Seventy-Three NATO’s air campaign over Eastern Europe, Operation Eclipse, had entered its second day and Russian air operations from airfields in Belarus & Kaliningrad had become increasingly hampered by these strikes. 1st Allied Tactical Air Force, stood-up from the former Allied Air Command HQ back at Ramstein, had many hundreds of warplanes under its command and these jets and their crews were scoring more and more successes against Russia. On the morning of August 7th, airfields in Poland, Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Great Britain had all come under cruise missile attack. On the war’s second day, neither Europe nor the United States had faced strategic air attacks from Russia due to0 the tactical situation in the skies above the continent…but this was all going to change on August 9th.
The return of Russian firepower was focused on a much larger variety of targets this time than on the first night of the war.
Airfields needed to be hit and neutralised but so too did NATO supply hubs along the European coastline, where Allied reinforcements were pouring into the continent. Conventional bombing raids using Tu-22M
Backfires struck the Polish ports at Gdansk and Gdynia, while again cruise missiles rained down on airfields around the country, also targeting civilian airports too. Warsaw itself was hit hard by cruise missiles targeted at various governmental and defence institutions, while an attempted attack was also made against the Seventh Army headquarters in Krakow, one which was defeated but with damage done to the city. Warsaw had been attacked yesterday by Belarusian
Scud missiles which had caused similar damage and mass panic throughout the Polish capital. Civilians were fleeing in their hundreds of thousands believing that the enemy was at the gates and that they would soon be under the rule of Moscow.
The tactical air battles above the Polish frontier continued throughout the day with major losses taken by both sides. Though the USAF’s F-22 Raptors continued to perform admirably, the continued use by Russia of long-range surface-to-air missile systems to complement the smaller Russian Air Force led to a pair of the vaunted Raptors being shot out of the sky, one early in the morning and another later in the night. Furthermore, Russian fighters had managed to shoot down one French-crewed NATO Sentry and damage another so badly that it would not fly again. These were horrendous losses for NATO to suffer. Numerous other aircraft types were lost in far greater numbers, with neither side having much chance of blasting open a corridor through which combat search and rescue operations could be launched. Downed pilots would, for now, be on their own.
Russia launched far heavier air attacks against targets in Western and Southern Europe than it had done since the war began. It was set to be a dark day indeed, eventually gaining the name ‘Bloody Monday’ in Great Britain for the damage and loss of life that would be inflicted.
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Backfires hit targets in Romania and Bulgaria early in the morning. Naval bases at Constanta in Romania and Varna in Bulgaria were hit by cruise missiles from the Backfires while more bombing took place against military and civilian airstrips. Missiles were fired into Bucharest and Sofia for shock purpose. Russian aircraft repeatedly violated Ukrainian airspace as these attacks were launched, with no efforts made by the Ukrainians to shoot them down or even to deter them. Neither the Romanian nor the Bulgarian Air Forces had much in the way of interceptor aircraft, and the rest of NATO was committing much of its airpower further north.
Germany, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France all fell victim to
Raketonosets – cruise missiles carrying bombers of the Russian Air Force – throughout the day.
Flying out over the Baltic Sea and avoiding the near-continuous dogfight that was occurring there,
Backfire bombers released their cruise missiles at targets in Germany and Denmark. The same RDAF airfields were hit again, while cruise missiles fell on critical railway infrastructure being used to transport troops to Zealand as well. Those bombers would be knocked down in significant numbers by RDAF F-16s and by
Luftwaffe Typhoons too, but all of these victories were scored after the bombers had launched their cruise missiles and so they did nothing to mitigate the damage that was done. German airfields, like those in Denmark, were hit, harder this time than they had been before. Wuntsorf, Holzdorf, Toldendorf and Bad Sulze came under missile bombardment in an effort to influence the fight over the Baltic Sea.
Further attacks were launched against Germany from
Bear bombers that came down over the North Sea. The sinking of the American aircraft carrier there meant that the Russians had a much clearer shot at targets in Northern Europe by coming down over the Norwegian Sea. With the Royal Norwegian Air Force fully committed defending their homeland, there was little NATO could do to intercept these bombers before they reached their firing points and so much damage was again inflicted.
Firstly, the Royal Netherlands Air Force bases at Leeuwarden and Volkel were hit and then more missiles came in behind the bulk of German air defences and hit the NATO-run airbases at Ramstein and Spangdahlem. With major airfields along the North Sea suppressed, more bombers came in and attacked the NATO-designated ports-of-entry there. Hamburg, Bremerhaven, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Calais were all visited by KH-55s or KH-22s.
The air forces of Holland, Germany, Belgium and France all had fighters up there over the North Sea patrolling for enemy aircraft yet the sea was a tremendously big place and the Raketonosets could launch their missiles from hugely long distances. Fires burned as some of Europe’s most beautiful cities were hit ravaged by fires. Emergency services across the continent struggled to contain the damage; fire engines, police, and ambulances raced around those cities that had been bombed, responding to calls for help. Military units were being deployed to assist the civilian emergency services and for some, many cities in Western Europe resembled the places further east where the major fighting was happening on the ground. There were burning buildings and armed soldiers patrolling the streets. The war had hit home for the people of Western Europe, and they now experienced the same terror at the prospect of bombs falling on their heads as they had in 1941.
Naturally, the ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ that was the United Kingdom also came under missile attack.
The radar stations at Benbecula and Buchan were targeted first. The RAF’s northernmost airfields, those at Lossiemouth and Leuchars, faced missiles from
Raketonosets firing from over a thousand kilometres away. The targets of these missiles were the high-value assets stationed at both bases, such as the RAF Nimrod R1 & US Navy P-3 maritime patrol aircraft. Many of these planes had been moved to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast International Airports as civilian air traffic was grounded across the continent. Nevertheless, much damage was done at Leuchars and Lossiemouth with hangers left burning and taxiways littered with delayed-action munitions. Civilian airports in Scotland from which the RAF was flying its jets naturally came under attack too; Glasgow and Edinburgh saw damage done and many casualties inflicted too when they were bombed. Ulster was not left alone either; US Navy P-3s and Royal Navy Sea King ASW helicopters operated from RAF Aldergrove, so that facility was paid some attention by KH-55 missiles, albeit with less damage done than in Scotland or later on in England.
It wouldn’t be until the evening of August 9th that England came under attack again, but when it did happen, it was on a massive scale. Many strikes flown as part of Operation Eclipse had been launched from RAF bases, so in order to disrupt the NATO air campaign against Belarus and Kaliningrad, Russian forces waited till evening to hit these bases. One group of
Bears launched their missiles RAF Boulmer, where the UK’s radar network was controlled from while more aircraft hit RAF Coningsby, RAF Leeming and RAF Waddington. The damage done here was partially superficial with all three airfields still capable of launching combat operations; disruption was caused though and casualties inflicted. There had been plans to target civilian airfields in Northern England too, but those were held off as the military airfields were seen to be far more valuable targets when it came to disrupting NATO’s air combat capability over the North Sea.
The airfields in East Anglia also got missiles launched at them. Efforts to destabilise Operation Eclipse included a secondary cruise missile strike against RAF Marham and against the US Air Force bases at Mildenhall and again at Fairford and Lakenheath. RAF Brize Norton was hit as well, though this was done as part of a more general effort to take out the facility as a logistical hub. C-130s and C-17s were flying from that airstrip in great numbers, going eastwards towards Poland and Germany carrying troops and equipment. British port cities would also face the wrath of the
Raketonosets. Hull, Liverpool, Southampton and Portsmouth were all attacked late in the night as a means of slowing down the movement of the British Army’s 3rd Mechanised Division from these locations. Again, the damage inflicted wasn’t all that effective militarily, but the civilian casualties were horrendous, as could be expected when cruise missiles were launched into cities. The fires raged throughout the night and firefighters were still pulling the dead and injured from the rubble when dawn came the following day.
None of these Russian strikes against Europe were unopposed. F-16s, Mirage-2000s, Tornados and Typhoons all rose to meet Russian bombers whenever they were detected on radar. The problem was that they were launching their cruise missiles from immense distances and then fleeing, only rarely being caught by NATO fighters and shot down. There was a trend developing where the bombers would be tracked and engaged during their egress rather than before they had launched their missiles. While this at least meant that the bombers couldn’t return the next day to do such a terrible amount of damage as they had done on Black Monday, it did little to calm the nerves of Western politicians, now facing raids on their own soil on a scale not seen since the Second World War.
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