful than the Russians had hoped. Owing to the timely arrival
of a British support group, a drastic alteration of course by the convoys during the
air strike, and harassment by maritime patrol aircraft, the Soviet submarines were
unable to co-ordinate their attack either with each other or with the Backfires.
During the next twelve-hour period three Soviet submarines were sunk, for the
loss of only one more transport.
The number of Soviet submarines now in position to attack the convoys was
less, in fact, than either C-in-C Northern Fleet or SACLANT had expected. There
were several reasons for this. First, four Soviet submarines in transit, at high
speed, had been destroyed by ASW operations in the Greenland-UK gap, unknown
as yet to the Soviet commander-in-chief. Second, signals to certain Soviet
submarines, ordering them to take up new patrol positions, had not been received.
This involved mainly the submarines which had been sent on anti-shipping patrol
prior to the declaration of the War Zone. Third, two diversionary fast convoys had
been sailed twenty-four hours before the CAVALRY convoys, one along a more
northerly route and another along a more southerly one. Each had attracted a
group of Soviet submarines towards intercepting positions. The diversionary
convoys, being free to follow highly evasive courses, which were carefully judged,
had succeeded in reducing by a quarter the number of submarines which could be
brought into contact with the CAVALRY convoys, once the Soviet command had
realized what was going on. Finally, the use of unusually high speeds by these
submarines, under orders to intercept CAVALRY at all costs, had led to several of
them being detected by various means and attacked by maritime aircraft from
Iceland and the Azores.
In addition to the most welcome reinforcement of the sadly depleted CAVALRY
escort force by the British support group, of which the anti-submarine cruiser
HMS INVINCIBLE formed part, two of JACWA’s escort groups, one with a British
escort carrier, and a number of Dutch and German, as well as British frigates and
destroyers, had joined the convoys by 12 August. It looked as if the worst part of
the ocean transit was now over. CAVALRY would soon come under the umbrella of
the United Kingdom Air Defence Region.
In the Norwegian Sea, Strike Fleet Atlantic had succeeded in destroying five of
the Backfire bombers returning from their attack on CAVALRY. NATO submarines
had successfully attacked the Soviet surface strike force off the North Cape and
sunk a KIEV-class light aircraft carrier and a KARA-class cruiser. Early on 12
August, within twenty-four hours of the combined air and submarine attacks on
the CAVALRY convoys, US Strike Fleet Atlantic began to pound the Soviet naval
bases and airfields in the Kola Inlet. C-in-C Soviet Navy, Admiral Starsky, in order
to justify his decision to use the main Backfire force to attack the troop convoys,
rather than concentrating on neutralizing the US Strike Fleet, accepted with
alacrity the reports he received of the ‘annihilation’ of the CAVALRY convoys by air
and submarine attack. He therefore ordered C-in-C Northern Fleet to send his
available Backfires to attack Strike Fleet Atlantic. In fact, having lost only one
more transport and two escorts to submarine attack, the convoys were now, on 13
August, under air cover from the UK and France. One hazard remained to be
overcome. The Le Havre mine counter-measures force, working round the clock to
keep the approach channels swept, detected mines during the night of 13-14
August. Possible diversions of the troop convoys were considered. Cherbourg was
in any case the destination of some of the ships. But every hour of delay in getting
the troops and their equipment to the battlefield would diminish the prospect of
averting the use of nuclear weapons, if the Soviet advance was to be checked. It
was a balance of risks.
The French Flag Officer-in-Charge of the First Maritime District had reason
to believe that the mines had been laid by a small force of Soviet coastal craft,
under cover of the severe fighting in the Channel four or five days previously. It
had not been possible to plot all the contacts, while so many things were
happening at once. He decided, therefore, having conducted a clearance sweep
and re-swept the main channel, to accept the planned number of CAVALRY
transports in Le Havre, the remainder being sent to Cherbourg and Brest. In the
event, there were no further casualties to the troop convoys. Out of the forty-eight
transports which had sailed from the USA and Canada, twelve had been sunk or
badly damaged. But ‘the US CAVALRY had arrived in time’.
This letter written at the time gives one man’s experience of Operation
CAVALRY. It is from a young American serviceman.

“Haslar Hospital
Gosport,
England
24 August 1985
Dear Mom,
You should have heard by now that I’m O.K.—some cuts, bruises and
burns here and there, but believe me, I’m in good shape. I guess I’ll be back
to duty in a couple of weeks. What then I don’t know. Another ship, I expect.
I’m being looked after real well, though. Yeah, but how come you ended up in
hospital? I hear you ask. O.K., well—you remember I was drafted suddenly to
Military Sealift Command, at Norfolk Va? Next thing I was aboard a great big
container ship in Boston. I’d better not give you the name. Believe it or not
they censor your letters here. At any rate, this ship was loading the Army’s
weapons. And then they slung a whole lot of bunkhouses aboard—big
containers. About 120. Then came the soldiers, 1,000 or so. My job was in
the extra radio team we took for the voyage.
Things happened fast. Two days after we heard the Russians had invaded
Germany we sailed from Boston. Then we waited in Halifax NS until the
convoy had gathered. When we sailed there were forty-eight ships, all big and
fast, and full of soldiers. We were really four convoys, each of twelve ships,
three columns of four in each. Ours was ahead. We also had two aircraft
carriers, but they were old ones, and full of troops. There was one at the head
of each of our outer columns. My station was on the bridge. I had to pass the
signals to the Skipper, or whoever was in charge of the ship - the watch
officer. So I could hear and see a good deal. On the third day out things began
to; happen. We ran into some submarines that fired missiles. We weren’t hit
then, but I could see columns of smoke coming up here and there. Of course
there were ships - troopships or escort ships, big and small - everywhere. We
passed near where a couple of “choppers” were hunting a submarine. We
didn’t think they had much chance of getting a “nuke”. But suddenly there
was an explosion in the sea and we reckoned they’d got one.
A few hours later, when it was dark, there was another missile attack—
more ships hit. Again we got away with it. Two of our convoy were hit,
though. In a moment they were ablaze, and hauling out of line. The rest of us
said a prayer and pressed on. Next day we copped it. I got the missile raid
warnings on my radio net. This time, as the submarines opened up on us,
there came the air-to-surface missiles. We were a long way from Murmansk,
but these boys found us and reached right out. Suddenly there was a terrible
flash and bang-crack, all at once. Then in a moment another. We were all
thrown in a heap. The Skipper (I think it was) shouted, “Full left rudder!
Emergency stop!” We had to haul out of line, you see. That’s about all I
remember till I came to in a life-raft. I said, “Where’s the ship?” Some guy
squatting there lifted up my head. “There,” he said, pointing. “She’s still
afloat, but pretty near burned out.” I could see the smoke. I didn’t feel too
good. But I guess I was very lucky. We all were, who were on the bridge, or
somewhere aft. The missiles had hit amidships and killed most everyone
around. Then the fire took hold. But as we turned out of line we brought the
ship’s stern to the wind. And as we stopped, the wind took the fire away from
the after superstructure, where we were - and a good many life-rafts. Some of
the soldiers who jumped straight overboard when the missiles hit were saved.
But hundreds were lost. It was bad. We were lucky. A British frigate found
us, and that’s why I’m in Gosport, England, Mom. There’s a great joke going
around here that Britain’s been saved by the US Cavalry riding in—like those
old movies, you know? Hope you are all well at home.
Love,
Dan?”
 In assessing the outcome of the war at sea, which continued unabated
until the NATO counter-offensive checked the enemy’s advance in the Central
Region, it is necessary to consider the aims of the respective naval commanders,
the extent to which these were achieved, and at what cost. In the first place, it
may be said that in failing to interdict more than 25 per cent of the immediate
seaborne reinforcement sent from North America to Allied Command Europe, the
Soviet Navy failed to support the Red Army decisively. SACLANT and JACWA
between them had for their part decisively supported SACEUR. As to the war at
sea in general, the losses of warships, aircraft and submarines on both sides,
during the first phase, had left the balance little changed since the outbreak of
hostilities, although at a lower level. Losses had been heavy, and there were
virtually no reserves. Replacement by new construction would take years.
NATO did enjoy one advantage over the Russians, however. It remained a good
deal simpler for the NATO navies to redeploy their existing surface forces than for
the Soviet Navy to do so. Several important US units from the Pacific were soon on
their way to the Atlantic, to replace elements of the Strike Fleet which had been
sunk, some by air but more by submarine attack, during the withdrawal of the
force from the Norwegian Sea. But the Soviet Baltic and Black Sea Fleets, despite
the seizure of the Baltic Exits and the transfer of Black Sea units to the
Mediterranean, were unable to support each other. NATO maritime strike aircraft
in Britain, ‘the unsinkable aircraft carrier’, and NATO submarines in the
Mediterranean, were a constant discouragement to Soviet naval movements. Soviet
naval and air forces in the Middle East did succeed, for a time, in dominating the
Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. But a combined US, British and Australian force,
operating in the Indian Ocean, eventually neutralized them. Again, losses on both
sides were heavy.
The movement of oil, food, raw materials and war equipment to north-west
Europe was strongly opposed by Soviet submarines and maritime strike aircraft.
But attrition of the Soviet forces was such as to wear down gradually the weight of
attack. In 1974 Admiral Gorshkov had made this point: ‘The underestimation of
the need to support submarine operations with aircraft and surface ships cost the
German high command dearly in the last two wars.’ Now his own country had
made the same strategic error. Had the submarines been capable of operating
submerged in large groups, as the German U-boats had done on the surface in the
Second World War, there is little doubt that their campaign would have succeeded.
As it was, the submarines could be dealt with in ones or twos—though nearly
always with the loss, to missile attack, of one or more anti-submarine vessels. The
escort carriers, frigates, patrol ships, helicopters and maritime aircraft had been
built, as a matter of great urgency, during the period 1979-85. Of critical
importance to JACWA had been the contribution of the Federal German Navy,
which, with the strong support of the NATO Council, had been greatly
strengthened during the period. The Federal German government, recognizing the
supreme importance of the safe and timely arrival of the convoys bringing US and
Canadian reinforcements to the Central Front, had increased its light naval forces
and naval air forces in the Baltic. This had permitted the release of frigates to
work with the additional UK escort carriers.
 When the outcome of the 1985 war as a whole can be assessed, it may be that
the downfall of the USSR will be attributed, ironically, to Gorshkov, the greatest
Russian admiral of all time, whose forceful and successful advocacy of ever-
increasing Soviet sea power led the comrades to disaster—when the seas got too
rough the Bear drowned.
Even on land the Soviet Union appeared to have overreached itself. In the all-
important central front of Western Europe, the Red Army had counted on very
early and decisive success. This success had eluded its commanders. Instead they
were faced with a check to their offensive and serious misgivings about support at
home.

Chapter 18
The War in Inner Space

In 1957 the world ran into its gardens and out into the streets to watch
Sputnik streak across the sky. Later they were to be glued to their TV sets
watching men walking on the moon. Then came the link-up of the US Apollo and
Soviet Soyuz spacecrafts, the politics of that misleading handshake in space
engaging the world’s spectators more than its technology. As Congress cut back
the funds for NASA’s (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) space
programme the earthbound mortals with their daily lives to lead rather lost
interest. Films like the record running Star Wars, first screened in 1977 and still
showing in London at the outbreak of the war, and books about interstellar wars
in deep space, fascinated and absorbed the public while real men and their
machines performing tasks as they orbited the world, no further away than
London is from Manchester in England, seemed of no particular account. That was
not, of course, true of the small scientific-military groups whose task it was to
think about and manage these things; especially so in the Soviet Union. It was this
inner space from 300 to, at most, 32,000 kilometres that occupied their attention.
The military applications of this extended area of man’s domination over his
environment were seen as precisely those first sought in aviation - namely,
reconnaissance and communications.
By 1985 the superpowers had developed astonishing capabilities in those
directions. Especially dramatic was space photography of such high resolution
that soldiers marching on earth could be counted in their columns. In the event of
war, the Russians would be especially interested in seeing what was going on in
the Atlantic and on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The US, on behalf of
the West, had a prime interest in observing military developments and
deployments in the heartland of the USSR by photography and electronic
eavesdropping, particularly during periods of tension or actual war, but also in
routine times of peace. Communications satellites acting as relay stations in space
had not only enormously increased the extent of available facilities, they had
enhanced the reliability and quality of radio transmission and reception out of all
recognition. They had also provided remarkable navigation assistance, with an
accuracy down to a few metres, to ships, submarines and aircraft.
Just as this inner space was now a quite readily accessible extension of the
atmosphere, so its military opportunities proved to be, in the main, extensions of
existing earth-based facilities, considerably enhanced but not unique—and
therefore never wholly indispensable. There was just one activity, of critical
interest to the Allies, where the time advantages in war might be so great that it
was perhaps in a special category and an exception to that general rule. That
activity was electronic reconnaissance. As noted elsewhere in this book, the West
enjoyed a decided advantage over the Communist East in ECM, and for that
reason the Soviet Union in peacetime shrouded its communications with every
possible veil of secrecy. If the West was to exploit its electronic advantage to the
fullest extent it needed to know from the outset of hostilities just which parts of
the frequency spectrum, and in what modes of emission, the Soviet forces would
operate. This information was urgently needed as soon as the battle was joined;
the Soviet cloak of secrecy had to be torn aside. This could all be done very much
more quickly and comprehensively from space reconnaissance satellites than
would ever have been possible by monitoring the communications networks in the
war theatre on the ground.
After the early scramble to catch up with the Soviet Union, when spurred into
competition by the success of the Sputnik shots, the USA soon took the lead. Their
vehicles and systems were demonstrably more capable, more reliable and more
durable than those of the USSR. Out of that technological and engineering success
came a difference of approach that was to be of fundamental strategic importance:
the Americans invested their resources in complicated long-life, multi-purpose
craft designed to function in orbit for periods as long as a year. The Russians,
under force majeure, went for frequent launchings of simple, single-purpose,
short-life payloads. The corollary to this in 1985 was that the Soviet Union had a
high launch capability - they had put no less than thirty-two photo-recce satellites
in orbit in the previous twelve months, and on 3 August they had more than
twenty launchers ready at Baikonur and Plesetsk with a variety of satellites ready
as their payloads. The USA, on the other hand, had no more than a few giant Titan
II rockets designed to put the thirteen-tonne Big Bird II satellites into space, and
five Orbiter aerospace vehicles developed for their space shuttle system.
In the late seventies the US programme seemed to have reached a plateau of
development, while the USSR continued with frequent manned launches on
research tasks, the exact purposes of which were not always evident to Western
observers. It was, however, pretty well authenticated that they were developing a
counter-satellite capability employing, in addition to jamming, certainly lasers and
other high energy beams. In 1985 both sides had some counter-satellite capability,
but it was suspected that the USSR was well in the lead. It refrained from making
use of this capability until the early hours of 4 August for fear of still further
conceding the advantage of surprise but, as recorded elsewhere, as soon as the
offensive was launched in the Central Region it made an all-out effort in space.
This immediately degraded Allied communications, but it was a degradation
that could at least in part be compensated for by switching to atmospheric
systems as soon as space circuits went out. When the history of the space war
comes to be written the part played by the communications managers in the US
control centres will be seen to have made a remarkable and decisive contribution
to the Allied war effort.
On NATO’s declaration of alert in July 1985, NASA, together with the
Department of Defense, urgently reviewed the launch schedules for the space
shuttle Orbiter vehicles. Of the five in service, one was available. Of the others,
one was on long turn-round for replacement of its thermal tiles; one was having its
undercarriage renewed after a heavy landing at Vandenberg AFB; one was on a
thirty-day refit and one was in orbit recovering a satellite. The European Space
Laboratory was on the ground and not scheduled to be relaunched until later in
the year.
At 0600 hours Eastern Standard Time on Friday 2 August the available orbiter
(Enterprise 101) was launched from Cape Kennedy with a four-man crew and
Colonel ‘Slim’ Wentworth, USAF, in command. It was a multi-purpose mission in
which priorities might need to be changed, and a manned craft was the best way
of preserving flexibility. Photography and a full range of electronic reconnaissance
was required from its regular passes over Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe. In
addition it was ready with specially prepared tapes in over a dozen languages for
propaganda broadcasts, but these would only be ordered if political developments
during the mission made it propitious to do so.
As tension heightened towards the end of July the two Big Birds were so
manoeuvred as to photograph the likely dispersal sites for the Soviet SS-16 mobile
ICBM (inter-continental ballistic missiles). At the same time the Chairman of the
US Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the readying of two further Big Birds as
replacements for any damaged satellites, with priority going to maintaining the
electronic surveillance which would be so vital to the Allied ECM campaign if war
broke out. He and his colleagues had also ruled that three supplementary
navigation satellites should be placed in geostationary orbit 30,000 kilometres up
over the Atlantic. This was the system that gave such an astonishing navigational
capability and allowed USAF’s F-111 aircraft to be immediately capable of reading
out a ground position to an accuracy of twelve metres. It was not thought that
these high satellites would be at much risk. They were very difficult to get at, and
there must surely be more cost-effective ways of disrupting the system than by
days of satellite manoeuvring in order to effect close-range interference. Some
corroboration of that view came on 2 August when the FLEETSATCOM (fleet
satellite communications) tracking and control station on the eastern seaboard
suffered major damage from an undetected saboteur. The very disturbing feature
of this was that the damage was done by electronic means and could only have
been inflicted by someone with an intimate knowledge of the station and its
technology.
The war in space was very much a matter of move and counter-move and the
outcome was fairly evenly balanced. The US were all the time concerned to
husband their limited number of launchers. On the other hand, their satellites
had much more comprehensive and versatile capabilities in space than those of
the USSR. Furthermore, with doubling and tripling up of systems they were very
resilient to interference and could accept extensive damage on occasions and still
usefully carry on their tasks. The key information on Soviet electronic emissions in
the Central Region battle area was in fact extracted very rapidly and early on in
the war to the great advantage of the Allies. Ballistic missile warning from high
satellites was also preserved completely throughout the war. The Soviet system
suffered heavily from US interference and from the random effect of its own
inherent unreliability and the short life of its vehicles. By dint of frequent
replacements the Russians kept up good coverage of the Atlantic and the United
States itself, but in the event this was not to give them the same practical
advantage that the Allies obtained from their own electronic reconnaissance.
None of this accorded very closely with popular ideas gleaned from the
bookstalls and the cinemas, and it was not to be expected that it would. However,
there was one incident that came quite near to the science fiction fantasies, and
for what it may presage for the future it may be worth recounting here.
Enterprise 101 had been in orbit for forty hours by midnight on 3 August. All
her systems were working excellently and she had been discharging regular
canisters of exposed film back into the atmosphere for recovery and processing.
Colonel Wentworth had not been ordered to start the broadcasts but his
spacecraft had been under close observation by the Soviet Union; her missions, on
which the Russians were well informed from their own sources in the States, were
highly unacceptable to them. Apart from the very real strategic disadvantages to
the Soviet Union of this space mission, the Politburo and military alike found it
intolerable that four Americans should be able to sweep across their country with
impunity ten times a day when they were on the brink of war. But they were well
prepared, and had already laid plans for putting Enterprise out of business if they
could.
In the early hours of 4 August a Soyuz 49 mission was launched with a two-
man crew, and on its fourth orbit the Soyuz craft was manoeuvred to within 150
metres of Enterprise. Wentworth was keeping a visual look-out at that time, and
when Mission 49 made its first beam sweep across Enterprise the laser traversed
his line of sight and blinded him. The Enterprise crew therefore had plenty on their
hands, both in alerting space control as to what was going on and in coping with a
blinded and weightless commander. Captain Jensen of the US Navy took over
command and ordered an immediate check for further damage. The craft had in
fact been subjected to other high energy beam sweeps and the damage check
brought gloomy news: their five engine nozzles and their elevons had been
damaged, and there was now no possibility of a successful controlled re-entry into
the atmosphere. Worst of all, their solar cells seemed to have suffered and electric
power generation had ceased. They had a large battery capacity, but Jensen
immediately ordered a reduction of all electrical services to the minimum required
for life support and for communication with space control.
Space control were reassuring; after a five-minute pause they announced that
Enterprise 103, which was now safely back at Vandenberg with her recovered
satellite, would be readied with all possible haste and sent up to recover them.
Jensen and his crew knew very well that it normally took several days to get one of
the orbiters ready for flight again, and they wondered quietly to themselves
whether their own batteries would be able to maintain their life support functions
until the relief mission could arrive.
 But the war was now on, and damage and interference to US surveillance
required the two waiting Big Birds to be placed in orbit without delay. Grimly, the
Joint Chiefs decided that when Enterprise 103 was ready she must be held for
priority satellite replacement. Colonel Wentworth and his crew had left the earth
before hostilities started. They spent the duration of the Third World War orbiting
in space, and their bodies were recovered on a solemn mission at the end of
August 1985. They were the first casualties of the war in space and are buried in
Arlington National Cemetery.

Chapter 19
Air Defence of the United Kingdom and Eastern Atlantic

For some years after the Second World War the UK maintained a high level
of air defence. The Berlin crisis and the airlift in 1948, and then the Korean War in
1950, did much to offset the idealists’ beliefs that all arms could be laid aside at
once, and while the threat was possibly not very great in those days wartime
memories of 1940 were still vivid. As a result Fighter Command’s resources up to
the first half of the 1950s remained considerable. Indeed, in 1957 it boasted some
600 jet fighters and a sufficiency of airfields and radars to support them.
But in 1957 there was a major shift in policy that was to leave the country
denuded of adequate air defence for nearly twenty years. Evaluation of the nuclear
missile threat from the USSR in the early fifties, at a time of overwhelming
strategic nuclear power in the USA, had led to the contemporary strategy of trip-
wire and retaliation. In 1957 it was decided, with impeccable logic, that all that
was needed was a fighter shield to protect our nuclear-armed V-bomber bases to
ensure that they could get into the air on their retaliatory missions just as soon as
the ballistic missile warning system indicated that they must go. (For a discussion
of this phase of British defence policy see Chapter 4.)
Whether or not the policy of trip-wire and massive retaliation was appropriate to
the circumstances of the time, it was later to demonstrate a fatal flaw. As Soviet
missile strength grew and the retaliatory strategy had to give way to the flexible
response, with its emphasis on the ability to fight with conventional as well as
nuclear weapons, so the basic assumption on which this minimal air defence was
predicated disappeared. But by then the demands on government spending from
many quarters left no room for the costly rebuilding of a comprehensive air
defence system to counter the growing Soviet capability to attack the UK in a
phase of conventional war.
By the time intelligence assessments had finally (and rather belatedly)
recognized the conventional air threat it was not just a matter of numbers of
aircraft - though heaven knows they were short enough; it was also a matter of
numbers of men in the air and on the ground. Both were difficult to come by with
the competing attractions of industry and commerce in an affluent society. Radar
communications and control centres were also insufficient in capacity or
availability for the changed situation. The shortage of airfields gave particular
concern. By the end of the 1939-45 war there had been an airfield every fifteen to
twenty-five kilometres throughout most of the country; now there were only a
handful—all the others had gone back to the plough or had been handed over to
municipalities or other users for a variety of purposes. The shortage of airfields
was critical.
In the seventies it was necessary to think of air defence on an immeasurably
larger canvas than that on which the Battle of Britain was portrayed. Not only did
the stand-off weapons of an attacking force require the defences to be pushed out
hundreds of kilometres if the launching aircraft were to be destroyed in time, but
the areas to be defended now reached across the Eastern Atlantic, where it was
necessary to protect shipping which would no longer have air cover from large fleet
carriers in the Royal Navy. In addition to the central task of the defence of the
United Kingdom and its base facilities, SACLANT and SACEUR assigned air
defence responsibilities to the British in an area that extended from the Channel
to the North Norwegian Sea in the north and out very nearly to the coast of Iceland
in the west. It was a tall order. If the worst NATO fears were ever to be realized
then the air resources available in the mid-seventies would be decidedly
inadequate, for in those circumstances the United Kingdom—as a rearward base
for SACEUR and a forward base for SACLANT, roles decided by the strategic
geography of the British Isles rather than by defence planners—could not hope to
escape the close attention of the Soviet Air Forces.
To SACLANT, apart from affording air defence and antisubmarine air patrols for
shipping in the Eastern Atlantic and Channel, the UK was a critically important
base from which to mount flank support for his Strike Fleet as and when it had to
fight its way against Soviet sea and air opposition into the North Norwegian Sea.
And in war this was, assuredly what the Strike Fleet would have to do. For
SACEUR, the UK would be the mounting base for much of the deeper air effort
behind the forward edge of the enemy’s battle area on the Continent. It would also
be to the UK that any aircraft and crews held in reserve would be likely to be
withdrawn. And then there was the air bridge: the endless belt of heavy-lift jumbo-
sized aircraft that would carry most of the human reinforcements and much of
their equipment from the USA to Europe as soon as full mobilization’ plans were
put into effect. Given a rudimentary air-to-air missile system, even early
generation long-range aircraft could wreak havoc with this flow if they got into that
great aerial procession. They must not do so—and it was the task of the British Air
Defence Commander to see that they did not. If that officer appeared, with the
resources available to him in the mid-seventies, a preoccupied man, no one could
say he had no cause.
Nevertheless, by 1977 things were beginning to improve, even if, in the view of
the Royal Air Force, nothing like quickly enough. Some measurable progress had
been made with the addition of two extra air defence squadrons provided by
extending the life of some of the Lightning interceptors; the F-4 Phantoms were
now the backbone of an interceptor force and had greatly raised its capability at
all levels, as well as its resistance to electronic jamming; Bloodhound surface-to-air
missiles (SAM) had been re-introduced to give low-level area defence in the south-
east of England, while mobile squadrons of the British Rapier SAM provided point
defence to vital airfields in the north. More improvements were in the pipeline: the
Tornado air defence variant was due to replace the Phantom in the eighties; Nimrod
airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft were on order; and a major rationalization
and modernization plan was in train to streamline the heterogeneous and
unwieldy radar communications and control systems that had grown up piecemeal
through the years as the RAF struggled to improve its air defence under the
parsimony of British defence policy. Looking further ahead, airfields were to have
hardened protection for their aircraft, while a particularly flexible and jamming-
resistant new data communications system, the United Kingdom Air Defence
Ground Environment (UKADGE), would link the fighters, control centres, airborne
early warning systems and airfields by the early 1980s.
Once the national consciousness began to become uneasy about the danger to
the UK of unchecked Soviet military expansion, the path of the air planners
became easier, and it was possible to gain some political support from all sides in
the House of Commons for measures now clearly seen to be needed for the defence
of the homeland. Policy agreement was one thing, putting it into effect was
another. The task was formidable. It is no simple matter to increase, or speed up,
the production of complex aircraft and weapons, or to create their support
facilities. It is more difficult still to conjure up the skilled and experienced men
and women needed to operate an expanded and complex military system without
mounting a deliberate programme of expansion in sufficient time to develop it in
an ordered way over a number of years.
By 1985 the Tornado interceptors were in service in considerable numbers,
thanks to increased production and round-the-clock working by all the
contractors in that part of the European industry. The AEW Nimrod had replaced
the Shackleton, and the numbers of SAM systems had been increased by
restricting overseas sales and by purchase from the United States. Among some
very promising air-to-air and ground-to-air weapons was the new EUROSAM, a
collaborative project with France, of which the RAF now had two squadrons at
home. A tanker conversion of the splendid old VC-10 transport was coming into
service, and this, together with some Boeings bought from the United States, had
greatly increased the air-to-air refuelling resources so critically important for long-
range interception over the sea to the north and west.
Just as the early scientific gropings with radar at Bawdsey Manor in the mid-
1930s had helped to turn the tide in 1940, so perhaps the most significant
progress was in the completion of the new control and communications system
(UKADGE). Without going into the technical details, it is sufficient to say here that
it worked through mutually-supporting hardened control centres and accepted
digitized data from the whole range of sensors contributing to the air defence
system: ground and airborne radars, early warning aircraft, and NATO ground and
sea-based sensor systems, including those of the French. This gave the Air
Defence Commander, and all those concerned in the control chain, an immediate
picture at any moment of the air threat and the resources available to counter it. It
was to be the essential management platform from which the expected battle
would be conducted.
Despite these improvements in equipment, and the highest quality of aircraft
and weapons, the Royal Air Force still remained dangerously short of one vital
asset: trained and skilled manpower. Political recognition in the late seventies that
discontent with service pay and conditions was making a career in any armed
service unattractive to young men came belatedly. The air force chiefs had long
been anxious because the young men and women of the calibre they needed
commanded particularly good opportunities in civil life. When substantial
increases of pay were agreed in 1978 the situation quickly improved, but skilled
servicemen became an even more expensive item in the defence bill than ever. The
levels were raised to meet the increased front-line requirement, but not to the
extent that the RAF, or indeed SACEUR in his operating criteria, considered
necessary for sustained operations. If the RAF was to be engaged in hostilities in
the near future, its commanders knew that through good leadership the human
reserve would need to be stretched right to its limits and probably far beyond.

The account that follows is taken from a personal interview with Air Chief
Marshal Sir John Hazel, AOC-in-C Strike Command and CINCUKAIR (C-in-C
United Kingdom Air Forces) in the NATO command chain.
“At 0700 hours on the morning of 30 July the Air Chief Marshal waited in the
hardened war room of his regional air operations centre at High Wycombe in
Buckinghamshire, England, for the next briefing to begin. Since mobilization seven
days ago he had virtually lived in the small subterranean office with his bunk set
in an alcove to one side. Now his eyes were on the closed circuit television screen
as the master clock ticked off the seconds to the start time for the briefing. Exactly
on cue, the briefing officer appeared on screen and the routine began: weather
conditions, actual and forecast, throughout his wide command; totes of aircraft
and aircrew availability, and readiness at the operational airfields and the newly
activated satellite fields and forward operating bases. All of this was called up
direct from the resource catalogue of the Command automatic data processing
(ADP) bank.
Despite the urgent refurbishment programme of the last three years, new assets
of runways, dispersals and hangars were still far from what he would have wished;
overcrowding, and therefore vulnerability, was exacerbated by the inflow of USAF
squadrons to their war bases in his command area. The reinforcement so far had
been most impressive, but one of the consequences was that there were now some
very juicy airfield targets on offer, and he made a mental note to have another talk
about dispersal with the Commander of USAF Third Air Force after the briefing.
The transition to a war footing had really gone very smoothly, and with all the air
movement that had taken place he was particularly pleased with the way the
complicated airspace management task (the identification and separation of
aircraft) was being conducted. He reflected on how different things might have
been if the improved UKADGE had not come on line much as intended. The greatly
increased capacity to track and identify aircraft was going to be worth its weight in
gold once the President authorized the reinforcement air bridge to start operating
at full throttle, as he must surely do very soon now if SACEUR was to get his troop
reinforcements in time.
A continuous stream of heavy transport aircraft at the rate of one every two to
four minutes, day after night after day, was what was called for to pump in the
manpower to the Central Region in order to steady the inevitable recoil of the
forward defences when the massive armoured thrust of the Soviet forces hit them.
Even though many transports would fly over his air defence region without
landing, their identification, safe control, separation and integration with the UK-
based movements, including the reinforcement shuttle traffic to and from the
Continent, would tax his control resources to the utmost. On top of that, of
course, there had to be scope for immediate reaction to hostile air activity, which
had to be expected in his vast airspace once the war began and, perhaps, way out
over the sea even before that.
The situation brief continued. Tornados of the Northern Interception Alert Force
from Leuchars had been launched during the night in reaction to a high, fast-
flying, radar plot. This was probably a reconnaissance MG-25 Foxbat, since it had
turned away north-east and passed out of scan at an estimated 20,000 metres
and two and a half times the speed of sound before the Tornados abandoned the
chase and returned to base. Most of the ground-based radar sensors had
experienced some sporadic ECM interference at the extremities of their cover but
the AEW patrols had managed to maintain a clear low-level picture in their
operating areas.
Overall his command looked in reasonable shape. All UK-based units had
completed their formal alert measures and were now husbanding their aircraft
except for essential air tests. Civil flying had virtually ceased now that the
emergency repatriation flights for summer tourists were out of the way, and the
national airline resources were being incorporated as a transport reserve. Liaison
officers at the reception bases for the USAF augmentation forces were very busy
briefing new arrivals. The C-in-C was confident that the joint operating procedures
hammered out over recent years between the two air forces would stand up to
wartime pressures. The influx of men and women from the support units and
reserves to their war appointments was now virtually complete. After his call to
Third Air Force Sir John handed over to his deputy commander and left to visit
some of his nearer bases to get a feeling for the situation at first hand. After all,
the intelligence staffs still thought the signs pointed to another ten days or so of
this sort of waiting game.
As his helicopter approached Wattisham, he noted with satisfaction the
effectiveness of the toning down and natural camouflage measures which had
been pursued for some seven or eight years now.
You could not really hide the runway, of course, but it was not at all easy to
distinguish the airfield from three or four kilometres away unless you knew the
area very well. The dispersal and decoy system would also make it very much
more difficult for an attacking pilot seeking to destroy aircraft on the ground.
“If only they were not tied to those damned runways,” he said to himself. Being
a good airman the inflexibility and vulnerability that went with long runway
airfields had always affronted his professional conscience.
Talking to the Tornado crews in their hardened operations room he was, as
always, exhilarated by their professional competence and dedication. This
squadron had less than a year’s experience with the Tornado but they were clearly
delighted with it.
“The radar is absolutely superb, sir,” one enthusiastic crew member told him.
“We can track them right down in the weeds if we have to.”
 Talking to the Squadron Commander, Hazel was reassured by the thoroughness
with which the training programme had been conducted; co-operation with
tankers and with AEW was obviously first class, and full advantage had been
taken of the Tornado’s electronic navigation and weapons system to develop
methods for concerted, and if need be autonomous, interception techniques
between groups of fighters.
Flying on to Bentwaters, he had a talk with the USAF Base Commander who
was grappling with the problems of absorbing some fifty F-15s that had just
landed from the States. Overcrowding was his problem; the pre-stocking of spares
and munitions seemed all right, and he was deploying the aircraft to pre-planned
dispersal airfields as rapidly as he could. One thing was certain: he was not going
to get caught with his birds on the ground if the balloon went up.
“They’ll be up there,” he said, “fighting—and shooting the hell out of the
Russians.”
Dropping in at Stanmore on the way back, Sir John talked at length with AOC
No. 11 Group, his Air Defence Commander, and they reviewed the state of
preparation together. They did not expect heavy losses in the air; after all, they
had superb aircraft, and there was no reason why they should lose many in
combat against intruding attackers. Losses on the ground were another matter.
But the AOC’s real concern lay in the limits of his human resources.
“We can’t know,” he said, “whether this is going to be short and decisive or
drawn out by reluctance to go nuclear. My chief worry is that in any action beyond
a week or two my air and ground crew will be stretched beyond the limits of
exhaustion.”
This was not news to the C-in-C; he shared his AOC’s reservations, but there
was little that could be done about it. Together they looked into the Command
bunker which would serve as first alternative operations centre, with all the
information available to the Command and Group operations centres duplicated
there. This would be a vital facility if battle damage put out the main centres at
any time—which was something that a resolute enemy was bound to try to do.
It was a thoughtful and reflective Air Marshal who flew the remaining few
kilometres back to his headquarters that afternoon. Much had been done to gear
up defences since the penny had dropped with the Western governments. The
crucial question was whether there had been time to do enough. On the answer to
that question might well depend not only the continued existence of an
independent United Kingdom but the survival of Western democracy.
Five days later, as we know, the Soviet offensive opened in the Central Region.
Sir John Hazel did not take much waking in the early hours of 4 August. He was
not greatly surprised to learn that heavy Soviet pressure was already being exerted
along the whole length of the Central Region. He knew that many of his strike-
attack forces would be committed immediately to interdiction and counter-air
operations, for which they were ready, in an effort to slow down the momentum of
the Soviet advance. He also knew that such of his aircraft as were assigned to
SACLANT would be required for a pre-emptive attack on the main Soviet Backfire
base in the Kola Peninsula up in the Arctic Circle. This would be carried out by
Tornados and Buccaneers from the UK, supported by tanker aircraft for refuelling
during the mission.
 Hazel thoroughly approved of this objective. Maritime air defence philosophy
had long been a lively subject for debate between differing schools of thought, but
he saw this attack on the source of the threat as entirely consistent with his own
strongly held view that the best form of maritime air defence was to prevent as
many of the enemy aircraft as possible from reaching the sea area where the
targets were. In the EASTLANT area this meant an emphasis on a barrier defence
across the routes that geography forced on the Soviet long-range bombers. This
philosophy, which was not shared by all, did not rule out air defence forces being
dedicated to the needs of a specific surface group, but resources were sparse and
point defence was an extravagant way of using aircraft. He certainly would need
strong arguments before he would divert significant effort from the more cost-
effective tactic of hitting the enemy at or near his point of origin.
In less than an hour the radar plot started to show intruders approaching the
UK Air Defence Region from the far north. In the next few days the defences were
to be very hard pressed indeed as wave after wave of attacks were launched
against the UK mainland. The pattern suggested that the Soviet long-range and
naval air forces hoped to achieve four main objectives: the neutralization of the air
defences; the elimination of nuclear-capable forces on the ground; the disruption
of command and control; and the impeding of the transatlantic flow of
reinforcements by sea and by air.
No one as yet knew an effective way of hiding a radar aerial, but mobile
equipments complicated the attacker’s job and made gap-filling feasible—with the
underlying strength resting in the flexibility and resilience of the new command-
and-control data system which could accept and process information from any
source. Radars were knocked out, AEW aircraft were shot down, and air defence
ships were sunk; continental early warning was nullified quite early on by the
speed of the Soviet advance on land. At no time, however, was the air defence
system so bereft of data as to prevent it from reacting. In some of the worst periods
the Tornados, supported by tankers, ran autonomous combat air patrols,
providing their own raid information and directing their own interceptions until
replacement AEW aircraft could come back on station or a mobile radar could be
brought on line.
Airfields presented a less tractable problem. If only there had been time and
money to prepare more satellite airfields and dispersals—better still, if the fighters
had been less dependent on those wretched concrete surfaces. Dispersal to reduce
losses on the ground increased the operating problems on bases already short of
manpower and the time needed to get aircraft into the air. Cratering and mining
were among the most disabling forms of attack: an airfield with its runway out
meant that all the aircraft on the ground were neutralized until repairs could be
effected. Rapid runway repair units had been a key feature in the improvement
programme, and now paid off well. They took many casualties, especially from
delayed action mines, as they courageously pressed on with their vital repair work.
In one way, things turned out rather better than Hazel’s men had expected. Low-
level attacks did not seem to be the Soviet Air Forces’ strong point. After 1,500
kilometres or more of transit flying, and of fighting their way through the defences,
many of them failed to locate their targets with sufficient precision. Those who
climbed to 500 metres or so for a quick verification of their navigation were almost
always picked off by the Rapiers positioned around the airfields.
As was expected, not all the attacks were at low level. Some came in at medium
levels with a massive shield of electronic counter-measures and a high-speed dash
to the point of release for their stand-off weapons. Against these tactics the
Tornados, pushed well forward on combat air patrol and supported by tankers,
proved the only effective counter. From the outset it was clear that the electronic
war was going to be as closely and tenaciously fought as any other aspect of the
air defence battle. The Soviet command of the art was clearly high, but air force
thinking within the Alliance had foreseen this and the in-built counter-measures
proved equal to the task when the test came. The revived emphasis that the RAF
placed on tactics after the sterile years of the trip-wire strategy also paid off
handsomely.
The corollary to the development of precision-guided stand-off weapons was that
targets had to be selected with great discrimination. This was evident in the
pattern of Soviet air attacks. Apart from airfields and vital points in the air defence
system, key targets such as ports, ordnance and aircraft factories all received
attention and suffered substantial damage. Whitehall was strewn with masonry.
Many buildings (including, ironically, the Treasury, as well as parts of the Defence
Ministry and the Palace of Westminster) were destroyed—though key members of
the government and central administration were safely established at alternative
and hardened centres. Civilian casualties, while not on the scale of the 1939-45
war, were nevertheless considerable, and because of the selective nature of these
attacks they were often very disruptive.
As the Allied forces were pushed back in Central Europe a great hole was torn
in the NATO air defence system in the northern area. This opened up new and
shorter lines of approach for the Soviet Air Forces’ attacks on the United Kingdom.
Their aircraft could now come out through the Baltic with comparative immunity
and fly across, or down, the North Sea. The response to this was to mount Tornado
combat air patrols (CAP) and tankers forward in the direction of that area in the
same way that CAP were mounted at focal points to intercept Soviet aircraft
coming around the North Cape and into the North Norwegian Sea. Soviet aircraft,
dropping to low level, could now pose a much stronger threat to the French
Channel ports which were so vital to JACWA for the reception of the massive
transatlantic CAVALRY convoys. Hitherto the Russians had found it difficult to
find a short, and sufficiently soft, line of approach to be able to attack with
intensity. Now, if they could skim through the Channel undetected at very low
level they had a chance of doing very serious damage indeed to the installations
and the sea transports themselves. In addition to the barrier patrols across the
Baltic Exits, the C-in-C now agreed with HQ Third Air Force, and with
COMAAFCE’s ready consent, that some of the recently arrived F-15s held in
reserve should be dedicated to meeting this threat and protecting the French ports
(in conjunction with the French Air Force). This was done, and the brilliantly
versatile F-15s had great success against those attacking aircraft that managed to
evade the barrier patrols to the north.
Losses in the air were well up to the levels that the peacetime analysts had
forecast, but valuable fighters were more often lost on the ground than in the air.
AEW aircraft paid the price for having to be far out on station and relatively
unprotected, and tanker aircraft were sometimes lost for the same reason. A
proportion of airfields were always unusable, but never so many that the defences
were totally grounded. The problems of identification in a very active sky and of
separation between missile and non-missile zones proved as difficult as exercises
had always suggested that they would be. Inevitably some RAF attack aircraft
returning from their Central Region targets fell victim to their own defences. The
barrier patrol up to the north was there as a tourniquet around the Soviet long-
range air forces seeking to threaten soft transport aircraft coming over the air
bridge and the shipborne reinforcements coming across the sea. Some inevitably
got through the net, but when this happened there was a second chance to
intercept them in lower latitudes, though not always until after they had done
damage to sea and air supplies.
As one instance, on 6 August two Backfire bombers armed with a massive
battery of air-to-air missiles got loose in the procession of air transports wallowing
across the Atlantic at 550 miles an hour. It was easy shooting. They knocked
down three C-5s and four 747s before withdrawing at high speed to the north. One
of them fell to a Tornado trap on the way home.
A system of dispersing the transports when a raider was known to be loose had
been introduced, but that time, for some reason, the codeword did not get
through. The air bridge had been attacked before, but this was a black day with
more than 2,000 men missing from a Central Army Group formation before they
even knew they were in action. But for most of the time the losses were at least
militarily acceptable.
After eight days it began to look as if the advantage might be lying slightly with
the defences. It was impossible to draw up an exact balance sheet, but they were
certainly taking a heavy toll of aircraft in the promising ratio of around four to one.
All now depended on how long the Russians would keep up the pressure and how
long the UK air defences could sustain their reaction.”

The following rather more personal account of events on a day in the

second week of full hostilities is taken from an as yet unpublished narrative by the
former Personal Staff Officer to AOC-in-C Strike Command. It illustrates the
understanding commonly found between top commanders and those who work
with them.
“Late in the afternoon of 12 August there was, for the first time, nothing on the
radar plot. There had been plenty of action that day. The last incident had been
when a force of ten-plus aircraft had turned back as soon as they ran into the
Tornado CAP outside the Baltic. As many of No. 1 Group’s attack aircraft as they
were likely to see again were now back from their early sorties over the Central
Region, and it looked as if things might be quiet for an hour or so at least, while
they, and no doubt the enemy, got ready for the next assault.
Sir John came up from the ground for a breather. His surface HQ had been hit
several times but his operational control facilities were still working. It was a relief
to walk on the grass in the Chiltern Hills on a summer afternoon. The day was
clear but up in the sky a milky veil of what looked like cirrus cloud stretched from
horizon to horizon. In fact it was the condensation trails of the great transatlantic
airlift, each aircraft’s trails being churned up and added to by the one behind it as
they ploughed on to their destination airfields.
In 1940 he had been at school in Kent, and he recalled how the masters and
boys had had a grandstand view of the Battle of Britain from the playing fields -
watching and cheering as Hurricanes chased Heinkels, and Spitfires fought
Messerschmitts. The school-boys nowadays, and for that matter the whole civilian
population, must be puzzled, he reflected, as they heard bombs explode and saw
the grim result, with no action going on in the sky. They would know what that
great milky way was because there had been so much about it on television. But
would they understand that No. 11 Group, the same group as bore the brunt of
the battle back in 1940, was once again fighting day and night for the survival of
the country and the West -but this time way out of sight and far from the
country’s shores? In due time, and if things came out right, he certainly hoped
they would, for these were important matters to be understood by the public. If his
reputation meant anything at the end of this war he would do his damnedest, he
resolved, to see that the politicans did not forget a second time.
After the luxury of letting his thoughts stray for five minutes he went down the
hole again and picked up a direct telephone to AOC 11 Group, his Air Defence
Commander.
Air Vice-Marshal Bill Williams, the AOC, was a very experienced fighter pilot,
but of course he was not old enough to have been in the 1939-45 war. He had a
feeling, one way or the other, that this war was not going to last very long; as an
airman to the core he had no wish to have to tell his children that he had spent all
of it underground. So that morning he had handed over to the Group Captain Ops
and flown one of the Tornados on the Baltic Exits combat air patrol. The very one,
in fact, in face of which the raiders had turned back. Later he remembered his
telephone conversation with the C-in-C because it seemed to mark a watershed in
the relentless battle that he was running.
Understandably, he was keen to give his chief a first-hand account from the
front line of battle. The C-in-C, who knew most things that were going on,
forestalled him.
“Hello Bill—I see you had a good trip. What were they?”
“Backfires we think, sir, but we didn’t get a visual. They turned back as soon as
they got us on their radar. We couldn’t close them—not this end of the Baltic
anyway—and we thought they might be spoofing.”
“How are things in the Group?” asked the C-in-C.
“Well, you know our battle claims and our air and ground casualties. We’re still
keeping a four to one kill ratio including aircraft losses on the ground and that
seems to be good. Everyone’s tails would be right up now except that they’re so
bloody tired. The aircrew are still all right - just - and we’re enforcing rest periods
between sorties for them, but the ground crew have only been snatching sleep as
and when they can since the first scramble. They’ve taken the casualties on the
ground absolutely marvellously, especially in the runway repair teams. There have
been plenty of medals earned by those chaps if we ever get round to that sort of
thing. But they’re pretty well flaked out now. I hate having to say it but I can’t see
how we can keep this pace up for more than a day or two. How do you think
things are going, sir?” There was a pause before the C-in-C answered—he wanted
to be encouraging.
“Several of their raids have turned back in the last eight hours and that must
mean something. I think it’s just possible that they’re coming round to the idea
that they probably can’t win this one.” He paused again. “I only hope they don’t
twig that they probably could if they raised the tempo and kept at us for another
week or so. Bill, you’ve got to keep your men going and it may be quite a time yet.”
As the C-in-C hung up, a Sergeant placed a folder of intelligence reports and
photographs on his desk. He studied them very closely. Half an hour later he
called the Air Defence Commander again:
“Bill, we’re getting some very good Int stuff by satellite now about our counter-
air ops. The losses of 1 Group, and of the Germans and USAF, in Tornados and F-
111s, have been pretty heavy but COMAAFCE reckons the exchange rate is a very
good one and I agree. With what they’re doing, together with the cruise missiles, it
looks as if we’re fairly ripping those airfields to bits.”
“Can I pass that round the Group?” asked the AOC, hoping for anything that
would help hold back their battle-weariness.
“Of course,” said the C-in-C, “but, Bill—for your ears only in case I’m being too
optimistic—if these reports are as good as they look your chaps should be getting
a little more rest before long.”

Chapter 20
The Air War Over the Central Region

Since the earliest days of the Alliance, ideas about the use of air power had
centred, non-contentiously, on the ability of air forces to bring rapid
concentrations of power to bear to redress the imbalance between Allied and
Warsaw Pact numbers. Over the years, ways of achieving this had changed with
the shifting balance in numbers and quality and with the continually evolving
political appreciations of the times. In the late fifties the strong Allied tactical air
forces were cut back as the emphasis swung to massive nuclear retaliation and
the ‘trip-wire’. In the late sixties, with the change to the ‘flexible response’ strategy,
defence efforts were directed to the development of aircraft capable of undertaking
both nuclear and conventional operations. As time went on, a numerical Warsaw
Pact superiority in the air, as well as on the ground, looked as if it was to be a
permanent feature in the balance of power. This placed a high premium on
maintaining the Allied technological lead. It also demanded attention to methods
of improving the effectiveness of the amalgam of national air forces through better
standardization of their weapons and tactics and of their engineering and logistic
support. These were not easy aims to achieve, for a variety of national reasons,
and progress—though happily considerable by 1985—had been slow and painful.
The NATO air forces in the Central Region were made up of two tactical air
forces, 2 ATAF associated with the Northern Army Group and 4 ATAF with the
Central Army Group. This structure was a hangover from the occupation of
Germany after the Second World War. Its appropriateness came into question in
the late sixties and early seventies. The problem was resolved in 1974, when an
overall United States Air Commander (COMAAFCE) was established, with his own
headquarters, to exercise central control of Allied air power at the highest level of
air command in order to exploit the flexibility and concentration of the numerically
inferior Allied air forces. COMAAFCE was responsible to the Commander-in-Chief,
Central Region (CINCENT), and his two immediate subordinates were the
commanders of 2 and 4 ATAF who retained, in peacetime at least, the same close
contact with the army groups.
On the other side of the Iron Curtain we have seen how, during the 1970s, the
Russians had developed a more sophisticated concept of air power. What had once
been an air arm with very narrow aims, and an almost exclusively battlefield role,
had evolved into an air force as the West understood the term. COMAAFCE saw
the need to organize his air forces so as to counter this increased threat, while still
being able to support the defensive land battle in the critical phase before full
reinforcements arrived. He also saw the difficulties. Land and air commanders
were agreed on the immediate, full-blooded use of air power in the first hours of an
offensive. They saw it as a strategic task of the first importance to identify and
slow the enemy’s main thrusts on the ground. At the same time, COMAAFCE
realized better than anyone that the success or failure of this plan would depend
on the security of his air bases. In particular, his mind often dwelt on the fact that
the bases from which 2 ATAF operated were uncomfortably far forward.
On the other hand, he felt confident about his assessment of the enemy’s air
objective. In a surge offensive with the initiative, and with an overall advantage in
numbers of more than two to one, it was dangerous and misleading to think much
in terms of what the enemy’s priorities might be - the Warsaw Pact would probably
do everything they could do in the air, and would do it all at once. They would
want to neutralize the Allied nuclear strike capability in the theatre; they would
aim to ward off interference with the land battle and to establish a tolerable, and if
possible favourable, air situation; they would need to protect their own air bases;
and they would want to put all the weight of air power they could behind their
forces on the ground. The prospect was one of air effort, at every level, of an
intensity hitherto never experienced.
In the last fifteen years the development of the Soviet Air Forces had stimulated
hard thinking and debate among the Allied air commanders and their staffs. This
thinking had reinforced the three classic counters to the threat: offensive counter-
air operations against the enemy’s bases; engagement in the air; point and area
defence.
There had been general agreement among Allied airmen for many years that the
most effective way of countering the Soviet air threat lay in ‘taking it out’ at its
point of origin—but this, never an easy task, had become steadily more formidable
as Soviet defences had advanced. The airfields would be hardened and very well
defended. But major developments in fire-suppression missiles, in precision-
guided stand-off munitions, and in airfield-cratering and area-denial weapons gave
COMAAFCE cause for sober confidence, though he knew that losses would be
high. Great improvements had been made in air-to-air capability since the late
seventies. Ground-controlled long-range interceptions would still be possible and
necessary, especially in the air defence of the United Kingdom and adjacent areas
of sea, but the pressure of geography in Central Europe and the short warning
time that this would allow, together with the confusion of electronic counter-
measures that would reign in the battle zone, pointed to the need for a less rigid
and more general air combat capability. COMAAFCE was well satisfied that the
introduction of the F-15s and F-16s to supplement the F-4 Phantoms had gone a
long way to meet the requirement. These were not only very potent aircraft, but
had once more the agility and manoeuvrability that had marked the earlier
generations of fighters. In addition, attention had been focussed on the need for
far more SAM and gun defences with a rapid rate of engagement around the air
bases, while passive defence measures such as provision of concrete aircraft
shelters, command bunkers, and hardened fuel and weapon storage were seen as
essentials. Happily, a NATO-wide programme of such improvements had been
brought to an advanced state by the spring of 1985.
Turning from the air versus air battle to the central purpose of NATO’s tactical
air contribution—intervention in the land battle—COMAAFCE saw two essential
roles. First he would have to check the surge of the enemy’s ground offensive by
hammering at the ‘choke points’ through which he would have to pass, then blunt
the cutting edge of those armoured thrusts that did get through to the Allied area.
This role called for an all-weather capability, very high sortie rates, and rapid
reaction to army requests in a fluid ground situation. Second, he would have to
take the momentum out of the assault by harassing and destroying the succeeding
attack waves. He was completely against the so-called ‘panacea targets’ vaguely
described in terms like ‘the enemy’s transportation system’. From hard practice
and experience with their aircraft and weapons, the airmen were convinced that
the best way of destroying armour was by area-denial and cluster weapons
dispensing large numbers of bomblets. Fortunately, after the improvement
programmes of the eighties they had such munitions in abundance.
On the morning of 3 August, as he mused on the characteristics of air power
and the battles his aircrew might soon be fighting, COMAAFCE came back again
and again to a major area of uncertainty. Twenty years earlier, as a squadron
commander in South-east Asia, he had learned about electronic warfare at first
hand, and he knew the sort of influence this could exert on all aspects of air war.
The Allies were confident of their technological superiority, and especially so in
this direction, but their closed society had enabled the Russians to shroud their
electronic warfare methods and developments in such secrecy that positive
identification of the best ways of countering them might not be available until
hostilities were well under way.
These reflections led to thoughts on the past difference between the US and
European (primarily British) approaches to the use of tactical air power. In the
seventies the US, with great resources in technology and the experience of the
Vietnam War behind them, had stressed the importance of suppressing the
defences and of elaborate electronic command and control and communications
systems. In the European view, however, this was prodigiously expensive, over-
dependent on technology, and dangerously vulnerable to counter-measures. The
US had seen tactical air power as a central force for the delivery of massive
firepower on clear-cut targets. European airmen, on the other hand, saw it as
more important to integrate the tactical air with the land battle, and they thought
flexibility would be gained not by close control of aircraft at medium altitudes but
from more autonomous and self-reliant procedures with very high sortie rates at
very low level.
These divergences sprang naturally from differences in experience and
resources, but it had latterly been seen, as in a blinding light, that this diversity in
doctrine in fact had a very positive merit in compounding the problems facing the
Soviet defences. Moreover, if the Europeans were wrong, they could still ride on
the coat-tails of US technology, supplementing the US aerial task forces. And the
Americans, realizing that they might be over-dependent on one thesis, started to
pay more attention to autonomous and low-level operations as a re-insurance
without departing from the main theme for the bulk of their air force.
Finally, as he thought about the human equation, COMAAFCE felt confident
that, in the high standards of their training, his air and ground crews, if put to the
test, would be second to none. The stringent tactical evaluation test of the NATO
air forces over many years of hard practice and training gave him every cause for
confidence.
The RAF Air Marshal who commanded 2 ATAF was also reviewing the state of
his command—and in the main with satisfaction. The improvements in the last
few years had been impressive, and nowhere was this more evident than in the
RAF elements of his command. In the late 1970s Gordon Lee wrote in the
Economist (17 December 1977): ‘Man for man the RAF is the finest air force in
NATO, perhaps even in the world. The finest, that is, in the sense of being the best
trained and most professionally skilled.’ If members of the RAF, on reading that,
had felt, with justification, some pride and even a little complacency, it was short-
lived; for in the next few lines he went on to say that the same unstinting praise
could not be bestowed on all its aircraft and equipment. In fact, there was nothing
wrong with the RAF in those days that money could not put right. Some money
had been made available, and rightly the first tranches had gone to the
improvements of the UK air defence. But by 1982 substantial improvements had
also been made to the RAF in Germany.
At the time much political capital was made of the intention to increase the
front-line strength of RAF Germany by 30 per cent. But as an immediate measure
the air staff devoted some of the resources to the improvement of current
equipment. In this way they had an eye to the likely difficulties of increasing the
aircrew numbers. Jaguar and Harrier aircraft were extensively modified and
improved; hardened accommodation with filtered air was provided for all airfield
personnel. Six regular and six auxiliary squadrons of the Royal Air Force Regiment
were raised to increase the level and quality of ground defences of the main air
bases and the Harrier force in the field. The air bases and their aircraft throughout
2 ATAF would be a much harder nut to crack than would have been the case five
years earlier.
But Air Marshal Broadwood, AOC-in-C 2 ATAF, had one matter on his mind
that caused him great anxiety. In the late seventies, for reasons that have been
explained elsewhere (see Chapter 19), the aircrew strength of the RAF had fallen
very low. It had not been possible to recover entirely from that situation by 1985
because of the years it takes to turn suitable young men into combat-ready pilots.
As a result, the ratio of aircrew to aircraft in RAF Germany in 1985 was still the
lowest for any of the national air forces in the Central Region. The essential
aggressiveness and skills were there in abundance; the worry was how long they
could be maintained in intensive operations with high losses and insufficient rest.
The steadily increasing tension in the Alliance, followed by general mobilization,
had given sufficient time for the air forces to reach a full war posture. By midnight
on 3 August, 90 per cent of the aircraft of the Allied Air Forces Central Europe
(AAFCE) were clocked up on the operations centre tote boards as serviceable,
armed, and protected in their concrete aircraft shelters. During the previous week
the US bases in continental Europe and the UK had received a continuous stream
of reinforcement aircraft flown across the Atlantic. As a USAF general, COMAAFCE
was delighted that the American reinforcement of Europe via the Atlantic air
bridge had gone so smoothly. All the same, he still had much to ponder. He was
well satisfied with the rate of aircraft generation and reinforcement, but the
numerical advantage still lay with the Warsaw Pact by something in the order of
two to one; and although the Pact could not now achieve tactical surprise, it could
still enjoy the great advantage of calling the first shots. Moreover, S ACEUR had
ordered that 20 per cent of the nuclear-capable aircraft should be held in reserve.
Clearly this had to be done, but it did not help him in the numbers game.
For the previous four days, NATO early warning had been affected by electronic
interference from the other side of the German border. This was not unusual. It
had been experienced increasingly during the current Warsaw Pact military
manoeuvres and the early hours of 4 August showed no change. At 0345
COMAAFCE was woken from a fitful sleep in his command bunker in the Central
Region’s war headquarters to be told of threatening developments on the other
side of the border. Minutes later he reached his war room where the German Air
Force (GAF) general on duty had positive information of a major Warsaw Pact
penetration of NATO airspace under cover of heavy ECM. The general on duty
reported that he had taken the initial war measures and aircraft were already
being scrambled. Within another few minutes, reports of attacks on the Alliance
missile belts, air defence radars and air bases began to come in. The war had
begun.

Looking back when it was all over, surviving aircrew of both sides agreed
that the first hours in the air over the Central Region had been indescribably
chaotic. With the exception of a few grey-haired American colonels—veterans of
South-east Asia—few-had ever fired a shot in anger or even heard one. The
excitement, the danger and the general confusion of the air battle during the
course of 4 August all contributed to what seemed utter chaos. Nevertheless,
thanks to years of planning and thought there was in fact a coherent pattern
underlying what was happening. A preliminary look at the records suggests that at
0800 hours on 4 August there were no less than 3,000 tactical aircraft airborne
over the Central Region. Although the full story of the war must await a detailed
analysis of combat reports and assessments, it is possible to describe the general
trends at least in outline.
The counter-air offensive on Warsaw Pact airfields was launched the instant
SACEUR gave authority for Allied aircraft to cross the border. The first aircraft to
do so were USAF F-111s and GAF and RAF Tornados, flying at tree-top level from
bases in the United Kingdom and West Germany. The effort was concentrated
against airfields in East Germany, and a gratifyingly high percentage of the aircraft
got to their targets. Confidence in their ability to get through heavy defences at
very low level was immediately established among aircrew and commanders alike,
and the very high speeds of the attacking aircraft at heights often below sixty
metres undoubtedly achieved tactical surprise. The few engagements by Warsaw
Pact fighters suggested a lack of confidence at ultra-low level and possibly some
shortcomings in their look-down radars. It was also evident that the Russians had
not solved the vexing problem of operating missiles and fighter aircraft in the same
airspace.
It is not yet possible to make a quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of
the counter-air offensive; but sufficient is known to say with certainty that,
maintained as it was around the clock, it very seriously hindered the Warsaw Pact
in achieving its main air objectives.
On the morning of 4 August, after consulting CINCENT and the ATAF and Army
Group commanders, COMAAFCE allotted a major air effort to armed
reconnaissance and interdiction of the battlefield approaches as soon as the main
enemy thrust lines were identified. All the Jaguars, Harriers and AlphaJets in 2
ATAF were dedicated to this role, and in 4 ATAF the AlphaJets and US A-10s were
similarly tasked. The French tactical air forces were mainly employed to the south
in the 4 ATAF area, but only, on the orders of their government, in support of
forces under French command.
When, later, the enemy’s main effort was identified as being in the north, and
the war in the south began to stabilize, COMAAFCE progressively switched a
proportion of 4 ATAF aircraft to operations in the NORTHAG-2 ATAF area; by the
evening of 13 August 30 per cent of 4 ATAF offensive air support potential had
been transferred to 2 ATAF. The crunch point in the Central Region air war was
approaching.
At this point it can be seen that three factors had a decisive influence on air
activity in support of the land battle. First, the weather throughout the region was
uniformly good and the picture was only occasionally obscured by dawn mist and
the odd rain shower; visibility, for the most part, was excellent, and the smoke and
dust thrown up by the massive Soviet mechanized forces could be spotted from as
far as thirty kilometres away. This was a wonderful help to the Harrier, Jaguar and
A-10 crews. Second, as our land forces were pushed back, Allied pilots found
themselves fighting over very familiar ground and the reaction time to army
requests for support was thereby reduced.
A combination of these factors did much to offset the enemy’s superior
numbers. But these operations were not carried out so effectively without grievous
loss. By 11 August the Harrier and Jaguar forces of the RAF had been reduced by
50 per cent, and by 13 August the steady attrition of NATO aircraft had reached
the point where COMAAFCE was seriously worried as to whether he would be able
to keep up the pace. If they paused, the enemy might have time to recover his
balance and redeploy his air power forward and closer to the FEBA (forward edge
of the battle area), as it shifted westward. In the event, three things came to
COMAAFCE’s aid. First was SACEUR’s decision to commit his reserves; second
was his rejection of persistent requests for nuclear action. This prompted
COMAAFCE to seek approval for using the aircraft hitherto held back for nuclear
strike, to which SACEUR agreed with the proviso that 5 per cent must still be
retained. Third was the imminent safe arrival of the CAVALRY convoys. At
COMAAFCE’s request, SACEUR then asked SACLANT to transfer to him the
latter’s Tornado and Buccaneer aircraft. This was immediately agreed, and on the
night of 13 August all these aircraft, further augmented by F-111 reinforcements
from the United States and the Italian and American reserves from 5 ATAF waiting
in Spain and France, ravaged the Warsaw Pact supply columns and dumps across
the length and breadth of the North German plain. This sudden stepping up of the
conflict with fresh crews and more aircraft can be said to have regained the air
initiative for NATO.
As far as air-to-air battles were concerned, over 10,000 air-to-air engagements
were registered over, and to the west of, the battle area in the first seven days. As
COMAAFCE had predicted, the Warsaw Pact threw their mass of aircraft into
battle in successive waves and—like the Allies—they supported their operations
with every kind of electronic measure. Although the enemy’s air offensive achieved
successes and caused moments of great concern at the War Headquarters of Allied
Command Europe, it can now be seen that it never succeeded in gaining complete
domination of the air.
NATO’s main contribution to the defensive air battle over the Central Region
was in the operation of F-4 Phantoms, F-15s and F-16s. A long-standing debate
between the British and Americans concerning deployment of air defences had
been solved by the adoption of a concept of defence in depth. Thus the first fighter
barrier was deployed forward of the NATO missile belts to cover the ground forces;
this was allotted to the American, Dutch and Belgian F-16s. Behind the missile
belt, RAF Phantoms and American F-15s flew combat patrols to complement the
rear area point defences. The air defence of France remained a national
responsibility.
In the early days of the war, the enemy’s ECM and its assault on the NATO
radar stations seriously degraded the Alliance’s capability for close-controlled
interception. But the weather favoured the defence, with good visibility beneath
the cloud layer at around 3,000 metres. The inability, or reluctance, of the Warsaw
Pact pilots to fly quite low enough offered the defending fighters many skyline
sightings as enemy aircraft crossed ridges and hills. The Russians’ strong suit was
their numerical superiority and not surprisingly they wanted to preserve it - so in
the main their preferred tactics on interception were to evade. On balance, their
air combat skills were shown up as inferior to those of the NATO pilots.
But the weight of numbers took their toll of the Allied defences. While in the
first few days of the war aircraft losses favoured the Alliance in a ratio of three to
one, the HAWK SAM belt was eventually saturated and those radars that survived
the initial onslaught were soon picked off by anti-radar missiles. The air bases
themselves were subjected to intense air attack—with the notable exception of the
US bases in the 4 ATAF area over which the F-15s maintained air superiority
throughout the war.
But although Warsaw Pact aircraft managed to achieve local air superiority on a
number of occasions in the first week of the war, full air support of their ground
forces proved impossible to sustain in the face of determined opposition from the
F-16s and, on occasion, Harriers armed with air-to-air missiles. But mounting
Allied aircraft losses, battle damage and fatigue often left the eventual outcome of
this ferocious air fighting very much in doubt.
Although the development of the Warsaw Pact offensive in the Central Region
has yet to be followed on the ground (which will be done in the next chapter),
coherence and continuity make it desirable to anticipate here its course and
outcome sufficiently to carry this tale of the air war over Europe to a conclusion.

COMAAFCE’s first indication of a distinct trend in his favour came with a

Soviet attempt to launch airborne and heliborne assaults in support of their attack
on the Venlo position on 14 August. They did not achieve surprise, and their
efforts to gain local air superiority lacked concentration and determination. The
ensuing melee in the air to the north and west of the Krefeld salient was greatly
enjoyed by the exhausted and hard-pressed German and British soldiers, who
afterwards christened it the Venlo Turkey Shoot.
When the NATO forces improved their command of the air after the sudden
release of reserves, local air superiority was exploited by precision-guided weapons
on Soviet crossing points over the Lower Rhine and Maas, which helped to throttle
the supply lines to enemy leading formations at a critical stage. With enemy
divisions to the west of the Rhine isolated, COMAAFCE allotted 90 per cent of 4
ATAF resources to the Commander 2 ATAF, leaving the remainder of 4 ATAF and
the remnants of 5 ATAF to support CENTAG. For the next two days this
tremendous concentration of airborne firepower wrought havoc with the enemy
forces west of the Rhine. But the air effort stood or fell on the retention of secure
bases, a fact of which Allied air commanders had always been uneasily aware. On
the very first day of the war some airfields were completely overwhelmed by
combinations of high explosive and persistent chemical agents; others suffered
their full share of misfortune. But rigorous peacetime exercises in the flexible use
of air power now paid dividends. Although airfields, unlike aircraft carriers, could
not be sunk, they could be overrun, and in the first days of war the enemy
advance in the north forced the abandonment of no less than six German and
Dutch airfields. The German Tornados were redeployed to the United Kingdom and
their AlphaJets moved south. Dutch F-16s moved back into Belgium. When, four
days later, the enemy crossed the Lower Rhine the RAF had to withdraw from its
airfields. Its attack Tornados and Buccaneers went back to the UK and the
reconnaissance Tornados were redeployed to the south. One of the greatest threats
to NATO air bases lay in surface-to-surface missile (SSM) attacks as the enemy
advanced and deployed his mobile missile systems further west. A co-ordinated
missile onslaught on 2 ATAF airfields only just failed to catch the Allied aircraft
before their redeployment. It was a very narrow squeak and the lesson was not lost
on COMAAFCE, even though, in mounting the attack, the missile batteries gave
away their positions and earned a particularly sharp and quick Allied air response.

The Warsaw Pact air forces did not achieve their objectives to the full
principally because they failed to gain tactical surprise and the Allied air forces
were ready and waiting for them. In addition, NATO’s electronic warfare was of a
superior quality throughout the campaign, and the Allied aircraft and their crews,
as had always been hoped, proved significantly superior in technology and skills.
The Allied defence plan had required the air forces to stem the Warsaw Pact flood
and hold the ring until the armies were reinforced and in battle order. In this they
succeeded. The furious air actions, air-to-air, air-to-ground and ground-to-air,
vindicated classical air thinking over half a century. It also qualified some of the
commandments in the airmen’s bible in important ways. For instance, while
airmen rightly saw the need to fight the air battle above all, in the circumstances
of this war they learned that there is no convenient tempo which can allow them to
meet their tasks in the ordered sequence so beloved of the Staff Colleges. The
airman’s belief, born of Second World War experience, and so irritating to the
soldiers, that the chronology of war should allow them to fight the air battle and
establish air superiority before addressing the problems of the land battle, were
shattered once and for all. Everything had happened together.
Given the limited resources that the West were prepared to devote to defence
before the Third World War, the air forces saw the need to compete above all in
qualitative terms. In this they were right; they would have been right in any
circumstances—for a second-rate air force is an expensive national indulgence—
but it is worth underlining the point that once the qualitative margin narrows
between opposing sides then numbers become very important indeed. It was
because of this that COMAAFCE’s counter-air offensive was so important. Happily
the aircraft, weapons and electronic attack systems specially designed for this task
proved highly successful and did more than anything else to offset the numerical
advantage of the Warsaw Pact in the air.
Outside the European theatre, but of crucial importance to it, a new air factor
was manifested in the transatlantic air bridge. Despite the early lessons from the
Berlin airlift back in the late forties, Western European strategists had been slow
to see air transport except in terms of an extension of existing logistic support. Not
so with the Americans, or for that matter the Russians, who in 1977-8 set up an
air bridge to the Horn of Africa that even in those days moved tanks to Ethiopia in
large Antonov transports. The reality was that air transport had now become one
of the major strategic manifestations of air power. It was therefore particularly
ironic that the British, in their defence economies of the seventies, should have so
drastically cut back their air transport force - a cut which forced their planners to
rely on the use of car ferries and steamers to and from the Hook of Holland in
their efforts to find ways of getting British reinforcements to the Northern Army
Group. Such measures were more reminiscent of the Paris taxis used to move
troops up to the Marne in 1914 than appropriate to the development of air power
in the second half of the twentieth century.
Perhaps the most vivid vindication of classical air thinking was the organization
of the command system of the Allied Air Forces in Europe in the early 1970s. It
had long been the claim of the airmen that if the flexibility and capacity for
concentration of air power was to be exploited then the air must be centrally
organized. This was indeed what happened, very much under US influence and
pressure, when a single air command was set up under COMAAFCE in Europe.
When the lock was forced at the northern end of the region and the entire
Northern Army Group was swung back like a huge door hinged on Kassel, it was
this organization which enabled COMAAFCE to swing his air forces through ninety
degrees to an east-west north-facing axis in a matter of hours. By the same token
he was able to accept the suddenly released reserves and apply them promptly to
the battle to which air power made such a decisive contribution.

Chapter 21
The Centre Holds

Early on 13 August it was confirmed to SACEUR that the transatlantic

convoys proceeding from the United States were at last within the UK Air Defence
Region, under air cover operating from bases in France and the United Kingdom.
Losses to personnel brought across by air (which included most of the units in
reinforcing formations, together with the greater part of their light and some heavy
equipment), had been high. Losses at sea to the ships bringing the balance of the
heavy equipment, with considerable numbers of men and invaluable munitions,
had also been heavy. Nevertheless there was now an early prospect of
augmentation of the forces available to Allied Command Europe by some four
divisions, together with a corps headquarters and corps and army troops. The
massive build-up which Soviet action had been planned to forestall was already
under way.
With a heavy concentration of air defence and, of no less importance, elaborate
precautions on the part of French police and troops to avoid civil disturbance and
disruption (see Chapter 22), the ships of the CAVALRY convoy could be expected
to begin discharging into French ports, where US troops were waiting to take over
their equipment, early on the morning of the 14th. Fully equipped units would
then move by road and rail at best speed through France and Belgium into the
area round Aachen.
At noon on that day, 13 August 1985, the Supreme Commander ordered the
release of four divisions from the theatre reserve. They were to come under
command to NORTHAG from 0001 hours, 14 August, for the purpose of opening
an offensive from present forward locations in the direction of Bremen. This was to
start not later than at first light the following day, 15 August. The operation,
codenamed ‘Culloden’, was already far advanced in contingency planning.
It was known for certain, from high-level surveillance, SIGINT and deep agency
reports on troop movements, that the enemy divisions now in action were from 7
Guards Army, brought up (as was also the case with 5 Guards Army) out of the
Byelorussian Military District in the USSR. Behind the leading motor-rifle
divisions in the first echelon of the assault force were two tank divisions. In
greater depth still, but with their leading units still only some thirty kilometres in
rear, were three more divisions, believed to be from the Twenty-Eighth Army out of
the same military district. It was now known that the unsuccessful airborne
assault, by 103 Guards Airborne Division, had also been mounted from there.
Of the Red Army formations met in action up to a week ago there was now little
sign in the forward areas, though some were known to be dispersed well in the
rear. Of those which had taken part in the initial assault on 4 August, no unit at
all, on the unquestionable evidence of reliable local sources, now remained on
Federal German soil. The Soviet practice of using divisions for three to five days in
all-out assault, to very near the point of total exhaustion, and then extracting
them for replacement by completely new formations, was clearly to be seen in
action. On the Allied side most formations had already been in action more than
once.
At 0400 hours on 14 August Warsaw Pact forces, after very heavy air and
artillery preparation, but no chemical attack, opened the expected assault on the
Venlo position. Airborne attack in battalion strength on the flanks fifteen
kilometres in rear, on Neuss and Roermond, proved fortunately to be of little more
than nuisance value. Two German Home Defence Groups, one on each flank, each
of nearly a brigade in strength, gave an excellent account of themselves in a role
for which they had done much training: after some very tough opposition the
German reservist and civilian soldiers triumphed over both attacks. Allied air
defence entirely prevented any heliborne follow-up. The crossings over the Rivers
Rhine and Maas remained in Allied hands, under the control of severely harassed
engineers, open at least by night and even sporadically by day. The enemy’s
attempt to isolate by airborne action the forward edge of the Allied battle area was
thus a total failure.
In the attack on the Venlo position the forward concentration of Allied forces,
four divisions deployed between two rivers on a front of thirty kilometres, with
anti-tank defences that were strong and well disposed in depth, put any use of the
enemy’s light lead forces on the usual pattern out of the question. The attack came
surging in, at first shooting light, after thirty minutes’ intense artillery fire aimed
at suppressing anti-tank defences, with three motor-rifle divisions up, each led by
its tank regiment, the tank companies coming in first and the motor-rifle
companies following, mounted in their BMP, some 200 metres behind. Direct
ATGW hits on leading BMP soon indicated that a mounted attack could only bog
down. A dismounted infantry attack in great strength followed, under fire support
from tanks, SP guns and BMP, with heavy concentrations from the tube artillery
and rocket launchers of the enemy’s divisional artillery, and air-to-ground attack
pressed hard in spite of considerable losses in aircraft. The very heavy weight of
the assault, with unit after unit piled on regardless of casualties, began to tell
before long. Here and there NATO defences, swamped by numbers, began to
crumble. The enemy, within an hour or two, was seen to be gaining a clear
advantage.
At the same time as the main assault on the Venlo position, another attack was
being made by one Soviet motorized division west of the Maas, southwards
towards Roermond. Heavy Allied missile concentrations on crossings over the
Maas and Lower Rhine, which were being kept open with great difficulty by Soviet
engineers, took sufficient of the edge off this attack to enable one US brigade,
operating with two Dutch regiments under command and anti-tank defences
disposed in depth, which the enemy had found it impossible entirely to suppress,
just to hold its own. Ground was given, but sufficient of the network of ATGW
remained in action to foil the enemy’s first attempt at doing to the Venlo position
on the west bank of the Maas, on a smaller scale, what the general Soviet offensive
had been trying to do to AFCENT as a whole, that is, to roll it up from the rear by
attack from north to south along the west bank of the Rhine.
An even stronger enemy attack than that west of the Maas developed at the
same time east of the Rhine, where units of II British Corps, with a Dutch brigade
and a strong and very recently regrouped German division, together with three
German Home Defence Groups, the whole force under a German general-
lieutenant, had up to now succeeded in preventing the movement of any but light
forces across the hardly formidable water obstacle of the River Lippe. Three things
had here contributed to an extremely important delay in the enemy’s advance:
flooding, which had done something to canalize movement from the north-east;
the extensive use of mines; and close air support, exploiting the slight but growing
advantage in the air the Allies now enjoyed and the evident superiority in
electronic warfare which was contributing so largely to it.
Of great assistance in the battle of the Lippe, on the right flank of the critical
fight for Venlo, were the heightened protection from air attack electronic
techniques afforded the Allied ground forces and, above all, the survival of effective
anti-tank defences against all attempts completely to suppress them. What was of
scarcely less importance here was the action on the ground of Federal German
reserve and territorial forces.
Even though a numerical superiority, at the chosen point of attack, of twenty or
thirty to one in favour of the enemy could be greatly reduced, considerable
advantage still remained to them. By nightfall on 14 August the forward edge of
the Allied position east of the Rhine was back to a line from Paderborn to
Duisburg. But for the tough fighting of the German territorial units, now
reinforced by another complete group, even this could not have been held. What
became known as the Battle of the Lippe was indeed something of a triumph for
the reserve forces of the Federal Republic.
By nightfall the centre of the Venlo front, between the Rivers Rhine and Maas,
had broken. The two British divisions defending the position, with one German
and one Belgian division, had been driven apart, and penetrations of up to twenty
kilometres had been reported.
Pressure from the enemy to exploit his advantage continued during the hours of
darkness. A full-scale assault was resumed at first light. Repeated requests from II
British Corps for nuclear fire support continued to be refused by AFCENT on the
Supreme Allied Commander’s orders, but very heavy artillery concentrations, from
both tube and missile systems, together with tactical air support on a scale not yet
seen on the Allied side, was having a marked effect in slowing down the enemy’s
advance. It had been possible during the night, moreover, to stabilize in depth a
number of defensive localities, where the anti-tank network was found to have
remained, to a surprising and encouraging extent, still in being. The enemy’s
suppressive action had been very far from fully effective. His advancing armour
and mechanized infantry now found itself obliged to move through a system of
interlocking ATGW positions which was still formidable.
What has been said before deserves to be said again. More and more, as the
fighting in the Central Region had developed during the last few days, was the
superiority of Allied electronic technology being seen on every side, both on the
ground and in the air. Now is not the time to speak at length on the improvement
in electronic techniques, in which the West had so very far outstripped the East
over the last few years, techniques in which a dramatic reduction in the size and
complexity of electronic components, as well as in their failure rate, had been
accompanied by a phenomenal reduction in cost. It is sufficient to say that, almost
unnoticed, the West, unhampered by industrial collectivism under state control
and with the stimulus of commercial competition, had established a lead over the
East. This had long been uneasily observed there but was now seen to be far
greater even than had been suspected. Its results were manifest in every sphere:
in the exploitation of the attack and reconnaissance capabilities of F-15 aircraft
and remotely-piloted vehicles (RPV), for example; in the deadly impact of precision-
guided missiles (PGM), which were immune to interference; in the netting of
tactical electronic units; in the reduction of vulnerability to interference with
communications by proliferation of channels; and in countless other ways. Allied
electronic counter-measures and counter-counter-measures were at the same time
reducing the effectiveness of hostile air and missile attacks without prejudice to
their own.
The operation of carefully co-ordinated intercept and interference systems
against communications was proving invaluable in the ground battle above all.
The location of hostile launchers and their swift destruction by terminally-homing
PGM; the jamming of hostile sensors; the diversion of missile attacks; the
application of a wide range of electronic counter-measures, behind an elaborate
and effective barrier of counter-counter-measures, to reduce the enemy’s capacity
to retaliate; and not least a policy of concentrated attack on the enemy’s command
and control mechanisms—all this was paying off handsomely. The Soviet system of
operational command was particularly sensitive. It was too inelastic to withstand
continued and determined efforts to seek out and destroy headquarters
installations. The inability of regimental commands to handle a fluid situation
when deprived of signals communication with divisional headquarters was now
more marked than ever. Forward radio intercept of transmission from penetrating
Soviet columns was picking up with growing frequency requests for fresh orders in
an unexpected situation.
Anti-tank defences, well disposed in depth, and in a highly favourable electronic
environment, could do a great deal to offset a heavy numerical inferiority on the
ground, particularly when the Allied tactical air forces were proving more effective
than those of their opponents. It could hardly be a complete substitute for
adequate strength in guns and armour on the battlefield, however. The
commander of II British Corps had not lost all tactical control within his area of
responsibility. His corps was still an operational entity, but it was split and
penetrated, and between groups now no longer able to support each other the
enemy’s advance went on. Though anti-tank defence detachments took a very
heavy toll, missile re-supply to the launchers was proving more and more difficult.
One by one ATGW crews were pinned down and overrun by motorized infantry in
BMP, now for the most part, in a development of high significance, attacking
mounted. By the late afternoon of 14 August leading elements of a Soviet tank
division were approaching Julich.
During the preceding night, however, a French armoured division had been
moving into the area around Maastricht. This was part of a French corps
previously intended for the Southern Army Group, but switched by SACEUR to
this location at the urgent instance of AFCENT (after hasty discussion with the
French government and swift intervention from Washington) late on the 13th. By
first light on the 15th, though not yet in contact, this French division was in a
useful and well-balanced position. Still rather thin on the ground as its units
moved up, it was nevertheless in touch on its right with the left flank of a force of
two US brigades, with which German Territorial units were operating in support,
deployed and largely dug-in east and west of Duren.
The peacetime location of HQ AFCENT at Brunssum, not far away, had now
been finally abandoned, command having been long exercised from a field
headquarters whose present location was near Liege. It was into the area of
Aachen that the advanced parties of the newly arrived US Corps, the
disembarkation of their heavy equipment in French ports now virtually complete,
began to arrive just before dawn on the 15th.

To the east of what was now becoming known as the Krefeld Salient two
British divisions and one German were fighting with their backs to the Rhine.
Their fire on the enemy’s flank, exploited by the timely manoeuvre of armoured
squadron groups, could not stop his southward advance but did much to slow it
down. On the other side of the Rhine, on the east bank, 14 August was a critical
day. NORTHAG was at all costs determined to hold firm in the area south of the
Lippe, to get the offensive now in preparation for the following morning off to a fair
start. Against the weight of opposition pressing down from the north this was far
from easy, but the battle that was now being fought, in great part by German
troops both of the regular army and of the reserve, on German soil, was
everywhere recognized to be of critical importance to the whole future of a free
Germany. The Battle of the Lippe was above all a stand by Germans, to give the
best chance of success in the counter-offensive for which Allied formations of six
nations were now advancing to their assembly and dispersal areas in preparation
for the attack. At nightfall the lines of approach for Allied units were still clear.
They were kept clear till dawn.
During the night the boundary between the Northern and Central Army Groups
was moved northwards. It now ran from Koblenz to Hannover.

We have treated the operations during these few days in mid-August 1985
with a degree of detail which might seem out of place in a book so limited in scope.
The reason is quite simple: 15 August was a critical day, a major turning point in
the whole battle for Europe.
What would have happened if the Alliance had done as little for its defences in
the past quinquennium as in the wasted years before is, as we look back today,
painfully evident. The Russians would by this time have been secure on their stop-
line on the Rhine, the Western Alliance would have lain in ruins, and the brutal
obliteration of the Federal Republic of Germany would already have begun. The
hopes of freedom in the subject peoples of the Soviet Union, both within the USSR
and outside it, beginning once more to stir when war broke out, would have
withered and died under a suffocating blanket of despair.
 What had been done within the Atlantic Alliance was not enough to prevent war.
Brought to the edge of it by miscalculation and mischance, with time not on their
side, the Russians were not held back from the invasion of Europe by the clear
certainty that an invasion would fail. On the contrary, the opening, even if less
attractive than before, still looked too good to miss, especially as it might not come
again. What the Western Allies had just managed to do, through a new surge of
confidence and resolve in some of them at least, was enough to soften the blow
when it came, to prevent the swift military resolution on which Soviet Russia
depended, to give time and opportunity for the use of some at least of the huge
resources disposed of in the West, and eventually to spark off the explosions in
subject nations which were in the end to bring the Soviet Union down.
At midday on 15 August, as the units of the new US corps, fully equipped and
ready for action, were hurrying under formidable defensive air cover by road and
rail through France, while on the far side of the Atlantic further shipping was
being marshalled into convoys to bring across the equipment for another, the
welcome news reached AFCENT that the NORTHAG offensive had got off well and
was making progress.
For the first time Allied ground forces were operating under conditions of local
air superiority. A formidable slice of 4 ATAF’s air reserves had been allotted by
COMAAFCE to 2 ATAF. CENTAG and SOUTHAG were supported only by what was
left of 4 ATAF, with the remnants of 5 ATAF and the French Tactical Air Force, the
latter long released from the French government’s insistence that it operate only in
support of troops under French command. For the time being, while the main
counter-offensive battle was opened in the north, this was enough in the south.
SOUTHAG’s turn would come.
Bremen airfield had been seized by US airborne troops and some, if not many,
air-portable units had been flown in, under anti-air defences that were now
proving more and more effective. The main attack, with three divisions up and two
more to follow, moving across the Lippe just before first light, with elaborate
deception measures to indicate an attack further west, was very greatly helped by
the emergence of well-equipped and carefully hidden stay-behind groups of
German Jagd Kommandos and British SAS (Special Air Service) left in the
Teutoburger Wald ten days before. A brilliantly successful SAS attack on a Soviet
divisional HQ did so much to confuse the Warsaw Pact defence that by nightfall on
15 August forward troops of a German division were once more back in
Osnabrück.
Useful and heartening though the Allied riposte might be, it could by no stretch
of the imagination be seen as the victory over the invading forces of the Warsaw
Pact which was immediately announced, to the great discomfort of Allied chiefs of
staff, by the Western press and TV networks worldwide, above all in the United
States. Little else had changed. In Norway, for example, AFNORTH, without much
in the way of air support except what could be provided from the United Kingdom,
and, with great difficulty, from carriers operating north of the Faroes, was still
containing and harassing the Soviet advance in the exceedingly difficult terrain of
Troms and Nordland. From the Skagerrak to the Hook of Holland the coast, and
the hinterland to some depth, was in occupation by Pact forces under Polish
command. Denmark had been overrun more than a week ago. Hamburg had been
declared an open city, a declaration which the Russians had ignored. It was being
left alone all the same, bypassed for attention later. The Berlin garrison,
surrounded by troops from divisions now withdrawn out of the fighting in the
FRG, was being almost contemptuously left alone. From the Baltic and Carpathian
Military Districts of the USSR some twenty divisions were on the move to come in,
as the next echelon, behind those that had followed up, out of Byelorussia, the
first incursion from the GSFG.
Further south little Austria had been brutally brushed aside. Two or three
brigades of good mountain troops were fighting on with the French and Germans
in Bavaria, and older folk in Graz were remembering again how things had been in
an occupation by Russian soldiers once before. AFSOUTH, with its regional
headquarters no longer in Italy but in Spain, had fallen apart. Soviet domination
of the Italian peninsula, if unobtrusive, was complete. In Yugoslavia the civil war
dragged on, with US marines, once in the eye of the storm before it became a
hurricane, now virtually cut off in Slovenia and tenuously supplied by air. Greece
was manning her frontier with Bulgaria, alongside Turkey-in-Europe. Asiatic
Turkey was under some Soviet pressure from the north, though not yet an object
of major attack. The Soviet Black Sea fleet had moved through the Straits already.
That, for the USSR, was enough for the present in south-east Europe.
The whole Allied position could hardly be called a winning one.
In the Central Region itself there were now deployed some forty divisions of the
Warsaw Pact, fifteen of them tank divisions. Though some, at least, of this
formidable order of battle had felt the effect of Allied air and missile attack, not
more than half of it had yet been in action against an enemy on the ground. By
any standard it was still three to four times as effective in firepower as the
aggregate of Allied troops arrayed against it, and up to now the Warsaw Pact had
held the whole initiative.
The Allied offensive of 15 August, nonetheless, was the key to changes of critical
importance. In the first place it brought into being in the forward areas a new
operational situation. The enemy had now to set about securing his flanks and
rear before attempting to resume the full impetus of his forward movement, which
it was only prudent for the time being to reduce. But there was more to it than
this. The operational challenge to the Soviet High Command could, at least in the
shorter term, be met and mastered. The political consequences of what was
happening, in the chemistry of which the military action of 15 August can now be
seen as a catalyst, could not.
The Soviet plan to bring about the military collapse of NATO’s Central Region,
with the occupation of the Federal Republic and the disintegration of the Atlantic
Alliance, before there was time to mobilize the West’s superior resources, or for the
Western Allies to come to an agreement on the use of nuclear weapons, had
already gone quite badly wrong. The intervention of the French, and the vigour
with which it was pursued, had been as unwelcome as it had been unexpected.
The improvements to NATO’s defensive posture in the previous few years, though
not such as to put invasion by the Warsaw Pact right out of the question, had
been sufficient to make it a good deal harder to bring off. The magnitude of the
superiority in electronic technology enjoyed by the Allies, above all by the United
States, and the adroitness of its application on the battlefield, had also come as an
ugly shock. This, among other consequences, had prevented the suppression of
anti-aircraft and anti-tank defences upon whose elimination Soviet tactical
practice, both in the air and on the ground, so heavily relied. It had greatly
hampered, by the severe degrading of communications which were sometimes
reduced almost to nil, the operation of mobile formations expected to manoeuvre
in depth.
The combined arms operations, moreover, upon which the battle-fighting
method of the Red Army fundamentally depended, had been anything but a
complete success. The Allies had operated, as it were, in the interstices of the
method, separating components whose strength lay in their interdependence. The
four main elements of the combined arms concept—manoeuvre, fire suppression,
organic defence and combat support—had rarely been allowed to operate together
in anything like the degree of harmony required.
For all these and other reasons the strategic programme had fallen so far
behind that there was now a real danger of that massive Western build-up which
it had been so important to forestall. Unaccountably, troop reinforcement over the
US air bridge had continued and the Soviet Navy had been unable to prevent the
safe arrival of heavy equipment by sea. More reinforcements were on the way.
From the military point of view the question had to be asked: how much was there
now to be gained by going on with a plan which had already failed?
The political consequences of incomplete military success in Germany were to
be far-reaching. The military might of the Warsaw Pact had not been defeated. Far
from it. What had happened, however, was almost as important as defeat. The Red
Army had been shown not to be invincible. As awareness of its limitations began
to spread so hope began to rise in places where, up to now, only an occasional
display of brave and fruitless dissidence had relieved the grey uniformity of a
hopeless resignation.
National revolt was still a long way off but the seeds of it were already being
sown as, in spite of the strictest censorship, the news went swiftly round that all
was not well with the offensive of the Warsaw Pact in Germany. From mid-August
onwards growing partisan activity, with widespread sabotage and the disruption of
rail communications through satellite countries, began to present an increasing
problem on the lines of communication. This occurred first where, from the point
of view of military supply, it mattered most—Poland. The same thing also began to
happen in Czechoslovakia, and to a lesser extent in Hungary and Romania.
Allied assistance to partisan forces, already some months in preparation, was
immediately forthcoming. In the last year techniques of the Second World War,
which some had feared might be allowed to lapse entirely, had been revived. The
very large expatriate communities, particularly of Poles and Czechs, and to a
lesser extent of Hungarians, in the United States, and of Poles born in Britain to
ex-soldiers of the Second World War who had settled there, had been combed for
recruits. Detachments of some size were already in an advanced state of training
and were now, with munitions, weapons, communications equipment and
supplies, being lifted surreptitiously by air into their own countries. Their
principal task, in addition to the raising of now no longer wholly unjustified hopes
of future deliverance, was interference, to the maximum degree, with rail and road
communications.
 As the US air bridge had so dramatically shown, the personnel of military
formations could readily be replaced by air. The Soviet airline Aeroflot had for
years been organized for, and practised in, the task of personnel reinforcement,
and in the ‘exercises’ which had preceded invasion had been fully mobilized for it.
Some freight movement, too, even of heavy loads, was possible by air, but very
large tonnages of fuel and munitions could not be handled so easily, still less the
large numbers of heavy equipment, the tanks, SP guns and BMP, which were
needed as unit replacements, and least of all the entire provision for an armoured
or motorized formation moving up to relieve another which was exhausted and
depleted in the battle. Road movement could help, though with all the
disadvantages of wear and tear upon equipment the essential means of transport
for combat formations remained the railway.
Great improvements had been made in the last few years in the rail support
system within the Warsaw Pact. Gauges had been unified, equipment
standardized, tracks multiplied. Long stretches of permanent way nevertheless
remained open to interference, only secure under close and continuous watch, a
heavy drain on military manpower. Partisan attack, over the very long stretches
involved, was becoming a great and growing problem, absorbing in protective
duties increasing numbers of formations which should have been moving up to the
front.
The Soviet Union had always enjoyed the advantages of relatively short land
lines of communication between the area of probable operations in Europe and the
home base. The United States had the Atlantic Ocean to cross, involving much
longer distances and less secure transit in slower and less efficient load carriers.
Air transportation had modified the position and reduced the disadvantage to the
US. It could not entirely remove it. This was a situation that the Soviet Union had
always sought to exploit (with a success that throws an interesting light on the
gullibility of some Western politicians) in any discussion on mutual force
reductions. The advantage of land over sea routes would always persist, but the
action of determined partisans, maintained in the face of measures of repression
and reprisal whose very brutality underlined the importance of what was
happening, was already doing much to reduce it.
In absolute terms, moreover, the mass and volume (to say nothing of the cost) of
all that was required, particularly in fuel and munitions, to maintain an army in
field operations at an intensive rate against a similarly equipped opponent, was
now very great. It had taken a quantitative jump since the Second World War.
Warfare in the Middle East in the seventies had shown this very clearly, if on a
relatively small scale. It was just no longer possible, at the rate at which stocks
could now be exhausted, to sustain intensive operations of war for months on end.
Head—and equipment—counts were no longer the true measure of an army’s
capability. Formations in large numbers could be a liability rather than an
advantage unless they could be kept effectively in action.
The Soviet war-fighting philosophy, from whatever origins it may have been
evolved, was in the circumstances of the 1980s exactly right. It enjoined the
initiation of total and violent offensive action, swiftly followed through to the early
attainment of a valuable objective. The position of military advantage thus secured
would then be exploited by political means. Speed was everything. The corollary
was that failure to secure the objective in good time must result in a thorough-
going reappraisal, in which to continue to press towards the same end might very
well be the least sensible course.
In the operation in the Central Region, at its sharpest point in the Krefeld
Salient, the Warsaw Pact advance never got any further than Julich. The newly
arrived US corps, equipped out of Convoy CAVALRY, was already by 16 August
building up on the western flank. This posed a threat which, taken in conjunction
with the northward offensive of the Northern Army Group, could mean nothing
other than a halt to the advance and an enforced change-over to defensive action
(for which the Red Army was not well suited) or to withdrawal.
The French division deployed in the Maastricht area in the emergency situation
of 13-14 August was relieved as soon as US troops began to arrive in strength. It
joined up with the rest of the Southern Army Group, which was now in a position,
with some further switch-back of Allied air power, to open a counter-offensive
towards the Czechoslovak frontier. This began on 17 August. By then NORTHAG’s
northwards offensive towards Bremen had regained possession of the Teutoburger
Wald, but it could make no further headway against the very heavy flank defences
of a rearward regrouping movement by Pact forces which could hardly yet be
described as a retreat.

We have looked in some detail at the circumstances leading to the

abandonment of the initial plan of the Warsaw Pact and the rearward regrouping
which followed. The events of the next few weeks can be passed over more rapidly.
Before we move on, however, some comment on SACEUR’s handling of the battle
may not be out of place.
It was a very near thing. The Supreme Commander was quite determined to
avoid the use of battlefield nuclear weapons if he possibly could, in the certain
conviction, shared by the President of the USA, that this could have no other
result than swift escalation into the nightmare of unrestricted strategic nuclear
exchange, with results which could not fail to be disastrous. As commander in the
theatre he was also determined to keep under his own hand as long as he possibly
could those modest theatre reserves which constituted his whole remaining
capability to influence the battle. He was on the horns of a dilemma, precisely the
same dilemma which had brought so much discomfort into the debate on the
‘forward defence’ of the FRG. To be able to hold off a very much superior attacking
force, without giving ground, either additional troops were needed on the spot—or
nuclear weapons.
SACEUR’s subordinate commanders had been pressing him to furnish one or
the other with ever-growing urgency. Counter-offensive action to relieve pressure
at the vital point was most critically necessary. It was the prospect of the arrival of
the transatlantic reinforcement convoy which justified him, in his own judgment,
in taking the considered (and considerable) risk of releasing his only reserves for
this purpose before the new formations to reconstitute them were securely under
his hand. This, it may be added, greatly strengthened him in resisting any further
pressure for nuclear release.
Analysts are already busy in debate on the wisdom of Soviet naval policy in the
seventies. We make some comment on this in Appendix 2. What is abundantly
clear in the present connection is that without the US Navy, assisted by the
European Allies, there would have been no further reinforcement of Allied
Command Europe by any but light formations after the outbreak of hostilities.
Without Allied air power the movement of troops to the theatre and the safe
delivery of essential equipment would have been impossible. Without the
expectation of early reinforcement SACEUR would have been faced with a choice
between surrender of his last remaining means of influencing the battle or, by
securing the release of battlefield nuclear weapons, committing the world to the
near certainty of a catastrophic future. Without stout fighting by the German
Territorial forces, in addition to the outstanding performance of the regular forces
of the FRG, the Allied counter-offensive might never have got across the start-line.
Without the strength and flexibility of Allied tactical air power, and its skilful
exploitation, the battle for the Central Region would have been lost almost before it
began. The list of what could have gone badly wrong is a long one. It was certainly
a very near thing.
The rearward movement of Warsaw Pact forces in the Federal Republic was not
the retreat of a defeated army. Though always under pressure from Allied forces
which were growing constantly in strength, penetrating where they could and
never failing to preserve that intimacy of contact which was always something of
an insurance against nuclear attack, the forces of the Warsaw Pact were still able
to develop a local superiority almost at will and to retain a high degree of tactical
control along the forward edge of their battle area. They had failed in what they
had set out to do, however, and the opportunity to do it could not be recreated.
There was not only no point in staying where they were. It was going to become
increasingly dangerous and difficult to try to do so. The wisest course was to
withdraw.
We are concerned here only with the military situation as it confronted Allied
Command Europe. Political developments, and particularly those within the
Warsaw Pact, which were to become of paramount importance at a later stage, are
another matter and are treated in Chapter 26.
In the AFNORTH area, the whole of Denmark and north Norway remained
occupied. A gentle movement of the Soviet administrative elements, with security
troops and guard units, which was virtually all that had moved into Italy in the
first few days of August, had begun out of the AFSOUTH area. By the end of the
month the communist-dominated Italian government was on its own, to make
what reconciliation would be found possible with its former allies under the
Atlantic Treaty.
In the Central Region the early withdrawal of the Soviet divisions in the Krefeld
Salient, following hard upon the opening of the NORTHAG counter-offensive of 15
August, was the beginning of an orderly rearward movement along the whole
Warsaw Pact front, everywhere—except possibly in the extreme south—under firm
Soviet tactical control. A concentration of four Soviet divisions north of
Osnabruck, facing south, kept open the southern hinge of a door which might
otherwise have closed upon Pact formations moving eastwards out of the Low
Countries and the westernmost parts of the Federal Republic, harassed on their
way by Allied air attack and the action of II British Corps but still in being. The
Allied airhead round Bremen, which might have been the hinge of the northern
half of NORTHAG’s door, was firmly contained by the enemy; it would be some
time before mine clearance allowed access to it from the sea. In spite of persistent
pressure from the south the gap between the Teutoburger Wald and the North Sea
coast was never fully closed, and Pact formations were able to move through it
eastwards, if only, for the most part, at night. Allied artillery fire caused heavy
losses and, in spite of the occasional temporary establishment of local air
superiority by Pact air forces, Allied air attack was frequently of devastating
effectiveness. A dogged Soviet screen of tank and motorized divisions, however,
was able to maintain a defensive front, and this, with the help of local counter-
attacks, just held off the threat from the south to the rearward movement.
The Allied purpose was less to inflict a punishing defeat on the armies of the
Warsaw Pact in the field than to get them off the territory of the Federal Republic
as soon as possible, with the minimum of Allied loss and collateral damage. From
the junction with NORTHAG, which was now on a line running north-east through
Hildesheim, CENTAG maintained continuous heavy pressure on Pact formations
moving eastwards (though with no further major set-piece battle) all the way south
to the junction with SOUTHAG. By 18 August no troops of the Warsaw Pact were
anywhere to be found in the CENTAG area, out of captivity, west of the
Demarcation Line. It was clear, however, that an advance by Allied troops across
the line into the GDR would be fiercely resisted, and orders to Allied Command
Europe were for the present to hold hard.
In north Germany the position was rather more complicated. Bremen was
relieved by 20 August. On the 23rd the forces of the Pact had consolidated
everywhere along the Demarcation Line except in the vicinity of Hamburg. Here
the River Elbe was the front. Hamburg, its declaration by the Senat as an open
city notwithstanding, had been occupied by the Russians. In order to avoid further
harm to a city so far very little damaged and the loss of civilian life, no attempt
was as yet being made by the Allies to take it back.
It was only in the extreme south that offensive operations were still in active
progress. The Southern Army Group, with II French Corps, II German Corps and
about a division of Austrian troops, all under French command, and a heavy
concentration of Allied tactical air forces in support, had crossed a start-line
between Nurnberg and Munchen on 17 August in an advance directed on Pilsen. It
had moved into Czechoslovakia on the 20th and was now making slow but steady
progress. Of the troops opposing it none were Czechoslovak. Instead, SOUTHAG
was now facing Soviet divisions out of 8 Guards Army and the Thirty-eighth Army
from the Carpathian Military District.
On 21 August the southern advance was brought to a halt, at least for the time
being, with its left flank, where II German Corps was deployed, south-west of
Cheb. It has since become clear that the Central Group of Soviet Forces was
concerned at the possibility of invasion of the GDR from the south and was under
orders to resist it strongly if it came. It can also be safely claimed that the forward
thrust of the Southern Army Group threw the operations of the Warsaw Pact in
the Central Region of NATO considerably off-balance and thus helped to expedite
its withdrawal in the northern plain.
Three momentous weeks had passed since that morning of 4 August when the
world woke up to find itself once more with a major war on its hands. Only a
pocket, if an important one, of Federal territory was still in the enemy’s hands.
Though still very much at war the Federal Republic was able to look cautiously
around and make a first assessment of the damage. Bremen was in ruins.
Hannover was very badly damaged too, particularly on the east and south.
Probably on account of the speed of the action the damage in other cities was not
as great. Kassel, Nurnberg and Munchen had all suffered, and the great cities of
the Rhineland had not been spared, though the spire of Koln cathedral had again
surprisingly survived. But though the future was obscure and peace was not yet in
sight, the worst seemed to have been averted, for the time being at least. The
invasion of the Federal Republic of Germany by the Warsaw Pact had failed and
the Atlantic Alliance had survived.

Chapter 22
Home Fires: The Domestic Scene in a Televisual Society

Hostilities had opened in Europe after a period in which every country in

the Western Alliance had, to some degree or another and each according to its own
particular needs and inclinations, done something to offset the result of years of
general public disregard of the possibility of war.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, the country most exposed, it had been
necessary to move with circumspection. The inescapable requirement to make
some provision for the evacuation of forward areas near the border with East
Germany, where early fighting would be sharpest, and the need to take account of
refugee movement flooding westwards, had to be met in such a way as not to
diminish confidence in the policy of forward defence or in the protection given by
NATO. Carefully and unobtrusively a great deal had been done. Arrangements for
the evacuation of children and the provision of emergency stand-by services in
depth were generally allowed to be not incompatible with an official policy which
encouraged people to stay where they were in a war emergency. There was
realistic, discreet and thorough planning for what was to be done if they failed to
do so. The provision for the handling of a very big flow of population from the
forward areas, much of it panic-stricken under air attack, for its marshalling,
guidance, reception, dispersion and maintenance, was both extensive and sound.
The development of the Territorial Army, which with its three Territorial
commands of five military districts had made impressive progress from the late
seventies onwards, furnished an invaluable supporting structure for the operation
of emergency services. Its communications, engineer, police and service units,
working in close harmony at Federal and Land level with civil and paramilitary
border police, all under a staff and command system reflecting the usual efficiency
of German military practice, proved of inestimable value. In the same years, civil
defence measures—including some provision of shelters, emergency stores of food
and medical supplies, hardened stand-by communications and sources of power—
had also made progress. A more generous financial provision in Federal and Land
budgets in the previous five years was well justified in the event.
 In France there was less inclination to provide for civil defence than in the FRG.
The argument was freely used that to do so would only diminish confidence in the
deterrent effect of the country’s preparedness to defend itself (which included a
built-in nuclear capability under national control). It certainly saved the French
government a good deal of money.
The French nuclear capability was never used, however. Under a Popular Front
government the nuclear element in the defence programme had been allowed to
fall behind, but even if it had not been, there was no question but that in a
bilateral exchange with the USSR, without US intervention, France would be the
loser. Soviet propaganda played upon this. The Soviet Union made it clear that
there would be no area bombing of French cities but that precision attack could be
expected from the air on any port or other target actively operating in an Allied
military interest. A nuclear response from France would result in a rain of
weapons of mass destruction upon her cities.
There was, in fact, considerable Soviet conventional bombing of French ports
and communications complexes. Since, however, penetration by hostile aircraft
was for the greater part of their journey over land and through several belts of air
defence, the damage that was done, where it mattered most to the Allied war effort
(above all in the Western ports), was not intolerably great.
Quite as much hindrance, and possibly even more, to the prosecution of the war
in France came from civil disturbance. War with the Soviet Union stripped the
mask from many professing Euro-communism in France, as in Italy and other
countries. An impressively well-prepared Peace Movement burgeoned on the
streets at once. Demonstrations, strikes and sabotage led to frequent clashes
between communist and Gaullist sympathizers and a growing strain on the police,
in whose support troops sometimes had to intervene. Widespread avoidance of
call-up was accompanied by a sharp rise in petty crime. Food and petrol rationing,
introduced on mobilization, never worked and perhaps were scarcely expected to.
On the whole, nevertheless, France moved towards a war footing without
intolerable upheaval, largely because the overwhelming majority of the French
people were seen to be plainly in favour of resistance to the Soviet initiative.
Conditions were much the same in the Low Countries, with the added pressure
of the immediate danger of invasion in both Belgium and the Netherlands, and, in
the case of the latter, the burden of partial occupation by the enemy within a very
few days. Resistance in Holland was slow to get under way in the Second World
War, due to the habits formed over a long period of neutrality. When it found its
feet it was formidable. In the Third World War there were many still in Holland
who remembered how it had been before. Underground movements began to come
into being as soon as the country was ordered to mobilize. From the time Soviet
troops first crossed the frontier they felt the strength and dourness of Dutch
resistance and replied with a savagery far exceeding what was still remembered in
Holland from the Germans. It was fortunate indeed for the Dutch that this
occupation by a wartime enemy of a very different sort lasted only a few weeks.
Britain, once again free from invasion and occupation by an enemy, had its own
problems. An account is given in Chapter 4, ‘Awakening Response in the West’,
and in Appendices 1 and 4, of the growing awareness, in the seven years before
the outbreak of war, of the reality of the danger to the Western Alliance from the
USSR, of the dangerously weak state into which the defences of the United
Kingdom had been allowed to fall, and of the country’s exposed position as the
bridgehead for US reinforcement. In the matter of civil defence, growing pressure
from the public, spearheaded in the first instance by unofficial bodies such as the
National Emergency Volunteers (see Appendix 4), finally compelled a reluctant
government to take the threat more seriously. Government spending on civil
defence £2 million per annum in 1978, just one-twentieth of what had been
allocated ten years earlier) was sharply increased, until by 1983 it was
approaching the 1968 figure. The legislation on army reserves (see Appendix 1),
introduced as a result of constant pressure from Chief Constables on the Home
Office, provided for the re-establishment of what was known as TAVR II—a part of
the Territorial and Auxiliary Volunteer Reserve of particular relevance in the
management of a national emergency—in a general increase in reserve forces.
Further legislation included, in 1983, a Civil Protection (Emergencies) Act, which
rationalized and extended emergency planning at all levels and introduced a
phased system of alerts. A national civil defence exercise held in August 1984 led
to a widespread improvement in procedures and brought out the clear lesson—
borne out a year later—that law and order would provide the acutest problems.
It is now perfectly clear that but for these reforms Great Britain would have
fallen into near-chaos under Soviet air attack. And no rocket attack was
experienced for more than a fortnight. Until the Soviet Union was prepared to
initiate the use of nuclear weapons as a deliberate act of policy, and accept the
consequences, it would be taking a wholly irrational risk to allow ballistic missiles
to appear on Western tracking screens. Conventional high explosive and
incendiary bombing, mixed with chemicals, delivered from manned aircraft using
stand-off methods, caused damage enough.
Evacuation of children, food and petrol rationing, the activation of emergency
services, the decentralization of administration - all worked smoothly enough. It
was the exodus from the towns, particularly from the Midlands and the north
towards the west and south, that did most to tax the authorities, even with their
new-found powers and resources. It was in movement, too, that there occurred the
ugliest scenes of mob violence, rioting and looting.
Lawlessness was particularly in evidence in the towns. Houses left untenanted
were an open invitation to burglary. Mugging in the streets, even in broad daylight,
was common. Air raids offered particularly favourable opportunities for crime,
though it was claimed by some that you were safer on the streets during an alert
than after it. The ‘all-clear’ brought the muggers out again.
It cannot truthfully be said that Britain was ever near collapse as an ordered
society, though life in it in those few weeks was difficult for many, and dangerous
for some, while death and destruction were widespread. Much went on as before.
The weather was good. In the country the hay was in, the harvest promising.
Industry, the railways, coal mining, went on much as before, though North Sea
gas was cut off and little oil flowed. Movement was difficult but rationing hurt very
few. Food distribution worked well enough, even under the stresses of refugee
movement. Cricket was played. People swam, sailed and fished. There was even
some racing. The school holidays were not yet over, though when they were very
many schools would not reopen in the same place. People still tended to live a
large part of their lives with, and through, television—perhaps even more so than
before. Indeed, since television was an aspect of life which, in wartime, at once
assumed an enormously enhanced importance, the part it played in the events of
August 1985 deserve closer examination.
The war brought immediate censorship to the television screens in Western
Europe and the United States. In the years preceding the outbreak of fighting
there had been considerable debate as to how far it would be wise to adopt open
censorship, with the risk of breaking public trust in the television news, long
established as the main source of news. The realities of the war swept those
doubts aside. One of the most cogent arguments for censorship in the Second
World War—the need to deny the enemy information which would be of value to
him—was no longer valid. Soviet space satellites, with the detailed information
they could afford, provided an immediate and much more accurate picture of what
was happening than could be gleaned from the television screen. Had fear of
informing the enemy been the only factor, risks could have been taken. But the
risk which no government and no military leader in the West could accept was
that of potential damage to civilian morale if the high and horrible cost in human
suffering of this war were to be projected night after night into the homes of the
public. This was a more important factor in the United States than in Britain and
on the Continent, where the pattern of viewing had been much disrupted by the
air attacks, which drove people away from their sitting rooms and into cellars and
shelters into which they could not usually move their televisions. Here the radio
reasserted itself as the main source both of news and of guidance from the
authorities. But on the Continent, too, over wide areas, particularly outside the
main cities, life was able to continue nonetheless with a considerable degree of
normality, and the television screen remained the centre of attention. So the
authorities from the outset adopted a policy of allowing the television bodies to
cover the war as freely as they could whilst insisting on a rigid censorship of the
material which emerged. In practice, this did not prove too difficult a task, for the
highly mechanized, rapid, highly scientific nature of the fighting, together with the
paralysing effect of chemical warfare on all but those equipped to deal with it,
limited drastically the coverage which was possible. Battle losses among television
cameramen, even in the comparatively short time the fighting lasted, were high.
This policy of strict censorship prevailed throughout the three weeks of the
fighting in Europe. Whether it could have lasted in such a rigid form if the conflict
had gone on much longer is another matter. There were already signs of
restiveness by the third week. In Britain the policy received its most severe test
when Birmingham was destroyed. For the first twenty-four hours after the attack
the authorities declared a complete ban on all pictures from the scene -pictures
which were in any event difficult to secure. Coverage was concentrated on the size
of the rescue operation, on scenes of fire brigades and rescue squads moving into
the area, and on the damage on the periphery. But such was the wave of rumour
and alarm which spread throughout the country that the government rapidly
reversed this decision, and decided that only the truth would meet the situation. It
therefore allowed the full story to be told, encouraged no doubt by the knowledge
that the counter-blow on Minsk had already done much to loosen the links
between the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites.
 The propaganda war, which was to a large extent a television war, was not,
however, fought by the combatants for the minds of their own peoples only. It was
also a war to influence the minds of the enemy, and the minds of the neutrals—
and of their allies. Both sides saw immediately that the most effective propaganda
they could make use of would be to emphasise the sufferings of their troops, giving
the widest possible exposure to those scenes of casualties and damage which were
being so carefully censored out. Within Germany the communist bloc were able to
make immediate use of the East German and Czechoslovakian wavebands, already
readily viewable within Western Europe, to disseminate such pictures. They
reinforced this, particularly in the case of Britain, by disseminating material from
satellites, utilizing for this purpose the fourth television channel which existed on
most British sets, and which had by 1985 still not been used for entertainment. It
should be added here that the main reason for this had, ironically, been the
decision to divert into improved defence expenditure the resources which might
otherwise have gone to financing further television. Though the British authorities
were able to jam this wavelength, the Soviet Union were still able to infiltrate a
considerable volume of material aimed at damaging the morale of Western
audiences. It was almost all of terrible casualties, shown in close-up, of shocked
and exhausted prisoners, of mile upon mile of damaged tanks, smashed vehicles
and the wreckage of every kind of equipment. Many sequences showed shocked
and wounded Allied prisoners pleading, whether genuinely or with false voices
dubbed over, for peace.
The Allied response was on similar lines. From West German transmitters a
steady volume of comparable material was directed at East Germany,
Czechoslovakia and Poland. To begin with little effort was made to hit at the
morale of the Russians themselves. The Allies rightly appreciated that if the crack
was to come, it would be within the satellite states. Two ‘black’ propaganda
television stations, operating from the Federal Republic, one beamed into
Czechoslovakia and one into East Germany, began broadcasting within hours of
the outbreak of war. These had been skilfully prepared, with the aid of exiled
broadcasters from those countries, to resemble closely the official communist
stations. They presented themselves as being Czechoslovak Television and GDR
Television, operating on a separate wavelength because of damage to transmitters
on the main wavelength. They gave a service identical in pattern to the official
service, but with the news, and in particular the newsfilm, selected to present the
communist position in the worst possible light. Since the main stations were still
transmitting, the device was readily detected, but investigations after the war
showed that these stations had commanded a surprisingly high audience, due at
least in part to the high quality of their transmissions. One feature was their use
of recordings of popular serials and popular music programmes which ran on the
official Eastern channels, which had been pirated off the air by agencies of the
Federal Republic in advance, ready for re-use.
The parallel propaganda battle for the minds of people outside Europe and the
United States was also fought on radio and television. Three areas were of
outstanding importance: Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. Both the
Warsaw Pact and the Allied powers sought from the outset to use television to
prove one central point to the people of these areas—that their side was winning.
There was no time to go into the question of the rights and wrongs of the struggle.
What was going to influence the attitudes of Africa and the Middle East and Far
East was above all which side they thought was going to win. Soviet propaganda
concentrated on constant radio reports of the success of their attacks, supported
by television news pictures of their forces in action - and winning. Allied
propaganda was much the same, except that the message they had to convey was
not one of victorious advances but of successful resistance. Every day that the
Russians were held away from the Rhine was a propaganda gain of the utmost
value, for it dented the image of Soviet invincibility.
In this propaganda struggle the Allies were possessed from the outset of
superior resources, both technical and human. The addiction of the peoples of
Western Europe and America to television in the pre-war years now proved a boon.
It had given Western Europe, and above all Britain and the United States, an
efficient worldwide infrastructure for the swift transmission of television pictures,
via satellite, all over the globe. The structure designed to meet the world’s hunger
for pictures of European football, and news, was ideal for international
propaganda. Every day, in peacetime, international newsfilm agencies, together
with Eurovision and the other international television bodies, had been
transmitting, chiefly from centres in London, New York, San Francisco and
Madrid, a steady stream of programme material. Thousands of technicians were
trained for this work and accustomed to doing it. The Allies could draw, therefore,
on the hundreds of television camera teams, almost all now equipped with
lightweight, highly portable ENG cameras, who worked for the many television
stations of the West. When the fighting broke out the American networks operated
from their relatively secure base in the United States as a united body, pouring
out to the rest of the world a flood of material gathered by the camera teams of all
the Allied countries.
Three aspects of the battle for Europe received particularly vivid coverage. First
there was the operation of the transatlantic air bridge. Day after day the television
screens of the world showed the endless stream of transport aircraft bringing in
and discharging into Europe men and war material from the seemingly limitless
resources of the United States. Second, West German cameramen provided, with
great courage and day after day, much dramatic footage of German resistance to
the invaders, seen at its most spectacular along the line of the River Lippe. Not
only were there shots of close combat, at once terrifying and moving, but
interviews with the German infantry which left no doubt as to the strength of their
morale and their great determination. Third, similar coverage was provided of the
fighting through of the CAVALRY convoys at sea. No fewer than five cameramen
lost their lives in this operation, for camera crews had been stationed on many of
the escort craft and major transports, and others flew with maritime aircraft.
Though there was considerable footage of the sinking of Allied vessels, this added
a note of convincing veracity to the recording of the arrival of the bulk of the
convoy. Culminating, as the work of these cameramen did, in scenes of troops
moving away from the quayside in France, depleted perhaps but very formidable,
this highly important battle was shown to the outside world as the victory which it
was. In the field of peaceful electronics, the electronics of television, the Western
technical superiority was to prove almost as important as its superiority in the
electronic technology of the battlefield.
In this propaganda battle the Allies had another weapon on their side -
flexibility and speed of decision. The US President made one ruling of major
importance immediately upon the outbreak of war. He resisted demands that a
censorship board be established to guide and select the flow of television material
overseas. ‘We must trust the networks and the individual broadcasters,’ he said.
‘We must rely on them to be both patriotic and sensible.’ An ad hoc organization of
television professionals was set up and given scope to make the constant, split-
second decisions on the choice of material to be transmitted throughout the world
upon which television depends. They were guided—and in the last resort could
have been controlled—by military advisers whose task was to ensure that no
information of positive military value to the enemy was sent out. For instance, no
coverage was given of the points of embarkation or the detailed composition of air
loads from the US, still less of the location of their points of arrival in Europe.
There was no coverage of the assembling of the CAVALRY convoys, no disclosure
of their exact contents or destination. Shots which showed secret equipment in
detail were excluded. But even such material as this was treated much less
stringently than in previous wars, for, as has already been pointed out, it was
known that the Soviet Union, by means of satellite surveillance, active pre-war
espionage and the early capture of much equipment in the fighting in Germany,
had access to most of these secrets anyway. By and large the broadcasters were
free to treat this material very much as they wished, within the general
understanding that it should be fairly selected so as to give a reasonably accurate
picture of the broad strategic scene. This meant that coverage of Allied losses and
withdrawals was balanced by coverage of Allied resistance and counter-attack.
Within this broad understanding, however, the broadcasters were left to make
their own judgments.
This had two results, both of considerable value to the Allied cause. It meant
that the material from Allied broadcasters reached the screens of the outside world
ahead of that coming from the Soviet bloc; and that it reached those screens in a
form that made it all the more convincing. It contained, if not the whole truth, at
least a reasonably rounded version of the truth. Certainly it was more truthful
than the coverage which came from Moscow. The communist material was not
only less plentiful, there being fewer peacetime camera resources to deploy, but it
was also dangerously delayed by their censorship machine. All Warsaw Pact
footage of the fighting had to be screened, in both senses of the word, by Soviet
officialdom. It arrived hours—and sometimes days—later than the Allied coverage.
Day after day the first impression of the fighting available to television stations all
over the world was that supplied by the Allies—and it was an impression of
embattled countries which, whilst suffering heavy and grievous setbacks, were
holding on strongly enough to enable the massive power of the United States to be
brought to bear. This did a great deal to sustain the morale of key countries like
Iran, a great deal to ensure the continued but friendly neutrality of the Far
Eastern bloc, and a great deal, as post-war research has already shown, to raise
anxieties within some African and Middle Eastern states that they might have
backed the wrong side.
 Within that most television-addicted society in Europe, the United Kingdom,
television played a curiously subdued role. By 1985 it had become in every way
the main source of information and entertainment for the public. The various
view-data systems which were then commonplace had added the dimension of a
journal of record, a development which had weakened still further the impact of
the newspapers. When war came, the public turned to television for news,
guidance and information, and for that measure of entertainment for which the
human spirit, however closely facing disaster, still has a craving. The first of these
the television organizations were able to supply, in copious measure. For the first
few days of the fighting the screens were given over almost entirely to continuous
news programmes, interspersed with messages about air raid precautions or
emergency services, with administrative instructions on such matters as rationing
and evacuation. There were also frequent speeches from government leaders.
Here the broadcasters found themselves on secure ground. Their touch was less
certain when it came to entertainment. They fell back in the first instance on
music, played from behind a caption card. But modern rock sounded suddenly out
of place. Light entertainment and comedy struck such a false note that, after one
channel had experimented with these as some form of relief from the gloom, they
were abruptly dropped. One British regional station had an immediate and warmly
approving reaction from its audience when it went over unashamedly to an
abundance of frankly patriotic music. But there were limits to the number of times
which even the works of Elgar could be played within the space of twenty-four
hours. An early answer was found in the wide use of soap operas. Extensive re-
runs of Coronation Street and Crossroads proved extraordinarily acceptable, if only
because they were a reminder of a normality which had once existed, and which
might, with good fortune, exist again. And the Western, that one indestructible
standby of television ever since its early days, also proved readily acceptable in
wartime, with its recipe of fantasy rooted in reality, and its reassuring message
that in the end the good and the right always triumph.

Chapter 23
The Vital Peripheries: Middle East and Africa

Almost fifty years ago General Wavell, when contemplating from the Middle
East the stakes involved in an earlier world crisis, summed up the strategic
balance in a statement remarkable alike for its brevity and its prescience. Oil,
shipping, air power and sea power, said Wavell, were the keys to the war against
Germany and Italy. They were dependent on each other. Air and sea power
required oil. Oil had to be moved about in ships. Ships themselves required the
protection of naval and air power. Wavell went on to argue that since the British
Empire had access to most of the world’s oil, as it had to most of the world’s
shipping, and since it was well endowed with naval power and potentially with air
power—‘we are bound to win’.
 To what extent did this sort of reasoning still apply half a century later? It was
true that oil was still both cause and means of conflict; it was true that sea power
was still largely dependent on oil and on the shipping indispensable to its
transportation; it was true that air power and oil were still inextricably bound
together—for use, for protection, for movement. What was no longer true was that
‘we’—the Western Allies—still had a monopoly of all of them.
Every great nation which without the benefit of sea power had sought to humble
others in inter-continental struggles had in the end been humbled itself by sea
power. It was a lesson enviously learned by the Soviet Union and carelessly
thrown aside by its once greatest exponent—Great Britain.
The equation was now a very different one. The Soviet Union had some 8,000
registered merchant ships with a gross tonnage of 20 million; the USA less than
5,000 ships although a tonnage also of close on 20 million. The Soviet Union had
500 oil tankers, the USA 300. In reserves of crude oil the Soviet Union had some 6
1/2 billion tonnes as against 4 3/4 billion tonnes. The Soviet Union was the
world’s leading crude oil producer, the United States the second. Yet the United
States now imported 500 million tonnes of crude oil annually, nearly half of it from
the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean. The Soviet Union imported none. As if
this were not enough, the Soviet Navy was the largest in the world, with some 250
major surface combat vessels and 300 submarines, of which 200 were nuclear-
powered. Aircraft integral to the Soviet Navy totalled around 700. The Soviet Air
Force had some 10,000 combat aircraft, including 1,000 bombers, of which one-
fifth were inter-continental, 4,000 fighters in support of ground troops and about
the same number for air defence. Air transports, including helicopters, amounted
to more than 2,000. We summarize these resources here (though it must be
remembered that a good part of them would be orientated towards China and the
Pacific) as a reminder that it seemed to be the Russians, now, who had all the
ingredients of Wavell’s recipe for victory.
In the Second World War the struggle for Africa and the Middle East had been a
sideshow. The power of the Wehrmacht had been broken in Russia, the power of
Japan by United States sea and air power; only Italy had been knocked out by
Allied efforts. Although the Middle East may have been subsidiary for the Germans
in the Second World War, for the Allies it was a fulcrum. Moreover, it had been an
excellent training ground. How did it appear forty years on with the Soviet Union
powerfully established astride the Red Sea and in Southern Africa? Could her
policy of denial seriously affect the West’s ability to wage war?
The loss of all Middle Eastern oil, the oil lifeline of Western Europe, the loss of
all Africa’s raw materials, the loss of the sea routes—and 70 per cent of NATO’s
strategic materials were carried through the Cape route—the loss of a gigantic
jumping-off point for naval and air operations elsewhere, the cutting of the world
in half, would be a very serious matter. The West would be cut off from some 60
per cent of the world’s oil reserves, available to it only from the Persian Gulf. All
the mineral wealth of a continent exceptionally wealthy in minerals would be
totally denied to Western Europe. The United States would cease to be able to
import nearly 50 per cent of the oil it used and would lose more than 60 per cent
of its imports, which travelled around South Africa. If some 8 million barrels of oil
a day, 90 per cent of Western Europe’s consumption, could no longer pass within
a few miles of Cape Town it would be a grave situation indeed.
The Soviet Union’s own policy of denial was a clear reflection of the position. For
what else had the Soviet Union built up its navy? Why else had it established its
influence in Yemen, Somalia, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola and Nigeria, except to
deny these strategically important places to the West? No wonder they had taken
such a keen interest in Southern Africa and the Horn in the 1970s. The Middle
East was third only to the United States in her share of world exports, and Africa
blocked the road from it. The total loss of influence in Africa and the Middle East,
and of command of the sea, to be denied oil and material and to have to hand over
great tracts of land to the undisputed authority of Soviet aircraft—such setbacks
might not absolutely subjugate the United States, but would certainly reduce its
ability to stand up to the Soviet Union. Africa and the Middle East were the key,
not to winning, but to not losing a world war, as the events leading to the outbreak
were to show.

We must now consider the action of the United States in two particular
areas which profoundly affected the operations in Africa and the Middle East.
First, the American intervention in South Africa. If the United States were not to
be elbowed aside in a part of the world of vital importance there was clearly no
alternative to the establishment of a firm footing and a naval base in Southern
Africa. In late July 1985 a brigade of US marines plus an air group of forty combat
aircraft, supported by an aircraft carrier and a naval task force of twenty
warships, positioned themselves in and around Simonstown.
The base was occupied and put in a state of defence. The Soviet naval mission
had quietly withdrawn. Whatever hopes this may have raised, the United States
had not committed itself to the support of South Africa against CASPA. In the
months to come no US forces were to operate in South Africa, except in defence of
the Simonstown base. This was to become the foundation for the maritime
supremacy and the ascendancy in the air which not only contributed to the defeat
of the Soviet Navy in the South Atlantic but also played a major part in the
development of operations in the Indian Ocean vital to the success of the American
intervention in the Persian Gulf.
When one important naval task force had positioned itself in the South Atlantic
and Cape area, another was deployed in the Arabian Sea and the western part of
the Indian Ocean. A brigade of US marines with their naval and air support was
from the end of July at Bandar Abbas, beginning to fulfil the United States’
undertaking to Iran and to the Union of Arab Emirates to keep them clear of
interference from either the newly formed United Arab Republic or the Soviet
Union itself. It was a timely reinforcement, for the Soviet bases in Somalia and
Yemen had also been strengthened in the previous months of false detente.
This United States’ action on both sides of the continent was at once
condemned by the Organization for African Unity, whose name continued as
before to mock reality. A resolution confirming the African states’ determination to
establish black majority rule in the Confederation of Africa South by force of
arms—not just African arms but Soviet, Cuban, Jamaican and Arab arms as
well—was reaffirmed.
 The battle for Southern Africa, without US intervention, was to be a slow and
inconclusive affair. But what it was to lack in speed, concentration and decision, it
was to make up for in variety, complexity and malignity.

In the Middle East things were different. United States intervention there
was decisive. The nature of the country, as well as of the conflict, enabled
American firepower—land, sea and air—ranging far afield in reconnaissance and
destruction, by sheer domination of communications to deter any serious counter-
strokes by the UAR. It enabled Iran to remain free from invasion, it assisted the
Arab Emirates to hold their own against somewhat half-hearted Saudi attempts to
settle old scores, it facilitated the preparation in Oman of the counter-offensive
forces which would sweep the Yemenis aside after one decisive battle.
Another of the most notable differences between the fighting in Southern Africa
and that in the Middle East was that whereas almost all the African participants
had had recent and bloody reminders of what battle was about, in Arabia the only
contestants who had any experience of war with modern weapons—Egypt, Syria
and Israel—were involved either very little or not at all in the fighting.
The Israelis had been continuously in a state of general alert, with reserves
mobilized and the country on a war footing, since the time of the formation of the
new United Arab Republic in November 1984, but they were not, in the event,
surprising as it seemed to many, involved in any fighting. A Soviet guarantee of
immunity from attack by her neighbours, within her frontiers as then established,
in return for a guarantee on the Israeli side of complete neutrality in any
developments affecting the security of the Soviet Union, was offered in December
1984. On the advice of the United States Israel accepted. From that time on,
through the world crises of the following summer and the general hostilities that
ensued, Israel remained neutral.
Egypt played, in the event, in spite of possessing considerable armed forces, no
more than a small and ineffective part in the fighting in the Middle East. Syria
played virtually none.
In the Middle East, of course, the United States was simply allying itself with
powerful indigenous forces in order to protect its own interests as well as theirs.
Its firm base was Iran. Iran had 2,000 tanks, most of them Chieftains, an excellent
armoury of ATGW, a huge infantry force which with reserves amounted to 200,000
men, more than 2,000 APC, 1,000 guns and all the paraphernalia of supporting
weapons and aircraft, including 400 Cobra attack helicopters. Her navy boasted
over fifty operational warships, including patrol boats, the air force 400 combat
aircraft. Such strength enabled Iran to position in the UAE and Oman the best
part of three divisions—one armoured, one infantry with APC and two special
brigades—all fully supported with SAM, guns, helicopters, logistic units and
tactical air squadrons. At the same time more than enough remained to secure
Iran itself from the threat of Kuwaiti or Iraqi adventures, and this still left the bulk
of Iran’s armoured formations with 1,000 Chieftains in reserve—an unattractive
fact for the Soviet Union’s army commanders in Turkestan or Trans-Caucasia to
contemplate. In addition, the Union Defence Force of the UAE was of no small size
or competence, with its total of 25,000 men, tanks, SAM, ATGW, patrol craft,
helicopters and Mirage fighters. Finally, Oman could deploy regular forces of some
15,000 including armoured cars, guns and ATGW, with ten fast patrol boats and
fifty combat aircraft.
The United States contribution was designed to fill the gaps. A strong Middle
East naval task force was assembled mustering a total of two carriers and a dozen
surface combatants. Ashore in Iran was the best part of a division of the US
Marine Corps, a US airborne division and an air wing.
On the side of the Soviet Union the new United Arab Republic’s armed forces
were by no means negligible in numbers. It was in their deployment and
immobility that they were at a disadvantage. Egypt had a large and well-equipped
army, nearly 300,000 men making up the equivalent of some twelve divisions, half
of them armoured or mechanized, and ten independent brigades. Their equipment
was largely Russian and included more than 2,000 tanks, with 2,500 APC and
over 3,000 guns and mortars. The Egyptian Air Defence Command and the air
force between them could call on 700 combat aircraft and sixty transports. The
relatively small navy had a dozen submarines, eight destroyers and escorts, and
fifty smaller craft. The paramilitary forces totalled 120,000.
But the Egyptian Army’s experience of operating in distant Arab countries was
an unhappy one, and the bulk of their forces remained at first in the traditional
deployment areas—Sinai, the Canal, the Western Desert, the Red Sea, and
Southern and Central Districts. The Field Force was organized into three armies,
all stationed on Egyptian soil, one east, one west, one south.
Saudi Arabia, with her small population, had a small army—a mere five
brigades, three of which were already deployed in Jordan, Syria and the Lebanon
as part of the Geneva Conference arrangements; the rest, together with the
National Guard, Frontier Force and Coastguard would be adequate for internal
security and for looking after sea and air bases but little more.
Kuwait’s efficient little army of about one division supported by some forty
fighter aircraft and thirty patrol boats had neither the logistic resources nor the
inclination to venture much beyond its frontiers.
The Libyan Army of 20,000 had more than enough to do keeping an eye on its
own people.
To this prospect, the Soviet Union had little to add. Her sea and air bases in
Eritrea, Socotra, Djibuti, Port Sudan, Suez, Jed-dah, Berbera, Mogadishu,
Kismayu and Dhahran were manned by some 50,000 armed technicians; her air
forces including transports amounted to about 500 aircraft of all types; her naval
strength in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean was not great. For
the Soviet Union it would be a matter of hanging on to what she had got rather
than reaching out for more. If, however, the Soviet Union appeared to be adopting
a defensive strategy in the Middle East, the same could not be said of Southern
Africa, for here she had powerful and more adventurous allies.
It had been laid down by the High Command of the Confederation of Africa
South People’s Army that the invasion of South Africa should be carried out from
all four front-line states: Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Largely
because of the difficulties of supporting logistically any more sophisticated
operations of war, the forces from Botswana and Zimbabwe would be essentially
operating as guerrillas, though on a very large scale. The two main thrusts would
come from Namibia and Mozambique, with the backing of west and east coast
ports, air bases, better equipped armies both in combat and logistic units, and the
opportunity for seaborne support. From Mozambique forces amounting to nearly
30,000 would take part, made up in the first place of the recently reconstituted
Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO) army, now swelled by more Makonde
troops from the Mozambique United Front (FUMO). Second was the Somali
contingent, a mechanized brigade with tanks, APC and guns. Third, there were the
main regular forces of Zimbabwe, a strong brigade, to which Tanzania had added
two battalions. The Cuban force amounted to no fewer than 10,000, and it was the
Cubans who were charged with directing the operation, though under the nominal
leadership of a Mozambique guerrilla general, the new strong-arm ally of FUMO’s
head. General Chinde Inhambane (it was of course a nom de guerre) was a man
who loved the petty details of military administration, who would have made a
respectable quartermaster in a Stores Depot. He now determined to be not only
commander-in-chief but also his own principal logistics adviser, with subsequently
dire results for the whole expedition. The plan of campaign decided on by him and
his Cuban advisers was nothing if not bold—an assault on the Transvaal aimed at
Pretoria and Johannesburg, with a substantial diversionary push into Natal.
The expeditions from Zimbabwe itself and from Botswana were to be essentially
huge distractions for the South African security forces, to whom the excellent
communications southwards from Mbizi and Gaborone were important. As
Botswana had so few men to spare, Namibia was to draft in a force of 20,000
guerrillas. The Zimbabwe force would be about the same size.
The other main operation would be the SWAPO, Angolan, Cuban and Nigerian
attack from Namibia. One force was to head for Prieska, the other for Cape Town
and Simonstown. The Nigerians had provided 30,000 men, the Cubans 10,000,
the Angolan and SWAPO armies numbered 50,000 together—all in all a force not
dissimilar in total to the eastern armies invading from Mozambique. Soviet
‘advisers’ and technicians were much in evidence.
What sort of enemy would these various contingents be likely to meet? In the
first place there was South Africa’s regular army, swelled by former Rhodesians
and refugees from Namibia—with a growing number of volunteers from
Australasia—to a force of 90,000. A US naval force at sea, even if no US
formations were involved in the fighting on land, would in effect be holding the
ring. Behind the regular South African army there was the Volkssturm, 200,000
strong, confident, well-trained and utterly dedicated to the idea of winning, or
dying—a hard nut for CASPA to crack.
There was some convergence of views, but far more divergence, between those
variously involved on either side as to what the whole thing would be about. Over-
simplified, it was this. The United States wanted to hang on to what she regarded
as two of her strategic interests: Middle Eastern oil and the ability to bring tankers
and other shipping round the Cape. For the USSR the requirement was to keep a
grip on Southern Africa, which would give her dominance of the sea routes, and to
control the Middle East and its oil. Those involved there had other ideas. The black
African nations wanted to destroy the white hold on South Africa and have it for
themselves, its riches, its land, its influence, its strategic potential. The white
South Africans were equally intent on keeping what they had. Neither cared
greatly for the broader issues beyond their own horizons. In the Middle East, Iran
was concerned to preserve her own integrity and influence, an influence extending
to southern Arabia; the smaller states simply wanted to continue with their well-
endowed development; the new UAR wished to become the centre and controller of
the whole Arab world. For the time being the convergences of policy were sufficient
to allow these sets of allies to work together. Their divergences would become more
apparent as operations developed.
Policy is one thing, method another. The United States’ concept of how to
maintain her foothold in Africa and support her allies in the Middle East was
clear, simple and within her capacity. It had four main features: first, to break
Soviet air and sea power in those areas whose strategic control was necessary to
the United States; second, to provide those elements of defensive power which her
allies in the Middle East did not possess themselves and without which they would
be unable to employ effectually the military power they did possess; third, to keep
these allies supplied logistically and to give further training to their armed forces
when practicable; fourth, to keep US forces out of the land fighting in Southern
Africa except in so far as the security of Simonstown demanded.
Everything the United States hoped to do depended on winning the war at sea,
which itself demanded ascendancy in the air. The course of the battle for the
Atlantic has been traced in Chapter 17. What matters here is its outcome. The
Soviet Navy’s defeat had two important effects on the battle in Africa. First, the
severance of maritime connection with the Caribbean meant that no Jamaican or
Cuban reinforcements or supplies could come by sea to West Africa. Second, the
blockade of West Africa from Conakry to Walvis Bay ensured that no support
could come by sea to the belligerent countries from anywhere else. The battle for
the Indian Ocean had been less intense and less costly than the battle for the
Atlantic, but it had been important. The United States Navy now had a strong
presence along the east coast of Africa from Mombasa to Port Elizabeth and in the
Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, and superiority in the Indian Ocean as a whole.
The Red Sea remained under Soviet domination; so did the Eastern
Mediterranean.
Mastery of the sea and air, as the United States had discovered in both Korea
and Vietnam, did not necessarily mean mastery on land, but it helped a good deal,
particularly in the Middle East. Here there were four main areas of operations for
ground forces. One was supremely important; the rest were sideshows. The first
was a joint operation by the United States and Iran, supported by the Union of
Arab Emirates and Oman, to seize complete control of the Persian Gulf. It involved
the elimination of Kuwait and the destruction of all Soviet and UAR forces in the
eastern part of Saudi Arabia. To start with, Kuwait was edged out of the game. The
tacit neutrality of Iraq, whose relations with Syria had deteriorated almost to the
point of military hostilities, enabled Iran to remove any threat from Kuwait without
a fight. In the summer of 1985, powerful Iranian amphibious and air forces,
poised for invasion, together with an unequivocal ultimatum, obliged the Kuwaiti
ruling council to announce the severance of their new relationship with Egypt and
Saudi Arabia. It was a volte face as total as that of Italy in 1943. From being the
integrated ally of their UAR partners, the Kuwaitis suddenly became their declared
enemies. Better, the ruling council had decided, a change of sides and a chance of
survival than the certainty of destruction by Iran supported by US naval and air
power. The UAR was without the means of arguing the toss.
The next phase was less one-sided and resulted in a prolonged, though not very
bloody, campaign. The Soviet base at Dhahran was subjected to heavy attack by
US ships and aircraft. A US marine force then captured and occupied it. Kuwaiti
and Iranian forces established a cordon sanitaire between Dhahran and the Saudi
Arabian forces, whose purpose was to guarantee the integrity of Riyadh. Skirmish
and counter-skirmish continued, but the Soviet and UAR sea and air units had
now been removed from the scene, and the ‘Gulf—no matter what the UAE might
think about it—could again be called Persian. For it was Iranian sea and air
power, backed by that of the USA, which called the tune there. United States land
forces occupied Dhahran and secured and ran the base and its communications.

“Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Medilatif el Kasemy was a helicopter pilot of

the Union Defence Force, the Army of the United Arab Emirates. He had been
loaned by its Commander to take charge of a mixed air regiment equipped with
French Lynx and Gazelle helicopters, which had itself been allotted to support the
Kuwaiti forces helping to keep Dhahran free from Saudi interference. For a week
they had had little to do except patrol, and he was beginning to agree that three-
quarters of a soldier’s life is spent hanging about doing nothing. He didn’t mind
hanging about, but he’d much rather do it from his air-conditioned house in Abu
Dhabi than in the desert. Soon after dawn one day early in September, however,
there occurred one of those incidents that made the whole thing memorable.
He was listening to the Gazelle patrol leader’s report in his Landrover with his
Operations Officer beside him. It was still being transmitted when he pressed the
horn of the vehicle to alert the Lynx squadron for imminent action.
“At 0512 hours, at position 738492, mixed force of AMX tanks, Greyhound
armoured cars and APC, estimated total thirty vehicles, moving east-south-east,”
went the message. “If they continue present direction and speed will reach
minefield gap at 850431 between 0600 and 0630. Am continuing to observe, but
have fuel for only 40 minutes more on station.”
The Colonel heard his Operations Officer acknowledge the message, then switch
channels and report it to HQ, as he seized his map and did some quick markings
with a chinagraph pencil.
“Tell HQ I’m going to engage as soon as possible and suggest moving the
Scorpion tank squadron to just this side of the minefield gap in their prepared
positions. I’m going on this mission myself. And tell the Gazelle patrol to look out
for us and guide us in!”
He dismounted from the Landrover and walked rapidly towards the twelve Lynx
helicopters with their business-like HOT missiles slung three per side near the
skids. The Squadron Commander, with his three troop leaders, was waiting in a
group. Rotor blades were turning, mechanics and armaments-men checking. All
other crews were mounted. Quickly he gave his orders, adding that he would
accompany the squadron in the second-in-command’s Lynx.
“But it’s your show,” he added to the Squadron Commander.
Within minutes they were off, swooping over the desert very low in four groups
of three. Twenty minutes later he sighted two helicopters, soon identified as the
Gazelles he was looking for. There was a quick interchange of information between
the Squadron Commander and the Gazelle patrol leader, then the Squadron
Commander gave his orders.
“Bearing 240, three columns armoured vehicles. We attack from north-east in
two waves, my group and Alpha first, taking leading vehicles; normal drill of target
choice; Bravo and Charlie attack five minutes later taking rear vehicles; return to
base for replenishment immediately after attack. Acknowledge.”
The time was exactly 0555 hours.
Shortly after 6 a.m. a part of the Saudi Arabian desert was a shambles of
burning vehicles and dead and wounded men. There were still fitful explosions. As
the Lynx squadron headed back for replenishment, the two relieving helicopters of
the Gazelle patrol appeared. There was more exchange of information, more
reports to base and to headquarters, which was anxious to learn whether there
was any need for support from the mobile column with its guns and British
Scorpion light tanks, now standing-to. The Colonel ended his own report with the
words: “I don’t think the Scorpion squadron will have much more to do now.”
“I wonder if we will, either,” he added to his Operations Officer. “Anyway, it was
good while it lasted.”
Taken from Mirage in the Desert: The Overthrow of Soviet Power in its Challenge
to Islam, a collection of reminiscences by officers who took part in the fighting.
Amman 1986, trans, and pub. SOAS, London 1986.

The third phase of this principal operation—aimed, as we have seen, at

seizing complete control of the Persian Gulf—consisted of further reinforcing
Oman with Iranian and UAE forces. These, in co-operation with the Sultan’s own
not inexperienced or inconsiderable army, once more began to cudgel the dissident
tribesmen into obedience and to make the Yemeni ‘volunteers’ begin to wonder
whether the game was worth the candle. But the elimination of Yemenis and the
rehabilitation of the tribes was to be a lengthy affair.
In Southern Africa, the first real blows were struck with the simultaneous
advance of four armies from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia into
South Africa in the summer of 1985. The expedition from Mozambique fared
worst, that from Namibia best, and the two guerrilla incursions from Zimbabwe
and Botswana, although destructive and elusive, had little impact on the outcome
of the general battle. In its drive through the Transvaal, the composite army of
FRELIMO, Zimbabwe, Cubans and Somalis deployed a respectable force of all
arms with proper air, but poor logistic, support. But the attacking forces greatly
misunderstood and underestimated their enemies. They had learned nothing from
their easy victories over the Portuguese and their battles with Rhodesians. Not
only did the South African Volkssturm defend their homelands with skill, savagery
and success, not only did the regular South African forces operate with disturbing
suddenness and speed, but, much to CASPA’s consternation, the special forces of
South Africa’s army took the battle into CASPA’s own base areas, mounting deadly
attacks on its airfields and supply depots, on its lines of communication, even on
the city of Maputo itself. They had not bargained for this.
The resistance both in the Transvaal and in Natal of the South African
Kommandos was fanatical—but it was a fanaticism tempered with cool measuring
of the military odds. The Afrikaaners fought with a ferocity which shocked and
dismayed both the cynical mercenaries and the dedicated guerrillas of the
invading forces. They were not always successful.

“2/Lt Pieter Van der Horst had just finished setting up his first ambush.
He had received information over the radio two hours earlier that a column of
some fifty mixed Mozambique and Zimbabwe guerrillas, supported by two T-34
tanks, were expected to reach his patrol area about now, and it had taken him
every bit of the time available to get ready. In his platoon he had thirty-two men,
four French medium machine guns, two anti-tank launchers of the Karl Gustav
type and two 81 mm Malaysian mortars. They were completely mobile in eight
Japanese Landrover-type vehicles and had rations for a week. Two Landrovers
with trailers were separately loaded with ammunition and petrol. His men carried
100 rounds each. He had chosen a disused farm which offered excellent cover and
superb ambush positions. Through it the main dusty track ran on towards
Lesotho. The ambush was laid out over a distance of 300 metres: the first killing
group of ten men with the anti-tank weapons and two machine-guns at the front,
or southern, end; the rear group with mortars and two machine-guns at the
entrance to, or northern part of, the ambush; and his own HQ and support group
in the centre with some ten men and plentiful supplies of grenades. His own HQ
men had the flamethrowers. Everyone was out of sight, the anti-tank and anti-
personnel mines laid, the detonating charges ready for distracting or deceiving the
enemy.
Van der Horst’s radio crackled. It was a helicopter pilot reporting. “Column now
within two miles your position, two tanks leading; remainder of force in two
parties, approximate strength twenty-plus each party. Some carrying supplies. No
heavy weapons.” Van der Horst gave swift and low confirmatory orders through his
walkie-talkie to the two NCOs in charge of killer groups. It was to be done broadly
as planned. First enemy party with tanks to be allowed to proceed unmolested to
Point A; then as second enemy party reached Point B or on his order or by his
opening fire, this latter party to be destroyed by machine-gun and automatic rifle
fire; immediately fire to be opened by own rear group, leading group to detonate
anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, engage enemy tanks with recoilless launchers
and destroy enemy foot with machine-guns; his own group to use flamethrowers
against tanks. All enemy weapons and ammunition to be secured. If detonating
charges required for deception - under his control. If for any reason enemy column
does not enter ambush, further orders on radio.
When they came in sight, the guerrilla forces did not appear to be expecting any
opposition. As they advanced, they barely bothered to adopt tactical formation at
all, but trudged along behind the tanks, weapons slung over shoulders, talking,
chewing, laughing, the gap between the two parties a mere 100 metres. As he
watched them coming, Van der Horst was thinking that his plan should work.
As a plan, it was good. But military plans, as von Moltke observed, rarely
survive contact with the enemy. In this case the seemingly unwary enemy
suddenly took the whole affair into their own hands. When the guerrilla column
was no more than 800 metres away from the ambush, the two tanks deployed to
either side of the track and opened fire, first with machine-guns, then with high-
explosive shells, on the derelict farm buildings. They were well out of range of Van
der Horst’s rocket launchers. The guerrilla foot soldiers rapidly dispersed on either
side of the tanks and went to earth. Van der Horst gave a quick order over his
radio: “Keep in cover and return fire with mortars and machine-guns. Leading
group at five minutes’ notice to move back to get behind them.”
The tanks kept up a steady fire and seemed quite impervious to the machine
guns now engaging them. Meanwhile, to Van der Horst’s concern, the enemy
guerrillas seemed to be crawling through the bush to the north of them in an
obvious attempt to outflank his own position. It would be foolhardy to try to
outface tank fire and allow his force to be pinned down while the guerrillas crept
ever closer. He still had one advantage over the enemy—speed. He spoke into the
radio again. “Cancel last order. Rear group prepare to mount in Landrovers and
move south in fifteen minutes; leading group prepare to give covering fire; my
group will follow rear group, covered by leading group, and we will leapfrog back to
agreed rendezvous Charlie. Maximum covering fire throughout move. Mortar fire to
switch now to Hill 102. Leading group to withdraw when my group established at
Charlie. Move on my orders.”
From a concealed position of great strength, with the expectation of gaining both
surprise and success, Van der Horst was obliged to resort to defence, evasion and
retreat. And all because he had no anti-tank weapons of sufficient range. It was a
lesson well learned, and would not have to be relearned, as before long his unit
and others like it would be equipped with the longer-range Milan-type anti-tank
guided missiles, also now coming in from Japan. And the helicopters would have a
new missile too. For the time being, it was necessary to run away in order to fight
another day. After all they had plenty of space. And plenty of time. It was usually
shortage of those two commodities that lost wars. Meanwhile Van der Horst,
noticing with satisfaction that none of his men had been hit, used a little time to
put a respectable space between his command and those T-34 tanks. “
[Extract from The Veld Aflame: South Africa’s Fight for Survival by a group of
participants, ed. Major-General K. E. Rymer, Cassell, London 1986.]

Even when the invading columns from Mozambique did meet with some
success in their advances, they threw away their advantage by their savagery to
the black inhabitants they claimed to have come to deliver. The Cuban proxy
leaders of the FRELIMO bands were men to whom the death or mutilation of
wholly innocent men and women was of no moment. Such was the short-
sightedness and vindictiveness of the invading army’s leaders that they were
ruthless where they should have been conciliatory, and - in the case of their own
members who revelled in excesses - tolerant where they should have been stern.
The invasion from Mozambique was held, but CASPA would not lightly give up
the battle. Guerrilla forces from Botswana were advancing deep into enemy
territory, reinforced by incursions from Zimbabwe. But what was rapidly becoming
clear was that South Africa was holding on.
Long before it was all over, the USSR had wholly ceased to be in control of
anything that was happening either in the Middle East or in Southern Africa.
Orders from Moscow, growing in confusion and inadequacy in the last few days of
August 1985, had, by the end of the month, virtually ceased.
 The United States now faced a huge new problem. This was not wholly
unforeseen, but in the event it was greater, and came to a head sooner, than had
been expected. Very considerable forces of all arms of the Soviet Union, disposing
of immense masses of war material, with hordes of technicians, advisers and
civilian operatives of every sort, were now spread over vast areas with no coherent
purpose and no further reason for being where they were. Some units and
formations went on fighting, for a while at least, wherever they happened to be, to
whatever local end seemed to their commanders sensible. Others sought the
earliest opportunity to surrender to the nearest American headquarters, at any
level. One startled US captain signalled to his superiors that he had at his
disposal two Soviet generals, an acre of officers and ten acres (approximately) of
Soviet rank and file, all now disarmed, and he requested orders. Local belligerents
made a beeline for Soviet weapons, equipment and stores, and more than one
Soviet unit, compelled to defend itself against raiders, found itself in action with
the support of some microcosm of the US forces to which it had surrendered.
Soviet ships usually made for port and tied up. Many aircraft simply flew home, or
as near to it as fuel allowed. Many thousands of men drifted away, leaving heavy
weapons, equipment and stores where they lay for whoever chose to take them
away.
To tell the story of the mounting of the United Nations Relief and Repatriation
Organization (UNRRO), which soon took over from the United States in the
concentration and maintenance of the remnants of Soviet forces deployed in Africa
and the Middle East, and then set in hand the long and complex business of
getting the men (and women too) back to their homes, is no part of our present
task.
The operation still goes on as we write, having had to face many more
difficulties than those confronting the United Nations Displaced Persons
Organization, set up at the same time in Europe. No history of the time, however,
would be complete without reference to one of the least tractable problems to
emerge in the immediate aftermath of the war. There will be traces of its impact in
Africa and the Middle East for a long time to come. It will be many years, for
example, before the last weapon brought by the Soviet Union into Africa and the
Middle East in the chapter of the world’s history which ended so abruptly in 1985,
ceases in one hand or another to serve a purpose.
The elimination of Soviet support, direct or by proxy, heralded the end of any
further external intervention. The security of South Africa was assured by the
success of her own armed forces in resisting and defeating tactical attack, with
some help from the efforts of the US Navy. These efforts, though aimed directly at
the peripheral operations of the Soviet Union, also had the result that both the
Soviet proxy fighters and the indigenous guerrillas were largely cut off from the
sinews of war. The end to the strategic external battle was far indeed from bringing
to an end the only sort of struggle of enduring concern to the Africans - the
internal one. Bitter battles between Angola and her neighbours, and within
Angola, were matched by frontier incidents in Zaire and a renewal of the
disruption of Mozambique. South Africa, though everywhere penetrated, held firm
at the core. Her front-line adversaries, while clinging to the idea of confrontation,
began to look to their own internal welfare. Far from a Confederation of Africa
South coming into being and flourishing, a de-federation of those dedicated to set
it up was already in progress.
The impotence of the Soviet proxies in Southern Africa had been demonstrated.
The success of Iran in the Persian Gulf and southern Arabia had been such that
even before the nuclear exchange in Europe precipitated the end she was already
concentrating forces on her northern borders for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
The aimless manoeuvrings of the Egyptian Army on the shores of the Red Sea
signified little. Soviet initiatives on the outskirts of the main battle had been stifled
and a great strategic prize retained firmly in the grasp of the United States. If this
success did not in itself ensure that the Western Allies would win the war in
Europe against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact it made two important
contributions. By stabilizing a situation in the Middle East to the advantage of the
West, and securing the oil flow along the sea routes, the US had already gone
some way to ensuring that the war, particularly if it were to be prolonged, would
not be lost. By setting up a situation in which Soviet initiatives on the periphery
were almost from the beginning seen to fail it hastened the general realization that
the military might of the USSR was very far indeed from being invincible, and thus
added to the growing weight of encouragement to its enemies nearer the centre.

Chapter 24
The Nuclear Decision

As the Soviet offensive ground to a halt in Europe and the war at sea
emphasized not only the geographical disadvantages of the Soviet Union as a naval
power but also the misdirection of its efforts to overcome them, various signs of
political instability began to appear, both inside and outside the Kremlin. The
purpose of the war had after all been largely political - to exploit the conventional
weakness of the West in order to humiliate the US and to re-establish absolutism
in Eastern Europe as the only safeguard against dissidence and fragmentation.
The very statement of these war aims demonstrated the hollowness and imbalance
of Soviet power. The military machine had been built up to an unparalleled size to
buttress a political performance which was almost uniformly unsuccessful. The
Soviet Union had been unable to take part in genuine detente because the appeal
of Soviet communism to the masses either inside or outside the Soviet Union had
proved mainly negative. Force, or the threat of force, had been necessary to
counter the greater political attractiveness of the West and fissiparous tendencies
within the Warsaw Pact. Political cohesion had failed to develop in Eastern
Europe. Even the approach to power of communist parties in the West had not
increased Soviet influence there; it had merely set an example of dissidence for
communist countries in the East.
In 1956 in Hungary and in 1968 in Czechoslovakia Soviet military power had
sufficed to restore political situations which were escaping from Soviet control. In
1985 the Soviet military machine proved just inadequate to extend Soviet political
control in south-east Europe and over West Germany. One of the major objectives
of this effort had been to master the general unease and insubordination of the
governments and peoples of Eastern Europe. The attainment of this objective
would have required quick and decisive victories in Yugoslavia and in Germany.
The check which in fact occurred was enough, even without actual defeat, to allow
pent-up political forces to burst out. The leaders of the former satellite countries,
and very soon the leaders of the Soviet Union itself, began to realize that military
force no longer provided a sovereign remedy for political dissent. Military stalemate
would not only allow the greater potential resources of the West to be mobilized; it
would also foster revolution in the East, just as it had in 1917.
Foreseeing the dangers of disintegration in the Warsaw Pact and disaffection at
home, the Soviet policy-makers split once more: the hawks became cataclysmic,
the doves were for return to Mother Russia. The former argued that while the
conventional battle had not gone quite according to plan this had always been only
one element in the total strategy. The nuclear weaponry remained intact. Better to
have some mutual destruction than creeping political decay and forcible
decolonization. The very backwardness of large areas of the Soviet Union would
allow it to survive better than the USA after a nuclear exchange. Besides, there
were enough warheads to target some on China as well and so put off that menace
for another generation, with negligible risk of Chinese retaliation. Also, if they were
really prepared to go to these lengths there was a good chance of a deal with the
United States before the major destruction took place. They could, for example,
carry out one or more nuclear attacks on targets in Europe to show they meant
business, and at the same time propose to the United States a bilateral status quo
and the division of the world into two spheres of influence. The two superpowers
had more interests in common than either had with its allies. It would pay each of
them for Europe to stay divided and for the Middle East to be kept in order by
both, acting together. Either could deal with China, provided the other kept out.
It was a persuasive picture, but reports from Eastern Europe and from the
constituent republics of the Soviet Union, which were growing in volume, were
already lending support to a contrary thesis put forward by the doves. The Poles
as usual led the way. With the outbreak of war the Soviet Union had re-imposed
its own control in Poland, working through the Polish ministries and the
apparatus of the police. This only served to stimulate resistance, which is a
natural habit of mind in a people who have been oppressed for 200 years by larger
neighbours.
Meanwhile, the Western Allies were hastily continuing their by no means
fruitless efforts to reactivate the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and SOE
(Special Operations Executive) and improve liaison with resistance groups. In the
confusion of the turning-point battle in Germany a Polish armoured unit in the
north deliberately let itself be overrun by the advancing Americans, which
provided a breakthrough for Western intelligence and an invaluable nucleus for a
further liaison network. The West for some time tried to play the old themes of
1939-45, but in fact the grounds for revolt this time were rather different. The
basic aims in Poland and elsewhere were to get the Soviet Union off their backs, to
get enough to eat, and to find their own way to whatever political future they
might choose. This did not necessarily imply rejection of a communist future, but
only, and most decidedly, of the Soviet way of achieving it. For a society aiming at
middle-class consumer values the dictatorship of the proletariat was in any case
rather an out-of-date concept. But what was really intolerable was the dictatorship
of the Soviet proletariat, as represented by the Soviet Politburo and the KGB.
As the more acute observers in the West had foreseen, the phenomenon of
Euro-communism was proving far more lethal to the Soviet empire than to
Western capitalism. The oppressed nationalities of Eastern Europe, and in the
Soviet Union itself, were not blind to the defects of Western society in general.
They did not all aspire to have their economies run by US multi-national
companies any more than by Soviet planners. The idea which inspired them was
that of a society based at one and the same time both on national freedom and on
socialist principle. Once the Soviet offensive in Europe stalled an opportunity
began to open up for asserting this approach. There was not much combination
between the various national movements, but the fact that so many of them both
in Europe and in Asia felt the same urge to national independence, and started
moving at the same time, turned a few local outbreaks into what was to become an
irresistible revolt.
Disaffection achieved a cumulative momentum of its own. In addition to the
growing resistance in Eastern Europe, the stirrings of nationalist revolt in Central
Asia fomented by the Chinese made it unsafe for the Soviet General Staff to rely on
units which contained a high proportion of soldiers from those areas. A larger
number of reliable units had to be sent eastwards from military districts which
could be properly called Russian. This left fewer troops for internal security in
Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. There they had to watch not only the
civilian population but the local army units as well, the loyalty of whose rank and
file to the Soviet command became every day more doubtful. The resistance was
not, as in the Second World War, that of an underground movement against the
authorities; the authorities themselves began to resist the pressures and directives
of the Soviet civil and military hierarchies. This showed itself principally in the
failure to maintain communications through Poland between the Soviet Union and
East Germany. Railways and roads were sabotaged, thus gravely hampering
forward movement of second and third echelon formations and of munitions, as
well as the delivery of food and manufactures from Poland to the USSR. The Polish
authorities proved singularly unable to find those responsible. Attempts by Soviet
forces to do so directly not only tied up still more units which could have been
better used elsewhere, but led to the first incidents of urban guerrilla fighting
directed against the billets and movements of Soviet garrisons.
Russia had been successful in previous conflicts, against Napoleon and against
Hitler, because of three priceless assets: unlimited space, apparently unlimited
manpower and the willingness of Russians to be led into frightful sacrifice for the
defence of the motherland. Now, everything was reversed. It was no good retreating
into the vast interior space of Eurasia when this would merely consolidate the ring
of states, not all friendly, which was forming out of the fragments of an empire.
And manpower was no longer wholly reliable. The men who came from subject
territories were less willing to be sacrificed in order to maintain alien rule on
neighbouring countries. Soviet manpower was at the same time intolerably
overstretched by national revolt against the Soviet Union on two fronts as well as
by resistance to the gathering Western forces in Germany and by the requirement
to face a potential Chinese threat.
The threat in the east was not seen primarily in military terms. The Soviet
superiority in equipment and experience still seemed enough to compensate for
greater Chinese numbers. Nuclear preponderance still lay with the USSR, though
how long this would continue into the future was doubtful. The threat was once
again not to Soviet Russia’s military strength, but to her political weakness. The
peoples who now formed the Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union had been
conquered or absorbed in the nineteenth century in a great surge of colonialist
expansion to the east and south. Russia had been drawn forward in an age of
competitive imperialism by rivalry with Britain, pushing north and west from
India, and the opportunity to take advantage of the weakness of China. The
Russians had been in some ways more successful and more ruthless than the
British. The north-west frontier of India remained a battle-ground for the British
and British-Indian armies up to the end of British rule in India in the mid-
twentieth century. Russia had liquidated similar tribal opposition in Georgia and
the Caucasus before the end of the nineteenth. Even more remarkably, Russian
control over enormous areas of Asia and many millions of non-Russian subjects
survived not only the transition from Tsarism to Bolshevism, but also the break-
up of Western empires in Asia, which might have been expected to set a dangerous
example to the republics of the Soviet Union in Central Asia.
Now, however, there was a new factor. It was the growing strength and
prosperity of China. Up to the 1970s China had not proved an attractive force. The
Chinese had suppressed the Moslems in Sinkiang no less brutally than the
Russians in Tashkent and Alma Ata. The material rewards of Chinese communism
had been even less satisfying than membership of the Soviet Union. Now, however,
co-prosperity was changing the material balance, and the Chinese were using the
minorities on their side of the border to infiltrate and influence those on the other.
Apart from offers of greater economic well-being, there were arguments closer to
the heart of Soviet doctrine which could be turned against their authors. It had
long been an essential element of Soviet policy and propaganda that ‘peaceful co-
existence’ included the support of movements, even wars, of national liberation.
These had up till now been far away, in Africa or South-east Asia; but why, it was
now asked, should not the same principle apply to the nations of the Uzbeks and
Kazakhs? Had not the Soviet constitution provided for the secession of the
constituent republics if these should ever wish it? Had not the moment come, at
this time in an unsuccessful war, when such aspirations might begin to be
realized?
For the time being the Communist Party apparatus and the secret police were
strong enough to keep such movements in check. But their existence was enough
to add powerfully to the worries of the central authorities, and to sharpen the
arguments between those who thought the crisis should be heightened as a means
of restoring order and obedience, and those who wanted to draw back from the
over-extension which had already led Soviet Russia into so many troubles.
The Kremlin doves, who called themselves realists, used all these facts and all
these arguments against the superpower status quo thesis of the nuclear hard-
liners. What good would it do to get the United States to recognize a Soviet sphere
of influence in Eastern Europe and Siberia when the Soviet regime was no longer
able to exert its influence in those areas? Even if the forces now facing NATO
remained immune to reduction by agreement with the West there would still not
be enough to hold down the previously subject peoples. Better to accept facts as
they were, and to recognize the errors of a gigantism inherited from Tsarist dreams
of empire and from the illusions of world revolution of some of the early
Bolsheviks. (It was still impermissible to criticize Lenin by name.) Russian
greatness had always been less of material things than of the spirit. Moreover, the
pure doctrines of communism had been distorted by the needs of empire. Far from
withering away, the state had been obliged to intensify its presence and its
pervasiveness. Russians might be better off alone, without the lesser breeds whom
they were finding it increasingly hard to keep in subordination.
On the Western side another argument raged almost as fiercely, though without
the personally lethal outcome common to argument in the Kremlin. To invade or
not to invade was the question. US reinforcements were now flooding in, the sea
routes were more or less assured, the European Allies had recovered and
regrouped. French participation had been an enormous source of strength.
Evidence of Soviet disarray was seen at every hand. Why not now go over to the
offensive, it was asked, and finish off for ever the threat from Eastern Europe, so
that everyone could live happily ever after? There was no need to repeat Hitler’s
mistake and go too far. No Lebensraum was now required. East Germany and
Poland could be freed and the advance could be pushed forward in the Ukraine as
far as the Dnieper. Control of the Ukrainian harvest and of the Dnieper hydro-
electric installations would be enough to cripple any further war effort by Soviet
Russia. It would be tempting to go on and liberate Georgia and control Baku, but
that might be counterproductive in the long run as it would expose too long a line
of Western communications, with the need for garrisons to secure them, and
repeat in the East the Soviet error in the West.
This line of argument, propounded largely by the more influential US
commanders, was supported by those who thought in terms of land masses and
geo-politics. But there was one element in it which ran foul of European political
instincts and political fears. The first stage in this advance would obviously be to
free East Germany from Soviet control and to occupy it with Western forces,
among whom West Germans would be preponderant. Could it really be believed,
asked the French, the British and the smaller Western Allies, that this would not
result in Germany being reunited? In the cold war years of the 1950s the
reunification of Germany had been a parrot-cry of Western governments. Many
Europeans had gone along with this line only because they were fairly sure that
nothing of the sort would happen. It seemed at the time a useful stick with which
to beat the Russians and a useful carrot to hold out to the West Germans to bring
them more closely into the Western Alliance. But it was not a genuine long-term
aim, except to very few. Many of the more thoughtful Germans themselves had
misgivings about what a reunited Germany might be like, and what effect it would
have on its neighbours. They might be fairly confident that West Germany at least
had profoundly changed and would not allow a reunited Germany to become an
aggressive force again, but they saw equally clearly that others would not feel the
same confidence in their pacific intentions; in contrast to the dawning hopes of
reconciliation in Western Europe through the Economic Community a reunited
Germany might start the same old dreary cycle of national antagonisms all over
again. These views had received little expression in Germany, but there had
certainly been an almost audible sigh of relief when Willi Brandt, with an act of
supreme statesmanship, entered upon the Ostpolitik in the 1960s, and to all
intents and purposes renounced reunification as an aim of German policy for the
foreseeable future.
Now, with the road to Berlin more or less open, the temptation was there. So, in
even greater measure, was the fear and suspicion. There were some in the West
German army who would find it hard to resist an opportunity to support an East
German rising against Soviet occupation, and to knock down once and for all the
hated Berlin wall and the frontier watch towers. The German command were
doubtful as to how far they would be able to hold back all their units if this sort of
opportunity presented itself. The French, British, Belgians, Dutch and
Norwegians, on the other hand, refused absolutely to agree to a move forward
beyond the West German border.
In addition to their fears of a united Germany, even one dominated by West
Germany, they argued persuasively that an offensive into Soviet territory would be
the one thing which might not only revive the Soviet will and capability to resist,
but also spur them on, out of desperation, to make use of their still intact nuclear
armoury. America might count on a measure of survival in such an event; the
outlook for Western Europe would be far grimmer. Let the Western forces rather
stand on the side lines, the argument ran, and watch the disintegration of the
Warsaw Pact, assisted by such covert stimulus as they could give, in Poland and
elsewhere, to national resistance.
There was another actor in this drama which the protagonists were apt to
overlook. East German opinion had long been among the most suppressed and
distorted in Eastern Europe. The failure of the Soviet offensive with the
subsequent ferment in Poland and the eastern republics, at last gave back a voice
to those who had perforce been silent for so long. The apparatchiks of the
Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland (SED) were brushed aside and a real
debate began to make itself heard, among academics, technicians, managers and
army officers, in fact among all those professionals who, in spite of Soviet
ideological interference, had kept the state running and made its industry a
formidable factor in the world. Their opinions were not exactly what might have
been expected in the West, or in the East. They did not clamour to join their
democratic brothers west of the Elbe; they saw little joy in a united Germany
controlled by West German bankers in the sole interest of economic growth. They
found the conformism and hierarchies of the West almost as stifling as their own.
They saw a better future in a state with some of the old Prussian virtues which
they had assimilated into their own system: frugality, a certain puritanism, a
feeling of superiority towards their neighbours on each side—a conviction that
they were more advanced than the Slavs on the east and morally superior to the
mixed economies in the West, already, in East German eyes, showing symptoms of
decadence.
The West Germans became aware of these views through the increased contacts
they were able to establish across the growing anarchy of the Warsaw Pact’s
forward areas. They were shocked and surprised that their fellow Germans in the
East should be reluctant to join in the economic miracle and the political freedom
of the West. Secretly, perhaps, some of them were also a little relieved to find that
they would not after all have to assimilate 17 million more Germans (and probably
as many socialist voters), which would have considerably distorted the German
political scene. In the light of these assessments West German pressure to invade
the East was significantly reduced. There was little joy in the prospect of a West
German army entering the East as liberators, only to be shortly told by their
liberated brothers to go back home.
This increased the difficulty for the Americans in persuading their allies to join
in a counter-offensive against Soviet Russia and the Warsaw Pact through East
Germany, Poland and the Ukraine. In a final attempt to resolve the argument the
President of the United States called for a summit meeting to be held in London
and attended by the heads of Government of the Atlantic Allies.
The discussion revolved round three topics:
1. The advantages of finishing off the job and so guaranteeing peace in our
time.
2. The risk that a Western attack would trigger nuclear war.
3. The German problem.
The Americans argued that they had once again saved Europe by their
exertions; three times was enough. The only way to make sure it didn’t happen
again was to push the Soviet Union back out of Europe. The Russians were not
mad enough to prefer nuclear destruction to the loss of their East European
satellites, even if they also lost some of their territory. Limited war aims would be
announced, giving them the assurance of a continued secure existence in their
own heartland, but not of dominion over others. The German problem was for the
Germans to solve. Even if they chose to unite, there would be so much repair and
reconstruction to be done after the war that they could hardly constitute a threat
to the other West Europeans, whose territory had escaped comparatively lightly
and so left them with less rebuilding.
The West German leaders, still divided among themselves and conscious of
continuing army pressure to move forward, kept a low profile in the discussion.
The British, French, Beneluxians and Scandinavians were unimpressed by the
American arguments and repeated their fears of nuclear attack and of a future
united Germany. Moreover, the march of events in the Soviet Union was rapidly
leading to collapse even without any further Western attack. It was much easier
and less costly, as the German General Staff had argued in 1917 when they
smuggled in Lenin, if defeat came about from internal disintegration rather than
from external invasion. Any future Soviet attempt to arouse nationalistic passions
against the foreigner and regain lost positions would be much less plausible if no
foreign armies had invaded Russian soil.
The Americans, with the more hawkish elements of the German armed forces,
considered moving in alone. Who knows what might have been the outcome if they
had? A new dramatic shift in the debate in Moscow removed the necessity to reach
a conclusion.
The ‘nuclear’ party in the Kremlin hierarchy, recognizing that time was against
them, staged a secret meeting with the President and Secretary General from
which their opponents were excluded at gun point. They insisted on an immediate
move towards the threat of nuclear action. A single atomic attack on a Western
target would be enough to demonstrate their determination. A simultaneous
message would be sent to the US proposing the immediate withdrawal of all
foreign forces in Africa and the Middle East and bilateral negotiation to establish
US and Soviet spheres of influence throughout the world. It would be appropriate
to attack a target in England while the Western summit was in session there, to
bring home to everyone the dangers of any other course than that proposed by the
Soviet Union. London itself should not be the target. The effect on national feeling
of the destruction of the British capital would be enormous; it would almost
certainly result in a hardening of Allied opposition and determination to a degree
that would render the attack counterproductive. Birmingham would do. It was a
great industrial concentration and a centre of the armaments industry, and near
enough to the capital for London to feel the blast without being razed to the
ground. President Vorotnikov had no choice but to agree.
It was important to make it absolutely clear to the Americans that this was a
single attack to demonstrate what might happen if they refused Soviet demands. It
was not to be seen as an immediate prelude to a general nuclear offensive. It had
to be expected that some retaliation would occur, but if the signals were
understood this should be limited to a more or less comparable strike. In spite of
hostilities, the Moscow-Washington hot-line had never been closed down. The plan
was worked out in detail. The timing had to be very precise. The ballistic missile
early warning system (BMEWS) would give only a few minutes’ warning of the
missile launch before its impact. The American President had to know just before
this that there was only one missile on its way, and where it was going, but not
long enough before for any counter-measures to be taken.
A warning message was sent via Washington to the President in London that the
Soviet President would speak on the hot-line at 1020 hours GMT on the following
day, 20 August. In London and Washington the intervening hours were spent in a
fevered guessing game on what the message would be. One thing was fairly clear
and brought relief. It could hardly be to announce a full-scale nuclear offensive,
since surprise would be an essential element in any such action. Most views were
fairly near the truth so far as a proposal for negotiation was concerned, but few
guessed that this would be accompanied by a Hiroshima-type demonstration, or
that the timetable would be as narrow and as threatening as it turned out to be.
For when the Soviet President spoke, after announcing the single missile launch,
he demanded that the US should send representatives within one week to
negotiate on the Soviet proposal, failing which further selective strikes would be
carried out. If there were any thought of preventing this by a pre-emptive general
nuclear attack, President Thompson was reminded of the Soviet Union’s
significant second strike capability.

Chapter 25
The Destruction of Birmingham
 In the main control room of the great BMEWS station on Fylingdales Moor
in Yorkshire the day watch had been on duty for a couple of hours and it was just
coming up to ten o’clock in the morning. The station looked out over beautiful
misty moorland, but the controller and his staff did not—there was plenty else for
them to do as the giant radars swept some 3,200 kilometres out into space. They
were searching and sifting the 7,000 pieces of orbiting debris and satellites that
man had projected into inner space since his first invasion of it in 1957.
The control staff were of course well abreast of the war situation and they knew
that, in political terms anyway, the threat of a nuclear attack was small. But they
were not there to make judgments of that sort. Warning of an attack rested with
the automated system coupled to the scanning and tracking dishes in the great
radomes. Anything detected that was not immediately reconciled with the ever-
growing catalogue of known objects was subject to an instantaneous analysis in
spherical trigonometry by a battery of computers. These would assess the
probability that the radar return indicated a missile and, as further radar tracking
information came through, discard, decrease or increase the assessed degree of
probability in the threat. If things ever went as far as that, the computer and the
cathode ray consoles would show, in a somewhat academic way it might be
thought, the estimated point of impact of each missile and the seconds to go
before its strike.
A system that had to have the highest reliability that man’s ingenuity could
devise was inevitably hyper-sensitive, and operators highly trained in monitoring
the auditory and visual responses grew instinctively to feel the computer’s mood.
Occasionally, even in peacetime, the alerting bell would sound as particles or
atmospheric conditions produced a response from space that the computer took
longer than usual to analyse. When it was identified as innocuous the computer
would apologize seconds later and explain its over-eagerness.
This was the way it was meant to work, and it was the pattern to which the
controller and his staff were accustomed. During the last two weeks at Fylingdales
and its sister stations in Alaska and Greenland bells had sounded frequently as
the Soviet rockets launched more satellites into orbit to maintain their space
activities. There had been plenty going on.
The station was a sitting-duck target for an air attack but no guided weapon
had come anywhere near it. This was not surprising -indeed it was to be
expected—because it was very much in the interests of the Russians, in their non-
nuclear war policy, not to risk anything that might so much as vibrate the hair-
trigger of the Allied nuclear response. For the same reason the persistent jamming
to which the other electronic warning systems had been subjected from the sea
and air had not been directed against BMEWS. There was an occasional indication
from badly tuned airborne equipment to remind the crew that the electronic battle
was still in progress, but otherwise the displays were clear.
At 1005 hours a neighbouring air defence radar warning station rang to say it
was no longer affected by jamming. Wing Commander Warburton, the Controller,
entered this in his log and thought it curious enough to tell his controller
colleagues in the other operational centres. An airwoman brought round the tea. It
was all very different from the smoke, dust, blood and horror of the battle raging
in the Central Region—but they were concerned here with a different kind of war.
Warburton had finished his tea when an American controller from the Detection
and Tracking Centre at Colorado Springs called to say that they had detected a
launch via a warning satellite over the Indian Ocean. It had come from a distance,
west of Baikonur, the site from which the satellite launches had been flying during
the last sixteen days, and they had not reconciled it. It would not be visible within
the Fylingdales detection range for a while, and he said he would call back as soon
as they had any tracking information on it.
The line to the Springs was crystal clear. The whole watch had strained their
ears to piece together the message and they had all mentally worked out where the
response would appear on the display before the American controller had finished
what he had to say. There was a scraping of chairs as each one took up a position
so that he could see over the observer’s shoulder. The seconds ticked by and the
radar movement seemed more sluggish than it had ever been before. Suddenly
there it was: the next scan of the radar confirmed it and the computed display
gave a very firm digital threat assessment on one missile on an approaching path.
Instantaneously the threat light flashed and the tracking radar slewed.
The Royal Air Force control staffs were well used to calming their adrenalin flow,
both through exercises simulated on magnetic tape and by the frequency with
which bells punctuated the various steps in the computer process, but this had a
very different feel about it. A single missile launch against the UK or the US was a
highly improbable event, but the confident mood of the computer had come
through to them, and with war raging in Europe anything could happen. Very
definitely something was happening now.
It was twenty-four minutes past ten when the digital display abruptly upgraded
the threat as the tracking radar picked up the missile soaring out of the
atmosphere into space. The computer instantly calculated that it was on a sub-
orbital trajectory with 353 seconds to impact. The whole watch was galvanized: if
this was a real nuclear attack how could a single missile on its own make any
sense? The digital warning display had gone instantaneously to all the other
operations centres, including the Government Situation Room, but the Controller
pressed the switch which connected them all on the voice circuit to confirm, even
though they could make no sense of the alarm, that the BMEWS was 100 per cent
serviceable and that the computers were continuing to upgrade the threat
assessment.
While he spoke one of the plotters called out ‘impact somewhere in UK, sir’, and
the computer print-out typed that before his eyes. The digital time-counter had
now spun down to 317 seconds to impact. Warburton kept the voice circuit open
to his fellow controllers with an additional hand-set to his ear connecting him
directly to the Controller at Strike Command, High Wycombe, where he knew his
commander-in-chief would be standing behind the control desk.
The Polaris Executive was the man in the system who would have the most to
do if the President and the Prime Minister decided that a nuclear response was to
be made, but it seemed hardly likely that they would agree to let sixty-four
submarine-launched megaton missiles fly to the heart of Soviet Russia in response
to this one baffling radar trace. ‘We still don’t understand it,’ said Warburton as he
confirmed the amplification of the threat which had just gone up on the display,
showing the Midlands as the impact area. The two plotters were poised over the
print-out waiting for the next mathematical refinement of the target information as
the seconds to go slid down to 227. It was the RAF Strike Command Controller
who had the news first: ‘It’s real - it’s the real thing,’ came over the voice system.
‘The Government Situation Centre have just told us that a message has come in
on the hot-line. Acknowledge—acknowledge—and Fylingdales have you any better
estimate of the point of impact yet?’
The print-out started up again and in a split second it had written ‘Lat/Long 52°
23’ N. 001° 49’ W.’ As this appeared simultaneously on the main display there was
no need to plot it on a map, for by one of the miracles of electronic automation a
luminous green circle with a cross in the middle had appeared on the cathode ray
map of the British Isles. It was over Birmingham. ‘It’s Birmingham—repeat
Birmingham,’ Warburton called into the voice circuit. The other controllers
acknowledged this grim news in the disciplined and mechanical way in which they
had been conditioned for so long to think about the unthinkable. But on the other
hand-set at his ear Warburton detected more than a tremor in the voice of the
Strike Command Controller when he overheard him say, after his
acknowledgement, ‘Oh my God!’ At High Wycombe only his squadron leader
assistant knew that when mobilization was ordered the Wing Commander had
sent his wife and their three children to stay with her family on the outskirts of
that now hapless city.
The time-counter showed 114 seconds to go as the Fylingdales assistant
controller exchanged and cross-checked data on the line to his opposite number in
the Detection and Tracking Center at Colorado Springs. A US Air Force major was
repeating back the facts and factors as he verified them with the information at
the master control centre. All the space satellite and ground radar information was
now integrated in the main computer at Colorado Springs, and as he logged the
details from Fylingdales he said, ‘Yeah—yeah, that all checks with our data here’—
and then, with more than a touch of melancholy in his voice, as the counter slid
down to sixty-three seconds, ‘It sure is going to be hot in Birmingham England.’

The SS-17 missile detonated its nuclear warhead 3,500 metres above
Winson Green prison at 1030 hours on the morning of 20 August. Within a
fraction of a second the resulting fireball, with temperatures approaching those of
the sun, was over 2,000 metres in diameter and reached down towards the centre
of Birmingham. The incredibly brilliant flash which accompanied the detonation
was visible in London. Even at that range, individuals looking at the fireball
suffered temporary blindness and felt a faint flush of heat on their faces.
The tremendous heat given off by the fireball had a more significant effect upon
people and materials within a range of twenty kilometres. Lightly clad yachtsmen
on Chasewater about nineteen kilometres from Winson Green felt their skin begin
to burn as the lasting pulse of heat from the fireball hit them. The thoughtful ones
dived into the water to escape the burning heat. Those who did not suffered
blistering burns on all exposed skin. The varnish on their boats bubbled, nylon
sails melted and newspapers lying in the boats burst into flames. Only those who
were protected from the pulse of heat by their clothing, or were shielded in some
way, escaped severe burns.
 Closer in towards Winson Green the effects of the heat from the fireball were
more pronounced. The foliage in the countryside had crisped as if autumn had
arrived. Smaller brushwood was smouldering. Haystacks were burning and
paintwork on buildings and vehicles in the path of the heat-wave blistered. At
Aldridge, and at other places within about twelve kilometres of the fireball, people
caught in the open received burns which needed immediate hospital treatment. At
this range curtains and other materials inside rooms that were exposed to the heat
pulse began to smoulder and in some cases burst into flames. Any lightweight
objects such as newspapers, canvas and empty packaging in the open soon caught
fire.
Closer to the fireball heat levels became even more intense, so that almost any
lightweight material subject to the heat-wave burst into flame while metals and
other objects were scorched and distorted. At these ranges the clothing worn by
individuals no longer gave effective protection against the heat. Clothes burned off,
and people in the open received such extensive burns that their prospects of
recovery, even with first-class medical assistance, were negligible. Fires were
started inside and outside buildings to an increasing extent as the epicentre was
approached, with apparently almost total conflagration occurring within three to
four kilometres of Winson Green.
The enormous blast pressures released by the nuclear device followed the heat-
wave within a matter of seconds. Those in the open who had suffered severe burns
had no more than a few seconds in which to register shock before the blast-wave
hit them. Those inside buildings who had already experienced the overpowering
flash of light were now subject to the effects of blast. Within a second or so of the
detonation the blast-wave hit the city centre beneath the fireball. The enormous
pressures had the effect of instantly crushing all buildings below it so that what
remained was only a levelled mountain of rubble. The blast-wave then roared and
crushed its way outwards from the centre utterly destroying everything in its path.
No structures above ground level were able to withstand the tremendous
pressures and the coincident wind speeds resulting from the blast. Within three
kilometres of Winson Green nothing survived, every building and structure being
reduced to rubble and strewn across the roads so that the entire area looked like a
gigantic rubbish heap. The effects of the blast-wave began to decline as it travelled
outwards, so that between three and six kilometres from the centre a few of the
smaller and more strongly constructed buildings remained standing, some at
crazy angles and missing many portions of softer construction around reinforced
concrete or steel skeletons. Even these few remaining buildings were in such a
twisted and derelict condition that they were hardly recognizable as the original
structures. They were surrounded by the gutted remains of lighter buildings of
modern construction such as hospitals and schools, demolished beyond
recognition. All domestic structures within this area suffered similarly, with most
brick houses collapsing under the effects of the blast-wave.
Those who had suffered the most agonizing effects of the heat-wave were
mercifully killed by the blast-wave that followed. People who had been indoors
were now buried beneath mountains of rubble and suffered a similar fate. Within
three or four kilometres of Winson Green very few people survived the immediate
effects of the detonation. Outside this range, and up to about seven or eight
kilometres away, the collapse and destruction of most buildings trapped people in
hundreds under fallen masonry. There were many deaths and severe injuries
beyond counting. The air was full of flying objects, picked up by winds moving
outwards from Winson Green at speeds which, even at ranges of four or five
kilometres, approached 500 kilometres per hour. The wind drove along objects
standing in its path like confetti. Motor cars and other vehicles were bowled over
and over, carried tens and even hundreds of metres from where they were. People
caught in the open were picked up, flung through the air and dashed against any
solid object in their path. Roof tiles, pieces of masonry and any loose objects were
projected through the air like missiles, smashing their way through obstructions
and causing injury to many. At distances greater than seven or eight kilometres
from the centre damage levels began to fall off, but even so all lightweight
structures were blown over, roofs were blown off and higher masonry buildings
suffered extensive damage. Large amounts of rubble and masonry fell into the
streets and all windows were blown out, much of the glass being converted into
missiles with much injury to people in the way.
A minor benefit of the blast-wave was that some of the innumerable fires started
a few seconds earlier were blown out and did not rekindle. This was small mercy,
however, compared with the even larger number of fires which were effectively
fanned by the outward moving winds.
Birmingham airport, twelve kilometres from Winson Green, suffered relatively
light damage, but wind speeds at the airport were of the order of 160 kilometres
per hour and many aircraft lost wings and tailplanes or were turned on their sides
by the blast-wave. Outside this range the effects of blast fell off rapidly, damage to
buildings being confined to broken windows and shifted roof tiles.
The blast-wave had rolled outwards from the centre at something like the speed
of sound, arriving at Birmingham airport approximately thirty seconds after the
detonation of the weapon. Even at this point the roar of the explosion was
stupendous, lasting for ten to fifteen seconds. The same roar was to be heard in
London, approximately eight minutes later, as a rumbling, roaring noise from the
direction in which the blinding flash of the fireball had been seen eight minutes
earlier. Those in London with any knowledge of nuclear weapons were in no doubt
as to what had happened.
Within one minute the stupendous activity of immediate damage from the
detonation had ceased. The enormous mushroom cloud above the totally
devastated centre of Birmingham had risen to a height of fifteen kilometres and
had spread across a diameter of approximately twenty kilometres. It cast its
shadow over a scene of extraordinary destruction, where everything was still
except for the occasional crash of falling masonry and the crackle of multitudinous
fires. Within a radius of five kilometres of Winson Green everything seemed to be
on fire. Outside this area, to a range of about eight kilometres, hardly any
building, or what survived of it, seemed to be free of a fire of some sort. Fires
occurred less frequently outside this range though there were buildings on fire at
ranges of up to fifteen kilometres. There were fires in towns as far away as
Wolverhampton, Stourbridge, Halesowen, Solihull, Sutton Coldfield, Walsall and
Brownhills.
 The devastation within the centre of Birmingham was so intense that the road
system had ceased to have any meaning, most roads having totally disappeared
beneath the rubble of the buildings once standing along them. Outside this area,
and to a range of five or six kilometres, all roads were totally blocked by fallen
masonry. The only means of movement around the area was provided by the M5
and M6 motorways which encircle the centre of Birmingham. These roads, being
wide and not hemmed in by buildings, remained relatively free of obstruction. The
bridges along them had also survived remarkably well. Outside the motorway
route the degree of devastation began to tail off, although most buildings still
appeared to be unusable. Almost all roads were so littered with rubble that no
immediate movement of vehicles was possible. The centres of Dudley, Walsall,
Sutton Coldfield and Halesowen were impassable, though in these towns the
outline of the road system was still visible and the overall extent of the damage,
though still enormous, was considerably less than in the centre of Birmingham.
Fires were prolific, particularly in commercial premises in high streets and
commercial centres, holding large stocks of inflammable materials. In many places
the gas distribution network had been broken and fires were being fed by escaping
gas.
The fires which were now alight across a circle with a radius of approximately
fifteen kilometres centred on Winson Green were beginning everywhere to take
hold. In particular the fires amongst the devastated remains of the centre of
Birmingham were beginning to burn fiercely. As the flames rose higher into the
sky air was drawn in from outside, with the result that winds began to blow
inwards towards the flames. This further fanned the conflagration so that, within
twenty minutes of the original detonation, an area of approximately thirty square
kilometres in the centre of Birmingham was totally engulfed in a fire-storm. The
flames and smoke rose hundreds of metres into the sky as the in-rush of air fed
and fanned the fires. The in-blowing air prevented fires moving outwards but
everything within the fire-storm area was now engulfed by it. Outside the area of
the fire-storm thousands of other fires were burning furiously. In peacetime many
of these would have been regarded as serious fires requiring the attentions of a
significant proportion of the fire-fighting effort available locally. As it was there
were so many such fires burning at once over a total area of about 600 square
kilometres that conventional fire-fighting equipment could have little or no effect
upon them.
The human casualties resulting from the detonation of the nuclear weapon were
horrific. The day had been a sunny one, so that many people were lightly dressed
and therefore susceptible to burn injuries on their exposed skin. The centre of
Birmingham had been crowded with shoppers and others going about their normal
business. Fortunately, schools were empty and some people were away on holiday.
Nevertheless, a population of approximately 2 million, including that of
Birmingham and its surrounding towns, was exposed to the holocaust. Of this
population approximately 300,000 were killed within minutes by the heat and
blast effects of the weapon or were subsequently to die unattended by any medical
or rescue team. A further 250,000 received blast or burn injuries of a very serious
nature, in need of urgent hospital treatment. Another 500,000 received lighter
injuries which could conceivably be treated either by themselves or with first aid.
Only a very small proportion of the population within the Birmingham area was
entirely free of injury. The medical and hospital facilities available to support this
catastrophic level of casualty were themselves savagely weakened.
Half the hospitals in the area were either destroyed or rendered totally unusable
by the explosion. Of the remainder only a quarter were able to function as normal
whilst the rest had suffered damage which severely limited their ability to cope
with more than their original patient load. Doctors and ambulance services had
suffered casualties in proportion to that of the civil population and so were hardly
able to cope with an emergency. By any measure the enormous numbers of people
requiring medical assistance so swamped the remaining medical facilities that the
help these were able to give was almost negligible. In addition to the physical and
human destruction, many of the survivors within the area were suffering from
severe shock. They were helpless and in no position either to help themselves or to
organize any form of co-ordinated help for others.
The fire-fighting services had also been severely disrupted, almost three-
quarters of the fire-fighting equipment within Birmingham itself having been
destroyed. Most of the firemen who responded to the emergency by making their
way to their fire stations found that their equipment was either buried or so
damaged as to be unusable, while those who were able to get their appliances out
found that they were quite unable to move them along the roads. Additionally,
there were so many fires burning that any sort of priority was almost impossible to
decide upon. Those nearest to the fire stations received what little effort was
available. Within Birmingham and its close environs the firemen who were able to
deploy equipment found that the water distribution system had suffered so much
damage that hydrant pressures were inadequate to support any real fire-fighting
capacity. This was not the case in the surrounding towns, however, where
subterranean water systems had remained undisturbed and where effective
pressures were available.
Within the city of Birmingham central administration and organization had
virtually ceased to exist. Normal telephone communication systems linking police,
fire-fighting services, medical facilities and local administration had all been
destroyed. In the preceding week a Sub-Regional Headquarters had been
established at the government offices in South Yardley. These offices were
approximately nine kilometres away from the centre of the explosion but they were
of modern infill construction and had suffered considerable damage as a result of
the blast. As offices they were generally unusable and, more important, all
telephone communication had been destroyed. The personnel manning the
headquarters were relatively unscathed but, having at first no form of
communication with outside agencies, even by road, they were unable to co-
ordinate any activity. It was some time before emergency radio communication,
from what was left of local and public utility radio, together with RAYNET Ham
Stations (the net of amateur or ‘ham’ radio stations), could begin to help.
A further problem was the total failure of electrical power in the Birmingham
area. The widespread destruction of electrical distribution systems had led to the
automatic cut-out of supply, and destruction was so widespread that the
distribution system throughout that area of the Midlands centred on Birmingham
had been affected. Many of the power stations supplying the area had
automatically shut down as their imposed load had ceased to exist. Thus the
whole of Birmingham, with its surrounding towns, was without electricity.
Spontaneous attempts at fire-fighting, rescue and the giving of medical
attention to the injured developed within minutes of the detonation. But, being
spontaneous and limited, the efforts were soon totally disorganized as calls for
assistance flooded into whatever remained of the emergency service co-ordination
centres. It was some hours before the initial shock had subsided sufficiently for
any attempt at local organization to take place. In Wolverhampton, Stourbridge,
Solihull, Walsall and Halesowen public utility communication systems had
survived to some degree and were at least able to report the extent of local damage
and casualties. These towns had been hit hard, with very extensive damage to
buildings and with large numbers of fires. A great many of their inhabitants had
suffered extensive burn or blast injuries and needed urgent medical attention.
Their fire-fighting, ambulance and medical collection services had survived
reasonably intact and were available to the local authority. The biggest problem
these services faced was that of moving their equipment around streets blocked
with rubble. In addition, the extent of fire was sometimes so great that entire areas
had to be completely avoided. Most of these towns had taken some elementary
precautions of a civil defence nature during the first days of war, even if they had
not done something earlier, including the stockpiling of earth-moving machinery
capable of clearing rubble off the main roads. They were thus able to clear routes
through the centres of the towns so that emergency services equipment could be
deployed, generally to the town or city centres, where the worst devastation had
been caused, where fires were burning most fiercely, and where the majority of
casualties had also occurred. The vast numbers of fires elsewhere in these towns
had to go unheeded. So did most of the casualties, lying unattended. The extent of
damage and casualty in these towns was so great that the local authorities were
overwhelmed by their problems and could spare no thought for assistance to areas
outside their own.
Towns closer to the centre of Birmingham, such as Dudley, which was
approximately nine kilometres away from the centre of the explosion, had fared
much worse than the towns in the outer ring. Dudley’s town centre was ablaze in
many parts, while movement of fire and rescue appliances along its roads was
severely handicapped and in many cases impossible. Again, a few items of earth-
moving equipment had been assembled before the war and these now attempted to
clear their way through the worst of the rubble. Many buildings had collapsed.
People were trapped but little rescue effort was available. The local authority
emergency services had remained reasonably intact but most of the telephone
communication system had broken down; it was thus impossible to organize
centrally any form of rescue effort. Rescue work continued on an ad hoc basis but
was hopelessly inadequate to meet the town’s needs; this was also the case in
other nearby towns like Halesowen, Walsall, Sutton Coldfield and Solihull. These
towns were in the worst state of any in the area. Large numbers of those still alive
had suffered severe injuries. Emergency services existed in some form or other but
without organization. The towns struggling for survival in surrounding areas could
provide no form of help to those in the inner ring. Still closer to the point of
detonation conditions were so bad that no help was available at all. Thus the
towns in the worst condition of all were left to their own devices. This was where
help was most urgently needed. As it was, there was none.
Within the motorway boundaries the position inside the city of Birmingham
itself soon became quite unmanageable. Movement was virtually impossible.
Although the fire-storm itself had abated, fires still raged throughout the area. The
area was a wilderness in which no help was to be had, surrounded by towns quite
incapable of providing any.
As the day wore on Wolverhampton and Solihull continued to struggle with the
impossible task facing their rescue and fire-fighting facilities. Most of the fires had
to be allowed to burn themselves out. Rescue attempts were made where
resources were available and where it appeared that some benefit would result. In
many places no attempt could be made to rescue people trapped inside fallen
buildings or to provide medical attention to the injured. Inevitably this meant that
many people trapped in buildings died either as a result of the spread of fire or
from the injuries they had received earlier.
By the end of the day on 20 August an area of 600 square kilometres centred on
Birmingham was a scene still lit by innumerable fires burning themselves out,
with pockets of activity where fire-fighting and rescue operations were going on
and groups of people had formed themselves into rescue teams to try to extricate
those buried beneath rubble. A small number of people had been able to obtain
medical assistance but thousands were totally unable to get near a hospital
because of the large numbers of injured requiring attention. By the end of the day
almost all organized endeavour within the areas hit by the nuclear explosion had
to be concentrated on attempting to cope with the enormous numbers of
casualties. Hospitals were being inundated with requests for help and submerged
by the wave of people appearing for treatment. Many were still lying where they
had been injured; there was no way of collecting them up. The numbers of people
appearing at hospitals were such that physical protection of the premises was
required from the police. Even so, the anxiety of people to receive treatment
themselves or have others treated was so great that violence began to develop and
there were disturbances outside some of the surviving hospitals.
The movement of survivors out of the area, by vehicle or on foot, soon began to
clog the remaining passable roads and severely hampered the emergency services.
Further police effort was required to control this. The police manpower available
for this task, and also for the protection of the hospitals, even with the help of
reserve army units, was simply insufficient. Chaos began to develop on the roads,
chiefly near hospitals and in areas which had suffered less damage than others
and where people came to find food and shelter. As the night wore on the absence
of electricity made matters worse, so that the day ended in a shambles of
uncoordinated activity by fire-fighting and rescue teams doing what they could
against the mountain of disaster facing them, in an environment where hundreds
of thousands of people were seeking food and shelter and attention for severe
injuries. The extent of the disaster and its aftermath was such that the local
authorities were quite unable to control events.
During the day the situation in Birmingham had been in the minds of the entire
country. Everyone was aware that a nuclear device had been exploded and most
were convinced that it was only the first of many. This caused an element of panic
everywhere as individuals sought either to protect themselves within their own
homes or to move from urban areas out into the country, where they imagined
they might be safer. The potential mass exodus of people was of great concern to
the government, who strove to check it through broadcast messages. Fortunately
no further nuclear attack took place. Nevertheless, local authorities everywhere
were making preparations to ensure their own survival and might not have been
receptive to requests to provide Birmingham with assistance, had these been
made.
The government had ordered Headquarters United Kingdom Land Forces to take
whatever action in support of Birmingham was possible without detriment to its
ability to withstand further nuclear strikes. Headquarters West Midland District
was ordered within minutes of the strike to provide what assistance it could in the
Birmingham area.
By mid-afternoon that day twelve major units from the regular and volunteer
armies, together with units of the RAF Regiment, amounting to some 10,000 men,
with logistic and medical services and some fire-fighting equipment, were being
deployed on emergency relief operations. Units drawn from West Midland, Eastern
and Wales Districts, including the Mercian Yeomanry and men from the Light
Infantry Depot at Shrewsbury, were deployed to Wolverhampton, Stourbridge,
Halesowen, Solihull, Sutton Coldfield, Walsall and Brownhills. Here the local
authorities had retained some semblance of local control and rescue and relief
operations were therefore already under way in some form or other. The military
units brought with them vehicles, communications, tentage, blankets, medical
assistance, engineer equipment and fire-fighting equipment. Most important of all,
they were organized bodies of men, capable and under disciplined control.
By the evening of the same day the emergency committees nominated in
peacetime had come into operation. These committees included representatives
from the police, fire-fighting services, ambulance services and medical authorities.
With liaison officers from military relief units the emergency committees now took
control of the deployment of rescue and relief operations during the recovery
phase. It was evening before troop deployments were complete and before the
emergency committees had a chance to take stock of the situation within their
areas. With no electricity and fires still freely burning almost everywhere, little
could be done other than attempting ad hoc rescue and relief operations with
existing facilities, while plans were made for a major effort at recovery from dawn
next day.
By the early morning of 21 August the Sub-Regional Headquarters at South
Yardley had managed to establish radio and land communications with central
government and with emergency committees in the surrounding towns. It was
thus able to co-ordinate the activities of all the emergency committees, which were
by now backed by their own surviving emergency facilities and military help.
All surviving hospitals were still being besieged by crowds of casualties needing
treatment. There were few doctors available either in the hospitals or in the
surrounding areas. Most of the roads were still impassable to vehicular movement,
so fire-fighting, rescue and ambulance teams could not approach the scenes of
worst damage. There were no telephones and no electricity. Gas supplies had by
now been cut off. The water distribution system had failed in many places, which
made fire-fighting more difficult still. There were many thousands of slightly
wounded people with no accommodation and no means of feeding themselves.
Looting of damaged commercial premises was becoming widespread as some
looked for food while others hoped for material gain. Many people were trying to
leave the area, clogging the roads with their vehicles and preventing the effective
deployment of emergency services. Fires were still burning in many places, and
the thousands of bodies littering the streets and lying amongst the destroyed
buildings threatened a future hazard to health.
The weapon had fortunately exploded at such a height as not to cause
extraordinarily high levels of radiation over the area. Emergency teams were able
to operate wherever they could be deployed without concern for radiological
hazard. There would have been extensive and dangerous radioactive fallout if the
device had been exploded closer to the ground. A very large area downwind of
Birmingham which might have been significantly affected by radioactive fallout
was thus not placed at risk.
As the day of 21 August wore on the emergency services, with military support,
began to make some headway in restoring order to the devastated area.
Emergency committees established road blocks at many places throughout the
towns to reduce the movement of refugees. Specific evacuation could now be
mounted to move casualties into other hospitals in the Midlands. Reduction in
refugee movement also allowed the emergency services access to the roads, where
these had been cleared, so that further rescue operations could be carried out.
Relief centres were set up in suitable surviving buildings such as schools,
assembly halls, community centres and cinemas. Emergency supplies of food were
established at the centres so that those being sheltered could be adequately fed.
Strong police and military guards were mounted at all hospitals to control the
access of injured people. Patrols of police and military also operated throughout
the area, wherever movement was possible, to check looting, which was
widespread. Emergency teams, reinforced by military and ad hoc groups of local
citizens, were organized to carry out further rescue operations and to gather in all
those casualties who had remained unattended so far. Casualties so collected were
passed through control centres where they were allocated to categories of
treatment, including first aid, attention at local hospitals where possible, or
evacuation to other hospitals in the Midlands. Military communications greatly
improved the co-ordination of operations. Some headway began to be made at last
in assessing the extent of the disaster and in allocating priorities.
The task of restoring order and of rescuing and providing succour to the injured
was still enormous in relation to the resources available. Fires were still raging,
thousands were still dying where they lay, many people remained buried alive.
Scattered crowds wandered about in a state of shock and there was frequent
violence amongst those who thronged around the hospitals, relief centres and food
stores, all of which were now under police and military guard. Police and military
were armed and in many cases had to use force, sometimes even with weapons, to
maintain control.
By the morning of 22 August some semblance of order had been established in
neighbouring towns such as Wolverhampton. Here all fires had now been
extinguished or had burned themselves out, and the combined efforts of police
and military were at last able to maintain some degree of law and order in the
streets, while rescue operations went on in damaged buildings and the further
evacuation of homeless and injured to other areas was arranged. Compulsory
billeting had allowed shelter to be found for most of those still wandering the
streets. Some military effort was now becoming available to probe further towards
the centre of the devastated area and to carry out rescue and relief operations in
the innermost ring of towns surrounding the city of Birmingham. Most of the
surviving populations of these towns had already left them and had arrived in the
outermost ring of towns. There they had been given shelter and such medical help
as existing facilities allowed. Nevertheless, within the innermost ring of towns, in
places like Dudley, many thousands of injured people still lay amongst the rubble
of their homes and countless others were buried beneath the ruins. The extent of
damage in this area was so great that only minor relief was possible.
The Sub-Regional Headquarters within the city of Birmingham had by now
realized that little could be done for most of the city area. Fires had largely burned
themselves out but the devastation had extended over such a wide area that the
capacity of rescue teams, already engaged in rescue attempts in the towns of the
inner periphery, was severely limited. It was evident that the resources in the area
were hopelessly inadequate to begin to attempt rescue operations in what
remained of the city of Birmingham itself. This would have to wait until national
resources became available. The city was therefore cordoned off along the line of
the motorways to the north and west and along the line of the River Cole and the
Stratford-upon-Avon Canal to the south and east. It was ordered that no rescue or
relief operations would be mounted within this area for the time being. The cordon
was strongly manned by police and military units and access into the city area
was forbidden.
By limiting the deployment of available relief resources in this way the Sub-
Regional Headquarters was able to make some headway in organizing and
administering the area outside the cordon.
Many thousands of seriously injured were now dying daily and sanitary
conditions had deteriorated to such an extent that there was widespread danger of
disease. Police and military units were forced to the frequent use of firearms in
maintaining law and order amongst the droves of injured and often dispirited
people who overcrowded the limited accommodation and swamped all medical
facilities. Evacuation of the injured was proceeding as fast as possible but the
numbers were so great that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable
destinations for them. Further attempts were being made at clearing major roads
around the city of Birmingham, but with the resources available only those in and
out of the towns concerned could be cleared. It was obvious that a major
evacuation of the entire area would have to be carried out, leaving behind only
personnel essential to further rescue operations.
Londoners had seen the flash and heard the detonation of the nuclear explosion
over Birmingham. While they watched the high mushroom cloud gather and
disperse the government was already taking action. Civil and military staffs
started immediately to put into operation contingency plans for nuclear attack. It
was announced that the Prime Minister would speak to the nation on television
and radio at midday.
 Central government was already established away from London. On 4 August
the first stages of the plans for evacuation had been carried out, with token staffs
setting up in underground war locations. The main bodies of civil and military
headquarters soon followed. Everywhere throughout the country the regional
centres for joint civil and military control, located underground and well-protected,
and subordinate sub-regional centres, had from the outset been fully operational.
At the head of each was a minister of Cabinet rank, with representatives of all
essential military and civil authorities. Procedures were well-practised.
Communications had long been hardened against bomb damage and interference,
even from the electro-magnetic pulse generated by a nuclear detonation.
Conventional air attack on many parts of the country had already been heavy,
particularly on ports, power stations and communication centres, with severe
damage and heavy loss of life. Fears of further nuclear attack were widespread. As
a result, it was not immediately possible to divert to the stricken cities and towns
in the vast circle of damage more than a comparatively small proportion of the
units of United Kingdom Land Forces. Police and civil defence forces were under
heavy strain. The voluntary groups trained by local authorities to cope with civil
emergency, as well as conventional or nuclear attack, and the RAYNET Ham radio
communications linked to the local authority and public utility radio networks
were invaluable. Equipment stockpiled by local authorities, acquired by grant-
aided purchase in the recent past or more recently still by requisition, was a
godsend. Against the background of the damage done in Britain in the past few
weeks by conventional air attack the Birmingham disaster could have pushed the
national situation out of control. What had been done for civil defence in the
preceding few years was just enough to prevent this.
Delegation of power over military and civil defence resources had become the
responsibility of the Headquarters of UK Land Forces. Representatives of the Prime
Minister, the naval, air and military commands and the civil agencies controlling
essential services were assembled there, in well-defended underground bunkers,
hardened against attack or interference to communications, containing all
necessary equipment.
The news media had used all their resources to cover the Birmingham
disaster—though for the first twenty-four hours after the detonation all pictures
from the scene were banned. Approach by road to the towns of the countryside
surrounding Birmingham was impossible. Visual cover was therefore only
obtainable through oblique scanning from the air. There had been commentary all
day on television and radio. When the Prime Minister broadcast, she explained
what had happened in the first nuclear attack on a British city—indeed upon any
city in the Western world—and outlined what was being done to provide relief. She
repeated urgent advice that all people outside the disaster area should stay where
they were; no one could yet know whether, or where, in the United Kingdom there
might be another attack.
The Prime Minister then went on to announce that the enemy had in his turn
been struck by nuclear attack, with even greater force than that used on
Birmingham. This was the first official intimation in the United Kingdom that the
Soviet city of Minsk had been destroyed.
 Her Majesty the Queen with her family, said the Prime Minister, would remain
in London, and she, the Prime Minister, herself would, of course, do the same.

Chapter 26
A Devastating Response

A few minutes after the detonation of the nuclear weapon over

Birmingham, as the huge damage from blast was being followed by swiftly
spreading fire, and as millions throughout the British Isles reacted in dumb horror
to the emergency transmissions on their television screens and on the radio, the
President of the United States was speaking to the British Prime Minister. The
time was 1035 hours Greenwich Mean Time, 0535 Eastern Standard Time. It was
at once agreed that immediate retaliation was necessary, if only to avoid a
catastrophic decline in civilian and military morale. The French President was
called and gave his instant concurrence. As the other Allies were being informed
instructions were already on their way to two SSBN, one American, one British, to
launch two missiles each, targeted on the city of Minsk. The epicentre was to be
directly over the middle of the city, at 3,000 metres. Each submarine reported a
trouble-free launch, exactly on time, and the multiple warheads from the four
missiles, tailored exactly to their task, detonated on target in quick succession.
The effect was cataclysmic. It was the horror of Birmingham repeated, only many
times worse, scarcely mitigated at all by civil defence precautions. There was no
TV or radio reporting of the attack. The news spread nonetheless like wildfire
round the world. Its impact was everywhere enormous but nowhere more so than
within the Soviet Union and its satellites.
The hot-line was used again, to tell the Soviet leaders that this was a limited
attack ordered as an inevitable reprisal and that a reply about negotiation would
be given in three days. In the event this proved unnecessary.
This nuclear exchange, carried out on the Soviet side with no pretence of
consultation with their subject allies let alone with the regional republics of the
USSR, proved to be the trigger which set off the smouldering nationalist explosion.
The growth of disaffection and resistance in Asia and in Eastern Europe has
already been described. Its causes were the check to Soviet arms in Europe and
elsewhere; the fundamental contradiction in the Soviet system as a revolutionary
empire - forcing its own subject nations to fight wars of national liberation in
Africa while denying them national freedom at home; offers of external help, from
China to the Central Asians and from the West to the European satellites; now
finally the realization that Russia might well have initiated a nuclear war which
could engulf them all unless they immediately separated themselves from Russian
control. The outbreaks were quicker and more violent in the East, more subtle but
more decisive in Europe.
The Council of Ministers of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic started the ball
rolling by securing the adoption by their local Supreme Soviet of a proclamation of
secession from the Soviet Union and of independence and non-commitment. The
new regime was at once recognized by China, who instituted large-scale military
manoeuvres on the frontier. The Soviet commander at Alma Ata prepared to attack
the Supreme Soviet building, now guarded by the local police and militia, but,
being unaccustomed to taking local initiatives, asked Moscow for instructions and
authority. The Kremlin, plunged into preparations for nuclear war and still torn by
internal disagreement, was too busy to reply, and the tactical moment was lost.
Enthusiastic crowds filled the streets carrying banners proclaiming their
friendship for the Russian people and calling on the Russian troops to return
peacefully to their own country. The Chinese threat appeared even more
dangerous than the local ‘disturbance’, and the general took himself and most of
his garrison off to reinforce the frontiers.
Proclamations of independence were equally successful in other republics which
bordered on Chinese or Iranian territory and where military activity on the frontier
diverted Soviet troops from their internal security role. In the Uzbek republic,
which did not have this advantage, however, the Soviet forces in Tashkent took
bloody reprisals against the nationalist leaders and temporarily halted the
independence movement. They might in the end have been able to re-establish the
situation in other territories, but meanwhile there was more serious trouble in the
West which finally gave the coup de grace to the crumbling edifice of Soviet rule.
The annihilation of Minsk also precipitated events on the western borders of the
Soviet Union. It was a well-chosen target, close to Poland on the west, capital of
the theoretically autonomous republic of Byelorussia, and Ukraine’s neighbour on
the north. Both Poland and Ukraine were quick to draw the necessary conclusion
that it could be their turn next unless they took steps to change the course of
history. In preparation for such an occasion the Polish defence authorities, still
able to call on great signals expertise such as the Enigma disclosures had
revealed, had secretly arranged direct links to their commanders, separate from
the Soviet-controlled Warsaw Pact network. They now activated these links and
instructed all Polish units to stand firm in their positions and resist any, repeat
any, other orders to move and any attack on their positions, from whatever
quarter. At the same time they made contact with the underground (in typical
Polish fashion the authorities and the underground had known perfectly well how
to get in touch with each other for some time past) and arranged for them to send
urgent messages on their clandestine radio to London, reporting what had been
done, asking for confirmation that no Allied attack would be made on Polish
positions, and requesting air drops of supplies of essential foodstuffs and
communications equipment. A positive and encouraging reply was received and
the Polish government quietly prepared a declaration of withdrawal from the
Warsaw Pact and the isolation of Russian units still on Polish territory.
The really crushing blow came from an unexpected quarter, however. Soviet
policy had always been at pains either to suppress or to appease any symptoms of
independence of mind on the part of the Ukraine. Its enormous contribution to
Soviet food supplies, its position in the front line of Soviet territory facing the
West, bordering on Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, and its vast
hydro-electric potential, had made it, after Russia proper, the most vital
component of the Union. It had suffered more than any other republic from the
actions of the Soviet state to obtain food supplies by force after the Revolution and
from the subsequent persecution of the wealthier peasants. It had been rewarded
after the devastation of the Second World War by being given, with Byelorussia to
the north, a privileged but fictitious autonomy as a separate member of the United
Nations.
Ukrainian nationalist sentiment had been repressed in 1966 in the Kiev trials of
intellectuals and members of the Ukrainian Workers and Peasants Union. Their
main crime had been to promote the idea of secession from the Soviet Union, a
right enshrined in the Soviet Constitution. Repression had only diverted this
sentiment into more powerful channels underground. Its modern exponents
understood the axiom that successful revolutions begin at the top. They
determined to make use of the one important freedom left to the inhabitants of the
Ukraine - the access of individual Ukrainians to positions of power in the central
apparatus of the Soviet Union. There had been several successful generals; now
the favourite son of the Ukrainian nationalists was in the unlikely guise of a secret
policeman.
After graduating from the police academy at Kiev in 1960, Vasyl Duglenko had
been recommended to Khrushchev by some of the latter’s Ukrainian cronies, and
transferred to the KGB headquarters in Moscow. Being still in a junior post he had
managed to survive Khrushchev’s fall, and climbed up the precarious ladder of
power to be Deputy Commandant, with special responsibility for the security of
the Kremlin. He had retained close links with the nationalist cells in the
Communist Party of the Ukraine and he had naturally placed a good number of
fellow Ukrainians in suitable positions in the KGB, particularly in the Kremlin
section.
So a powerful mechanism was in place, and the Minsk explosions provided the
opportunity, and the necessity, for its use. Duglenko and his friends in the
Ukrainian Party machine had no wish to take part in the last act of a Russian
Gotterdammerung. Although they vaguely knew what was about to happen in
Poland they saw no sure future in a separatist movement confined to the Ukraine.
The central keep of the Soviet system had to be attacked.
At the centre they could join forces with the group of ‘doves’ already referred to
in Chapter 24, whose influence had spread, with the worsening news from East
and West, even among sections of the command of the armed forces. It would be
vital to have some friends there if a coup was to survive its first dangerous hours.
This army group, small at first and of necessity conspiratorial, had decided even
before the attack on Birmingham that nuclear war was not going to achieve Soviet
objectives in the West, nor restore order in the East. Moreover, in the ensuing
destruction of organized life in the Soviet Union the armed forces themselves were
likely to disintegrate. A deliberate return of army units to the Russian heartlands
offered better hope for a future system of orderly government in which the armed
forces would have an effective role, and its commanders a tolerably secure life.
Their ideas probably did not include so radical a break-up of the Soviet Union as
the Ukrainians secretly envisaged. They would have been in closer agreement on
the need to relax the dead hand of centralized control on the economic life of the
country, not in the interests of laissez-faire, but in order to restore efficiency and
come nearer to matching the agricultural and industrial productivity of the West,
not to speak of China-Japan.
 As it turned out, both parties, keeping their ultimate objectives to themselves,
were able to establish discreet links for the tactical purpose of overcoming the
probable insistence of the hard-liners in the Central Committee on committing
nuclear suicide.
There was in any case no time to be lost. The Politburo was due to meet on 22
August to decide on further action in the event that the Americans did not comply
with the ultimatum to join in talks on maintaining the status quo.
On the morning of the fateful meeting, Duglenko’s boss, the KGB Chief, met
with a fatal ‘motor accident’ on his way into Moscow. Duglenko, already in the
Kremlin, could now be satisfied that he would have access to the Politburo
session. He relied on two things: complete surprise, for which reason no one knew
of the details of his plan except the dozen secret policemen required to carry it out,
mostly fellow Ukrainians; and the willingness of the Soviet administrative machine
of that time to accept orders from the top, whatever they might be—a
characteristic which he in fact was determined to change but which on this
occasion was to serve him well. When the meeting had assembled and he was
summoned to report on the accident to his Chief he drew from his pocket not a
sheaf of paper, but a pistol, with which he shot dead President Vorotnikov, and on
this signal his fellow conspirators, already on guard outside the room, broke in
and disarmed the rest of the Politburo. Duglenko announced that he was
assuming the offices of President and Party Secretary; he ordered the removal,
under guard, of the leading hard-line members, and received the allegiance of the
rest, who had little choice, with guns still drawn all round them.
The next few hours were a feverish race against time, to assume effective
command of the armed forces before any counter-move could be made and before
any wild orders could be given for nuclear release, to reassure the population, and
not least to reassure the Americans and dissuade them from any idea of a pre-
emptive nuclear strike. Some of the Soviet commanders were, as has been said,
generally favourable to the idea of salvaging what they could from the present
unhappy situation, as the only means of keeping the armed forces in being, but
very few of them were privy to the details of the conspiracy. It had, of course, been
necessary in advance to place one of these few in the post which handled the
transmissions of presidential orders to the strategic nuclear forces, so that when
Duglenko, having done what was immediately necessary in Moscow, finally got on
the hot-line to President Thompson, he was able to assure him confidently that the
Soviet nuclear forces had been ordered to stand down, and to ask President
Thompson kindly to give corresponding orders on his side. Duglenko proposed in
addition a complete ceasefire within twelve hours, and the opening of an early
conference in Helsinki to draw up terms of peace.
Even the most expert Kremlin-watchers on the Western side were taken by
surprise. In the confusion of the next few hours, while the American answer was
being prepared, some voices were heard urging that it was a trick, or that if there
were a real upset in Moscow, now was the time to push ahead and finish the
Russians off. More accurately, some others argued that this was no more than a
change of Russian tactics; the new, more open and more decentralized
communism, of which they were getting the first news by monitoring Moscow
broadcasts, would in the long run be more dangerous to the West than the brutal
obscurantism of its predecessor. Therefore no concessions should be made, the
guard should be kept up, and so on. But it was eventually agreed to be thankful
for a large if not necessarily permanent mercy, to reciprocate the downgrading of
nuclear alert, to accept the ceasefire, and to prepare, with all due caution, for a
conference.
Duglenko had to contend with far more arduous decision-making, on no less a
subject than the future of the Soviet Union. At a hastily-summoned meeting of
representatives of all the constituent republics there was not really much choice
but to accept that the Union was in dissolution; independence was now openly
proclaimed as the objective of the Ukraine. It had already been achieved by many
of the republics in Asia. The Russians now clearly had to accept that whether they
liked it or not they were on their own.
It was generally agreed that they would all form a joint delegation to the
Helsinki Conference, and at the same time work out the modalities of separation.
Needless to say, the violent transition from a centralized autocracy to multiple
nationhood was not everywhere achieved in an orderly manner. Not all the
republics were geared to establish their own administrations, and many had
deficient economic resources. The enormous problem of disposing of the former
Soviet forces, in Europe and Africa and the Middle East, was being handled by
UNRRO.
The Conference, as is the way of conferences, proliferated into a whole series,
some of which are still continuing, and it would require another volume of this
history to do justice to all these deliberations. The collapse of the USSR meant the
end of large-scale hostilities in Europe. It did not mean universal peace.

Chapter 27
Reflections on a War

Conflicts which the Soviet Union did not start, but which it studiously
sought to sharpen and exploit, have yet to be resolved. Fighting still goes on. The
pattern of the successor states into which the USSR seems now to be dividing has
yet to be fully determined. There are differences between the countries which,
under their former regime, were all members of the Warsaw Pact. There are also
differences between each one of them and the member states of the Western
Alliance, with which they have so lately been at war. To settle all these differences
will take time and will be far from easy. Meanwhile, there is still warfare outside
Europe. No doubt it will continue, in one way or another, for some time, with
whatever resources (and much material has been left behind by the Russians) the
belligerents can find.
The Third World War, however, can be fairly said to have ended with the
collapse of the Warsaw Pact in late August 1985 and the cessation of direct
hostilities between the major powers. We have already taken a brief glance at how
the world then looked, and in the concluding chapter we look a little into the
future. Something more should now be said about what might have happened and
did not, about certain contributory factors to the outcome and about some, at
least, of the conclusions that can be drawn from these events.
What especially distinguishes the scene we now see about us—and this is
something to which we shall only be able to grow accustomed with the passage of
time—is the absence from it of the powerful, restless, baleful, expansive,
intractably dogmatic imperialism of Soviet Russia.
The world has come out of another bad dream, just as it did out of the Nazi
nightmare. This one lasted rather longer. The myth born in the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917 persisted, before it was dispersed, for nearly three-quarters of a
century. It was the myth of the emergence of true democracy from a proletarian
explosion, when what had really taken place was the murderous overthrow of a
democratically elected government by a fanatical authoritarian minority.
It is argued by some that the basic contradictions of Marxism-Leninism would
inevitably have caused, in time, the downfall of any state built on it. Whatever Karl
Marx may have contributed to nineteenth-century thought his political philosophy
is held by many today, a century later, to be unscientific, romantic and obsolete,
no more useful as a guide to government in the twentieth century than the novels
of Charles Dickens as a reflection of life today in England. Indeed, if the
revolutionary genius of Lenin had not harnessed to the advancement of Marxism a
huge and backward group of peoples accustomed to absolutism—most of them
Asiatic and some still semi-savage—it might have been consigned to the dust heap
of history long ago, and this particular nightmare might never have occurred at all.
The nightmare is now over, and we shall never know if the USSR, given time,
would have fallen apart by itself or not, without the war it brought about. There
may be other nightmares still ahead.
It has been suggested with some plausibility that in addition to the conjunction
of miscalculation and mischance which triggered off the explosion of August 1985
there had long been a growing awareness among the rulers of the USSR of
increasing strains within the Warsaw Pact, and within the Soviet Union itself,
which could hardly be contained without a signal military victory over the
capitalist West. There had also been, among the top people in the regime, a very
real fear of Germany. There had even been some fear of the capacity of the Federal
Republic to lead the West (and above all the United States) into an aggressive war
against the communist East. This was a fear which West German insistence on
‘forward defence’ (whatever that might mean—and it clearly meant different things
to different people) did little to abate. It was for all that little but the product of the
Soviet Union’s own propaganda.
The real causes of this war between the Eastern and the Western blocs will long
be matter for debate. Whatever they were the fighting could not, it now seems, find
its resolution (if it did not move into the strategic exchange of weapons of mass
destruction, which would have emptied the concept of ‘resolution’ of all meaning)
anywhere but in Europe. Its focal point could be nowhere but in the Federal
Republic of Germany.
The critical point in the military action was therefore bound to be, at least as far
as the battle on and over the land was concerned, in what was designated in NATO
as the Central Region of Allied Command Europe.
 What also seems beyond doubt is that the Soviet plan to penetrate the Northern
Army Group, cross the Rhine in the Low Countries, and roll up AFCENT by an
offensive thrust from north to south along the west bank of the Rhine, which
would have taken CENTAG in the rear, came very close to success. It was well
conceived and well prepared, with a not unreasonable assessment of the
difficulties involved. This particular plan was an element in a general structure of
contingency planning, any one part of which was valid in itself though none was
likely to be implemented in isolation. It was the unexpectedly strong Western
response to the Soviet intervention in Yugoslavia which pulled the chocks out, as
it were, and set the plan for the invasion of the Central Region rolling down the
slipway to the launch.
What might have happened in the long run if this plan had come off is quite
incalculable. It can be said with complete confidence that in the shorter term it
would have brought about the total destruction of the Federal Republic of
Germany, and that the Atlantic Alliance would in consequence have lain in ruins.
The possibility of a counter-offensive by the United States, in these circumstances,
can hardly be conceived. The situation would have been beyond repair.
The bogey of an all-out attack on Allied Command Europe by forces of the
Warsaw Pact, planned in total secrecy and carried out with complete surprise by
forces already in place, with the aid of massive under-cover operations prepared
with absolute security, was not the sort of thing to give sensible men sleepless
nights in the years before the war—though it might not have been sensible wholly
to disregard the possibility. Much more likely, Allied planners thought, was what
actually happened: the implementation of well-prepared contingency plans,
involving a high degree of preparation, as crises developing elsewhere showed
signs of moving out of control.
Unlikely though it may have been, a surprise attack in the late seventies by in-
place forces of the Warsaw Pact would have found Allied Command Europe so ill
prepared that its early success could hardly have been in doubt, whether the
French came in on the Allied side or not. The US Army in Europe had not yet fully
recovered from the Vietnam experience. It was becoming accustomed to the
absence of the draft but was already running into serious and unexpected
difficulties over reserves as a result of ending it. Stocks which had been run down
for the Israeli war were only slowly being replaced. The ‘Reforger’ system, by which
formations would be flown in from the continental United States to marry up with
equipment pre-stocked in the Federal Republic, though already showing great
promise, had not yet been as fully developed as in the years to come.
The Bundeswehr was improving, but although its units were rated by the
Russians as the best of the Allied bunch it was still only in moderate shape by the
exacting standards of German professional soldiers, while the German Territorial
Army was scarcely more than embryonic.
The British Army of the Rhine was again in the throes of reorganization, with
the level of provision (and the state) of its equipment causing concern to its officers
and with several battalions of its invaluable infantry still in Northern Ireland. The
forces for defence in depth in NORTHAG, when the inevitable breakthrough
occurred and there was no release of Allied nuclear weapons (which would almost
certainly have been withheld), were wholly inadequate.
 Belgian and Dutch forces were heavily—and dangerously—reliant on reservists
with no more than short conscript training behind them, and were still reluctant
(particularly in the case of the Dutch) to maintain any considerable strength in
proximity to their forward battle stations in the Federal Republic. There was very
little hope that in the event of a surprise attack Dutch forces of any real
significance would have been able to reach their emergency positions before these
were overrun.
The Allied air forces were still ahead of those of the Warsaw Pact in quality of
equipment, though the gap was closing. They were also well ahead in the quality of
their aircrew, but among the European Allies air forces had been ruinously run
down. Air defence with surface weapons, even in Allied Command Europe, was
nowhere strong. Some of the equipment was good. The British low-level Rapier, for
instance, was outstanding. There were in 1977 only two Rapier regiments in
BAOR, however, neither of which was armoured or even tactically mobile. The air
defence of Great Britain, upon which so much would depend, was particularly
weak. It was almost as rundown as the UK’s civil defences against air attack,
whether by conventional weapons or nuclear.
Invasion from a standing start in the late seventies, if it had ever been tried,
would almost certainly have brought the Russians to the Rhine in a very few days
- unless NATO employed nuclear weapons. What would have happened then is
anyone’s guess. A high probability would have been swift escalation into the
strategic nuclear exchange which would very soon have rendered the land battle in
Europe largely irrelevant.
Deliberate all-out attack with complete surprise from a standing start, it must
be repeated, was always unlikely. The more probable way in which it was thought
in the West that a war in Europe would be likely to break out was just the way it
did. What happened to start it off in 1985 could have happened, in one way or
another, much earlier.
If the crisis of 1985 had occurred in 1977, say, or even in 1978, it is, as we have
seen, scarcely conceivable that the Soviet plan for an advance to the Rhine, the
dismemberment of the Alliance and the total destruction of the Federal Republic of
Germany could have failed given the state of preparedness of the Allies at that
time.
What was done in the years between 1978 and 1984 was enough to prevent
this. The tale of it has already been referred to in outline. It is told more fully,
using Britain as a test case, in Appendices 1 and 3.
The advantages of the military structure formed to function in peacetime—a
quite unique feature of the Atlantic Alliance—have become ever more abundantly
clear. Without NATO as a framework the individual efforts of the Allies would have
been of little account and much less effective in the aggregate. Within NATO the
contributions of the Allies, though incompletely co-ordinated, added up to far more
than the sum of the parts. In these years the United States came out of its post-
Vietnam trance. Great Britain threw off some of the illusions which had flooded
into the vacuum left by the disappearance of an empire. The Federal Republic
ceased to be mesmerized by the success of its economic miracle and the allure of a
welfare state. Even Belgium and Holland, though late and incompletely, began to
show some awareness that the Soviet Union was already in a position to meet and
master a real crisis and would welcome a showdown with the capitalist West, and
sooner rather than later at that. Throughout NATO there was a growing tendency
to face and accept defence responsibilities, nowhere more clearly shown than in a
steady rise in readiness, an improvement in reinforcement capabilities and a
striking advance in anti-tank and air defence.
The miscalculation over the possible participation of France was a major
blunder on the Soviet Union’s part at the very outset. In the sphere of grand
strategy the Soviet Union was soon to be in deeper water still. It was attempting to
handle an almost worldwide problem of war command, with operations proceeding
simultaneously from Bodo in Norway to Berbera in North-east Africa, from the
Caribbean to the Caucasus. This was beyond the powers of the centralized system
of control on which the regime depended. Only a degree of independence in
command which was wholly foreign to it, and to which Soviet commanders
themselves were completely unaccustomed, could have enabled peripheral
commands to retain the initiative without which they were bound to fail.
At the tactical level, a very similar point applied. The Russians were attempting
to apply a battle-fighting method which demanded a degree of independence in
junior leaders which it had been a major interest of the Marxist-Leninist system to
discourage.
The battle-fighting method itself was on the whole unremarkable. What was
hailed in the West by some in the late seventies as a tactical revolution in the Red
Army, the conversion from mass attack to manoeuvre, from the shock of frontal
assault to the ‘deep thrust’ and the ‘daring raid’, was neither so novel nor so
radical as was thought. What was being developed in Red Army tactical practice
was the action of combined arms, co-ordinated and commanded at a lower level
than was customary. This marked a shift of emphasis which showed up
weaknesses none the less. The BMP, designed for the nuclear battlefield, was
found not to be the best combat vehicle for the carriage of infantry supporting
armour in a non-nuclear battle. It was in the process of being somewhat hesitantly
replaced by a better vehicle, the MTLB, when war broke out. The problems of
interrelating combat elements with different speeds and other characteristics
remained unsolved.
So did the difficulties of combining many widely differing parts into a composite
tactical whole in a fluid situation, where initiative, inventiveness and a bold
independence of mind in junior leaders were what counted. The Red Army had
made much over the years of the importance of free and lively debate among junior
officers, particularly in journals available to the public and to foreigners—much
more, in fact, than the armies of the West where such things were taken more for
granted. In action on the battlefield, however, the young Red Army officer—who
almost certainly expected nothing else—found himself as usual under the
deadening hand of total conformity. It was this which made the command posts,
control structures and communications systems of the Warsaw Pact such
rewarding targets for attack.
It must here be strongly emphasized again, however—and it cannot be too often
repeated—that the forces of the Western Allies were only in a position to survive
the onslaught of the Warsaw Pact because, though heavily outnumbered from the
outset, they were able to remain in being. Without the sort of improvements
effected in the years between 1978 and 1984 this would have been impossible.
The war on land in Europe was a short one. Deprived of the swift victory that
could have been so confidently predicted only a few years before, the Warsaw Pact,
once checked, could not recover momentum in time to achieve and stabilize a
decisive advantage before the arrival of the first of those Western reinforcements,
with their great weight of weapons, which could soon be expected to flow so
plentifully.
The fighting could hardly have gone on for very long in any case. Neither side
could have sustained for more than a few weeks the expenditure of aircraft and of
missile and other stocks—of fuel, for example, and of all manner of warlike stores
and equipment—demanded in the modern battle. Even if the production of
munitions of war in the home bases had been possible at the rate at which they
were used up on the battlefield, it is doubtful whether, with hostile interference to
the lines of communication, supply could ever have kept up with consumption.
The Soviet concept of the application of armed force for the purpose of securing
a political advantage, in the state of the art in the last twenty years of the
twentieth century and in the circumstances of the time, was thus wholly rational.
It was facing an adversary relatively weak in the first instance but disposing of
potentially overwhelming resources. Late twentieth-century war consumed
material in such enormous quantities as to put very long drawn-out operations
out of the question. It was imperative, therefore, to secure a position of great
political advantage in a short, sharp, violent encounter, starting with the offensive
initiative, exploiting as far as possible the advantages of surprise and of a
somewhat longer period of preparation than the enemy’s, and reaching a chosen
strategic objective before the enemy could bring his superior resources to bear and
while stocks were still sufficient to sustain intensive action.
We have seen what happened. In the last few years before the outbreak of war
the West began to wake up to the danger it faced, and in the time available did
just enough in repair of its neglected defences to enable it, by a small margin, to
survive. The Allies had better luck, perhaps, than they deserved. The Soviet Union
was guilty of an important misjudgement in the matter of the American response
to intervention in Yugoslavia, and of a critical blunder in their assumption that the
French would not come in on the Allied side. A check to the forward impetus of the
Warsaw Pact’s invasion of the Federal Republic of Germany followed by a single,
catastrophic, strategic nuclear exchange, triggered off the dissolution of the Pact
and started the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself into its national
components. The Marxist-Leninist empire, as hated and feared, perhaps, as any
regime the world has seen, collapsed in total ruin, and the world is even now
engaged, in many different ways, in picking up and sorting out the pieces.
The immediate tidying up which engaged the Allies, as soon as the USSR ceased
to be able to prosecute the war and hostilities in Europe came to an end,
contained operations that were already more or less familiar from experience of
other wars but also one that was both highly important and quite new.
The presence of large numbers of nuclear warheads in Europe presented the
Allies with a new and very difficult post-war problem. Many remained firmly in
Allied hands, though a considerable number had been in Special Weapons Stores
overrun in the offensive and could not now be accounted for. Very many more
were dispersed and lost on the other side, amidst the confusion in which
hostilities ended. Much of the deadly content of these weapons had disappeared
and so far has not been traced. The United Nations Fissile Materials Recovery
Organization (UNFISMATRECO) is seeking urgently to recover all it can. Some will
almost certainly find its way into hands from which, in the interests of peace and
security, it should at any cost be kept.
One last lesson is worth drawing from the war itself. Not inappropriately in an
age of high technology, it lies in a technical area.
The period of full-scale hostilities between the forces of the Atlantic Alliance and
the Warsaw Pact was short—no more, in fact, than a few weeks. It was still
sufficient to show in quite astonishing fashion how far the electronic technology of
the West had outstripped that of the Eastern bloc. The reason was very simple and
beyond dispute. The advantage of the West lay in commercial competition. No
state-controlled activity, no collective operation, in a field wide open to scientific
inventiveness and industrial enterprise, could have produced developments as
staggering as those in the electronics industries of the non-communist world. The
reduction in size, weight, power consumption and cost of electronic components in
a competitive market had been quite phenomenal. The evolution of micro-
electronics and of micro-processing had been nothing less than a technological
explosion.
Let a short example suffice. In the 1950s the transistor began to replace the
vacuum tube. In the 1960s circuits often transistors were in use. Within ten years
transistors numbering several hundreds could be mounted on one small chip of
substrate two centimetres square. What was called medium-scale integration (MSI)
was then possible. By 1977 large-scale integration (LSI) had come in, employing
1,000 or more transistors mounted in the same space. When war broke out very
large-scale integration (VLSI) was already in use, with 10,000 transistors mounted
on a chip still only the size of a postage stamp. The work of a computer whose
equipment in the forties, using vacuum tubes, would have filled a barn could now
be done by something the size of a wrist-watch.
The impact of this on the development of military hardware was incalculable.
The equipment for communications, control, guidance, the detection and location
of weapons and emitters, the means of jamming, interception, interpolation,
diversion and a thousand and one other functions, was flowing in such profusion
that there was much more, and in much greater variety, than could be used. The
irony for the West, in the shortness of the war, welcome though it was, lay in the
inability of military men to find the questions to which the electronics men already
had the answers.
They were only beginning, when the fighting ended, to get the best out of the
equipment and techniques already in service. They had not yet begun to explore,
in a technology developing at an almost frightening rate, the applications of
techniques already far advanced and being improved on daily.
The wars of the late nineteenth century—the American Civil War, for example,
and the Franco-Prussian War—were wars of the railway, the telegraph, breech-
loading small arms and tinned rations. The seas were dominated by the ironclad.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the Russo-Japanese War showed to any
who cared to learn the dominance on the battlefield of the spade, barbed wire and
automatic weapons. The First World War rammed home the same lesson, in a war
in which the internal combustion engine, artillery, the submarine, air power and
armoured vehicles became the dominant features. The Second World War was one
of worldwide mobility on land and sea and in the air, of total mobilization of
population and industrial reserves, of seapower and of air forces. It ended in the
shadow of the nuclear weapon. The Third World War was widely expected to be the
first nuclear war—and perhaps the last. It turned out in the event to be essentially
a war of electronics.
To end these reflections on the Third World War upon a technological note may
appear odd. It is unlikely to seem so to some future reader. Wars commonly
produce an acceleration of technical advance. This one did more: it took the lid off
Pandora’s box. We are now moving forward into a world which will be more and
more dominated by electronic technology. It is likely to prove a very different world
from the one we knew, the one which came so near to destruction in the Third
World War. That war was fought, it is true, under the shadow of the threat of
nuclear devastation. On the basis of NATO’s rediscovered confidence and hastily
repaired defences it was largely won by electronics. We cannot begin to guess how
our lives, and even more our children’s lives, will be influenced by the possibilities
which these swiftly developing techniques are now opening up. An unfamiliar,
perhaps uncomfortable world awaits us, very strange and new. We can only be
thankful to have survived, and wait and see.

Chapter 28
The Beginning of the Future

We believe that later historians who write the history of the Third World
War will not drastically alter our conclusions about its causes. However, we are
writing very shortly after the end of the war and can only provide the best
predictions we have about its effects—and we are very mindful of the anecdote
with which this chapter concludes. History is not an exact science. And ‘the
historian of the future’ is as much artist as scientist or academic. But the
futurologist cannot be taken lightly. He bases his conclusions on perceived trends,
and his predictions themselves may possibly have some effect on the future: in
helping either to prevent his predictions coming true or to realize them.
Nobody can be sure which of the many meetings and international position
papers of the first three months of 1987 will prove of lasting significance to the
world. At least one of these papers, we suspect, may have begun to paint the
picture of the future.
It was prepared for the meeting of the EEC heads of government at Copenhagen.
It had been collated in the Council of Foreign Ministers. This had not been a recipe
for meaningful documents in the past, but this document may be destined to play
a role in the history of Europe more significant than the past treaties of Rome,
Versailles, Vienna and Utrecht put together. What it embodies has already become
known as the Copenhagen doctrine. It is a lengthy document, legalistically
expressed. A detailed summary of it appeared in The Times of 15 February 1987,
and we quote this in full:

1 At the end of the 1939-45 war there were two superpowers: the
United States and the Soviet Union. At the end of the 1985 war, there are
again two superpowers: the United States and the China-Japan co-
prosperity sphere. The difference for us this time is that Europe does not
lie between them.
2 America and China-Japan will face each other—we hope in
amity—across the Pacific Ocean. The Pacific basin will become more
important to each of them than the Atlantic is.
3 The most extreme version of this emerging Pacific superpower
isolationism is already being expressed in the Schneider memorandum,
from the American General Art Schneider, who was most angry when
President Thompson allowed European political instincts and fears in
1985 to delay the invasion of East Germany which Schneider (popularly
known as ‘young blood and guts’) had expected his own army group to
spearhead. Schneider, who may be the Democratic candidate against
President Thompson in next year’s 1988 presidential election (and failing
that will almost certainly win the now almost as important office of
Governor of his native California), has written:

‘Henceforth we should let Europe and Africa stew in their own tribal
wars. It will not be worth the death of a single American soldier to prevent
them, especially as (a) the Birmingham and Minsk bombs have shown that
the whole world is not contaminated by single N-blasts and (b) it will be
possible for China-Japan and the US to quarantine smaller countries’ N-
wars from afar by saying that any country which launches an N-weapon
will immediately have a neutron bomb from us homed in by missile to its
president’s palace.’

It is possible that within ten years an even more tempting weapon for
such quarantining may become available to countries with the
technological capability of the US and Japan. They may be able to
announce the setting up of a telecommunications ‘ring fence’, for the state
of the art will then permit those capable of developing the appropriate
technology to take charge by telecommunication of the guidance system of
any missile in flight and redirect it at will. This would mean that any
country launching a missile could find it reversed upon a reciprocal
course and turned back to land and detonate at its point of launch. The
advance in telecommunications during the technological spurt caused by
the threat of war, even more than in the brief duration of the war itself,
has been greater than in any other technology except that of energy.
4 It is therefore important for us in the EEC to see that the sort of
Europe we rebuild during this peace should not be one liable to ‘tribal
wars’.
 5 The rest of Europe, both East and West, will be frightened if the
two Germanies unite. They would then form too dominant a European
power. It is therefore important that each Germany should be a member
of the EEC, and be united within the EEC to the same degree as France
and West Germany are, but no more than that.
6 The same applies to all the former communist states, including
the European states of the former Soviet Union. The EEC now needs to
extend its boundaries in the way that Charles de Gaulle once envisaged.
The European Economic Community should become a Europe from the
Atlantic to the Urals.

This document was accepted at Copenhagen with some relief by the

governments concerned, including that of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Charles de Gaulle was now seen in retrospect as a prophet, where in life he had
more often been regarded as a prickly and tiresome man. Two new issues were
strenuously discussed at Copenhagen. One concerned the best rules and aims for
the new, enlarged EEC; on this there was a note of innovation, excitement,
enthusiasm and intellectual daring—an attractive throwback to the European
spirit of the late 1950s which had seemed to be sleeping since. The second issue
was what on earth to do about the politico-strategic problems on the long
southern border of the new EEC; on this there was a note of near-despair.
First, the governing mechanism of the new EEC. It was recognized that free
trade in goods, though to be continued, was likely to be much less important to
rich countries in the future than freedom for international and transnational
telecommunications. Now that factories (except in low wage areas) were bound to
become more and more automated, people in the rich northern one-third of the
world would mostly be in white collar jobs where they would be working with their
imaginations rather than their hands. But people in such jobs would not
necessarily need to live near their workplaces. What should be the nationality and
tax position of a Belgian dress designer who lives in Monte Carlo and St Moritz in
the winter, at Stratford-on-Avon in the spring, and Corfu in the summer, and does
his work by daily telecommunication through a portable console to colleagues and
computers at the largely automated textile factory at Volgograd where he works—
who becomes, in fact, a tele-commuter?
The EEC ministers at Copenhagen began to grope towards the concept that the
European citizen of the future would need what the West German Chancellor
called ‘triple nationality’, but the Luxembourg Prime Minister significantly called
‘triple tax status’. Let us use the Luxembourg terminology; it is more novel and, for
that reason, in this fast-changing world, easier to understand.
First, each.citizen would have to pay some taxes to the area in which he lived;
this would maintain purely local government services there. There is here the
obvious danger that all the rich might then choose to live together in areas with
low social security costs (because there were few local poor around) and thus low
tax rates, while the poor might find themselves huddled together in areas which
needed a lot of social expenditure but with no local rich to pay the taxes. In order
to avoid this ‘ghettoization of continents’ in the telecommuting age, the ministers
at Copenhagen were beginning to realize that much wider governments (in this
case, a central government of the EEC itself) would probably have to become
responsible for what might be called the ‘welfare’ or ‘transfer incomes’ roles
performed by national governments in the pre-telecommuting era.
Otherwise, rich folk would all take off to tax havens, and telecommute from
there. So there would probably have to be a set schedule of income tax rates
across Europe: perhaps a maximum marginal rate of not more than 55 per cent
for the richest and a negative income tax for those falling below a minimum level,
so as to set a floor income for the poorest Europeans.
It would not be sensible for Monte Carlo to be able to declare itself a tax haven
and for all rich telecommuters to congregate there, while the poor of Europe
congregated in some decaying old city like, say, Warsaw, which might then become
the ‘welfare capital’ or ‘muggers’ capital’ of Europe.
It would therefore be advisable to have a European regional policy. One object:
to attract more rich telecommuters into the troubled old cities like Warsaw so as to
get a better social mix there (therefore, allow the inhabitants of Warsaw to pay a
lower top tax rate on incomes above a certain size). Concurrent object: to persuade
some of the poor to scatter from Warsaw to other areas. This would involve a
direction that unemployed youngsters going on to social security would after a
certain period get lower social security benefits in Warsaw than if they moved to
seek jobs outside it.
Already in the 1970s New York City was suffering from not being able to
implement a policy of this sort. High local taxes and crime rates meant that richer
taxpayers were fleeing the city, leaving behind a city electorate that became poorer
and so more left-wing, and voted itself larger welfare benefits which it could not
pay for. The higher welfare benefits in New York City then attracted more welfare
families in. There would be a spreading of this sort of vicious circle right across
the world in the telecommuting age (and also of the twin problem of rich tax
havens) unless regional policies of this type could be put in train.
The third leg of the European citizen’s ‘triple tax status’ would then be the leg of
the nationality on which he chose to stand. There is the advantage that each
person could, within reason, choose which this should be. National governments
need no longer rule over purely contiguous groups of people. The problem of
Belgium has long been that one part of the people has regarded itself as Flemish,
the other as Walloon. With the tripartite system it should be possible for the
Flemish to elect their own governments (for systems of family law, for cultural
issues, including education, and for other representational matters) even while
living amid the Walloons, who could similarly elect their own government. The
same would apply to Catholics and Protestants living together in Northern Ireland
and to the provinces of Yugoslavia, and, so long as national government
diminishes in importance in this way, it might eventually be possible for the two
Germanies to have a joint unimportant national government of the same kind.
It is probable that in the telecommuting age all areas of the world will eventually
have to move to tripartite systems of this sort: with (a) continental-sized
governments to pursue regional central tax policies in order to prevent some tax
havens becoming ghettoes of the rich and some inner cities ghettoes of the poor;
(b) very local governments, which could eventually become as small as particular
groups of citizens wanted them to be (so that people who wanted to live in a
commune and telecommute from it could set that commune up as a unit of
administrative local government if neighbours agreed, while at the other extreme
other groups might prefer to employ a commercial company on a performance
contract to carry through administrative local government tasks rather than
pretend that, for example, voting Republican or Democratic was the right way of
getting a mayor who would be best fitted to find the most successful changing
technology for operating New York’s drains); and (c) national governments that
would have a diminished role over their peoples, who would not necessarily live
contiguously.
The EEC at the end of the Third World War seemed lucky in being well placed to
set up a prototype for this tripartite system, when it should be needed. One
problem concerned the capital city or cities for the new Europe. It had been argued
even before the war that the existing city of Brussels was too crowded for this
purpose, and also, strangely, too central. A central city as a capital now means
that centripetal forces become too strong, so that the central area grows richer and
the flanks too poor. Even by the 1970s there had been grounds for arguing that
the best scheme would be to have twin cities nearly a continent apart as capitals,
joined by close telecommunication links and with great data banks planned from
scratch for the new information age. A sentimental opportunity now presented
itself. It was the Dutch Prime Minister who suggested at Copenhagen that the
custom-built capitals of the new Europe should be Peace City West and Peace City
East, built on the former sites of Birmingham and Minsk.
One of the most important functions of government is the organization of
military preparedness and defence. Much of this should be organized on a
continental scale. The new Europe felt reasonably confident that it could avoid
internal tribal wars. But it regarded the chaos emerging on its southern
boundaries with sickened alarm.
The two most worried reflections at Copenhagen were: ‘the world is now divided
into three parts, and the EEC is perched on top of the wildest south’; and
‘unfortunately, the earth is round’.
Many people expect the China-Japan co-prosperity sphere (including
Australasia) to be the future centre of the world. Japan is rapidly becoming the
most advanced country technologically. China has the largest literate labour force,
and as this is still relatively underpaid in comparison with its ability and
entrepreneurial drive it therefore has the fastest early capacity for growth.
Australia and the islands to its north will be among the pleasantest places in
which to live during the telecommuting age. No part of this area was invaded in
the Third World War, though a great many Australians and New Zealanders fought
as volunteers on the Allied side and in Southern Africa, and many more were on
their way to Europe when the few weeks of full hostilities came to an end. The
parts of the China-Japan co-prosperity area that may still be ravaged by coups
d’état and urban guerrilladom (Indonesia? Thailand?) are relatively small, and
should prove controllable - especially (and this is worrying) as Japan and China
may be more willing than others to ‘cure’ or ‘control’ violent individuals with
personality-changing tranquillizing drugs.
The second main area of the world is the Americas. North America was
undamaged by the Third World War just as it had been by the First and Second.
The main economic effect of war and post-war reconstruction has been (as in
1941-45) to restore it to full employment. South America has prospered, and
communism has been overthrown in the Caribbean. It is about as popular to
advocate Soviet-style communism in the Caribbean (including Cuba and Jamaica)
in these late 1980s as it was to advocate Nazism in continental Europe in the late
1940s. For a time, at least, urban guerrilladom in the Americas is likely to be on
the decline.
The problem area is the territory to the south of the new EEC. On the western
side of its long southern border, Africa has become a dumping ground for every
sort of surplus military weapon used in the late war; its tribal hatreds are still
seething; it may be entering a new dark age. Perched on its southern rim are the
triumphant white homelands of South Africa. During the years 1988-2013 they
may feel as self-confident after military success as Israel did in 1948 and 1967,
offering some of the same attractions but posing some of the same problems.
China-Japan is likely to co-operate with Australasia to its south, in order to
help bring humane and sensible telecommuter-era government to the troubled
areas between them. Some of their joint methods of neo-gunboat diplomacy will be
called neo-colonialism; but as they will be a multi-racial partnership they will get
away with a lot. North America may co-operate similarly with Brazil, to create its
own north-south axis and an area of prosperity between them.
There will be a school of thought that thinks that the new EEC should ally itself
with white South Africa, as China-Japan with Australia, and the United States
with Brazil. But the EEC might then find that it had made racial problems in its
‘wild south’ even more likely to bring riot upon itself.
At the eastern end of Europe’s southern border, none of the problems of the
Middle East has been resolved. An EEC’s southeastern border would lie on the
Caspian Sea, including a short land frontier with triumphant Iran.
As Iran has been on the winning side, it may have temptations to extend a new
Persian empire across Arabia. There will be fierce resistance if this is attempted.
This uncovers two other problems: first, the fact that Iran is now the cockpit
between the China-Japan and EEC spheres of interest; second, the question of
how long Middle Eastern oil is likely to remain important.
While Iran’s western border is with Iraq and the Gulf, its north-eastern border is
with the Asiatic republics of the former Soviet Union, now under Chinese
influence, and its south-eastern border is with Pakistan. India-Pakistan was not a
scene of fighting in the war; the new generation of youngsters coming out of its
schools is the first generation to be almost entirely literate (like the first generation
of literate Chinese to emerge from their schools fifteen years ago, and look how
they’ve progressed); some people therefore expect rapid economic development in
India-Pakistan at last. Some trends suggest it may become the manufacturing
area for the China-Japan co-prosperity sphere, the place to which that rich area
devolves its pollutant heavy industries. This may be especially likely if nearby
Middle Eastern oil remains an important industrial fuel.
There could be a paradox here. The Japanese remember all too well that, on the
day in 1941 when they started their war with the United States, a paper before the
imperial government had said that war was necessary because of the coming
shortage of oil. In that December of 1941 Japan had a reserve of oil sufficient for
its needs for a few months ahead; the Japanese government believed that it would
never have so much oil again unless it seized control of the oilfields of Indonesia
and perhaps Burma. Thirty years later oil supplies from Indonesia and Burma
were much less important than anybody had forecast. Though Japan had been
defeated, Japanese industry was using every six hours an amount of oil equal to
the entire stock that Japan held on Pearl Harbor day. It was buying it easily from
temporarily glutted supplies in the Middle East.
The 1985 war also owed its start partly to fears on the part of the great nations
that they would face penury unless they could secure physical possession of oil-
producing areas. One remembers the competition run in 1920 by an Austrian
newspaper for the most dramatic conceivable newspaper headline. The winning
entry was ‘Archduke Franz Ferdinand alive. World war fought by mistake.’
The history of energy supplies during the recent conflict has raised some
question as to whether, in relation to the ‘oil shortage’, that sort of headline may
not now be proved apposite.
The areas that have increased their industrial production most in recent years
(Japan-China and South America) were cut off from imported supplies of oil when
the 1985 war broke out. Each had accumulated large reserve stocks before the
war and the war was far shorter than they expected. They got by with ease. The
Japanese, who are now the world’s most advanced technicians and who had
feared that the impeding of oil supplies from the Middle East might prove much
longer-lasting, have progressed dramatically with experiments on the thousands of
possible other ways of releasing energy from storage in matter. This does not apply
simply to nuclear, solar, wave and geothermal energy, but also to, for example,
creating artificial rain in large tanks by allowing warm air above sea water to rise
through deliberately cooled upper air and getting hydro-electric power from that.
Also, the protests of environmentalists against nuclear fission have diminished
since the war, and nuclear fusion is at hand.
One must beware of any forecasts about fuel supplies now the war is behind us.
In February of 1947, during the Shinwell fuel crisis, Britain’s Prime Minister, Clem
Attlee, said that no coal miner need fear for his job for the rest of the century.
Within twelve years, a majority of the then existing coal mines in Europe and
Japan had closed down. The forecast ‘oil-short 1990s’ may prove like that. The
Middle East may, like the coal-mining districts at the end of the coal age, have
tragically priced itself into standards of living it will no longer be able to afford. Or
it could still prove for some years (as many people suppose) to be the main supply
area for a valuable and depleted natural resource.
In either event, the Middle East is not going to be a comfortable southern
neighbour for the new EEC. If oil is still scarce, there will be a jockeying for
positions there. If the area is going to be poorer than it has grown accustomed to
thinking it has a right to be, there may be constant coups d’état. It became
fashionable in the 1970s and early 1980s to suppose that a main object of
diplomacy would always be to make good friends of the rulers of Iran and the Arab
oil countries. But billionaire shahs and sheikhs are not likely to be the most
popular folk heroes for the last decade of the twentieth century.
 After each major war this century, a great empire has melted away. After
the 1914-18 war, the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire. After the 1939-45 war,
the victorious British empire. After the 1985 war, the defeated Soviet Union. That
last is the only result of the late war that can be accounted as certain so far. For
the rest, the most accurate prophecies could prove to be the ones that seem least
likely now.
There is a nice story of a political prophet in Munich in 1928, who was asked to
prophesy what would be happening to the burghers of his city in five, fifteen,
twenty and forty years’ time. He began: ‘I prophesy that in five years’ time, in
1933, Munich will be part of a Germany that has just suffered 5 million
unemployed and that is ruled by a dictator with a certifiable mental illness who
will proceed to murder 6 million Jews.’
His audience said: ‘Ah, then you must think that in fifteen years’ time we will be
in a sad plight.’
‘No,’ replied the prophet, ‘I prophesy that in 1943 Munich will be part of a
Greater Germany whose flag will fly from the Volga to Bordeaux, from northern
Norway to the Sahara.’
‘Ah, then you must think that in twenty years’ time, we will be mighty indeed.’
‘No, my guess is that in 1948 Munich will be part of a Germany that stretches
only from the Elbe to the Rhine, and whose ruined cities will recently have seen
production down to only 10 per cent of the 1928 level.’
‘So you think we face black ruin in forty years’ time?’
‘No, by 1968 I prophesy that real income per head in Munich will be four times
greater than now, and that in the year after that 90 per cent of German adults will
sit looking at a box in a corner of their drawing rooms, which will show live
pictures of a man walking upon the moon.’
They locked him up as a madman, of course.

Appendix 1
British Defence Policy

Reorganizations of the British contribution to the land forces of Allied Command

Europe - of which, over the years, there had been several - had always been
represented by the British government of the day as improvements to BAOR’s
effectiveness, even when their actual result could only be a reduction in combat
capability. The 1974 reshuffle was no exception. The Northern Army Group (under
British command, it should be remembered, and containing almost all the British
ground troops assigned to NATO) had never at any time been fully adequate to its
task—to repel a Warsaw Pact incursion into northern Germany. No one really
believed that NORTHAG, even given time for its four constituent corps (Belgian,
British, Dutch and German) to be brought up to war strength and moved forward
to battle locations from barracks far in rear, would be able to hold up indefinitely a
conventional attack on the scale to be expected, and there were virtually no
reserves in depth to deal with a breakthrough. The 1974 reorganization of the
British Army made a weak position weaker.
It was this lack of forces in depth which had led to the stationing of two US
brigades in northern Germany—most valuable but still far from sufficient to
restore tactical control once the NORTHAG front was pierced. The main
significance of this move on the part of the Americans, though its purpose was
essentially military, can be seen apolitical rather than tactical. It showed simply
that the US did not accept the clear implication of British defence dispositions in
Germany: that a failure to hold an invasion on the Demarcation Line must very
soon be followed by nuclear action, which could lead to a strategic nuclear
exchange; that provision for a land battle in depth was unnecessary. The
Americans, in rather pointedly providing two combat brigades for the very purpose
of defence in depth, in an area of mainly British responsibility, demonstrated that
in a matter directly affecting the security of the United States under threat of
strategic nuclear attack, they were not prepared to allow their choice of options to
be dictated by British defence policy.
This did not pass unnoticed in Britain. The suggestion, given a generous airing
in the British press, that Britain was continuing to rely on the US to do what
Britain should really be doing for itself, was not particularly pleasing to the British
public in a time of reviving national confidence. It was to play a small but not
unimportant part in securing public approval for the increase in Britain’s
contribution to the NATO ground forces, which will now be explored.
The principal features of the restructuring programme for the British Army
carried out under the Defence Review for 1974, to which reference has already
been made, were as follows: divisions would be made smaller and one level of
command, the brigade, would be eliminated. The span of divisional and unit
command would be increased, with the result that there would be fewer HQ and
fewer but larger combat units. The fighting capacity of the British Army of the
Rhine, it was claimed, would be maintained and in some respects enhanced -
though if anyone believed this to begin with no one did for long, not even the
politicians who made the claim. Certain specialist functions (such as the flying of
army aircraft, the manning of the larger anti-tank missiles and the driving of
supply vehicles) would be concentrated in the hands of a single branch of the
army.
For the army as a whole, the aim was said to be to reduce manpower while
maintaining combat effectiveness. It was true that the numbers of equipments in
service were kept at about the same level, which was dangerously low. What was
described as ‘cutting the tail and keeping the teeth’, however, only meant that
even in the inadequate numbers to which these equipments had been reduced,
there were insufficient men to man, maintain and move them. The real purpose, of
course, was economy at almost any price. Within three years of the 1974 Defence
Review BAOR was at its lowest level of operational efficiency ever.
Not everything that was done was wholly bad, however. The regular army
logistic reinforcement which the army at home (United Kingdom Land Forces—
UKLF) was to provide for BAOR was drastically reduced, but to help fill this gap
units of the Territorial and Auxiliary Volunteer Reserve (TAVR) were integrated into
newly created regular combat formations. These, though brigades in all but name,
could not be called brigades without contravening one of the declared principles of
the exercise. They were therefore given the imprecise but otherwise inoffensive title
of ‘field forces’ instead. This was at least one step towards a much needed
improvement, the better use of reserves.
The effect of the restructuring plan on NATO reinforcement plans was one of
nomenclature and source rather than of numbers. Before it, UKLF had
undertaken to despatch to BAOR in support of NATO a total of some 60,000 to
70,000 troops, consisting of complete formations - 3 Division and 16 Parachute
Brigade, for example - and a whole series of unit and individual reinforcements of
great variety. Sortie were TAVR Signal Groups to activate the NATO and BAOR
communications systems; some were so-called Yeomanry Regiments, fully
equipped with armoured reconnaissance vehicles, to thicken the covering force
troops available to I British Corps; others were units or individuals to strengthen
either the structure or total numbers of BAOR formations, regiments, companies
and squadrons. Leaving aside those who might be sent to the so-called flanks of
NATO (Scandinavia, Italy, Greece, Turkey), the operation was designed to bring
BAOR on to a war footing, which involved more than doubling its peacetime
establishment. It was essentially a reinforcement which combined regular units,
regular reservists and units of the TAVR.
After the army’s restructuring programme had been completed in 1978, the
plans for reinforcement were substantially the same, but it was of course a
reinforcement of a BAOR which had itself been restructured. By then I British
Corps contained four armoured divisions (which were little more than large
brigades) and one light infantry formation, called 5 Field Force. Two other field
forces, 6 Field Force from Aldershot and 7 Field Force from Colchester, were part
of UKLF reinforcements for BAOR and were themselves composed partly of regular
units and partly of TAVR, the latter providing the bulk of the logistic support.
Otherwise the reinforcement plan conformed to the previous pattern. As far as
equipment was concerned BAOR remained as poorly provided as ever, though
some new ATGW were promised soon.
Public dissatisfaction in Britain with its contribution to NATO, as Soviet military
preparations still showed no sign of slowing down while pressure within the
Alliance upon its members to do better steadily increased, caused the British
government to introduce in 1979 a new Army Reserve Act, whose main purpose
was to tap unused sources of trained military manpower. This Act laid down the
means by which a liability for annual training and for embodiment in a national
emergency would be given to those officers and men leaving the army each year
(some 20,000 in number) who had hitherto not had any such liability. There were
two main categories: first, those who served on short regular engagements, that is,
officers who had completed a three-year Short Service commission and soldiers
who had served for three, six or nine years with the colours. The second category
(for it was decided to disregard Long Service men who retired at the age of fifty-
five) comprised officers who had served on Special Regular commissions of up to
sixteen years and soldiers who had completed twenty-two years. Although this
second group already had certain reserve liabilities in an emergency, they were not
required to do annual refresher training. The new law would therefore enable the
government to call on both junior officers and soldiers and also on more senior
ones, such as majors and warrant officers. All those in these various groups would
for three further years have a training liability for two months’ annual
embodiment, including overseas training, and their reserve liability in times of
national emergency would continue until their forty-fifth birthday. The necessary
safeguards of employment and so on were included in the legislation. Thus some
20,000 officers and men, well trained in existing equipment and techniques, from
all corps of the army, became available each year from 1980 onwards.
Four things would be required to turn this availability of men into a really
valuable NATO contribution—weapons to equip them, the structure to absorb
them into units and formations, training exercises both at home and in their
NATO role, and all the administrative, ammunition and transportation support
necessary to make them operationally effective. Extra equipment came to hand in
two ways: first, a modification of regular infantry and armoured units reduced
them once more from four companies/ squadrons to three, which was all their
authorized manpower could properly support anyway; second, re-equipment
programmes for regular units on a rather more generous scale made it possible to
transfer weapons and vehicles to the newly forming reserve units. These were
themselves formed by the expansion of existing TAVR organizations. The Artillery
and Engineer Groups were trebled, each regiment forming a group; the
dismounted Yeomanry Regiments were remounted on armoured vehicles; the two
fully equipped Yeomanry Regiments quadrupled in size, each squadron forming a
complete regiment; fifteen more of the TAVR Home Defence battalions were given a
NATO role and equipped accordingly. There were similar expansions and re-
equipment programmes for signal support and logistic units, and all was fitted
into the existing organization of UKLF. At the same time, what was known as
TAVR II was again, after some years in suspense, brought into being. It was a force
resembling a militia, mobile and lightly armed, with an important role on the home
front.
By 1984 the whole position had been transformed: 5 Field Force stationed at
Osnabruck had become a division, which, with its TAVR and regular
reinforcements, could be made fully up to strength. Both 7 Field Force and 8 Field
Force (which was stationed on Salisbury Plain and which had had a home defence
role), with their TAVR components, became fully-fledged armoured divisions on the
same pattern as those in I British Corps. Their despatch to Europe meant that a
second corps would be available to NORTHAG, a corps HQ having been formed at
Bulford from resources thrown up by the reduction of HQ UKLF and the former
HQ South-West District. In addition to these increases, 6 Field Force became a full
light division with a limited regular and TAVR parachute capability, to be
employed either on the flanks of NATO or in the Centre.
The Home Defence units of the TAVR, together with certain regular units formed
from the Training Establishments and Base Organization, numbered in all some
30,000. Thus C-in-C UKLF was able to retain a sufficient fighting strength to
ensure the security of so-called key points, and have a mobile reserve for
emergencies, provided initially by 6 Field Force, and later from mobile columns
from the Training Establishment.
It was planned that from 1985 onwards II British Corps, with its headquarters
normally located in Britain and with a wartime location near Rheine on the
Dortmund-Ems Canal, would carry out manoeuvres in BAOR once a year. The
extra divisions would at last give the Commander of NORTHAG what had been
lacking for so long—some degree of depth. He would now have in consequence a
better chance of containing an incursion without very early recourse to nuclear
weapons.
During this time of awakening interest in defence, perhaps no question in any
Allied country (except possibly the truly critical problem of reserves in the United
States, to which we shall return) raised more domestic difficulties than that of the
air defence of the United Kingdom. The nakedness of NATO, once the nuclear
shield was seen to be so brittle, was nowhere more brutally exposed than in the
vulnerability of the British Isles to air attack. The comforting assumption of the
short, sharp war conducted in someone else’s country had vanished once it had
been realized that in the present condition of NATO a war with the Warsaw Pact
was most likely to be short and sharp if it were to end in victory for the other side.
To prevent this would need a capacity for sustained intensive conventional
operations, and in these the position of the United Kingdom as a rearward base for
Europe and a forward base for the United States made heavy air attack inevitable.
Rueful looks were now cast back at the baleful consequences of the 1957 White
Paper, of which one had been the concentration, in the interests of economy and
ease of management without operational penalty, of RAF installations in
vulnerable patterns offering responsive and rewarding targets to penetrating
aircraft. The recovery and rehabilitation of airfields disposed of to the army or to
civilian use, the construction of further airfields to relieve dangerous congestion
on those used by the USAF (which already in 1977 had more than 200 F-111s in
Britain), the hardening of operational control centres and the provision of mobile
alternatives were all only parts of a very big construction programme demanding
the expenditure of something like £1,000 million in a three-year plan.
It had soon become apparent that the permanent stationing of further USAF
squadrons in the UK, probably on the west coast, would now be unavoidable. This
brought at least partly into public view a matter which had long been under
confidential discussion: the question of the distribution of responsibilities between
British and American air forces in an emergency.
There had long been little doubt that the USAF would generally play the
dominant part in air operations based in the UK. There was equally little doubt
that, although the USAF would assume the chief responsibility for the security
and air defence of its own installations in the UK and a high degree of
responsibility for the defence of the UK base as a whole, the RAF would have to
play the chief part in the defence of national territory. It was, indeed, a sign of the
reviving national self-respect evident in Britain at the end of the seventies that in
the matter of air defence, as well as in other respects, total reliance on the United
States was being increasingly replaced by a robust determination in the British
people to play a full part in their own defence -and to pay for it.
A growing public willingness in Britain from the end of the seventies to see a
higher proportion of a rising GNP devoted to defence can be said to have been truly
indispensable to the survival of the Western Alliance in the years that were to
follow. There was a limit to the share of other people’s burdens which would be
borne by the United States. There was also no lack of latent-support on the
western side of the Atlantic for the dangerous argument that the US should
disengage itself from the Alliance.
At sea, the rundown of the Royal Navy had thrown a heavy additional load on
the US Navy in maintaining the flow of fuel, food and raw materials into Western
Europe, which would be vital in an emergency. Contraction of the RAF had gravely
impaired Britain’s ability to give air support to BAOR ground troops and keep the
air forces of the Warsaw Pact off their backs, and above all had removed the
capacity to defend the UK base. The reduction of Britain by blockade at sea, the
collapse of the Northern Army Group on land, the neutralization by air attack of
Allied forward bases in the British Isles—together these would spell ruin for the
Alliance as a whole. This was in the event only prevented by the reversal of the
rundown in Britain’s defences forced by public opinion on politicians from the end
of the seventies. It was costly but the money had to be found, if necessary—if, that
is, a growing GNP could not cover the increase—at the expense of other
programmes. The reconstitution of UK air defences was at least labour-intensive
and thus useful in the continuing fight against the obstinately high level of
unemployment in Britain.
Important though the problems of the British contribution to NATO ground
forces might be, the situation of the RAF and the needs of air defence could be
said to be marginally even more critical. Britain could survive, in some form, if
only for a while, the collapse on land of Allied Command Europe. It could probably
get along somehow under severe blockade at sea. What it could hardly be expected
to survive, given the state of technology today, was devastation from the air. To
prevent this, then, was the task of highest priority. It was also the most costly.
Because of its impact on so many different aspects of life in Britain, and its
widespread requirement for the diversion of effort and resource from other uses,
the re-creation of the air defences of Great Britain was also the most difficult part
of the defence programme.
The programme got off to a relatively slow start in the financial year 1979-80
and gathered strength in the following years, as the percentage of the GNP devoted
to defence moved upwards from 5 per cent and began to approach - though it
never quite reached—the 11 per cent it had touched during the war in Korea at
the turn of the fifties. It never, in fact, until the outbreak of war, exceeded 9 per
cent, but since this was a percentage of a greatly increased GNP, the rise in
expenditure in real terms was very considerable. Vulnerable points, such as main
ports, airheads, defence and other key industrial installations and command and
control centres, against any or all of which attack by precision-guided weapons
could be expected, were furnished with point-defence surface-to-air missile
systems supplied by the United States. Airfields were extended and hardened to 2
ATAF standards, like those in Germany, and light and easily concealed operational
control centres were established. The lack of ordnance for operations sustained for
any more than a very few days—one of the gravest weaknesses in all aspects of
Britain’s defences—began to be made good by the reactivation of production lines
allowed to lapse, and where this was not possible (as was sadly all too often the
case) the setting up, at great expense, of new ones. The training machine began to
be rescued from the poor condition to which successive defence cuts had reduced
it and a vigorous recruiting drive opened in the schools and universities. The
Auxiliary Air Force was expanded with a non-combat role of weekend instruction,
thereby developing a nucleus capable at the appropriate time of taking on a full-
time function and releasing flying instructors for combat duties. Even so, with the
training time for pilots to front-line standards approaching three years and a grave
shortage of instructors it was to be a long haul before the new cockpit seats
arriving in the front line would be filled with competent combat pilots. As was also
happening for the other two services, legislation was amended to permit the
embodiment of volunteer reservists in advance of Royal Proclamation. At the same
time provision was made for the utilization of reservist RAF general duties
personnel without high specialization but with an invaluable initiation into service
under arms. These were absorbed into Home Defence units of the land forces.
In the matter of equipment, as a top priority, orders for the MRCA (multiple role
combat aircraft)—the Tornado—in the air defence variant were increased, but lack
of elasticity in the production line compelled the RAF to run on their existing F-4
Phantoms to achieve the 100 per cent increase now sought in air defence aircraft.
Radar cover was provided around the west coast, and a tanker force augmented by
aircraft from the United States to sustain long-range interception of enemy aircraft
operating in the Western Approaches. Real progress, hitherto stalled for lack of
funds, was made in exploiting over-the-horizon radar techniques and satellite
information; organic aircraft radar was steadily improved and increasingly relied
upon; airborne early warning (AEW) became available to the extent that it could be
relied upon as a mainstay; and the ambition of the RAF to be largely independent
of ground radars by 1990 looked like being realized as much as five years sooner.
A bid for a 100 per cent increase in maritime patrol aircraft was agreed, but it
was already too late to save the jigs for Nimrod production, and the American
Lockheed Orion had to be purchased instead. Finally, proposals to station further
USAF air defence forces in the UK, both to afford further security in the Western
Approaches and to strengthen UK air defence as a whole, proposals which had
only received lukewarm support in Britain in the early seventies and had
encountered stiff resistance in Congress, were now, as it became evident that
Britain was at last beginning to do something for herself, looked on with favour.
On the side of offensive air operations, it was not quite so easy to secure funds
for expansion. An increase in front-line strength of 30 per cent was eventually
negotiated, to be taken in a combination of Tornados, Jaguars and Harriers, with
an option on the F-16 and F-4 Phantom if Jaguar and Harrier production should
prove—as turned out to be the case—to have been run down too far to meet the
requirement. A long and keenly debated decision as important as any in the
development of air power was taken to bring the cruise missile into service with
the RAF in its air-launched version. This, in its high-explosive mode, was seen as
a quantum jump in the capability for counter-attacking enemy air bases and
attenuating the weight of effort which might be mounted from them against the
British Isles. This was a complex and expensive programme which had to follow in
the wake of the American re-equipment with these weapons, and it was not
expected to be available to the RAF until the middle, possibly late, 1980s.
 Appendix 2
Gorshkov and the Rise of Soviet Sea Power

‘The flag of the Soviet Union flies over the oceans of the world,’ observed Admiral
of the Fleet Sergei G. Gorshkov in 1974. ‘Sooner or later the United States will
have to understand that it no longer has mastery of the seas.’ Throughout the
1960s and 1970s, even after Admiral Gorshkov’s retirement from active service,
successive Politburos had accepted his well and persistently argued thesis that
world peace, that is to say the triumph of Marxism-Leninism throughout the
world, must be, and could only be, based upon mastery of the seas.
To gain this it would be necessary to allocate an exceptionally high proportion of
Soviet resources of men and material to naval and maritime purposes, and to
apply these scientifically. The classical sea power doctrine of Mahan had to be
reinterpreted in the light of Marxist-Leninist theory and the socio-political and
technical conditions prevailing in the last quarter of the twentieth century. These
included the continuing credibility, and therefore necessity, of the submarine-
launched strategic nuclear missile system, with matching general-purpose naval
and air forces in support, and to counter, as far as possible, the opposing
submarine strategic systems. Necessary, also, was the evolution from Mahan’s
theory of general command of the sea of a doctrine of local and temporary
command appropriate to the support of ‘state interests’. Additional general-
purpose naval and air forces would be needed, in consequence, for use in
situations involving a limited number of participants, in a limited area, using
limited means to realize limited ends.
This line of reasoning was not only persuasive in itself, and accorded almost
universal agreement by the naval hierarchies of the non-Soviet world. It also
seemed to be fulfilling, when put into effect, the promise of its progenitor. The
activities of the new Red Navy began to hit the headlines just after the Six-Day
Arab-Israeli War in 1967, when Soviet naval forces entered Port Said and
Alexandria ‘ready to co-operate’ with the Egyptians to repel any aggression.
Indeed, the hitherto self-evident asymmetry of the superpower confrontation as
it had developed since the end of the Second World War—maritime coalition
versus continental colossus—began to be questioned. Between powers of a
different nature a modus vivendi could be reached. It did, in fact, exist. When
Alexis de Tocqueville predicted of autocratic Russia and democratic America:
‘Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of
them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half
the globe,’ he did not prophesy war between them. Yet might not the projection of
autocracy over the sea, by calling forth the projection of democracy on to the
continent, eliminate the differentiation between the respective destiny-swayers
upon which their peaceful co-existence, being an agreement to differ, had rested?
Whatever dangers Soviet determinism might hold for the peace of the world,
American pragmatism had already compounded the risk by her involvement in the
war in Vietnam. The contribution made to her national security by this mistimed,
misplaced and misconducted intervention in South-east Asia was almost totally
negative. A far more fruitful, less politically sterile and less socially disruptive
policy would have been to bring the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean into the orbit
of statecraft and naval policy, as urged by Admirals Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval
Operations, and John S. McCain Jr, Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet, in the
1950s. Better late than never, Drew Middleton, the military correspondent of the
New York Times, wrote on 20 April 1973: ‘…the strategic interests of the United
States and global strategy in general will pivot on the Persian Gulf late in this
decade as a result of competition for the area’s oil.’
The rapid growth of the Soviet (and satellite) merchant and fishing fleets
throughout the 1960s and 1970s, while not directly associated with the Gorshkov
naval expansion, coincided with it. Apart from specialized shipping used for
oceanographic research, hydrography and space programme support, the Soviet
Union sought, as many a nation had in the past, the political, strategic and
economic benefits of self-sufficiency in maritime transportation: prestige,
conservation of currency, control over shipping, maintenance of employment in
the home shipbuilding industry, and, in addition, a specifically Soviet
requirement, the ability to carry economic and political warfare into the capitalist
camp. Fishing (and whaling) fleets, operated industrially and on a huge scale, also
provided protein to help make good deficiencies in agricultural production.
That a serious contradiction existed near the centre of Soviet maritime policy-
making had become apparent during the series of United Nations Conferences on
the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which took place during the 1970s. While the Soviet
navalists were at one with those of the United States and the other ‘traditional’
maritime states in seeking to maintain the freedom of movement so far enjoyed by
ships of all nations upon the high seas, and through the straits that connected
them, the Soviet foreign relations experts, hoping for political advantage, favoured
the claims of ‘Third World’ nations, some old, some new, who wanted to extend
their sovereignty over wide expanses of sea and ocean off their coasts, and the sea-
bed beneath, thus severely eroding the whole concept of freedom of the high seas.
Of course, historically, the freedom of the seas has always been in the gift of the
dominant naval power. The granting or withholding of belligerent status and of the
rights of neutrals in war, whether declared or undeclared, remained in 1985
something rather more than a folk memory but less than a governing factor in the
determination of national and international responses to hostilities at sea. But the
Soviet Navy had conducted itself with propriety as it extended the scope and
intensity of its peacetime missions. It was not until the shooting started, and
political guidance had to be sought from Moscow, that failure to harmonize the
political with the operational requirements in taking account of the international
law of the sea began to have its effect.
It can now be seen that to meet a number of pressing requirements, including
the need to relieve pressures in the Soviet Union no less than in the satellites, the
Soviet leadership had brought to an advanced state contingency plans which,
directly or indirectly, would put the Soviet Navy to the test. The time was coming
to cash Gorshkov’s cheque. The plans involved in the first instance the use of
naval and air forces in support of political operations designed to offset American
reaction to savage, repressive measures within the Soviet empire and to secure
advantages over the USA while it was still under a new and untried
Administration. One of these plans hinged upon upsetting violently the political
stability of the Persian Gulf; another on delaying the establishment of a stable
political settlement in Southern Africa. Thus, the supply of Middle Eastern oil to
the United States would immediately be in jeopardy, both at its source, in the
Persian Gulf, and en route in tankers via the Cape of Good Hope.
On 29 December 1984 came news which electrified the world. An Iranian troop
transport had been torpedoed and sunk, with heavy loss of life, by a Soviet
submarine in the Strait of Hormuz; and an American intelligence ship had been
subjected to missile attack off Aden.
Had Fleet Admiral Gorshkov still been in charge of the Soviet Navy it is doubtful
whether things would so soon have begun to go wrong for the Russians. In the
first place, he would have had sufficient prestige, courage and professional
acumen to have demurred when given orders to send a submarine into the Persian
Gulf approaches to sink an Iranian troop transport and immediately report the
successful attack. The depth of water being insufficient for nuclear-powered
submarine operations to be fully effective, the submarine had to be one of the
diesel-driven ‘patrol’ type. But the Iranian Navy was known to have been equipped
with up-to-date ASW forces, mainly of British origin, and to be well trained in their
use. The prospect, therefore, of a successful submarine attack, followed by the
safe withdrawal of the submarine and receipt of the all-important attack report,
would not be good. By the same token, Gorshkov would have been unlikely to
countenance a surprise missile attack upon an American intelligence ship. He
would have reasoned that such an attack might invite reprisals against the Soviet
Union’s own intelligence-gathering ships upon which so much depended; and that
the US Navy could quickly concentrate a powerful force to escort the damaged ship
to safety.
These dramatic events, when reported to the Soviet naval high command, had
the effect of concentrating the comrades’ minds wonderfully. Despite the careful
planning which had preceded the challenge to the United States, there was
suddenly a feeling that events might get out of control. It was central to Soviet
politico-military doctrine that military measures must directly and effectively serve
some chosen political objective, whether on a worldwide or on a regional scale.
Operations in the Middle East had been continuing, short of actual shooting by
the great powers themselves, for many years - ever since the 1960s, in fact, soon
after the failure of British nerve, French colonialism and American leadership
became manifest at Suez. The rapid growth of the Soviet Navy under Gorshkov
had been in response to two quite separate requirements, reflecting, as do so
many aspects of Soviet policy, its dyadic nature. The first of these, as could be
deduced from the Peace Programme promulgated at the Twenty-Fourth CPSU
Congress, accepted as inevitable a degree of watchful co-operation between the
Soviet and the Western blocs. The strategic balance would be maintained, nuclear
war averted and detente promoted. The second need was competitive. In the Third
World the Soviet Union had to compete strongly with the West for political
influence, by supporting its friends and denying to the West any advantage that
might be detrimental to the interest of the USSR or its clients. The Soviet Navy had
to support both aspects of Soviet state policy. In theory this had seemed not only
feasible but the strongest argument for naval expansion. In practice, how was it
going to work out?
The more recent Soviet naval activities in the Middle East formed part of the
grand strategy formulated in 1983, when the probability had been foreseen (in a
planning document given strictly limited circulation within the Kremlin) that the
necessity would arise ‘to remove, by force if necessary, the NATO threat to the
security of the USSR in Europe’. The intention of the Soviet Union to continue to
take part, either directly or indirectly (but without inciting conflict with Western
forces), in ‘fraternal wars’ had been reaffirmed. This policy, sanctified by
Communist Party doctrine, could contribute to the achievement of two
complementary strategic aims, one political in nature, the other military. Given the
increasing dependence of the USA and her NATO allies on petroleum imported
from the Persian Gulf, both its denial at source and its interdiction en route would
be of great—perhaps decisive—advantage to the Soviet Union. The ‘fraternal’ aid
currently being provided to the new United Arab Republic, and to the ‘People’s
Liberation Armies’ in Southern Africa, supported these two objectives. But now the
shooting had started. It was essential to retain the initiative. The closest possible
co-ordination of diplomatic and naval activity was essential; and the responsibility
had to be placed firmly where it belonged—with the Politburo. The Soviet Minister
of Defence, Raskolnikov, was in complete accord with the Commander-in-Chief of
the Soviet Navy, Admiral Starsky. There had to be an immediate plenary meeting
of the Main Military Council.
When this meeting took place, twenty-four hours later, it was attended by all
the First Deputy and Deputy Ministers of Defence; also by the commanders-in-
chief of the ground forces, air forces and strategic rocket forces, and, of course, of
the main fleets. The ministers responsible for supplies, production of war
materials and transport were present, and the Soviet Foreign Office was
represented. Opening the meeting, the Minister of Defence briefly outlined the
recent events. He then emphasized the need to keep the Politburo, and especially
the Chairman of the Central Committee of the CPSU, fully informed and properly
advised. Second, the co-ordination, command and control of diplomatic activity
and naval operations had to be fully effective. The balance had to be kept between
actively supporting ‘fraternal’ forces and avoiding general war with the
imperialists. To this end the Council ordered a number of studies to be made, for
presentation within forty-eight hours. One of these studies, to be made by the
naval staff, was ‘The Correlation of Naval Forces in the Red Sea, Arabian Sea and
Persian Gulf.
The naval paper, completed two days later, was predictable, not only in its
comprehensiveness but also in its complexity. Despite Gorshkov’s single-minded
advocacy of Soviet sea power throughout a quarter of a century as commander-in-
chief, and the implementation of most of his major proposals, there remained
many in high places who had never been fully convinced. Several influential
members of the Military Council were civilians, landsmen of Russia to whom sea
power remained an alien concept, and one not easily accommodated within
Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Nor had the generals, as a body, ever been fully
reconciled to what they saw as a disproportionate diversion of resources to naval
expansion. The Soviet naval staff, therefore, took nothing for granted in reviewing
the naval situation in the Middle East. The summary of facts, conclusions and
recommendations which accompanied the paper was commendably terse, but the
paper itself was not. It began with some ‘General Considerations’. These affirmed
that:

1 The seas and oceans of the world remain, in spite of air, and improved
land, transport, the ‘broad highway’ over which 90 per cent of the world’s
commodities, minerals, manufactured products and petroleum are moved. In
addition, 70 per cent of the population of the world live within thirty miles of
the sea coast.
2 Economic necessity has forced the Soviet Union to develop, first, large
fishing fleets [whaling fleets, also, until there were no more whales], then a
large, and still increasing, merchant fleet. The former provided indispensable
protein, the latter foreign currency, essential transportation between widely
separated parts of the Soviet Union, and political influence worldwide.
3 Oceanographic research has enabled Soviet scientists to understand the
sea and the exploration of the sea bed.
4 National security has demanded, first, naval defence of Soviet territory
against the nuclear power of the US carrier strike fleets, together with the
capacity to interdict seaborne military reinforcement of Western Europe from
North America. Later, the development of submarine-launched strategic
nuclear ballistic missiles, both by the Soviet Union and the United States,
placed upon the Soviet Navy the main responsibility for the retaliatory and
damage-limitation rocket forces, indispensable to the preservation of a
strategic nuclear posture that would at least not be unfavourable to the
Soviet Union in the event of nuclear war.
5 The Soviet Navy must also play its part in the combined armed forces of
the Soviet Union by supporting the seaward flank of the ground forces with
amphibious operations, defence against attack from seaward, and supply.
6 ‘State interests’ frequently require the support of the Soviet Navy in
peacetime. The historical mission of Marxist-Leninist theory calls for the
projection of Soviet power beyond the confines of the Eurasian land mass. To
this end, it is necessary to contend with, and eventually overcome, the sea
power of the United States and her imperialist allies, so that the supremacy of
the Soviet Union, at sea as on land, will be acknowledged.

The next section of the Soviet naval staff paper was headed ‘The Comparison of
Naval Force’. Pointing out that navies were not in themselves to be regarded as
synonymous with sea power, but rather as the instruments of sea power, it went
on to give the historical context. Shortly after the end of the Great Patriotic War in
1945, it had been objectively true to say that the Soviet Union was predominantly
a continental power, facing a predominantly maritime coalition, in which the
United States and Great Britain provided the main naval elements. In addition, the
vast majority of the world’s shipping was owned and operated by the maritime
coalition, which also occupied or controlled almost all the main ports, harbours
and sea routes throughout the world.
 During the past three decades this asymmetry had been transformed, by the
forces of history and the peace-loving exertions of the Soviet Union, in three ways.
First, the Soviet Navy had grown, both actually and relatively, so that it was now
in many respects ‘second to none’; second, the Soviet Union had provided itself
with a large ocean-going merchant fleet, as well as fishing fleets of great capacity;
and third, the failure of the imperialists and colonialists to retain political
authority over their subject peoples had led to a large increase in the number of
independent states, and these states between them now possessed navies of their
own, and many of the ports and harbours which formerly were controlled by the
old maritime coalition. Fortunately, the Soviet Union, as the friend of all liberated
peoples, now had access to their ports; could utilize their naval forces in the
struggle for peace; and could in some cases deny their use to the imperialists. The
Soviet Union was now, therefore, a maritime as well as a continental power.
It was still true, however, that in comparing the two blocs, geography, so
important a factor in sea power, did impose constraints. The advantage of unified
political control enjoyed by the Soviet Union, as compared with the autonomy of
the countries comprising the Western coalition, was offset by the continued
existence of four major threats to the freedom of Soviet movement by sea. The
British Isles could act as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the north-west
approaches to Europe. The exits from Murmansk to the Atlantic, and from the
Baltic to the North Sea, could not be regarded as secure. Nor could the
Dardanelles, so long as Turkey was imprisoned in the capitalist camp. In the Far
East, Japan was so placed as to be able to impose serious limitations on the use of
Vladivostok. Soviet policy would sooner or later have to eliminate these four
constraints upon her sea power.
Turning now to the comparison of actual naval forces, the paper first referred to
the criteria of relative capabilities which had been used in determining the shape
and size of the Soviet Navy in accordance with its various missions. Formerly, ‘like
fought like’ at sea; a direct comparison of the numbers of similarly armed ships
which could be brought into action at a given place and time had always formed
the basis both of strategy and of tactics. Now, the balance of naval capability had
to be calculated by mathematical systems analysis, solving multi-criteria problems
for various adversary situations and different combinations of heterogeneous
forces and means. Objective analysis of this kind permitted determination of the
necessary and sufficient composition of forces and their combination into
balanced groups. Because the application of such methodical, indeed scientific,
analysis was indispensable to a proper assessment of the naval-air situation in the
Middle East, it was deemed essential to explain it in some detail.
The central concept in modern naval force comparison, the paper affirmed, was
the weapon system, not the ship, the submarine or the aircraft, though these were
considered as targets for the various weapon systems. In defining a weapon
system a choice had to be made. At one end of the spectrum, a club in the hand of
a caveman could be called a weapon system; at the other, a ballistic missile
submarine. In the present context, the elements of a weapon system were:
1 A means of detecting and identifying a possible target.
2 A warhead capable of destroying or neutralizing that target.
3 A vehicle to carry the warhead to the target.
 4 A launcher for the vehicle.
5 A means of controlling the vehicle so that it will hit the target.
6 Protection for the vehicle and warhead against counter-measures
designed to prevent either or both from hitting the target.
Certain features of the operational environment profoundly affected weapon
systems, the paper went on. If the target was under water the system would be
dependent upon the acoustic properties of seawater; if it was above water, it would
be dependent upon electro-magnetic radiation. Weapon systems which required a
homing device of any kind for target acquisition could always be decoyed or
otherwise countered. Those guided by radio command were susceptible to
electronic jamming. The tactics used in bringing weapon systems to bear were
governed by their characteristics. The principle of concentration of force required
continuous reinterpretation in the light of complex and varied weapon systems.
Taking the targets in turn, studies had shown that:
1 Surface ships are vulnerable to surface-skimming, submarine-launched,
horizon-range missiles; to tactical surface-to-surface missiles; to air-to-
surface missiles; and to torpedoes and mines.
2 Submarines are vulnerable to submarine-launched, wire-guided
torpedoes; to aircraft-launched torpedoes and nuclear depth charges; and to
ship-launched torpedoes.
3 Aircraft are vulnerable to surface-to-air short-range missiles; to surface-
to-air medium- or long-range missiles; and to aircraft-launched missiles.
It had been established, the paper continued, that the latest Soviet weapon
systems performed as well, if not better, than their equivalents in service in the US
Navy. Soviet strategic deployments and tactical dispositions, therefore, must
always aim at bringing to bear a superior concentration of appropriate weapon
systems, while denying to the enemy the opportunity to do so. In the field of
underwater warfare, two special factors had to be borne in mind. First, owing to
the relatively low speed of sound waves in water, it was not feasible for
submarines to operate in close formation with each other in order to bring to bear
a concentration of weapon systems upon a hostile submarine or surface target. In
a submarine versus submarine action, therefore, victory was likely to go to the one
which first detected the other. And because noise levels depended mainly upon
speed, the submarine whose mission required it to move rapidly would be at
greater risk of being surprised. Second, mines could be used with great effect in
certain circumstances.
A reminder was then given of the effect upon naval operations of the almost
continuous reconnaissance, by satellite or aircraft, now available. The movements
of all major surface ships, whether naval or merchant, were now known, and
could, if required, be shown direct on TV screens anywhere in the world. Only the
submarine forces remained secure from observation, and even in their case good
estimates could often be made of the number and types at sea in various areas.
But one very serious constraint remained in regard to submarine operations: the
need to avoid mutual interference between friendly submarine and anti-submarine
forces.
The final section of the Soviet naval staff paper reviewed the situation in the Red
Sea, Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf. In comparing the naval and air forces, it
assessed the available weapon systems on both sides as approximately equivalent.
The Soviet naval object was to support Soviet foreign policy, in exerting pressure
on the United States forces in the area, and assisting the fraternal United Arab
Republic forces to deny full control of the Persian Gulf to Iran. The course of
action recommended was to reinforce the Soviet naval air squadron re-established
at Aden with an additional squadron of Backfire bombers, and one of Foxbat
fighters. The task group based on a Kiev-class, anti-submarine carrier, now
visiting Mauritius, should proceed to the Red Sea, preparatory to the declaration
of a War Zone there, should this become necessary. Under the heading ‘Command
Communications and Control’, the naval staff advised the establishment forthwith
of a Flag Officer Soviet Middle East Forces (FOSMEF), with headquarters ashore at
Aden. The agreement of the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY)
government should not be difficult to obtain. FOSMEF would require a full
operational staff, an air deputy and a political adviser. A communications echelon
would be set up, with an organization appropriate to the major operational task
envisaged. FOSMEF would, for the time being, be responsible administratively to
the Commander-in-Chief Soviet Black Sea Fleet, at Sevastopol. Operationally, he
would be directly responsible to the Commander-in-Chief Soviet Fleet.
When the Soviet naval staff paper was taken by the Main Military Council,
together with several other important papers, the Conclusions and
Recommendations were approved.

Appendix 3
NATO Naval Command Structure

It was natural in 1951 to create first an Allied Command Europe, in order to

establish US forces on the ground, where they would discourage the Soviet Union
from any further westward advance. It was also natural to create an Allied
Command Atlantic, in order to ensure the reinforcement and re-supply of the US
ground forces. It was inevitable, also, that both supreme commanders should be
US officers. It was, perhaps, equally natural, and inevitable, that Great Britain,
especially with Winston Churchill once again returned to power as Prime Minister,
was not ready to subordinate the Royal Navy entirely to an American admiral with
his headquarters on the far side of the Atlantic. Not until it had been agreed,
therefore, to set up an Allied Commander-in-Chief, Channel, with supreme
commander status, and a British admiral in the post, would Churchill agree to the
activation of SACLANT. The Channel command was confined to the southern
North Sea and the English Channel; and it was hoped that the worst possibilities
of operational misunderstanding, at the command boundaries, would be
eliminated by ensuring that the same British officers who exercised certain British
national commands, and appropriate subordinate commands in Allied Command
Atlantic (ACLANT), would also hold the subordinate posts in the Channel
Command. The wartime mission of SACLANT would be to maintain intact the
communication lines of the Atlantic Ocean, to conduct conventional and nuclear
operations against enemy naval bases and airfields, and to support operations
carried out by SACEUR, while the Commander-in-Chief, Channel (CINCHAN) was
‘to control and protect merchant shipping, to endeavour to establish and maintain
control of the area, and to support operations in adjacent commands’.
Since 1951, a number of important developments had taken place, both political
and strategic. Although no single one might have justified a change in the
command structure, their cumulative effect would do so. The developments were
these: the post-war recovery of Western Europe, despite severe economic setbacks,
which had transformed the relationship with the USA from dependence to
interdependence; the advent of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, which had
relegated the US Strike Fleet from being the primary naval strategic force, and only
secondarily a general-purpose force, to being primarily a general-purpose force,
with a nuclear strike capability; the rapid increase in the number of nuclear-
powered general-purpose submarines in both the Soviet and the US Navies; the
continued failure of scientific research and technological development to provide
an effective means of detecting and accurately locating submerged submarines
(while this failure preserved the second-strike capability of the SSBN forces, and
hence contributed to the maintenance of strategic nuclear stability, it augmented
the threat of submarine attack on shipping and surface warships, already far more
serious than in the worst period of the Battle of the Atlantic in the Second World
War); the discovery and exploitation of oil and natural gas in the North Sea and
the Norwegian Sea; the withdrawal of British naval forces from permanent stations
outside the NATO area, and full dependence upon NATO for national security; the
closer political association of the Western European members of NATO, and their
desire to have a greater say in the conduct of the affairs of the Alliance, vis-à-vis
the United States; the adoption of communication networks, data exchange
systems, warning systems and air defence systems which needed to be matched
by appropriate command and control arrangements if full advantage was to be
taken of these techniques; the fact that nuclear-powered general purpose
submarines operate with so much less effectiveness, and are indeed much more
susceptible to detection, location and destruction, in the shallow waters of the
Continental Shelf (200 metres or less) than in the deep ocean beyond; finally, and
most important, the adoption of a strategy of ‘flexible response’ in place of the
originally declared strategy of ‘massive retaliation’ against the first identified
aggression.
Thus, while the basic requirement remained, that the NATO ground forces in
Western Europe should be reinforced and supplied across the Atlantic, almost
every other condition which governed the original NATO command structure had
altered. What was, in effect, a continuation of the Second World War-winning set-
up would no longer serve. A flexible response strategy meant nothing if it did not
mean the demonstration, in peacetime, of both the determination and the
capability to engage major enemy forces by land, sea and air, if put to the test.
Given the speed of movement and scale of attack which had to be expected, as well
as the range of tactical missiles, the whole land and sea area of the north-west
European Continental Shelf would have to be regarded, from the outset, as part of
the central front battlefield. True, the nature of the operations thereon would be
three-dimensional; and the area would retain its character as the terminal and
entrepôt for transatlantic support. But one thing was certain: the purely political
character of Channel Command, squeezed between a subordinate command of
SACLANT, who was far away in Norfolk, Va., and the presumably hard-pressed
SACEUR, across the Channel, could not be expected to meet the requirements of
war.
To abolish CINCHAN, and incorporate his command in ACLANT, would merely
invite that well-known over-centralization syndrome known as ‘apoplexy at the
centre and paralysis at the extremities’. To subordinate CINCHAN to SACEUR,
with whatever title, would cause the latter to be continually looking over his
shoulder. There remained a third alternative, namely to create, out of CINCHAN, a
new Supreme Allied Command, which would comprise the existing Channel
Command, and part of the existing Eastern Atlantic Command, adjusted so as to
be approximately contiguous with the United Kingdom Air Defence Region. The
new command, which it was decided to call the Joint Allied Command Western
Approaches (JACWA), would be a joint sea-air command, held by the British Naval
and Air Commander-in-Chief. The British Flag Officer Submarines, and a US flag
officer, would be deputies, and the chief of staff a NATO admiral of another
nationality. The EASTLANT-Channel naval-air headquarters became the home of
JACWA, and fairly soon the structure of subordinate commands, based upon
retention of national command, but flexibility of operational command and, to an
even greater extent, of operational control, was in being and working well.
The Commanders-in-Chief of JACWA discovered first that, whether they liked it
or not, they would become, early on in a typical ‘invasion from the East’ situation,
engaged in a battle for the Baltic Exits; they might also find themselves arranging
for the withdrawal from West Germany and the Netherlands of warships and
submarines nearing completion, or refitting, lest they should fall into enemy
hands. In fact, had they not existed at the outbreak of the Third World War, Cs-in-
C JACWA would have had to be created. Their task included the entire planning
and operational responsibilities which had fallen to the Admiralty during both the
previous world wars, in its capacity as a command post for operations in home
waters and the North Atlantic. It was still in his capacity as C-in-C Fleet, however,
and not as Naval C-in-C JACWA, that the British admiral set in train the
NORSECA plan (see above).

Appendix 4
The Home Front

I: A summary of events in civil defence in the seven vital years 1978-85

1978
Government allocation for civil defence at approximately £2 million (in real
terms about one-twentieth of the 1968 budget) is totally inadequate. Government
directives and plans for dealing with emergencies are out of date and irrelevant.
Except in a few counties there is little or no interest in civil defence or emergency
planning.
1979
Formation of National Emergency Volunteers (NEV)—a voluntary, self-financing
organization formed to recruit, train and equip civil defence workers at
parish/community level and to encourage parishes and urban communities to
plan and organize as survival units in an emergency—with the emphasis on self-
sufficiency.
In a period of massive unemployment and uncertainty the NEV rally strong
support. Under imaginative and forceful leadership it begins to impress
government and local government with the urgent necessity of taking positive
action to restore a civil defence capability.
In late 1979 the government passes legislation facilitating the embodiment of
TAVR in an emergency.
1980 and 1981
The NEV increase rapidly in all counties. Fifty per cent of all rural parishes now
have workable emergency plans and are equipped with radiac instruments and
chemical detector papers, and 65 per cent have one or more civil defence advisers.
In urban communities the proportions are 12 per cent and 18 per cent.
1982
In March 1982 a US bomber carrying five 10-megaton nuclear weapons collides
in mid-air with a Jumbo jet over Hampshire and crashes in flames on Fawley oil
refinery. There is no nuclear explosion, but a substantial escape of radioactive
cloud which blows across Southampton Water. Radiation is detected by a NEV
operator in Warsash. His early warning makes possible rapid evacuation of
population in the path of the fall-out as far inland as Petersfield. Casualties
treated number 631 and include five deaths. Population in southern counties
alerted.
Later in the year the IRA threaten to detonate a nuclear warhead in the Bristol
Channel. The partial evacuation of Bristol is started before the threat is disposed
of. The public is now aroused to demand that the government provide proper
protection in an emergency with a faster reaction time.
1983
The government passes the Civil Protection (Emergencies) Act, giving statutory
recognition to the NEV with an annual allocation of £2 million per annum for the
purchase of civil defence equipment at parish/community level, and to defray
administrative and training costs.
The total grant for civil defence and emergency is increased by £30 million per
annum; this includes provision for the hardening of essential communications
systems against EMP (electro-magnetic pulse).
This Act sweeps away the former emphasis on secrecy, and introduces a new
two-stage emergency warning—Phase 1, ‘Warning Stand-by’; Phase 2, ‘Action’—
and stresses that each level of authority in an emergency—region, county, district,
parish, ward, street association, etc.—must plan and equip to be self-contained at
immediate notice and to survive for at least a week without help from outside.
All authorities down to and including parish/community level are directed to
prepare and update emergency plans for approval by government inspectors.
These plans should provide for the appointment of a controller and emergency
committee with the necessary powers to run the parish/community and co-
ordinate survival measures in emergency for a considerable period.
1984
International tension is growing. There is talk of a possible world war. NEV step
up recruiting and training. Most rural parishes are equipped and ready. Less than
40 per cent of urban communities are prepared.
The government holds a national civil defence exercise in August with simulated
emergency alerts and trial evacuations. Existing evacuation plans are modified to
a more flexible system. The lessons of the exercise are that law and order may be a
major problem.
A new government booklet, Civil Protection in an Emergency, is issued to local
authorities down to parish/community level, to government and local services,
and to the NEV and voluntary bodies.
1985
In the summer international tension, less in the early part of the year, is again
acute.
20 July. In response to its recognition that the Warsaw Pact is mobilizing NATO
begins to put Allied armed forces on a war footing. The USA prepares to airlift
troops to Europe and loads war equipment on to shipping.
The UK government issues Emergency Phase 1 warning and distributes a Civil
Protection booklet to all householders. Radio and TV broadcasts and newspaper
articles advise the public how to behave and survive under attack. Evacuation
plans are explained. The orderly evacuation of school children is to start on 22
July. Plans for petrol and food rationing are announced. The Stock Exchange is
closed.
All community councils and local authorities convene extraordinary meetings
and update emergency plans. Councils confirm appointment of controllers and
emergency committee members. Final preparations are made to put emergency
plans into operation.

II: Extracts from the Emergency Diaries kept by three English communities,
recording the course of events in sixteen critical days, 4-20 August 1985

4 August
Branscombe, a village in Devon, pop. 400
All times are according to British Standard Time.
0900 Emergency Diary opened. BBC has reported Warsaw Pact forces
advancing into West Germany—only conventional munitions (incl. chemical)
reported used so far. UK Govt declares State of Emergency (Phase 2).
0920 District Controller confirms State of Emergency locally. 0931 Chairman
Parish Council directs activation of Branscombe Emergency Plan (BREMPLAN).
0940 Branscombe Emergency Committee (BREMCO) takes over Holt House (a
private dwelling) as Emergency Control HQ. Instructions issued to establish
Feeding and Rest, and Hospital and First Aid Centres.
0950 Report received that already 4,000 holiday-makers and refugees are in the
parish and more arriving at approx fifty per hour. Controller asks police in Seaton
to divert refugees. Reply negative (have no authority and we are already
overwhelmed with problems in Seaton and Beer).
1005 In agreement with Chairman Parish Council, Controller blocks roads into
Branscombe with bulldozers leaving Gatedown Lane open with Control Post at
northern end.
1200 PM broadcasts to the nation. State of War exists but we will not be first to
use nuclear weapons.
1400 Meeting in Village Hall. Chairman Parish Council and Controller speaks to
villagers and visitors. Parish ration/identity cards issued.
1500 BBC reports NATO troops withdrawing. 1600 Survey team starts
continuous radiac monitoring watch.
1700 Govt broadcast advising population to remain calm and all except key
personnel to remain at home and await further instructions; meantime to carry
out directions of Govt booklet.
Buxford, a town south of Manchester, pop. 8,000
1700 Buxford Emergency Committee activated, Emergency Control HQ
established and Control Staff closed up at full strength. Continuous watch opened
with radiac equipment and chemical detector papers. Large numbers of refugees
moving south from Manchester by car and on foot, but passing through.
Sparksley Green, an urban community in central Birmingham, pop. 2,075
1810 Emergency Control HQ established at the ‘Red Cow’. Only Controller and
two Communications Officers have reported. No radiac or other equipment. HQ
organized on reporting basis only. Rapid exodus of population, roads blocked.
Some looting of food shops and liquor shops. Few police in evidence.

5 August
Branscombe
0915 All private cars moved to parks in fields and tanks drained. Hospital
operating Edge Hill. Feeding arrangements going well. Emergency latrines being
dug at Rest Centres and at all Billeting Centres on main drainage.
1000 All refugees reported under cover. Emergency water scheme operational.
1100 Stocks of detergents, lavatory paper, pharmaceutical and medical supplies
received from District Controller.
1200 Steady stream of US transport planes flying overhead since 0900.
2300 Signal from District that enemy bombing can now be expected at any time
- probably from aircraft using HE and chemical weapons.
2400 Electricity supply failed. Switched to own generator.
Buxford
1200 Emergency plans operating well. Refugee stream to south continues.
US planes arriving in some numbers Manchester Airport. Buxford population
fear they will attract Soviet attack and 20 per cent have already left. Control Staff
at 90 per cent strength. 2300 District warn that enemy are expected to start
bombing our airfields at any time.
2400 Electricity failed. Stand-by candles.
Sparksley Green
1200 Still on reporting watch only with Controller and two Communications
Officers - no equipment. Approx half population seem to have left. Armed police
are bringing looting under control. Two looters shot, one policeman murdered and
two injured. A number of fires which a depleted fire brigade have difficulty in
controlling.
2300 Signal that bombing attack expected. District sending two spare
Communications Officers with radiac and chemical detectors. Two Emergency
Committee members reporting at 1000 tomorrow.
2400 Electricity cut.
Branscombe
0350 Air raid alert.
0415 Sound of A/C overhead. Bombs falling to east and west.
0430 Signal that our airfields under heavy bombardment.
0730 ‘All Clear’ sounded.
1000 Signal received that bombs dropped during night had contained HE,
incendiary and nerve gases (tabun, sarin and VX). 1700 Air raid alerts and All
Clears have followed each other all day.
Controller directed that no further air raid warnings would be sounded in the
village unless bombs were seen to be dropping or there was threat of a nuclear
attack. Hot meal ordered for all at 1830. 1930 US transport A/C flew over Parish
at 2,000 metres on fire—parachutes emerging as A/C flies off west. Reported to
District.
1935 Enemy A/C flew low across Parish west to east. Reported.
2300 Electricity restored.
Buxford
0350 Air raid warning.
0400 to 0600 Heavy air raid high level A/C—100+ bombs land Buxford area.
Survey team make short recce at 0500 during lull—report much damage and
many fires, and chemical detector papers show positive readings. Police,
ambulance, fire brigade and rescue squads working in respirators and protective
clothing.
0615 All Clear. Survey team report bombs still exploding intermittently—
presumably with delayed action fuses. As some contain nerve gas it is agreed with
police to re-sound Alert to get everyone under cover while unexploded bombs are
dealt with.
0800 Survey report shows approx 1,200 casualties of which 157 are dead.
0900 Two enemy A/C attack airport. No bombs on Buxford. US transport
planes continue to come in in spite of bombing.
1006 One US and one Soviet A/C come down in flames over Buxford. Both
crash to south.
1138 Five A/C attack airport—50+ bombs on Buxford including nerve gas.
1400 District Controller agrees all civilians except key personnel be evacuated.
Control Staff to stay.
Sparksley Green
0550 Air raid warning.
0600 A/C overhead, bombs falling and exploding to east. None in our area.
Reported.
0615 All Clear.
 0700 District advise water will be cut off at 1200. Police agree to tour area with
car loud-hailers to advise householders to fill baths and containers before 1200
and to use plastic bags etc for toilet purposes.
1500 Police are withdrawn. Looting and fire-raising starts again. Three murders
in streets and some inter-racial fighting. All food shops run out or looted.
Communal meals supplied by District at school. Less than 25 per cent of
population remain.

7 August
Branscombe
1200 Much A/C activity all morning. Villagers and refugees continue to work on
farms and at allotted tasks.
1341 Electricity fails. District advises water will be cut off at 1600. Emergency
water and hygiene plans activated.
1400 At BREMCO Conference with Parish Council a reserve Controller and four
Committee members chosen to replace existing BREMCO team should they
become casualties. The Parsonage House chosen as an alternative Control HQ if
Holt House destroyed. Directed that second copies of Emergency Diary and
Financial Records be kept there.
Buxford
1000 No air raids for 20 hours; area declared clear of bombs and
contamination. Buxford Controller suffered nervous breakdown—his 70th
birthday. Cncllr Deschet appointed as new Controller.
1115 Gang of four armed youths reported looting liquor warehouse—no police
or troops available. Controller with armed posse goes to restore order.
1330 Controller returns with posse and police Inspector, who has charged
Controller with murder and malicious wounding. He charges that after the youths
had been disarmed in the warehouse the Controller held a summary court martial
and sentenced the four youths to death. When he ordered his armed posse to
carry out sentence and shoot the boys they refused, whereupon he took one of the
guns himself and opened fire, killing one and wounding three. At this point the
Inspector arrived. Chairman of Buxford Council arrives, relieves Cncllr Deschet of
his appointment and replaces him with Cncllr Burt-Rand.
Sparksley Green
1200 For mutual protection and support most of remaining inhabitants have
concentrated in the area round the school and the ‘Red Cow’.

8 August
Branscombe
0600 Signal ex District—enemy concentrating attacks on power stations, oil
depots and ports.
0700 Farmers northern perimeter of Parish report looting of food stocks during
night. 0800 Recce of N perimeter report 850+ refugees camped alongside A3052
demanding accommodation in Parish.
1000 Controller visits refugees and offers accommodation for 34 women and
young children, a hot meal for all and two days’ food for the remainder if they will
keep moving. Offer accepted. They are given medical supplies.
 1150 Controller orders construction of strong barbed wire fence along northern
boundary of Parish.
1200 Four refugees in village brought before Controller accused of raping girl.
Accused and witnesses with armed escort sent to District HQ for trial before JP.
1350 District HQ signal that nuclear bomb has exploded over London. Village
advised and nuclear drill rehearsed.
1430 District HQ advise previous report false. Village told.
1630 Air dogfight over Branscombe. Soviet plane shot down over sea. No
parachute. Reported.
2131 Intense air activity, sound of bombs falling and heavy explosions which
appear to be in area of village and are getting… [Entry ends here.
Emergency Diary was found in ruins of Holt House.]
Buxford
0800 Heavy air raid on airport during night. Over 50 bombs in Buxford area—
HE and nerve-delayed action. No water or electricity.
Sparksley Green
1200 Heavy air attacks on Birmingham Airport during night. About 30 HE
bombs fell in Sparksley area, approx 170 casualties. Police, rescue, fire, etc, in
control. Still no water or electricity. 1410 Epidemic of sickness and diarrhoea
reported to District.

9 August
Branscombe
0800 Emergency Control HQ at Holt House destroyed by direct hit with 225 kg
HE bomb at 2131 yesterday and Controller and Emergency Committee members
and all Control Staff killed. All CD equipment except one dosimeter destroyed.
Reserve Emergency Control HQ opened up in Parsonage House at 0400 and stand-
by Emergency Committee members and Controller took over as agreed. Supply of
dosimeters, survey meters, chemical detector papers, respirators and protective
clothing received from District at 0700. Priority phone connection established at
0750.
Eight killed, seventy-three injured and gassed in village in last night’s raid
caused by HE and nerve gas. All casualties evacuated to Axminster.
0900 120 cattle and sheep killed previous night. Buried at Holt Pits.
1015 New stand-by Controller and BREMCO members appointed. Reserve
Control HQ will be at Hayes Farm.
1350 Burial service of casualties of last night’s raid. Service in Parish church.
1500 Farmers report large number cattle and sheep with unusual symptoms,
thought to be due to nerve gas. District asked to send vet.

12 August
Branscombe
0800 BBC report Warsaw Pact forces still advancing southwards up west bank
of Rhine. Continued enemy A/C attacks on UK airfields, ports and power stations.
0900 Outbreak sickness and diarrhoea reported Rest Camp I. District asked to
send doctor.
 1000 Controller meets deputation from refugees who complain of inadequate
food and harsh and uncomfortable living conditions, and say that many do not
wish to work on farms and all have to walk too far to work and for their meals.
Controller explains necessities but promises to try to improve conditions.
1800 The first of the daily evensong ecumenical services in the Parish church.
Full.

19 August
Branscombe
0800 BBC reports NATO counter-attack northwards towards Bremen has made
headway, and enemy’s southern advance has been stopped. No air attack on UK
for 48 hours.
1400 Cricket match—Village v the Rest. Village 86 all out, the Rest 87 for 4.
1900 Evening concert Village Hall.

20 August
Branscombe
1140 District reports nuclear explosion Birmingham area.
1300 BBC confirms high-yield nuclear bomb burst over Birmingham at 1130.
Very heavy casualties and great damage. Villages within 50 kilometres and in path
of fall-out cloud being evacuated. Govt warns there is possibility that other nuclear
strikes may be expected.
1600 Controller addresses village on sports field—explains position and
rehearses nuclear drill. Everyone to continue as normal with no extra precautions.
Buxford
1130 Extraordinary bright flash in southern sky, followed by ascending,
expanding huge red ball of fire. Immense shock wave later. Can it be?
Sparksley Green
0028 Residents’ party in Control HQ ends at midnight. Little activity in UK over
past 72 hours. Many hope war will be over in few days. But who has won?
1100 Routine call to District. Signal loud and clear.
1128 Warning—all Control Posts to stand by for urgent signal.
1129 Signal—RED ALERT (air raid warning sounded): ‘President USA has
received Soviet warning of immediate nuclear attack on Birmingham Engla… [The
charred remains of this log were found in the cellar of the ‘Red Cow’.]

Appendix 5
Deployment of Forces and Equipment
[NOTE: Inserted lists illegible.]

Abbreviations
AAFCE Allied Air Forces Central Europe
A/C aircraft
ACLANT Allied Command Atlantic
ADP automatic data processing
AEW airborne early warning
AFCENT Allied Forces Central Europe
AFNORTH Allied Forces Northern Europe
AFSOUTH Allied Forces Southern Europe
AFV armoured fighting vehicle(s)
AIRCENT Allied Air Forces Central Europe
AIRSOUTH Allied Air Forces Southern Europe
ALCM air-launched cruise missile(s)
AOC Air Officer Commanding
AOC-in-C Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief
APC armoured personnel-carrier(s)
A/S anti-submarine
ASW anti-submarine warfare
ATAF Allied Tactical Air Force
ATGW anti-tank guided weapon(s)
AWACS airborne warning and control system
BAOR British Army of the Rhine
BMEWS ballistic missile early warning system
BMP boevaya mashina pekhoty (Soviet infantry combat vehicle)
BREMCO Branscombe Emergency Committee
BREMPLAN Branscombe Emergency Plan
CAP combat air patrol(s)
CASPA Confederation of Africa South People’s Army
CD Civil Defence
CDU Christian Democratic Union
CENTAG Central Army Group
CINCHAN Commander-in-Chief, Channel
CINCENT Commander-in-Chief, Central Region
CINCNORTH Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces Northern Europe
CINCSOUTH Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe
CINCUKAIR Commander-in-Chief, United Kingdom Air Forces
CLGP cannon-launched guided projectile
COMAAFCE Commander Allied Air Forces Central Europe
COMBALTAP Commander Allied Forces Baltic Approaches
COMCENTAG Commander Central Army Group
COMNORTHAG Commander Northern Army Group
COMWAS Commander Western Approaches South
CPR Chinese People’s Republic
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
DEW distant early warning
DF direction-finding
EASTLANT Eastern Atlantic
ECM electronic counter-measures
ECCM electronic counter-counter- measures
ELINT electronic intelligence
EMP electro-magnetic pulse
ENG electronic newsgathering
EUROSAM European surface-to-air missile(s)
FEBA forward edge of the battle area
FLEETSATCOM Fleet satellite communications
FNLA Angolan National Liberation Front
FOSMEF Flag Officer Soviet Middle East Forces
FPB fast patrol boat(s)
FRELIMO Mozambique Liberation Front
FRG Federal Republic of Germany
FUMO Mozambique United Front
GAF German Air Force
GDR/DDR German Democratic Republic/Deutsche Demokratische Republik
GLCM ground-launched cruise missile(s)
GNP gross national product
GS General Staff
GSFG Group of Soviet Forces in Germany Group
HDG Home Defence Groups (of the Federal German Territorial Army)
HE high-explosive
I (or INT) Intelligence
ICBM inter-continental ballistic missile(s)
IRBM intermediate-range ballistic missile(s)
IRR Individual Ready Reserve
JACWA Joint Allied Command Western Approaches
JTIDS Joint Tactical Information Distribution System
LSI large-scale integration
MBFR mutual and balanced force reductions
MICV Mechanized Infantry Combat Vehicle(s)
MPLA Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola
MR maritime reconnaissance
MRBM medium-range ballistic missile(s)
MRCA multi-role combat aircraft
MSI medium-scale integration
MT megaton
MTLB (Soviet universal combat vehicle)
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NBC nuclear, biological, chemical
NEV National Emergency Volunteers
NCO non-commissioned officer
NORSECA Northern Seas Environmental Control Agency
NORTHAG Northern Army Group
OAU Organization for African Unity
OP observation post
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
OSS Office of Strategic Services
OTC Officer Training Corps
PDRY People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen
PGM precision-guided missile(s)
QRA quick-reaction alert
RCRIP Reserve Component Readiness Improvement Package
RPG rounds per gun
RPV remotely-piloted vehicle(s)
SACEUR Supreme Allied Commander Europe
SACLANT Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic
SALT Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
 SAM surface-to-air missile(s)
SAS Special Air Service
SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland
SHAPE Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe
Sigint signal intelligence
Sitrep situation report
SLBM submarine-launched ballistic missile(s)
SLCM submarine-launched cruise missile(s)
SNAF Soviet Naval Air Force
SOE Special Operations Executive
SOL soldier out of luck
SOSUS sonar surveillance system
SOUTHAG Southern Army Group
SP self-propelled
SSBN submarine(s), strategic ballistic nuclear
SSM surface-to-surface missile(s)
SSN submarine(s), nuclear
SNFA Standing Naval Force Atlantic
STASS surface-towed array surveillance system
SWAPO South-west Africa People’s Organization
TACCP Tactical Command Post
TAVR Territorial and Auxiliary Volunteer Reserve
UAE United Arab Emirates (in the Persian Gulf)
UAR United Arab Republic
UKADGE United Kingdom Air Defence Ground Environment
UKLF United Kingdom Land Forces
UNCLOS United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea
UNFISMATRECO United Nations Fissile Materials Recovery Organization
UNITA National Union for the Total Independence of Angola
UNRRO United Nations Relief and Repatriation Organization
USAF United States Air Force
USAREUR United States Army in Europe
VLSI very large-scale integration
V/STOL vertical/short take-off and landing
WESTLANT Western Atlantic
WP Warsaw Pact
XO Executive Officer

Authors’ Note and Acknowledgements

We who have put this book together know very well that the only forecast that can be
made with any confidence of the course and outcome of another world war, should there
be one, is that nothing will happen exactly as we have shown here. There is the
possibility, however, that it could. There is also the very high probability that unless the
West does a good deal within the next few years to improve its defences a war with the
Warsaw Pact could end in early disaster.
Those who argue for the reduction of defence expenditure in the countries of the West
not only seem to live in a land of total make-believe, but they refuse to give the Marxist-
Leninists who govern the USSR any credit either for meaning what they say (and have
been saying for a long time) or for knowing what they are doing. What they have been
saying, and have not ceased to say, is that the capitalist countries of the West are doomed
to go down before the inexorable advance of communism, with the Red Army playing a
major part in their overthrow. What they have been doing is building up huge armed
forces, far greater than what would be necessary, in any conceivable situation, for their
own defence, at a cost gravely detrimental to domestic development in the USSR and in a
mode essentially offensive.
We have been encouraged by signs around us that among the peoples of the West the
point, on the strength of such indications, is beginning to be taken. We have outlined a
possible course that improvement to the defences of the West might take, in full
awareness that it might take others. We have assumed that enough is done to ensure
that, when the Soviet machine travels of its own momentum along a path of
miscalculation and mischance towards an attack on NATO, the West, at some cost, is able
to survive. It is possible, of course, that enough will not be done. The outcome is then
likely to be different. This is not to suggest that a war is bound to happen, or even that it
is likely. If, however, there could be no question that, in the event of war, the Warsaw Pact
would win, the free countries of the West would be in no position to withstand political
pressure from the USSR, which would enjoy the fruits of a military victory without having
to fight for it.
We have had invaluable advice from a great variety of sources, including the Ministry of
Defence in London, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe, Allied Forces Central
Europe, the British Royal Military College of Science, and elsewhere.
We are much indebted to a widely acknowledged expert on the Red Army, Professor
John Erickson of Edinburgh University.
We are particularly indebted for advice to General M. Davison (formerly C-in-C
USAREUR) and General W. de Puy, both recently retired from the US Army. They have
given invaluable help on more than one aspect of our work.
Mr Julian Allason, whose own book on the defence of the United Kingdom against
nuclear attack will appear in 1979, and Major J. A. Hibbert, who is much concerned with
civil defence, have also been helpful, as have serving officers whose advice has helped to
lend realism to our treatment of the fighting.
The events in this book have, on occasion, been presented according to our, the
authors’, views rather than according to the advice given to us. Any criticism of the result,
therefore, should in no way be directed at those mentioned above. No contributions are
signed since strict attribution would not be easy in so co-operative an enterprise.
Sir John Hackett, February 1978

(1-1) Taken from Black Horse and Red Star: American Cavalry at War by John S. Cleghorn, Col.US
Army (retd), Houghton Mifflin, Boston 1986.
(1-2) Taken from an article “Sketches of the Eighth at War” in The Royal Armoured Corps Journal,

Autumn 1986.
(1-3) Taken from A Civilian in a Short, Hot War, reminiscences by A.E. Arnold, Chatto and Windus,

London 1986.
(10-4) It is probably unnecessary to say that at no time was there any planning in NATO for an

invasion of the GDR. The suggestion had some propaganda value in the USSR, and among Soviet
sympathizers abroad.
(11-5) I Belgian, I German and I Netherlands Corps and I and II British. The last, formed largely from

reserve units during the previous year, had been deployed for the first time in Germany a month
earlier.
(11-6) It has been possible to put together the account here given of the personal experience of the

G3 Duty Officer, who was one of the earlier fatal casualties of the fighting in Germany, on the basis
of evidence of others present in the Ops room at the time, and the preservation of the officer’s letter
to his wife. This story is told by one of the present writers, who was a close friend.
(12-7) II Br Corps was moved to Germany in July 1985.
(12-8) Armoured infantry, 3,500 strong, together with a regiment of sixty tanks, an artillery regiment

of 155 mm SP howitzers, anti-tank and anti-air missiles, support troops and a tactical helicopter
squadron.
(14-9) Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty lays down that in the event of armed attack on any
signatory each member will assist the country so attacked by taking ‘such action as it deems
necessary including the use of armed force’.