Lions Will Fight Bears - Britain in World War Three, Spring 1988[{locked}]

Sixty–One

In the last few days of official peace, Western intelligence efforts against the Soviet Union fell into the strategic sphere as many of the usual methods of observing what was going on behind the Iron Curtain became impossible. There were no diplomats on the ground and neither were there any traditional spying operations available to be conducted. Therefore, gaining an understanding on the eve of war as to what the Soviets were doing and how they were preparing to act was left up to satellites and specialist aircraft carrying stand-off surveillance equipment – those manning the latter were put at enormous risk.

High up in space, there were no national frontiers and despite the best efforts of the superpowers, neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had the ability to enforce their claims of sovereignty high up above their countries from the passing of reconnaissance satellites. Throughout the weekend of March 12th and 13th, American reconnaissance satellites carrying various payloads of surveillance equipment flew above the Soviet Union and looked down upon that country. Photographs, video recordings and radar images were collected and internal radio communications recorded. There were various attempts to ‘dazzle’ many of these flybys from the ground with electronic interference and even laser beams, yet the satellites did their work. Many would soon afterwards be left near useless because their re-routing was urgent and their manoeuvring fuel depleted, but such things were accepted.

Along the maritime and land borders of the Soviet Union in the north, the east, the south and the west, many reconnaissance aircraft flew similarly urgent missions. There were high-flying U-2s, supersonic SR-71s and antenna-sprouting RC-135s all engaged in this effort and the crews of these aircraft faced grave danger. Soviet air defence radars lit them up and fighters came up to intimidate them. No shots were exchanged, though on many occasions it was a very close-run thing.

As all of the intelligence data was collated, the conclusions were obvious: the Soviets were in the final stages of their preparations for instigating open warfare with the West.


The United States maintained the largest and most capable military forces of all those in the West. Other nations provided valuable contributions to the available armies, navies and air forces of the West, but the Americans were pre-eminent in this field due to their high-spending on defence, worldwide capabilities and political will to use military force when it came to the crunch.

The majority of the United States Armed Forces moved to the alert level DEFCON 2 on the Friday after the first wave of terrorist attacks against civilian targets across America commenced. These were regarded as a concentrated effort to deplete the countries will to resist and a sure sign that conflict was imminent. However, at the same time, strategic forces went to DEFCON 1 alert: in effect preparing for the imminent commencement of warfare that would involve nuclear weapons being used. These high levels of military alert were instigated on Presidential orders and meant that all elements of the United States Armed Forces were ready to go into action at any moment.

With those massed strategic forces of the United States being on such a high state of preparedness, this meant that the missile silos the housed ICBMs across the country were ready to launch and so too were the SLBMs on submarines that were out in the world’s oceans. All of these missiles had targets assigned to them and were ready to fly should America be attacked with nuclear weapons first. The intercontinental-range bombers of Strategic Air Command (SAC) were on airborne alert with bombs and missiles armed and ready to be deployed as well.

Britain and France both had nuclear weapons too, but neither nation had the numbers or the capability for the use of such as the Americans had.


This readiness by the Americans of their strategic nuclear forces for immediate use was due to a political realisation occurring in the White House that war was coming and nothing could be done to stop it. Reagan had hoped against hope that his refusal to be intimidated by Soviet blackmail efforts using their East German proxies would cause the Kremlin to back down, but this had not occurred. All the signs were now pointing to war being launched against the United States and its allies worldwide.

Whether that war would be nuclear, conventional or even both was an unknown and therefore he and Secretary of Defence Carlucci had issued instructions that the military be prepared to fight effectively in either case.

Secretary of State Grassley was unable to tell his President why the Soviets were about to launch a war or what their objectives in one would be. No one in the CIA, the DIA, the NSA or any other intelligence agency could answer that question with a definitive answer that would satisfy Reagan and there was no comfort in knowing that his fellow Western leaders who were also preparing for the Soviet onslaught couldn’t get an answer as to that intention from their advisers either.

Reagan initially wanted to remain in the White House to project an image of what he regarded as strength to the American people by doing so. His Vice President and the Speaker of the House of Representatives remained on aircraft twenty-four hours a day while the president pro tempore of the Senate and other government official high up in the line of succession were established in secure locations should the worse happen. Remaining in Washington, and letting the world know that he was, was also a strategy chosen by Reagan to maintain that image of strength abroad too; he wanted America’s enemies to know that the country would not be cowed.

However, the Secret Service didn’t want their #1 charge to remain in this fixed location… especially after a pair of near simultaneous security breaches relating to the President’s working location and his emergency transport arrangements.

Keeping close surveillance upon Reagan ready to assassinate him when military action was about to commence was regarded by the Secret Service as a certain Soviet objective. That was why security at the White House had been massively increased after George Schultz’s murder. Almost everyone who came to the White House or was anywhere near the President was regarded with the utmost suspicion. This mistrust was shown to be far from paranoid when an intern working for the office of the White House Counsel Arthur Culvahouse arrived at the White House on the morning of the 12th with a portable phone on her person. Most interns had been released from their duties due to the current international situation but Culvahouse had insisted that the young lady in his office from his native Tennessee remain. The phone had never been brought into the White House before and was examined by the Secret Service and found to have a very odd series of internal components within that resembled some sort of tracking device; it was sent off to the NSA for further verification.

Culvahouse’s intern was taken in for some tough questioning while the Secret Service strove to re-examine her initial vetting to work in the White House.

A much more serious security break occurred when a trio of armed intruders were spotted and then engaged by Marines at Anacostia naval airfield just outside Washington. All three trespassers were unfortunately shot dead before any interrogations of them could be tried, but the young men from ‘Helicopter Marine Squadron One’ (HMX-1) naturally decided to shoot first and ask questions later because those Marines tasked with providing emergency evacuation to the President. HMX-1 operated green- & white-painted VH-3D helicopters and were on forward detachment at Anacostia from their home base at Quantico.

These instances led the Secret Service to insist that Reagan leave the White House; they were greatly alarmed that there would be further threats to the President. There was an underground communications facility at Raven Rock in Pennsylvania’s Blue Mountains (also known as ‘Site R’) that was regarded as immensely secure, but Reagan made it clear that he wasn’t going there. Instead, like Bush and Jim Wright, Reagan ended up entering an aircraft for the foreseeable future: an E-4B, the Doomsday Plane.





Sixty–Two

Thatcher was much more mentally prepared that Reagan was for war to break out.

She had seen such a conflict occurring for some time now and pinned little hope on the Soviet leadership – whoever was in charge there – being placated. Furthermore, she had been ready to put a stop to any Western concessions to the murderous and undemocratic regime in Moscow. This wasn’t warmongering on her part, far from it, but a realisation that Chebrikov and Shcherbytsky (who no one in the West was aware yet was pushing up daises) just wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than abject surrender of everything the West held dear: democracy, free trade and the right of sovereign countries to choose their own destinies.

She decided that she would stay in Whitehall along with her War Cabinet and not take the advice of either the Civil Service or the military to evacuate to an underground bunker in the Chilterns. There were Ministers of the Crown in bunkers up and down the country ready to assume leadership should London be destroyed by a Soviet missile; her place was at the seat of Government… even if steel barricades manned by soldiers separated a good chunk of Central London from the rest of the city.

When asked why she was staying put, she stated that the British people were not hiding in bunkers so neither could she. That would have made great politics, if anyone was listening. In reality, Thatcher knew that if nuclear weapons were used against the UK, even just the one, then the country would face irreplaceable damage and the loss of life would be immense. There would be nothing left behind. Britain was too small and there was no effective civil defence for sheltering civilians from the immediate and then after effects of a nuclear attack.

Whether the Soviets would attack Britain with their nuclear weapons was the great unknown. All intelligence pointed to them being ready to launch a conventional attack worldwide against the West, but the potential for the use of nuclear weapons was something that couldn’t be gauged because the thinking of those in the Kremlin was too difficult to understand. As far as Thatcher saw it, war with the Soviet Union meant an eventual Western victory. Unless the ultimate weapons of warfare were used – after which the Soviets could expect a devastating nuclear counterattack to come down upon their heads – then she saw that the West would prevail in such a conflict. The naysayers weren’t convinced, but Thatcher was. Millions may lose their lives, countries near destroyed and governments would fall, but in the end final victory would be achieved by the West.

That would be the death of communism too – an outcome that Thatcher would much prefer to happen peacefully, but understood was only going to come about by war.


The Prime Minister was working eighteen hour days and tiring herself out. As was her style, Thatcher wanted to be kept thoroughly informed of everything that was going on and be involved wholly in the decision-making process when it came to all matters. With Parliament not sitting because its members were dispersed to their constituencies and most of the Government hiding in bunkers, everything seemed to fall upon her shoulders.

Her days and nights were spent listening to briefings on military matters, the national security state of affairs and the still terrible social situation that Britain was in. The things that she was told often left her mad or outraged, but she got on with her job and kept telling herself that she was doing the right thing. Of course history would not be kind to her… but when had it been?

When briefed upon the military situation, Thatcher listened carefully to what she was told on how the Soviet-led military build-up was continuing in their final preparations for war. She was told of how the armies of the West were outnumbered thought at the same time understood there was a marked qualitative edge that NATO and its allies had. The British military and it’s allies faced off against a more numerous enemy yet at the same time was expected to hold its own in combat. There were many offhand comments from the military about how if things had been done different in the past – if more money had been allocated to defence, if there had been the political will to expand the armed forces etc. – then the dangers wouldn’t be so great, yet that was the way things were and nothing could change that now.

The results of Operation GORDON had been relayed to Thatcher and she had been impressed by that military action had taken place, though at the same time she wasn’t best pleased when efforts to counter the entry into Britain of other Soviet commandos had failed. These Spetsnaz teams had at once started attacking Britain and while not acting as they had done in the United States in going directly after civilians, many people were still losing their lives while the security forces tried to hunt down and eliminate these invaders. Thatcher made it clear that no effort was to be spared in putting a stop to their activities while at the same time thankful that when TtW had begun, the entry into the country of further Soviet commandos had been stopped.

The general public was still living in fear of being atomised in a Soviet nuclear attack, yet it was reported to the Prime Minister that the worst excesses of social disorder – rioting, mass outbreaks of arson and widespread looting – had come to an end. There were many explanations offered for this, but Thatcher felt that it hadn’t been at all to do with a political settlement being made or trouble-makers detained by the security services. Instead, the easing of those draconian restrictions had been eased and so of social order had been restored.

She had come to realise that TtW had been implemented too fast and with little regard as to how it was going to affect people. The decisions made to enact rationing overnight, stop people travelling and shut down the media had not been the wisest thing to do. It had cost many lives too.

As to those people detained in the initial stages of TtW – before the Security Service started acting like grown-ups – Thatcher read a report authored by the Cabinet Secretary, the head of the Civil Service Robin Butler, concerning those suspected subversives held by MI-5. She had not been best pleased at all by what Butler had found out was going on with the conditions of those detainees being held and also the ‘evidence’ that the Security Service had used to arrest and then continue to detain them. When first briefed upon the need to apprehend such a large number of civilians from the wide background that they hailed from, she had put a lot of faith in Antony Duff’s judgement: that had been another bad mistake on her part.

Thatcher expected that for many years after the coming war ended, there was going to be a lot of political debate about this issue and none of those involved in it all – from her downwards – were going to come out of it well. It was on the Sunday morning that Thatcher read this report (the day before the war, yet she didn’t know that) and therefore too late to act properly. However, she did instruct Antony Duff that some of the detainees should be released and given priority access to medical care. Many of those elderly Marxist historians and CND organisers were really not a threat to their country and also in a bad way.

Such issues aside, Thatcher, like the rest of the country, waited for the opening salvoes of armed combat that would be World War Three to finally commence.

Sixty–Five

The British I Corps was positioned back from the Inter-German Border in the south-western portion of Lower Saxony. The corps was concentrated together to defend an area that contained cities and large towns, major roads, rural countryside and mountainous terrain. The area where Lt. General Peter Inge had his troops emplaced ran north from near the city of Braunschweig, down through Salzgitter and Goslar and then into the Harz Mountains. Highway-4 lay to the east and part of Autobahn-7 was in the centre of the corps’ operational area with the Leine River behind.

This part of West Germany was regarded as an area of vital importance for a Soviet-led assault to seize first when setting about conquering the rest of the country. The Hannover and the Weser River were to the west and on the northern edge of the corps zone was Autobahn-2 that ran all the way from Berlin to the Ruhr. Like all of West Germany, this was a region with a high population density in places though tens of thousands of Germans had already fled from what they regarded as somewhere soon to be a war zone.

The British Army was determined to put up a good fight in the defence of their initial sector even though the expectation was that eventually they would have to withdraw from there and back over the Leine… maybe the Weser too. The British I Corps was a mechanised force with many tanks and armoured vehicles yet a significant portion of the formations assigned were light infantry units too, particularly those TA units added as reinforcements to defend fixed positions.

Heavy casualties were anticipated even though the British Army knew that it couldn’t afford to take losses. Thus the infantry dug thousands of individual fighting holes for themselves ready to ‘ride out’ massive Soviet artillery barrages and they had chemical warfare suits at-hand as well. Challenger and Chieftain main battle tanks, Warrior and FV432 tracked armoured vehicles and M-109 and Abbot self-propelled artillery pieces with the British I Corps all had multiple fall-back fighting positions dug by both the Royal Engineers and West German reservists.

The deployment of the units assigned to the British I Corps ran according to long-established planning for this eventuality apart from the exchanging of the new 5th Infantry Division for the 3rd Armoured Division. The 5th Infantry Division sat in protected positions near the half-empty city of Hildesheim with the 1st Armoured Division to the east. The latter division was to defend the frontlines with the former ready to move forward to seal off any local enemy penetrations. The 5th Infantry Division also had the mission of assisting the 4th Armoured Division located southwards from the area around Goslar and into the Harz Mountains, though this was less easy terrain for forward advance by Soviet forces than up where the 1st Armoured Division was.

The three divisions had twenty-four batteries of field artillery (each of eight guns) assigned between them but there was also extra artillery available under the command of a separate artillery brigade assigned to the British I Corps directly. Those divisional guns were of 155mm calibre, whereas the guns in the artillery brigade were 175mm and 203mm models. This mass of firepower was available on-call down to battalion-level commanders though the British did expect their guns to be spending a lot of their time on the move running from Soviet counter-battery fire.

No Western military was more in love with helicopters than the Americans were, yet the Army Air Corps still fielded quite a few helicopters to support the British Army. There were multi-role Lynx and Gazelle helicopters with the British I Corps and these could all carry weapons as well as moving small numbers of troops around. The Lynxs were all armed with TOW missiles too: weapons which were expected to take a heavy toll on Soviet tanks and armoured vehicles.

There were combat troops assigned to the British I Corps headquarters directly and these were spread all over the corps’ area. There was infantry assigned to General Inge’s mobile headquarters and also to the corps’ supply network; more troops were tasked for close defence of the mobile Lance nuclear-armed missiles with the artillery brigade. Then there were the two battalions from the Parachute Regiment manned by TA ready to move into any large urban areas that the Soviets would enter; the Paras were going to take as many anti-armour weapons as they could with them when they did that and turn somewhere like Braunschweig, Salzgitter or Hildesheim into a death trap for Soviet tanks.

Ammunition and fuel supplies were available for the British I Corps and it was plugged into the overall NATO logistics system on the Continent. There were worries though over what would happen when NATO eventually run out of supplies immediately at-hand with resupply having to cross the North Atlantic and the later reach the frontlines. Morale was reasonably strong within the British I Corps despite all the worries about what was going on at home and the drills to protect the command against nuclear and chemical weapons. As to the quality of the troops under General Inge’s command they were all well-trained with the British Army being an all-volunteer force and many of them had real experience of being in a combat environment, that being Ulster. Public order duties in Northern Ireland weren’t the same as full-scale warfare with a mechanised army like the Soviet Union and the very few officers and soldiers who had seen some action in Falklands War six years before were even less in number within the British I Corps.

Conflict with the Soviet Army was going to be one hell of a bloody affair.


RAF forces on the Continent had been significantly reinforced from UK-based units and they were spread out over a wide area in many different 2 ATAF airbases. There were close-support Harrier attack-fighters, Jaguar strike aircraft, multi-role Phantoms and Tornado strike-bombers. Many of the pilots didn’t expect to survive past their first mission with the numbers being against them when they were up in the skies. At the same time, they were all professionals trying to maintain the traditions of the RAF.

Chinook and Puma helicopters from the RAF were in the main assigned to support the British I Corps by moving troops around, though at the same time their assistance would be sought in helping up set up emergency field bases for RAF jets – the Harriers in particular. The RAF Regiment provided airfield defence formations and all of those company-sized squadrons had light armoured vehicles with them ready to help repel Soviet assaults on their airbases. Rapier surface-to-air missile launchers were fielded by the RAF Regiment to not only to stop air attacks against RAF facilities but as part of the Continent-wide NATO air defence network too. There had been calls from some for the Rapiers to stay on the British mainland to defend the country, yet they had gone to West Germany and Holland instead.

The RAF was expected to work alongside their NATO partners in air operations across Western Europe in multi-national missions against the Soviet invasion. Of course, the RAF would be helping out the British Army on the ground and other countries’ air forces would be doing the same with their own deployed armies, yet still the RAF was meant to work with its partners in helping them and getting the same in return.


The Royal Navy had put a lot of effort into getting as many of its ships and submarines to sea as possible. Over the previous few weeks since LION had gone into effect, nothing had stood in the way of the primary task that the RN had of getting their vessels out and ready for war. Manpower issues were overcome by using reservists and even officer-cadets who were given what was very much on-the-job training. Only vessels undergoing the most serious of maintenance issues were still in port with others being sent to sea after hasty patch-up jobs or missing equipment.

There were multiple missions that the RN was tasked to preform: providing anti-submarine warfare support to NATO convoys in the North Atlantic, defending the approaches to British waters from enemy submarines and mines, preparing ‘force protection’ against expected Soviet activity on the Danish and German parts of the North Sea coast, nuclear deterrence missions with the trio of submarines carrying SLBMs and then there was the Task Force up in the Norwegian Sea.

All three RN light aircraft carriers – HMS Invincible, HMS Illustrious and HMS Ark Royal – were now at sea with almost the entire fleet of Sea Harriers that the Fleet Air Arm had on their decks. Instructors and trainee pilots helped to man these aircraft that had done so well in the Falklands though now faced going up against Soviet naval missile-bombers rather than Argentinean short-range lightweight fighters. Destroyers and frigates surrounded the capital ships of the Task Group with a few submarines nearby for close support and replenishment ships were present too.

There were a few NATO warships with the Task Force just as there were some RN warships assigned to the American carrier group – Striking Fleet Atlantic – and a multi-national force operating close to the Norwegian coast off the Narvik area: Standing Naval Force Atlantic. Close co-operation between the RN and its naval allies was very good due to decades of working together for a situation just like this.

As to the Task Force, this extraordinary gathering of RN combat power had been tasked by Atlantic Command as operating as the forward line of NATO defence up in the Norwegian Sea. By nightfall on March 13th the Task Force was in position about two hundred miles west of Tromso with the Sea Harriers flying airborne patrol missions while linked to the radar coverage of NATO E-3s flying from Orland Airbase on the Norwegian mainland. The deep waters of the Lofoten Basin was below the ships and everyone was on full alert ready for the Soviet attack.

The previous day had seen the withdrawal back into the Barents Sea of the Soviet Northern Fleet that the Task Force had initially come up into these cold and lonely waters to confront. The Soviet ships had sailed away back around the North Cape and been shadowed all the way by NATO reconnaissance aircraft that relayed their date to the Task Group.

RN submarines not directly assigned to the Task Force had followed those retreating Soviet warships though with many of the submarine captains eyeing up the bigger vessels – the missile-carrying aircraft carriers and the battlecruiser Kirov – ready for attack. They wanted to do as the commander of HMS Conqueror had done in 1982 and sink a capital ship.

Like the British Army and the RAF, the RN was as ready for war as it was going to be.

Sixty–Eight

Two days before RED BEAR commenced, submarines at sea with all four Soviet Navy Fleets were sent coded instructions that when they received a certain series of seemingly meaningless numbers and letters in the next shore-to-submarine communication, they were to wait a period of six hours before they were to undertake wartime operations. Those initial messages to the submarines at seas close to and far from Soviet shores were specific to the area that they were operating in, though the second message sent was a general order.

Northern Fleet submarines operating under the Arctic and in the Barents and Norwegian Seas were instructed to attack all NATO and Western military vessels that crossed their path. Moreover, civilian shipping of those countries as well as the majority of any other maritime vessels encounter were to be attacked too. The Soviet Navy was regarding those waters as war zones and unless civilian vessels that their submarines came across were from a select few countries then those were to be attacked like they belonged to NATO countries.

Out in the North Atlantic, the Baltic and the Mediterranean, the waters around the Middle East, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean there were tighter restrictions on Soviet submarine operations. Warships, submarines and civilian shipping of countries that the Soviet Union were launching war against were to be struck but not unarmed maritime vessels of neutral nations.

Furthermore, when the orders went out to the submarines at sea, a definition was supplied to submarine captain as to what was a ‘neutral nation’. Countries such as Brazil, India and China were regarded as such but Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands were most certainly not. Western ships were often registered in these countries and therefore only flew flags of convenience. If ships from those nations were attacked by Soviet submarines then none of those countries would make any noticeable response as far as the planners of RED BEAR were concerned.

The operational orders given to Northern Fleet submarines allowing them to regard the waters that they were travelling through as a free-fire zone were given because the Soviet Navy knew that any supposedly neutral vessel in those areas of the world’s oceans was more than likely to be hostile to their interests. If the home nation of an attacked vessel made a diplomatic fuss then the Soviets could always deny that their submarines attacked such a ship and blame NATO forces should there be the need to actually make comment on an event like that.

All Soviet submarines used Moscow time when they were at sea no matter where they were operating or home-ported. This was easier than relying on time zones and a measure to insure against time-related mistakes. At 11pm on the Sunday night that second coded message went out to submarines of the Soviet Navy worldwide to wait the necessary six hours and then undertake combat operations.


The numbers of major warships that the Northern Fleet operated and the capabilities of many of those vessels were not that impressive when compared to the naval might that NATO could mass, but their submarines were something else. There were so many of them home-ported in bases along the many fjords that cut into the Kola Peninsula from the Barents Sea.

By the morning of March 14th, almost all of the Northern Fleet’s submarines were at sea after a rush deployment that had occurred over the past few days as the Soviet Navy prepared to assist in the defence of their country by pre-emptive wartime missions. The strategic missile submarines carrying a good proportion of the nation’s nuclear arsenal were some of the first vessels that left their bases and headed for the ice that covered most of the Arctic Ocean or the ‘secure’ White Sea. They would be generally safe from attack while under the icepack or in those closed waters, and in a position to force a surfacing and fire their weapons if needed.

The large number of coastal submarines that served in the Northern Fleet had been put to sea as well and these didn’t stray that far away from the shores of the Kola Peninsula. Their mission was to remain as protecting force against enemy submarines that would wish to enter the Barents Sea and launch missile attacks against the Soviet Union from close-in.

Other diesel/electric powered submarines – ocean-going patrol models – and nuclear-powered submarines left their bases too but these went further afield than either the icepack to the north or staying offshore. Forty-seven of these submarines had departed from their bases and travelled westwards heading for the open waters beyond. They had to round the North Cape first and many were detected by NATO sensors from their engine noises or in the case of the diesel/electric submarines when they had to surface to snorkel for battery recharging. NATO aircraft had littered the seas with air-dropped sonobuoys while there were also hydrophones emplaced on the sea floor. The Soviet Navy knew that satellite reconnaissance would show that these submarines were no longer in port and so didn’t worry about NATO detection when they rounded the northern tip of Norway: there was deeper, wider waters ahead and their soon-to-be mortal enemies were not going to be able to track them there in any number.

The Northern Fleet was in no way intending to operate its submarines in coordinated actions like German ‘wolf-pack’ tactics of WW2 or try to individually control their actions by sending a multitude of constant shore-to-submarine communications. Western naval forces had been exercising for many years to fight against such practises. The submarines sent forward had their own sonars and surface-search radars and they were tasked to patrol areas where they would conduct operations when the order was given. On occasion, specific submarines would be given direct orders and maybe ordered to operate together, but that would be the exception rather than the norm.

In addition to this surge deployment of submarines heading westwards to race into position before RED BEAR got underway, there were already Northern Fleet submarines at sea in the Norwegian Sea and the North Atlantic. Eight of them were conducting patrol missions before the bigger deployment and a trio of those had come from the Mediterranean before changing command designation from the Black Sea Fleet to the Northern Fleet. Several of these submarines already out in open waters had faced harassment operations from NATO naval forces who had used every detection asset available to them to do so. Yet, the Northern Fleet knew that there was no way that NATO could handle fifty plus submarines all at once conducting combat missions.


Literally within minutes of the countdown ending, a trio of Northern Fleet submarines went into action against NATO forces.

Out in the middle of the North Atlantic and nearly a hundred miles south of the Azores Islands, a 949-class (better known by the NATO designation Oscar) missile submarine launched a massive salvo of the anti-ship cruise missiles it was carrying at a nearby convoy of ships heading from Florida towards France. The Minskiy Komsomolets had been at sea since late February and had originally been tracking the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal before losing sight of that vessel and its escorts after they all conducted a speed run through bad weather. Later, the Minskiy Komsomolets had been tasked to stay in the North Atlantic watching for convoys of ships heading towards Europe laden with military equipment like the one which the submarine attacked. There were thirteen civilian merchantmen – flying flags of convenience as well as a scattered few from NATO nations – in this convoy that the submarine had been trailing for the past twenty hours along with three warships: a destroyer from the US Navy, another from the French Navy and a Spanish frigate.

All these vessels were on their way to La Rochelle in western France and emergency signals were being received at the moment of attack from Atlantic Command warning that hostilities had commenced.

The dozen P-700 Granit (NATO: SS-N-19 Shipwreck) missiles that the Minskiy Komsomolets fired were very potent weapons of warfare with large warheads and fantastic speed. The targets which they flew against at near wave height were easy prey for the Shipwrecks and only at the last minute did guns on the warships start firing and a few SAMs sent skywards.

One Shipwreck had a major malfunction and crashed itself into the cold North Atlantic while another one was hit by a missile from the French destroyer in what was honestly a lucky shot. The other ten missiles found targets…

Nine of the civilian merchantmen and the Spanish frigate all took a lone missile hit. While autonomous from their firing platform once in flight, the Shipwrecks had programming that allowed them to act together and communicate with one another. They thus didn’t go after the same target when one missile would do the job.

Each of those struck ships was finished. Some would burn themselves out while others were torn apart by explosions and would quickly sink. Crews escaped from a few ships though died in great numbers in others. Meanwhile, the Minskiy Komsomolets escaped unscathed and ready to undertake another mission of the submarine captain’s choosing. He still had half of his Shipwreck battery left and a wide ocean to hunt for targets in.


HMS Battleaxe had been at sea for more than four weeks now up in the Norwegian Sea first with the Eisenhower Carrier Battle Group and later with what became Striking Fleet Atlantic when the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower was joined by two other carriers (the Forrestal and the Theodore Roosevelt) in addition to many other warships. The RN frigate stayed with the American naval force when other NATO ships departed to join either the British-led Task Force further northwards or Standing Naval Force Atlantic. This exchange-type mission for the Battleaxe hadn’t been a problem for either the US Navy or the RN with it continuing as the British ship became fully integrated with the Americans. The replenishment ship RFA Fort Austin had twice paid a visit to the Battleaxe to transfer equipment and stores, but there was a lot of supply effort and all the refuelling of the frigate from a similar US Navy vessel to keep the British warship functioning.

The US Navy was well-trained in anti-submarine warfare (ASW) but they could appreciate the valuable skills in undertaking the same mission that the Battleaxe had in addition to their own. The Battleaxe was linked into Striking Fleet Atlantic’s anti-submarine mission and operated as part of the combined effort to guard against subsurface threats.

As soon as word arrived that warfare had broken out, the Battleaxe went to general quarters alert like the American ships with she was with. RN crewmen rushed to their battle stations and all the weapons and sensors of the frigate were ready for action.

There wasn’t much of a wait for the Battleaxe to see action.

Independently and in an uncoordinated manner, two Northern Fleet submarines attacked Striking Fleet Atlantic within the first hour of the war. A 641-class (Tango) submarine coming westwards down into the Norwegian Sea attacked the outer northern-facing ASW screen of the US Navy flotilla and launched a trio of torpedoes against the frigate USS Underwood. The intention of the Soviet captain was clearly to sink or disable the Underwood before striking deeper into the US Navy flotilla through such a gap created.

Unfortunately, the deployment of the Tango from its Kola Peninsula base had been rushed and during that haste substandard torpedoes had been loaded aboard. Seven of the twenty SET-65 torpedoes were not in a fit shape to be fired with accuracy and a pair of those bad ones were within the three launched. Therefore only one torpedo lanced straight and true towards the Underwood… and smashed into the towed noisemaker trailing behind the frigate. The warship itself fired a pair of its own torpedoes straight back at the submarine who had attacked it while its airborne ASW helicopter dropped some more into the water as well.

The Tango was able to escape from this sudden counterattack and live to fight again.

This action were the Underwood was left undamaged occurred some distance away from the Battleaxe though it served to make everyone aware that this was the real thing. For so long the crew aboard had been at sea up in these waters that the danger posed to them if the Soviets ever did attack had lost some of the fear that should have been there. The frigate’s captain let his crew know over the tannoy that Striking Fleet Atlantic had faced an unprovoked Soviet attack – like the rest of NATO – and reminded all of his sailors about their patriotic duty and also their oaths of service.

Soon enough, the crew of the Battleaxe saw combat up close and personal for themselves when the 705-class (Alfa) nuclear-powered attack submarine K-493 fired a salvo of four torpedoes right at the RN frigate. Thankfully the range was enough for the Battleaxe to get a little warning of what was coming their way as the noises of the torpedo tubes on the submarine being flooded and then those torpedoes being fired by compressed air was heard. The threat axis was quickly defined and the Battleaxe was able to swing her stern round to face that while at the same time decoys and torpedoes of her own were fired.

This wasn’t to be how it was in the movies though; there was no chance that the Battleaxe was going to escape from such an attack by either luck or guile. The torpedoes were closing-in hard and nothing would stop them. First one then two more torpedoes smashed into the rear of the Battleaxe; the fourth struck one of the noise-making decoys.

By positioning his ship in this manner to take the expected impacts, the frigate’s captain had hoped to at best provide the smallest possible target for those torpedoes and at worst limit the damage. If his ship was going to get struck by underwater projectiles then the stern was the best place to have those impacts occur. The engine room presented tough armament in an era where ship armament was a thing of the past and the compartment there could be rapid evacuated.

Only sixteen of the frigate’s two hundred plus crew lost their lives when the torpedoes hit – an immensely low number of casualties considering the devastating attack upon the Battleaxe.

The frigate was left dead in the water after the attack. The danger of sinking was something to keep in mind though wasn’t really expected unless a follow-up attack or bad weather was encounter because the rear areas of the ship had been sealed off and seawater aboard pumped out. There was a Norwegian tugboat that could offer a tow available with Striking Fleet Atlantic for such an eventuality as this and the initial hope was that maybe the Battleaxe could be towed to shore.

The gap in ASW defences created by the knocking out of the Battleaxe was soon covered by American warships moving about. These joined the Lynx helicopters from the stricken frigate in trying to hunt down the attacking K-493 but to no avail.

In a few hours, Striking Fleet Atlantic would have more serious things to worry about than just a lone escort frigate disabled by a submarine attack.


Throughout the rest of the morning, Northern Fleet’s submarines would be busy engaging in combat operations. Of civilian ships encountered in the Norwegian Sea these were very rare and warships were found only in battle groups, which fought back.

It was a different story out in the North Atlantic…





Sixty–Nine

The Soviet artillery barrage begun at 0545 local time.

From up near Lubeck on the shores of the Baltic Sea all the way down to where the borders of West Germany, Czechoslovakia and Austria met several thousand howitzers, heavy mortars and tactical rocket launchers opened fired in a crescendo of noise and projectiles. Artillery divisions, independent brigades and regiments as well as the regiments from divisions all joined in. There were so many guns involved that they could almost have been parked wheel to wheel from north to south.

Waves of waves of projectiles poured into West Germany and exploded when they hit the ground; the barrage wasn’t going to come to a stop anytime soon. The Soviet intention was to blast the NATO armies into submission before attacking with their ground forces afterwards.

The only flaw with this was that a large number of the areas that they targeted weren’t where NATO troops were located.


A series of fierce arguments had raged back in Moscow in the days before RED BEAR was launched among the officers of Marshal Ogarkov’s planning staff and when studied post-war by Western intelligence operatives looking into the history of World War Three, they called this the Artillery Debate.

The political line that the Soviet military was told was that the West was about to launch an invasion of the Soviet Union, mainly by the way of the country’s fraternal socialist allies in Eastern Europe. To stop this from occurring, the Soviets, their Warsaw Pact partners and a few other countries worldwide were being forced to strike first to stop that attack. The naval flotilla off the coast of Norway which was positioned to undertake air and missile attacks on the Kola Peninsula was one of those threatening Western forces and so too were the massed NATO armies in West Germany.

The ground attacks by the Fronts operating from East Germany and Czechoslovakia were to be preceded by air and artillery strikes and these were just as important as the invasion of West Germany to smash NATO’s armies. In the case of the artillery ‘softening-up’ of Western forces, the Soviets knew that there would be many NATO troops in defensive positions all across that country ready to repel just the sort of pre-emptive strike that they were planning and so those were targeted with artillery. In addition, and more importantly, the offensive forces that NATO was preparing to be the first wave of their invasion force was to be smashed to pieces straight away too with shells, mortars and rockets.

The Artillery Debate in Marshal Ogarkov’s planning headquarters had seen major disagreements among Majors, Colonels and junior Generals over how much effort to concentrate in the artillery barrage to these different groupings of NATO ground forces; there were even a few brave, younger men who argued that there were no massed NATO invasion forces just those sitting in defensive positions up and down West Germany. Furthermore, there were heated differences of opinions over where exactly NATO would position those offensive forces. Defensive positions could be accurately judged, the RED BEAR planners believed, from tactical maps and combat experience of their own, but pinpointing where offensive forces would gather before attacking eastwards was up for debate.

In the end, the Soviet artillery barrage blasted huge areas of West Germany in a continuous, unbroken barrage that would go on for the next hour again and again hitting the places where they believed NATO forces would be positioned.

*​

Tactical aviation assets of the Soviet Air Force belonged to Frontal Aviation (FA). Comparable to the USAF’s Tactical Air Command and the RAF’s Strike Command, FA was an organisation responsible for the introduction of new aircraft into service along with training and personnel deployment; individual FA combat regiments were commanded directly through the Air Armies that they were assigned to. FA formations had been recently moved around across the western regions of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe into new bases and under new headquarters. There had been little training done in the past few weeks as there were continued bouts of major maintenance work being undertaken on aircraft to keep them in peak condition. When they were airborne, FA pilots found themselves instead of practising air combat or bombing missions instead working tirelessly to perfect command-and-control procedures.

All throughout the afternoon and evening of the last day of peace, the crews of FA aircraft deployed to bases across East Germany, Poland and Czechoslovak were asleep. This was done under strict orders that came down from the top that told them that they were to go to sleep and thus be awake and alert for the coming night. These were all junior officers who were affected by this rather odd order, not enlisted men, but they still did as they were told and tried to get some sleep.

Meanwhile, as pilots, co-pilots, navigator and bombardiers all lay in their bunks, the air forces of those three Northern Tier countries patrolled the skies of Eastern Europe in their fighter aircraft. Their take-off and landings caused an immense amount of noise at the airbases where their Soviet comrades were trying to sleep and where also Soviet ground crews were working on more than eighteen hundred tactical aircraft that the FA had in-place.

These FA aircraft that were being last-minute maintenance were all built at factories across the Soviet Union and designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich, Sukhoi and Yakolev design bureaus. The first of these provided MiG-21 fighter-interceptors, MiG-23 fighters and fighter-bombers, MiG-25 interceptors and reconnaissance aircraft, MiG-27 fighter-bombers and MiG-29 multi-role fighters. From Sukhoi there were Su-17 fighter-bombers, Su-24 strike-bombers and reconnaissance aircraft and Su-25 attack-fighters while Yakolev-designed Yak-28 electronic warfare aircraft were present. These models all came in multiple variants that gave similar aircraft different capabilities and missions. They were all jet-engined tactical aircraft and the best available to FA for front-line combat. The weapons that they carried along with their combat systems were all very potent if not as ‘fancy’ as what comparable NATO aircraft had.

The few MiG-29s that FA formations flew had gone forward into combat when RED BEAR had commenced on fighter sweeps to engage alert NATO aircraft while backed up by MiG-21s and MiG-23s from the air forces of the Northern Tier countries. NATO resistance to these highly-regarded FA fighters had been greater than expected and there had been terrible losses to the MiG-29 force that would later leave the Soviet Air Force reeling… and the Soviet Army with little smiles at seeing how their stupid and smug comrades from the Air Force had been humiliated.

Inter-service rivalry within the Soviet Armed Forces was nothing to be underestimated.


Despite these shocking losses of what were meant to be the very best fighters available, almost all of the rest of the FA regiments tasked with initial RED BEAR operations commenced an immense air attack westwards at the same time as all those guns opened fire. All across West Germany there saw the appearance of Soviet aircraft attacking ground targets, combating defending NATO fighters and also aiming for more distant targets in Denmark, the Low Countries and France too. NATO air defences launched SAMs which raced up from the ground to engage these aircraft despite the launching of anti-radar missiles against the guidance radars of these missile batteries.

The objectives of this massed Soviet air offensive were to deliver a stunning blow to NATO forces in the air and on the ground that they wouldn’t be able to recover from. The Soviets wished to own the skies over Central Europe to stop their own offensives on land from being attacked by air as well as to conduct further air attacks after the ‘Big One’ that this was. Airbases over on the western side of West Germany were targeted and so too were bridges and other transportation points. Supply points for the NATO armies as well as identified headquarters units of combat commands were targeted as well by either overhead bombing or the launch of tactical missiles.

Like the Artillery Debate situation with the Soviet Army, the Soviet Air Force too was ordered to strike where planners had decided that NATO’s invasion force would be positioned ready to attack eastwards. There were defensive positions targeted, but great importance was directed towards bombing troops and tanks on the ground in these suspected offensive positions.

A hell of a lot of ordnance was expended against non-existent targets.

Losses to FA aircraft engaged in these missions were horrendous like they had been with the very first air attacks. NATO was prepared for this to occur and had been readying itself to meet such a massed air strike coming westwards for the past forty years. Their fighters attacked Soviet aircraft trying to knock out the defensive SAM belt that ran north-south down the middle of West Germany and aircraft that got past that too. Orbiting E-3 aircraft wearing NATO and USAF colours did impressive work in guiding fighters towards strike packages and trying to make sure than none of these managed to wrought serious damage.

NATO took losses of their own – grievous losses too – but the scorecards were soon in their favour in the number of aircraft knocked down. Moreover, when NATO fighters were destroyed in the air their pilots who managed to eject were landing inside West Germany, not direct into enemy hands like Soviet ones were. Nevertheless, NATO aerial victories couldn’t take away the fact that many of their own aircraft were shot down while immense damage was being done to military and civilian targets all across West Germany and later into the surrounding NATO countries too. There were so many Soviet aircraft conducting combat missions that they couldn’t all be stopped.

The only consolation for NATO was that soon enough they would get the chance to strike back with their own offensive air operations.

*​

The artillery barrage and the air attacks in the lead-up to dawn covered the approach towards NATO’s frontlines on the ground in West Germany by leading elements of the Soviet, East German, Polish and Czechoslovak armies. Reconnaissance units from the field armies lining up to move forward in strength when it got light took the opportunity to conduct armed surveillance right into NATO territory under the cover offered by all the shells, rockets and bombs arching high above them.

There were a few helicopters used in this effort though in the main it was conducted by men on foot and in specially-designed vehicles. The subordinate units of West-TVD wanted to know exactly where its opposition was positioned and also get a first look at how well the artillery attacks were going.


The reconnaissance units that entered the defensive sector of the British I Corps came from the Soviet Third Shock and Polish Second Army’s, which were both attached to the First Western Front. Minefields on the eastern side of the Inter-German border had been avoided and entry made through the defensive works erected just back from the actual demarcation line that divided Germany in two. Men and vehicles then slipped into West Germany at multiple points and did so with great caution.

Where the British 1st Armoured Division was saw the approach to their forward positions of detachments from the reconnaissance battalion of the Soviet 120th Guards Motorised Rifle Division (120GMRD): a unit based in Belorussia in peacetime but one that had been among the first combat divisions to move forward when the Soviet Army had mobilised. Platoon-sized groups of tracked BRM-1 and wheeled BTR-70 reconnaissance vehicles came over the border and so too did dismounted scouts. These reconnaissance troops were well-trained but they had of course never gone up against real-life Western anti-infiltration measures before.

The 1st Armoured Division’s 12th Armoured Brigade was positioned ahead of the two other brigades of the division with its four combat-manoeuvre battalions formed into combined arms battle groups. The men of the 1 CHESHIRE battle group and the 1 R IRISH battle group – each infantry heavy with attached tanks from the 4 RTR – found themselves watching vehicles and infantry probing the outer areas of their defensive positions between three and five miles back from the border line. These formations had seen artillery blasting their positions and the German countryside around them and while they had suffered some losses, the men had dug their foxholes well and the Royal Engineers had constructed sturdy earthworks for the tanks.

Landmines took out even the most careful of Soviet scouts while felled trees blocked access routes and caused vehicles to detour towards ditches where they got stuck. There had been heavy rain overnight and everywhere was wet, further slowing the Soviet approach. The battle group commanders at first had their men hold their fire to let the Soviets come closer though very quickly orders come down from the brigade headquarters – which had taken a battering from Soviet artillery – to take out as many enemy scouts as possible.

MILAN missiles flew, sniper rifles cracked and tank cannons spewed 120mm armour-piercing shells. Firing from hidden positions and using night vision equipment, the British units did fantastic, especially with their opening shots. The reconnaissance detachments from the 120GMRD fell back with haste only to then find themselves harassed by the guns from the 1 RHA (Royal Horse Artillery) battle group giving the Soviet Army a taste of its own medicine.

Some of the Soviets managed to get off return fire with a few scouts finding targets despite the British troops being well hidden. Infantrymen from Cheshire and Ulster died alongside Soviet conscripts from the far flung regions of Moscow’s empire in this clash before the heavyweights joined in.

This series of bloody engagements over a wide area was still a partial success for the 120GMRD though because at least they had found the enemy. Artillery from the division’s own regiment shifted fire and was joined by battalions from the Soviet Third Shock Army’s organic independent artillery brigade. Moreover, when the division attacked, they knew that the way ahead was where NATO troops were.

To the south, the 19th Infantry Brigade from the 4th Armoured Division led a similar resistance to Polish efforts at reconnaissance efforts across the Harz Mountains region too. Lighter BRDM-2 scout cars and Mil-2 helicopters as well as dismounted infantry trying to get a fix on their British opponents did so only by shedding much Polish blood. The helicopters in particular faced man-portable SAM’s coming up off the ground in great numbers stopping them from surveillance using mounted equipment and dropping of men onto high ground.

British resistance was as strong and determined in the south of their defensive sector as it was in the north.

Up and down the NATO frontlines, there were countless clashes in the darkness as the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies eased forward. In a few cases their missions were achieved where gaps were found in NATO defences, but those occasions were few and far between. Instead, there were Western troops manning defensive positions everywhere all willing to open fire at once on scouting efforts. As this information went backward and then up the chain of command, questions were asked as to if there were so many NATO troops forward in defensive positions, what troops were in those offensive positions further westwards ready to invade eastwards?


Dawn was fast approaching and all these little engagements would soon be forgotten when the opposing massed ground forces met in battle.

Seventy–One

The First Western Front was commanded by the newly-promoted General-Colonel (a three-star rank) Ivan Ivanovich Korbutov. Only two days before he was to lead his new command into battle on the North German Plain he had been a two-star General-Lieutenant back in Legnica with the headquarters of the Northern Group of Forces, a shell of a headquarters that had lost all of its troops.

There were twenty combat-manoeuvre divisions in four field armies that made up General Korbutov’s assigned ground forces with two air armies and all their aircraft. He had only led two divisions when back in Poland and been poised to stay there commanding nothing when RED BEAR commenced because he and Marshal Ogarkov had never been on good terms. However, the Belorussian Military District commander General-Colonel Shuraev had explicitly argued with Marshal Ogarkov from Magdeburg (where the Front’s headquarters was located) back to Moscow over the plans for the First Western Front and been quickly removed from command: thus giving General Korbutov his chance.

A career soldier, General Korbutov was a man known to follow orders to the letter. He had no objections like his predecessor had with the 51st Artillery Division, the individual artillery and rocket artillery brigades assigned to armies and divisional artillery regiments smashing the suspected positions of NATO invasion forces. His aircraft were sent against such supposed locations too without expressed doubts. The First Western Front would play a subordinate role to the Second Western Front as well with his full cooperation.

The airmobile operation conducted by General Korbutov’s assigned 103GAD was quickly realised by him and his staff to have been a failure. As the clock ticked away to 0630 local time when the rest of the First Western Front was meant to go into action, the large area of Luneburg Heath where those paratroopers should have seized wasn’t in Soviet hands. Even worse, the helicopters that had taken those doomed men over the border hadn’t returned in anywhere near the numbers which they had left in. There were two Landing-Assault Brigades – true airmobile troops – under his command waiting for those helicopters so they could go into action with the main ground assault and other missions were meant to have been undertaken by all the Mil-6 Hooks, Mil-8 Hips and Mil-24 Hinds that didn’t return as well. Reports from both the heavily-reinforced Soviet Fourth & Twenty-Sixth Air Army’s stated that they had taken heavy losses in aircraft during combat missions; General Korbutov had taken the necessary staff courses in aviation though he was a Soviet Army man and the affairs of the Soviet Air Force were never going to be that important to him.

The losses inflicted against the paratroopers, helicopters and fighters under General Korbutov’s command made no difference to that fact that the First Western Front was to move forward and into battle at dawn. His forward reconnaissance units, despite their losses, had identified where much of the NATO forces opposing his were (so they told him) and that was all that mattered as far as he was concerned.

As planned and directed, the First Western Front attacked when light appeared behind them on the eastern horizon.


On the right flank, the Soviet Second Guards Tank Army moved out of the Altmark region and across the Inter-German Border towards Luneburg Heath. There were both Dutch and West German screening units immediately over the border line and fierce engagements begun within minutes of the armies crossings taking place despite the ongoing artillery barrage that hadn’t let up. The Soviet Second Guards Tank Army had been reorganised and reinforced from its peacetime establishment with two tank and two motor rifle divisions of Soviet troops now assigned along with the majority of the East German 1MRD: one of the regiments of that division had remained behind in West Berlin.

The two Soviet motor rifle divisions of the Army lead the attack each using a pair of its rifle regiments to conduct the border crossing and the initial drives into West Germany with the other rifle regiment and the tank regiment of each behind. Towards the town of Uelzen the Soviet 207MRD went and it ran into Dutch Leopard-2 tanks and a hell of a lot of dismounted infantry with man-portable missile-launchers. The artillery barrage was meant to have at least taken care of the missile-men and the Soviet Army didn’t rate the fighting quality of their Dutch counterparts highly, but neither factor was true in this instance. The Dutch fought for their lives against leading elements because they knew that if they didn’t sting the attacking Soviets hard then they would be enveloped by wide flanking manoeuvres: as long as they could keep the Soviets off-balance by ambushing their forward probes that wouldn’t happen. Many Leopards exploded in fireballs when hit by cannon shells from T-80 tanks, reconnaissance-outfitted M-113 tracked armoured vehicles blew up when missiles mounted upon BMP-2s hit them and infantry were machine-gunned but the Dutch fought on inflicting their own heavy casualties as they slowly fell back through one prepared position to another in a complicated and dangerous series of retrograde manoeuvres.

The T-64 tanks of the Soviet 94GTD escorted more BMP-2s and BTR-60s full of infantry when that division penetrated the forward defences of the West German 11th Panzergrenadier Division. The main defensive positions were behind the north-south running Elbe-Lateral Canal though the Bundeswehr units out front were determined to fight for every inch of German soil against their historic Russian enemies. There were Leopard-1 tanks and Luchs wheeled fighting vehicles out front and a lot of Jager infantry carrying MILAN missiles. However, despite their patriotism, like the Dutch, the West Germans had no choice but to full back very quickly into rear defensive positions – the canal was a natural position – when faced with the onrushing Soviet armour pouring towards them.

Soviet aircraft were over the battlefield with Sukhoi-17 & -25 tactical fighter-bombers right in the thick of the action while MiG-23s were meant to provide top-cover from NATO fighters. Helicopter support for the initial Soviet Second Guards Tank Army assault was limited by earlier losses, but there were still many Mil-24s flying about firing guns and rockets. Both the Dutch and the West Germans fielded Gepard anti-air vehicles in forward roles though and the twin 35mm guns on these tracked vehicles found themselves busy in trying to cut down this air support.

There was one hell of a maelstrom of explosions, gun fire and death straight away just inside this area of West Germany.


The Soviet Third Shock Army was in the centre and the 120GMRD was joined in the first assault over the border by the East German Army’s 8MRD; the other three Soviet divisions waited ready as a follow-up force. The East Germans went straight into action against their West German counterparts (a shock for NATO intelligence who had always predicted that such a thing would never happen) east of Wolfsburg and engaged the 1st Panzer Division. The East German task was to reach the main highway that was Autobahn-2 from behind the expected defensive positions near the famous Helmstedt crossing. Intelligence had pointed to NATO forces massing to invade their socialist country staging in that area ready to drive on Berlin and the area where they were aiming to seize had already been battered by artillery as well as rockets carrying sub-munitions designed to attack the massed NATO armour there.

The East Germans got nowhere fast. This was a region near where the 1st Panzer Division was based and somewhere its officers and men knew well. The countryside here had been scouted for all possible invasion avenues and positions where mobile artillery supporting an attack would set up positions. In the past week the area had been littered with mines and a lot of natural cover destroyed in a mass destruction of the local environment. Germans spilled the blood of their fellow Germans in great numbers.

In comparison, the British 1st Armoured Division didn’t do so well in their opening engagements with the Soviet 120GMRD. Scouts from that Soviet formation had been cut down in great numbers in the pre-dawn darkness, but once there was light in the sky the Soviets abandoned all caution and attacked in strength everywhere they could. Their attacks were first towards the Schöningen area before looping around either side of the Elm Hills. This area was southwest of Helmstedt and on the way towards Wolfenbüttel; the highways south of Braunschweig were the initial divisional goals. The British had been bloodied earlier and the shock of the losses that they had taken had been a strain on many of the soldiers. Soviet T-72s and BMP-2s smashed into the forward positions of the 12th Brigade and didn’t shrink back after a few of their number were hit by MILAN missiles. Regimental artillery with the motor rifle regiments, not divisional artillery on other missions, fired in direct support and British counter-battery fire wasn’t effective enough.

The 22nd Brigade moved forward very soon after the Soviet attack to help support the withdrawal of 12th Brigade units though almost at once the former formation was engaged by Soviet units looking for the British flanks. There were motorcycle recon units seemingly all over the area who either ran into minefields or were blasted with tank fire when met, but who also used their radios.

The British did manage to pull back but they left so many of their men behind either dead or wounded and about to fall into Soviet captivity as the 12th Brigade was effectively destroyed as a cohesive fighting force during the first instances of combat.


The Polish Second Army was a heavy armour formation sent over the northern stretches of the Harz Mountains towards other British units and also the Belgian I Corps. This advance by the Poles was meant to threaten both the right flank of the British Second Army and the left of the US Seventh Army… or so General Korbutov was instructed to inform the Polish Army officers under his command. Instead, the Soviet Second Guards Tank & Third Shock Army's were meant to be his main striking force with the Soviet Twentieth Guards Army following either one of those formations forward depending on success achieved.

The terrain over which the Poles attacked was not suitable for massed armoured attack until those mountain slopes were crossed and the lower ground beyond reached. Up on the broken high ground the British 4th Armoured Division and the Belgians fought extremely well in blunting off all initial penetrations of their defensive zone. They remained under artillery barrage and air attack, but fought from their positions with steadiness.

There was talk almost at once in this area of the NATO defensive belt spread across West Germany that they would be able to hold indefinitely no matter what happened elsewhere.

*​

Commanded by the four-star General Boris Vasilyevich Snetkov, the Second Western Front was designated as the primary striking force of the Front’s assembled with their field armies. It was smaller than General Korbutov’s command in combat divisions (there were seventeen) but with higher-rated troops and a greater concentration of aircraft assigned.


The Soviet Twenty-Eighth Army (a Belorussian Military District formation with divisions from there now assigned alongside East German based units) went forward into the defensive positions of the West German II Corps. The leading motor rifle divisions – the 20GMRD and 50GMRD – crossed the Werra River and went towards the lower reaches of the Fulda River behind. The urban and suburban areas of nearby Kassel were avoided as the Soviets rightly suspected that the city would be a maze of anti-tank defences and instead aimed to get deep into northern Hessen.

Their opponents fought back as hard as expected but the Soviet plan here was to keep going despite initial losses and seek an opening wherever one could be found. It was thought that as they were fighting for their homeland, the Bundeswehr would be liable to making strategic mistakes in not withdrawing from indefensible positions.

This wasn’t the case here.


Like they had long expected to be, the US V Corps was hit by an attack by the Soviet Eighth Guards Army advancing towards the Fulda Gap. From out of the Thüringen Wald, Soviet tanks and infantry vehicles raced for that river, the high ground beyond and then the approaches for the natural invasion routes leading in a south-western direction towards Frankfurt and also west to Cologne too.

Soviet and American officers had built their careers on planning for military operations in this region with both the Soviet Eighth Guards Army and the US V Corps. The Americans knew the ground better than their Soviet counterparts though the GRU had in recent years had some gold-plated intelligence delivered to it from a treasonous American who had sold them plans for US V Corps defensive efforts in the Fulda Gap with particular regard to dispositions.

One of the Soviet divisions previously based in Hungary had been attached to the Soviet Eighth Guards Army and the 93GMRD was one of the leading motor rifle divisions; the other being the 57GMRD. They went charging in their tanks and tracked vehicles to meet the paratroopers of the 106GAD ahead of them being near murdered on the ground there.

The attack was blunted everywhere it was first tried. No matter how many guns that Soviets shifted the fires of and aircraft were tasked to strike, the US V Corps held its ground taking immense punishment by giving just as it got. USAF F-15s ruled the skies providing top-level cover for F-4s, F-16s and A-10s that poured into the areas where fighting was taking place while being directed by forward air controllers on the ground who had long waited for a morning like this. Fighters from the Soviet Sixteenth & Twenty-Fourth Air Army’s had some success of their own but were outclassed in the skies and couldn’t influence the fighting on the ground whereas the USAF could.

Yet, the Soviet Eighth Guards Army could afford to gut its forward units of their strength while they knew that the Americans wouldn’t be able to sustain the losses that they were taking. Eventually they would fall back as their doctrine demanded and the Soviet Eighth Guards Army would make an effort to chase them all the way to the Rhine.

First though they had to keep attacking and attacking and attacking…


While the Soviet First Guards Tank Army was held back as an exploitation force, the Second Western Front sent the East German Third Army forward into northern Bavaria. This was an army consisting of two regular and two reservist divisions of East German soldiers who were well-disciplined and excellently motivated, but they were to engage the US VII Corps in a region ill-suited for offensive operations.

Near Coburg the East Germans were bleed while an initially successful drive through the Hof Gap following Autobahn-9 deep into Bavaria turned out to be a trap on a grand scale with American troops ambushing and devastating the East Germans.

Elements of the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment and the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division got off to an excellent start in their first combat engagements.

RED BEAR called for the East Germans to pin the US VII Corps down to stop them moving to assist their sister corps in the Fulda Gap or the West Germans in eastern Bavaria. Instead, the East Germans would be soon desperately calling for Soviet help.

*​

General-Colonel Viktor Vasilyevich Shokov led the Third Western Front in a large attack across the length of the West German-Czechoslovak border. Just as General Korbutov had been, General Shokov had recently taken over command of this formation after the previous man who had been appointed had been replaced for not doing as Marshal Ogarkov wanted: General Shokov had been in command of the Carpathian Military District beforehand.

Two Soviet and two Czechoslovak field armies were positioned in western Czechoslovakia and three of those crossed the border at 0630… and ran into American and West German troops defending Bavaria in-place ready to defend against this move.


The Soviet Thirty-Eighth Army attacked with two of its divisions and crashed into American troops from the 1st Armored Division fighting a fierce battle of maneuver right from the start to hurt the Soviets badly before they would stretch out and deploy properly. Soviet strength of numbers was going to be the decisive factor and ground was taken soon enough, though not from grand defeats of American troops.

Once the Soviet Army free of the death traps caused by American mines, speeding M-1A1 tanks and their infernal AH-1F helicopters there was plenty of open ground ahead in north-eastern Bavaria where the follow-up divisions would move to engage the further American troops there who intelligence said were waiting to invade Czechoslovakia through the same routes that the Soviets had taken eastwards.


Fighting alongside each other, against the expectations of NATO intelligence which suggested that such a thing wouldn’t be done, the two Czechoslovakian field armies entered West Germany through the Bayerischerwald and the Böhmerwald. These heavily-forested areas of Bavaria were not suitable for the assault that the Czechoslovaks launched, especially when they had to call off the airmobile assault that was planned for their 22nd Independent Airborne Brigade due to a sudden lack of helicopter transport. Those helicopters had all been used transporting the doomed Soviet 98GAD to seize and hold bridges over the Danube between Regensburg and Passau. With so many helicopters lost either heading westwards or returning eastwards, the 22nd Brigade wasn’t able to conduct all the airmobile operations that RED BEAR called for to be undertaken by battalion- and company-sized assault groups at key points in the forests.

Bundeswehr forces did very well in their first engagements with part of the 10th Panzer Division even stopping a regimental-sized Czechoslovak attack dead in its tracks on the border. Initially, the West Germans wanted to follow up that success by counter-attacking right across the border into the rear supply areas there of the Czechoslovak Fourth Army but the West German III Corps commander and also General Glenn Otis commanding the US Seventh Army put a stop to that due to the overall situation of NATO forces needing to conduct a fighting withdrawal.

The planned moves of the Canadian and Spanish troops in central Bavaria didn’t take place because the West Germans had done so well and the US Seventh Army might need them elsewhere.

*​

Millions of soldiers had gone to war all across Germany with only some of them first in the fight but many more moving forward quickly to get into battle. Aircraft filled the sky as they combatted each other and attacked enemies on the ground. The Soviet artillery barrage continued at full strength for the first fifteen minutes after 0630 before guns were shifted en masse to other targets called-in by units in combat everywhere.

Tactical missiles were by this point being launched westwards from East Germany and lancing into NATO territory. The planners of RED BEAR had wanted to send them as part of the opening barrage because they were fearsome weapons of war and there was no defence against them, but a political decision in Moscow had caused this delay in case NATO overreacted to them being used at first and thought that they were armed with nuclear weapons.

Millions upon millions of civilians in Western Europe were already in shelters after the first shots of the war had been fired but now many of them started to see warfare up close and personal when there was fighting in the border regions that were not wholly empty of locals (not everyone wanted to be a refugee) and also as conventional air attacks struck towns and cities far away from the frontlines.


This was the beginning of the ground war in Central Europe, but there was also other fighting taking place in many other places.





Seventy–Two

When it came to aviation warfare strategy and equipment, the Soviet military had invested heavily in what they deemed making their strategic bombers raketonosets (missile-carriers). Aircraft of both the DA and AV-MF like their Badgers, Blinders, Backfires and Bears could carry traditional bomb loads internally and externally, but so too were they outfitted to fire multiple cruise missiles that could hit land and sea targets from a ‘safe’ distance. The Soviets regarded cruise missiles as a war-winning weapon and that was why they had so far in the first hours of the war been employed in many instances.

The AV-MF forces operating with the four fleet commands especially had their long-range bombers mounting many cruise missiles for operational missions. The big raketonosets were with the Northern and Pacific Fleets while the Baltic and Black Sea Fleets were operating tactical aircraft mounting stand-off missiles too. This was done because trying to bomb Western warships in the conventional sense of an overhead attack was rightly-regarded as suicidal due to the anti-air defences that the navies of their enemies were known to maintain.

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Northern Fleet Aviation had always maintained the strongest force of raketonosets among all the others with the cream of aircrews being sent to fly their aircraft. Over the past few weeks, long before RED BEAR, when NATO naval forces started to gather in the Norwegian Sea with a view to enter the Barents Sea, Northern Fleet Aviation had been reinforced by first Black Sea Fleet Aviation units and then much later operational training formations from Belorussia too.

Apart from those raketonosets of the AV-MF that remained in the Far East, almost every naval missile-carrier had been moved to the Kola Peninsula with one assigned mission: smash the NATO warships which were poised to assist in the invasion of the Soviet Union.


Two of the initial Bear Ds had managed to gain long-distance radar contact with Striking Fleet Atlantic and its US Navy carriers soon after war commenced while another one of those large patrolling aircraft had a fix on the multi-national Standing Naval Force Atlantic. The larger American force was regarded as a much greater threat and so the smaller flotilla of ships was to be ignored for the time being.

Eight regiments of raketonosets with more than a hundred and ninety aircraft had been sitting on ground alert for several hours before they were given the word to get airborne now that the scouting Bears had confirmed what a radar-ocean reconnaissance satellite (RORSAT) had earlier detected: the American carriers were still in the Norwegian Sea. The aircrews had been drinking coffee in their seats and fighting muscle cramps while the more astute of them had looked out of their aircraft windows at their dark surroundings wondering what a fantastic target such a sight would make for enemy aircraft.

Then the orders came through and the massed raketonosets begun to depart their airbases.


Sixty-eight Tupolev-16KSR Badger Gs were assigned to three of those regiments. Three of these turbojet-powered aircraft failed to taxi away from their positions on the flight ramps at the airbases were they were now based at – much to the anger of their crews who screamed obscenities at the ground crew who had meant to have them in perfect condition – but the rest of them did manage to begin climbing away from the ground. There were launches of two aircraft at a time from the cold and snowy airbases because the planning for this factored in the need to react to time-sensitive information.

After the slower Badgers had got airborne, the five regiments of Tupolev-22M2 Backfire Bs & -22M3 Backfire Cs started to leave their airbases too. Only one of these one hundred and twenty-four dart-shaped aircraft didn’t manage to make it off the ground due to last minute maintenance problems.

Further Bear Ds lifted off from the ground alongside the raketonosets as well as other long-range strategic reconnaissance and electronic warfare aircraft to accompany the strike aircraft. This huge display of aircraft the rose into the dawn sky wasn’t visible to those on the ground in the north-western reaches of the Soviet Union should anyone have looked skywards because of the low clouds that they flew up into and then levelled out once they were above those.

The Badgers and the Backfires along with their specialised escort aircraft – Tu-16P Badger Js and Tu-22P Blinder Es outfitted with electronic jamming equipment – soon formed up into tactical groups for their far off mission. There were commanders aloft who would take charge of certain numbers of the aircraft managing them all as they all first flew towards the coast near the Norwegian border before reaching the Barents Sea. Afterwards, the raketonosets were due to turn westwards.


Striking Fleet Atlantic had reacted at once to news that warfare had finally begun by going on full alert and engaging in further defensive manoeuvres. When Soviet torpedoes missed the USS Underwood and then crippled HMS Battleaxe anti-submarine efforts that had previously been directed to avoiding and tracking suspected submarines suddenly became fierce hunts for such vessels with live firings of weapons against ‘suspected targets’; nothing more than noise generated by the current of the ocean and underwater mammals. Anti-missile defences against the threat of submarines firing supersonic projectiles against the ships of Striking Fleet Atlantic were stood ready to be used at a moment’s notice.

The offensive power of Striking Fleet Atlantic was concentrated in the aircraft that flew from three carriers. Each of those had seen their air wings reinforced recently by formations without a carrier to operate from (the US Navy had a trio unavailable to fleet operations) and also US Navy Reserve squadrons. Thus the USS Forrestal, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS Theodore Roosevelt each had between seventy to eighty combat aircraft flying from their decks.

There were A-6E Intruder and A-7E Corsair strike-bombers and attack-fighters on the carriers along with FA-18A Hornet strike-fighters… and plenty of F-14A Tomcats.

The Tomcat was a raketonosets-killer.

The US Navy regarded their fleet of the aircraft as the ultimate interceptors that, under the right circumstances, could destroy any number of bombers and cruise missiles send against their carriers. The combination of AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles, the powerful AWG-9 radar and excellent pilot training made the Tomcat an extremely potent weapon of war. All three carriers had a reinforcing third squadron of Tomcats assigned to them and the carrier hangars were that full that aircraft had to be parked out on the deck when not in the air, but this was considered worth it.


The Bear Ds that had been coming out of the Kola Peninsula and for weeks now tracking the movements of first the Eisenhower Carrier Group and later when Striking Fleet Atlantic was formed. During that time, the US Navy had been trying to avoid the radar coverage of them sought by those Soviet aircraft while at the same time tracking those Bears with airborne radar aircraft flying from the carriers (E-2C Hawkeye) and sending armed fighters towards those aircraft.

These ‘games’ had gone on as they were until earlier this morning when one of those Bears was shot down by a pair of Tomcats from Fighter Squadron 103 (VF-103, which was usually assigned to the USS Saratoga) who had flown towards the aircraft and blasted it with Sparrow missiles.

There were weather systems that Striking Fleet Atlantic could use to shield themselves from detection and the Norwegian Sea was a large stretch of water where any airborne hunters were going to have to thoroughly search. Twenty warships and four support ships were with the trio of mobile airbases that were the carriers, but that large composition didn’t mean that the Soviets would easily be able to locate them with ease.


Unfortunately for the US Navy, they were just a little too confident with their beliefs over the ability to keep themselves hidden from detection. Their opponents knew that once war commenced Striking Fleet Atlantic could move eastwards towards Norway in case their aircraft were needed over that the northern reaches country; there was also the expectation that aid in ASW efforts from land-based maritime patrol aircraft flying from central Norway airbases would be sough too. The Americans started operating under what they called EMCON (emissions control) which involved electronic silence from their ships in terms of radar and radio use. Only their aircraft did so with the US Navy wanting no clue to be given to where their ships were to Soviet snoopers by fixing the positions of them using those electronic signals.

The crews of Naval Aviation Bears hunting the Americans knew all about how US Navy carrier groups operated in peacetime and there was plenty of information on how they would seek to avoid detection in conflict. Attention was specifically focused upon the E-2 radar aircraft that flew from their carriers.

Everything that was known about what the US Navy would do to hide Striking Fleet Atlantic was put into practise not long after that first Bear had been downed. A radio report from the aircraft as it tumbled from the sky towards the ocean below from its doomed crew gave the other searching AV-MF aircraft an idea of where to start looking and then attention was focused upon the radar waves that the E-2s emitted as they searched the skies. A rough idea of where Striking Fleet Atlantic was operating was thus gained and messages sent to Northern Fleet HQ calling for the Badgers and Backfires to come up and join the most-deadly game of cat-and-mouse ever played.

Targeting aircraft would accompany the raketonosets for last-minute guidance of where to fire their waves of missiles towards and the initial tracking Bears would stay monitoring the Americans until then… as long as the US Navy didn’t wise up and realise what was coming their way before then.


Striking Fleet Atlantic did move towards northern Norway once the shooting started there because one of its primary roles in the Norwegian Sea was to support the air effort there. The Soviets were wrong in their judgement that support by land-based P-3C Orion maritime patrol aircraft would also be a reason for doing this, but that didn’t really matter. As the carriers and their escorts slowly moved eastwards their E-2s shifted patrol areas so that the area of sky that their radars monitored areas of the coastline too looking for Soviet aircraft engaging land targets there. There was still attention focused upon watching for raketonosets as well though.

Moreover, while keeping those airborne radar aircraft up along with many Tomcats, on the carriers Intruders and Hornets were being readied for a maritime strike mission should a Northern Fleet surface force be detected.


The Backfires led the way despite the Badgers coming out of the Kola Peninsula first. The five regiments of these aircraft had split into three separate strike forces with each aircraft armed with a pair of Kitchen missiles (the Kh-22PG anti-shipping variant) and flying at a high subsonic speed around the northern reaches of Norway and high above the clouds. The groups were converging on an area where reports were coming in that the American carriers were and that information was being updated constantly so that when the moment was right the Backfires would go supersonic and make their attack runs.

The Badgers didn’t take the round-about route that the Backfires did in going all the way around the North Cape: instead they cut through Norwegian air space. Fighters from the Air Force’s Seventy-Six Air Army were ahead of them though on their own missions and not specifically tasked to support the heavily-laden bombers.

Those weapons loads that the Badgers had were a pair of KSR-5 (AS-6 Kingfish) anti-ship cruise missiles.

NATO E-3s flying from both Bodo and Orland in central Norway soon detected the Badgers coming over Finmark despite the conventional air activity there and also the distraction by Soviet air operations through Sweden into southern Norway. The latter was something that Northern Fleet AV-MF had hoped would take far more NATO attention away from their Badgers, especially with Soviet Air Defence Force interceptors flying some of those long-range missions.

USAF and Norwegian F-16s flying from airbases in northern Norway were quickly tasked to intercept such aircraft in the belief that they were heading towards their own airbases even if the courses of the groups of Badgers being detected were further to the north than they would have been expected to be.


Striking Fleet Atlantic received the radar images from the E-3s and didn’t agree with the assessment made about the intentions of those bombers. The US Navy regarded those bombers as carrying out missiles for an anti-ship strike and only one target was considered to be worthy of so many bombers at once: them.

What neither the land-based NATO forces nor the US Navy knew though was whether the tracked aircraft flying high and fast towards the Norwegian Sea were Badgers, Blinders, or Backfires. Only escorting reconnaissance aircraft were emitting detectable signals – ineffective jamming – as the Soviets copied their American opponents and used EMCON.

If it had been known that Crimea- & Belorussian-based raketonosets aircraft had joined Northern Fleet AV-MF then the numbers would have been seen to be shorter in terms of aircraft to what could now be fielded. In addition, knowing that those aircraft were Badgers and not Backfires, NATO forces would have started to worry where the latter aircraft were. Intelligence on the strength of aircraft that had been gathered in the Kola Peninsula hadn’t been that great though as opposed to what NATO knew about Soviet massed forces elsewhere.

Air operations being conducted by Soviet Air Force spread into the skies over northern Sweden just when the F-16s were to be sent against the Badgers. Stopping those aircraft from their missions to bomb NATO targets on the ground became paramount over everything else when the Badgers didn’t make a turn towards the ground defences at the Lyngenfjorden position nor airbases near Narvik and in the Lofoten Islands area.

Striking Fleet Atlantic thus didn’t have land-based fighter assistance but that was not thought to be needed due to the number of Tomcat interceptors aboard the carriers. In fact, the formation was heading eastwards so that it could provide fighter support for NATO forces in Norway rather than the other way round. Soviet aircraft were streaming across Sweden unmolested and into ‘secure’ rear areas of Norway; Striking Fleet Atlantic’s fighters were needed there; this was of course before the Badgers appeared.

The Americans had a lot of confidence in their defensive fighter force but at the same time the US Navy wasn’t stupid. Striking Fleet Atlantic didn’t have the intelligence that pointed to just how many raketonosets the Soviets had gathered together ready to attack it, but they knew at the same time that there would be an attack planned. Feints were expected to draw off their Tomcats and so too were other deceptions even up to the use of drones. The US Navy was determined not to lose what they knew would be regarded as the first major engagement of the Third Battle of the North Atlantic to Soviet Navy missile-bombers.


While the Badgers were attracting all of NATO’s attention, the force of Backfires flew onwards without being detected. The northern coastline of Norway was near-empty of either Norwegian or American forces apart from a few special forces patrol and there were certainly no ground or airborne radars in the area. Ice cold waters and abandoned towns and villages were below these fast moving bombers as they closed-in upon their distant targets. Soon enough that coast was left behind them as the Backfires entered the Norwegian Sea north of Hammerfest and started to make a gentle, lazy turn to the south as they did so.

The radar tracking of the Badgers was detected by their electronic warfare systems and then an attempt made to counter it by the airborne jammers flying with the raketonosets tasked bombers. There was a surprise when no fighters came charging towards them but then the aircrews of these bombers had a mission to undertake and they focused upon that like those in the other bombers.


The Bears that were shadowing Striking Fleet Atlantic from a distance were using their Big Bulge radars in the passive mode to continue to monitor the US Navy formation as those bombers got closer. If those radars had been in the active mode of operation then they would have been able to gain an even better understanding of the force composition that they were sending two hundred aircraft towards, though doing that would make sure that they were straight away detected by the Americans and thus engaged.

This was a life-saving measure for the aircrews of these two aircraft but they were going to have to do that when the necessary time came. Their only hope for survival was that by that point the Americans would be too distracted by everything else going on.

Soon enough though the mounted radars would have to go active because final targeting information needed to be sent to the approaching raketonosets before they could launch their missiles.


With the USAF F-15s on Iceland left without a base to operate from when Keflavik was destroyed – they could land at Reykjavik but not undertake combat missions from that civilian facility without much preparation – the US Navy suffered from their loss. The Navy and the Air Force didn’t like each other much but their rivalry was nothing like that in Soviet military forces; they just didn’t like to work together unless they absolutely had too… and it served the interests of both to as well. Nevertheless, the squadron of F-15s from Keflavik had been assisting Striking Fleet Atlantic, often unwittingly, with their presence from that island in keeping a track on the reconnaissance efforts of AV-MF Bears. After the runaways there were knocked temporarily out of action and many of the facilities wrecked, those fighters started to land at Reykjavik before they ran out of fuel.

On Striking Fleet Atlantic’s western flanks there were now no longer those land-based fighters to provide outer defences though with so many Tomcats being carried, that gap was quickly filled by US Navy fighters. This wasn’t a problem at all: Striking Fleet Atlantic would have full command over these fighters as opposed to only working in cooperation with the now-homeless F-15s.

What didn’t occur to the Americans was that the missile attack undertaken against Keflavik had been a deliberate attack to affect Striking Fleet Atlantic and weaken its supposedly weak (in the minds of AV-MF mission planners) western flank.


The Badgers were soon out of over the water themselves and away from land. They maintained their high altitude and the escort jammers with them kept continuing to do what they were with all of their powerful radar-defeating equipment. Communication between these aircraft as they all flew westwards on the same course at the same altitude needed to take place no matter how much that wasn’t desired. An encrypted and low-powered radio was used for the aircraft to talk to each other though there was no idle chatter on the radio waves just instructions from mission commanders to pilots which were only to be acknowledge by a simple keying of their radio mikes unless there was the most dire of emergencies. What those senior officers aboard a select few of the Badgers were waiting for was contact with those Bears far out ahead.

As all of these bombers flew onwards, notice was not made until the very last moment of a flight of four fighters racing up from below them. These weren’t coming from the NATO land bases to the south and now behind them but instead from a few ships off the Norwegian coast to the northeast and between them and the Backfires.

The fighters were Fleet Air Arm Sea Harrier FRS1s.


The RN Task Force had no idea that neither reconnaissance satellites nor scouting Bears had failed to detect them. There was a liaison officer from Striking Fleet Atlantic aboard HMS Invincible and thus the RN knew that one of those aircraft had been downed right near the US Navy force once hostilities opened. Moreover, they were being fed other information from the Americans as well as E-3 Sentry aircraft flying from Norway.

With the case of the latter, when the force of Badgers flying in their general direction was first reported the RN flotilla had gone under EMCON as well as changing course and speed. Those Badgers were actually considered by the Task Force to be on their way to strike them though had yet to work out where the RN had its ships. Sea Harriers from all three light aircraft carriers in the Task Force were at once readied for combat and four of the six aloft on combat air patrol were sent charging towards those Badgers.

The RN wanted to break up their formations and cause them a world of hurt before they could locate and attack the Task Force.


The high-energy radar waves from the Blue Fox systems fitted to the Sea Harriers set off a wave of alarms across the Badgers as radar warning receivers went active. Pilots screamed at their electronic warfare and radar officers to tell them who and where the enemy was while at the same time frantically looking out of the cockpit windows into the now clear skies ahead.

The missiles, like the aircraft that had launched them, came from underneath not out front.


Eight Sidewinder missiles were fired by the Sea Harriers in their first attack when they came up and out of the clouds to fire once they got a visual on their targets before the pilots who were all instructors in peacetime – these Sea Harriers were from the reformed 809 Squadron of Falklands fame and now consisting of the staff of flight training schools – dove back away again into those clouds.

There were another two missiles remaining on each fighter as well as a full load of shells for the pair of cannon pods being carried. The intention was to make the Soviets pay dear for being in defenceless aircraft long away from friendly fighter cover and so the Sea Harriers quickly begun to make another attack.


Seven Badgers were struck (one with a pair of Sidewinders) in the first missile attack with wings, tails and fuselages being hit on those aircraft. One exploded in mid-air while the other half dozen begun to fall out of the sky, increasing in speed as they did so.

The remaining aircraft all scattered like the proverbial cat had been put among the pigeons. Some climbed while others lost altitude. Bombers turned to port and others went starboard. Chaff was launched by several Badgers and the six rearwards-facing 23mm autocannons in others opened fire.

In this chaos that erupted, the AV-MF aircrews nearly caused as much destruction as the Sea Harriers did. Four aircraft suffered mid-air collisions with another nine being hit with high-explosive shells (with varying degrees of damage inflicted) in ‘friendly fire’ incidents… and then those Sea Harriers came back for a second attack.


Short of fuel and with their carriers a long way off, the Sea Harrier pilots made a quick second attack in which they used their missiles as well as firing burst from their cannons. There were targets all over the sky and many of those were flying wholly erratically. Therefore there wasn’t a mass of aircraft to fire into where a hit had been almost guaranteed during the first attack.

This time only four Sidewinders struck targets with the rest lancing towards ghost targets created by chaff and one missile even going after the falling rear fuselage section of a Badger torn apart as a result of a mid-air collision. The men of 809 Squadron had rushed to strike out because they were worrying over their fuel state and done everything that they had always told their trainees not to do. Yet, they still had their gun pods and there were targets to be sought with those before they would have to leave this scene of massacre up here.

30mm shells from ADEN gun pods could do a lot of damage.


Twenty-three Badgers (raketonosets and jamming aircraft) were lost before the Sea Harriers flew off. The enemy action had caused a terrible blow to be struck but so too had the friendly fire and collisions. The aircrews of these big bombers had panicked and played an important part in the destruction that had been wrought.

In addition to those lost aircraft, eleven other bombers had jettisoned their heavy loads of cruise missiles when escaping the attack because carrying such weapons would slow them down. The previously perfectly aligned formation was spread all over the sky afterwards with one bombers being lost belonging to the mission commander.

No one knew if those attacking aircraft were going to return again nor if other would conduct a similar attack. Everything was just a mess.

However, there was nothing that could be done apart from the formations to reform under the command of the deputy mission commander and carry on with the weapons that they had left. Even the raketonosets no longer armed would stay on mission because the aircraft could be useful as targets for enemy interceptors… an unstated but understood reality.


The Americans had not been idle while these bombers were coming towards them. They sent aloft their A-7 Corsairs with ‘buddy tanks’ to transfer fuel to Tomcats and the FA-18 Hornets who had been armed ready for a land attack mission were instead armed with air-to-air missiles: they didn’t have the range of the Tomcats but still could help engage enemy cruise missiles coming towards Striking Fleet Atlantic.

The spotted Badgers (the Sea Harrier pilots radioed what type of aircraft they were attacking the moment that they move in for their first attack) and the Backfires that the US Navy know knew had to be airborne too were one thing to worry about and multiple squadrons of Tomcats were waiting for their arrival, but meanwhile Striking Fleet Atlantic was hunting for the Bears that just had to be nearby and guiding bombers towards them. There was light in the sky and low clouds above which single interceptors were sent hunting for them with active radars.

To the north, the northeast and the northwest these fighters went first before moving to search in other directions too. One Bear was found and dispatched with a brace of Phoenix missiles shot against it but the other aircraft was elusive to this hunt. There was much frustration but nothing could be done apart from maintaining that hunt and also preparing to attack what Badgers remained airborne after that stroke of luck that the RN had had.


The Backfires had completed their looping manoeuvre around to the west and thus behind what were assumed to be the main defences of Striking Fleet Atlantic. There were no F-15s flying from Iceland to harass them and the airborne radar aircraft from Keflavik had been forced to put down on that island after their fuel reserves had become dangerously low with no tankers coming up to meet them.

Whilst keeping their speed below the sound barrier to conserve fuel for their attack run and the expected chase when they fled after that, the Backfires had still moved fast to get into position and were ready to make their move long before the Badgers far to the east who were meant to precede them were.

Once in position though, there was no Bear waiting to meet them and give final guidance as to where exactly their targets were. Though none of the aircrews of these aircraft knew it, not very long beforehand that aircraft had been downed and the only Bear still aloft near Striking Fleet Atlantic was the one positioned to guide the Badgers in.

To guide their Kitchen anti-ship missiles, the Backfires needed accurate targeting information so that not only could they strike ships, but that those missiles would hit aircraft carriers and major warships rather than smaller warships or even supply ships set up as decoys: this was a NATO tactic that the RN had used in the Falklands War which saw the Atlantic Conveyor being hit by a missile that should have struck an aircraft carrier.

The Backfires themselves had PNA-B (Downbeat) search-and-attack radars with a useful range of one hundred and seventy plus miles when activated from altitude and hunting the sea surface for larger vessels, but the missing Bear had been meant to have been present to use it’s radar to scan over a larger distance while the raketonosets went in low without using theirs and attracting SAM fire before they could fire their missiles.

Nothing could be done though. The Bear wasn’t where it was meant to be and all the information that the Backfires had was the last known location of the main body of the NATO naval force. They needed better information before they could fire effectively and so the Downbeat radars on several of the bombers (the information would be shared by data-link) were activated.


Just as had been long practised, Striking Fleet Atlantic reacted accordingly.

There was a squadron of Tomcats – VF-142 from the Eisenhower – out to the west and they at once swept back their wings and thundered across the sky at full speed towards the sources of the radar emissions that had got everyone’s attention. As soon as their Phoenix missiles had the range those would be fired off in a massed volley aiming to take down Soviet bombers before they could get their missiles off and therefore multiply the number of targets.

Behind them another two squadrons (both from the Forrestal) were moving into position to add their own volleys of missiles. Tomcat pilots had trained for this type of mission over and over again countless times and all of that was about to pay off.

Below the fighters zooming across the sky to get into position, the carriers all launched as many aircraft aloft as they could and not just fighters. Any aircraft within the vessels was an explosive and fire hazard; it was also best not to have them go down with a carrier if it was unfortunately sunk.

There were three warships with Striking Fleet Atlantic that contained an arsenal of SAMs. Two of these were the AEGIS missile-cruisers USS Ticonderoga and USS Leyte Gulf; the third was the nuclear-powered cruiser USS Virginia. The missiles that flew from these warships would be deadly to any attacking aircraft although their primary function was missile defence against the attack that was now detected as about to begin.

The rest of the warships with the flotilla had air defences of their own from guns to short- and medium-range SAMs. These weapons would be a last ditch defence against what would by that point be a successful attack upon Striking Fleet Atlantic; if these were used than things had gone to hell.


The stage was finally set for the AV-MF’s force of raketonosets to show whether all that investment in time, training and money was worth it or whether US Navy efforts to defend against such an attack were going to work.


Many, many targets popped up on the radar displays of the Downbeats when they were activated. The bomber crews were nowhere near as expert at interpreting such images as their comrades who flew Bears were despite their training to that affect though unless all of their pre-flight intelligence was spectacularly wrong, there were more than triple the number of reported targets ahead.

They realised that they were being spoofed with multiple false targets.

However, the Backfire raid mission commander quickly reasoned that there had to be real targets among those spotted and he needed to act. Radar warning receivers were telling him that intercept radars of American F-14 interceptors were active and time was running out. He could either order the firing of his missiles – two hundred and forty of them – with the knowledge that they would hit targets and then have his raketonosets escape at supersonic speeds to fight again another day or move in closer in the face of what would be serious fighter opposition to gain ‘perfect’ intelligence… the latter choice would certainly mean that many of his bombers would be lost.

He ordered his raketonosets to fire at the targets that they had on radar.


The Tomcats of VF-142 were too late: they weren’t in missile range of the Soviet bombers when those Backfires started launching their own missiles. There was a temptation among the pilots to give chase to the bombers who were launching and then turning away north while increasing speed so that kills could be achieved, but that was overcome very quickly with all those missiles now racing away from the aircraft that had fired them.

The cruise missiles were going towards the ship that the Tomcat pilots called home.

There were four Phoenix missiles on each of the dozen Tomcats and all were launched in one salvo with shouts made by pilots over the radio of ‘FOX THREE!’ Once done with that, VF-142 turned away to allow the approaching VF-11 and VF-201 (the latter a Reserve formation) to come into position to fire.

On the Leyte Gulf, the designated air defence command ship, the scorecard from the efforts of the Tomcats was monitored. Thirty-five interceptors had taken out ninety-seven cruise missiles; this was a success rate of almost seventy-five per cent though there were still one hundred and forty plus missiles inbound.

Other Tomcats were lancing out towards the threat – some had to remain behind guarding against the Badgers still on their way – and they were going to have to be mighty fast and mighty successful if the missile strike was going to be stopped. When the first three Tomcat squadrons had fired, they had been shooting against cruise missiles climbing away from their launching bombers in their boost phase. Now those missiles were up very high in the sky and racing at high Mach numbers ready to make their terminal dives downwards.

The number of inbounds fell to one hundred and then dropped below that figure. There were other aircraft with Striking Fleet Atlantic but there wasn’t the time to get those Hornets into the action before the cruise missiles started to make their final attack run before ‘tipping over’ ready to dive. Aircraft were cleared out of the way at this point anyway because the SAMs that all the dedicated air defence warships had were going to come into play.

There were four dozen RIM-66 missiles on the Virginia, sixty-eight aboard the Ticonderoga and ninety-six carried by the Leyte Gulf. Once the inbounds were in range, the three cruisers begun rapid firing these missiles skywards from their launchers. Upwards those SAMs went and towards the inbounds while leaving behind thick patches of lingering grey smoke that surrounded each vessel.

The scorecard went down to thirty-one inbounds afterwards. It had been hoped that the RIM-66s would have achieved more kills than this impressive number but the inbounds were now moving so fast and jinxing all over the sky as if they had the intelligence to know that their deaths were coming.


Other missiles from further ships were fired. The cruiser USS South Carolina launched her SAMs and then destroyers begun firing. Electronic jamming measures were increased even further than they were while chaff was fired off in every direction by ships trying to create huge ghost targets.

Again the number of inbounds coming directly for Striking Fleet Atlantic ships fell, this time down to eighteen. By this point it was up to gun defences to do their best to keep ships safe. Vulcan-Phalanx 20mm anti-missile guns fired streams of shells at missiles coming down and when hits were scored the shattered remains of the Kitchen missiles were spewed everywhere. The anti-missile guns couldn’t get them all though despite excellent last-minute work.

Five ships were hit by seven missiles.

The destroyer USS Nicholson took an impact right in its main superstructure before that Kitchen exploded inside the vessel. There was a thunderous roar and then the already devastated warship was blown to pieces: only eight of her three hundred and thirty-three crew survived.

The big Virginia was struck twice, one in the stern area where her helicopter deck was and then in her superstructure. Like with the Nicholson the hits themselves were fatal by the sheer damage they caused when tearing into the missile-cruiser before the warheads on each missile went off killing four hundred and eighty-two of her six hundred crew.

The combat support ship USS Arctic was struck by a Kitchen missile that turned out to be a dud yet the damage done from the force of the impact and the fires started would later cause her to be abandoned with seventy-six sailors losing their lives.

USS Wisconsin took an impact and came away wounded but still combat capable. The diving Kitchen smashed into the battleship’s bow just forward of the ‘A’ turret and into the armour there. There was no penetration of the decks below though much shock damage sustained. When the missile warhead went off A turret had all three of its huge gun barrels bent – such was the force of the blast – but that was it. Twenty-five sailors aboard would lose their lives in this strike due to a variety of causes from being exposed to flying debris outside when they shouldn’t have been to internal shock damage trauma.

The brand-new carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was struck by the two remaining cruise missiles. One was hit by rounds from a Vulcan-Phalanx gun at the very last second and tumbled into the carrier’s island superstructure instead of being blasted in a forced self-destruct explosion like other engaged Kitchens. The missile warhead didn’t go off but the missile body was moving fast and caused immense damage as it tore a hole in the stern-facing side of the island and then started fires inside there that would soon spread. The other Kitchen followed milliseconds later by impacting the flight-deck near the bow, tearing through that into the empty hangars and then it kept on going down deep into the ship before the warhead detonated.

The Roosevelt was left badly wounded by this with hundreds of casualties aboard and flight operations now incapable of taking place from the aircraft carrier.

The Backfires had done their worst but Striking Fleet Atlantic was far from eliminated as a combat force.


As to the Badgers, those raketonosets which had survived the RN Sea Harrier attack were engaged by Tomcats as soon as they contacted the Bear which was meant to guide their missiles in. The interceptors from VF-74 – a squadron which wouldn’t be going back to the Roosevelt this morning – were flying with a EA-6B Prowler in support and that electronic combat aircraft had been tracking the signals from the Bear contacting those Badgers as those raketonosets came into position to fire upon the by that point wounded Striking Fleet Atlantic. Phoenix missiles blazed away at bombers before they could launch their Kingfish cruise missiles. Twenty-nine more Badgers went down along with the Bear and then the remaining bombers turned away and fled for home without firing the few missiles that were left.

*​

And so the game came to a close. The raketonosets had done their worst but had not achieved their goal in sinking the three aircraft carriers and devastating the rest of the American carrier group. Nonetheless, despite the fearful losses taken by the Badgers, the Backfire force was untouched. They had no idea as to the success of their missile launchers, but they could return again.

Seventy–Five

Northern Norway was meant to be a sideshow. Soviet military action in Scandinavia was supposed to be nothing but a partial effort to the main centre of the defensive pre-emptive war launched into West Germany. Like in the Baltic Approaches and also in southern Norway, RED BEAR exceed all initial promise in northern Norway.


The Soviet Sixth Army fielded six combat divisions for its offensive into Finmark and Lapland. There was attached support for this command from the Arctic Front that included the reinforced 2nd Artillery Division, the independent airmobile brigade from the Leningrad Military District, two naval infantry brigades and also the Soviet Seventy-Sixth Air Army (plus an extra couple of combat air regiments from the Moscow Military District). The objective of the Arctic Front was to overrun the entire region and reach the Norwegian Sea near the Narvik area. Airfields were to be captured and NATO forces engaged to be beaten in battle so that the anticipated left-hand flank of the Western invasion of the Soviet Union from Europe wouldn’t be possible.

Once the airmobile elements of the 36th Brigade had secured their initial objectives – apart from the disaster at the Tana Bridge – and light was in the sky, the Soviet Sixth Army started moving forward. There was one of the field army’s divisions positioned on the right flank, two in the centre and three on the left. The advance of these three groupings had only been preceded on the right by an artillery barrage while in the centre and on the left (through Lapland) the howitzers, multiple-barrelled rocket launchers and heavy mortars travelled behind the vanguard formations aiming to get into position for when they were needed.

In the Varanger region, Norwegian special forces soldiers harassed the advancing 131MRD as the Soviet division approached Kirkenes and then went through the town to reach the beginning of Highway-6. The hit-and-run strikes were beaten off with massed firepower and when the Norwegians tried to escape into the snow-covered forests they were chased down by PT-76 light tanks and helicopters firing area barrage rockets too. The ambushes using anti-tank missiles fired at command vehicles and mines taking out advance guard formations were expected by the Soviets because they were anticipating that there would be a serious effort to stop them reaching the Tana River. No delay was incurred this early on because there was a little room for Soviet elements to manoeuvre around a bit.

The 69MRD and the 77GMRD – both of which were amphibiously trained but were operating now in their traditional role – went towards Ivalo in Lapland before aiming to go around Lake Inari and then turn in a north-western direction towards Karasjok and the Norwegian-Finnish border. No one harassed them during their route and the men of the motorised rifle divisions even watched as Finnish Defence Forces units stood aside and did nothing to halt their advance.

The other three divisions (37MRD, 54MRD and 71MRD) moved directly westwards across Lapland and aimed their advance in the general direction of the Finnish town of Kuttanen on the Muonio River. There was no opposition to this move by Finnish forces either though there was some later air activity by NATO aircraft flying from Norway. Very quickly there were delays in this mass movement of armour all across Lapland due to the lack of good roads and when there were any, they were found to be full of ice and snow as Finnish civil authorities had done nothing to treat them.

The two naval infantry brigades remained behind on Soviet territory near Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. NATO had been making preparations to meet ships carrying these troops forward around the North Cape as the opening wave of the Arctic Front’s assault but that wasn’t to be. Putting those troops and all their equipment aboard defenceless landing ships, of which there weren’t enough anyway for a major assault, when the seas off the coast had yet to be sanitised wasn’t sound military strategy. The ocean was to deep and too wide for NATO submarines to hide in and strike it; it wasn’t like that down in the Baltic off Zealand.

When the time came, the naval infantry would be put to use in making either an amphibious assault to finish off NATO opposition or even as shock troops elsewhere.

A lone regiment from the Soviet Seventy-Sixth Air Army had been assigned to support the 131MRD in driving towards the Tana Bridge area and those Sukhoi-17M2 Fitter Ds had been busy bombing and strafing ground targets without meeting any air opposition. Instead, man-portable SAMs fired from the special forces men on the ground had rose to meet them on several occasions and two of their number were quickly lost in close-air support missions. Out over Lapland, it was a different story with MiG-27s as well as Sukhoi-24M Fencer Ds not called upon to engage land targets. There were Fulcrums flying protection for them and even fast MiG-25RB Foxbat B reconnaissance-fighters available, but no NATO air intervention at first… until American aircraft on tactical missions started appearing over Finnish skies.

The Foxbats had undertaken a few missions over the skies of the northern reaches of Sweden and spotted no ground advance of NATO forces making early headway that way and so had been directed to scout the way towards Kuttanen at the bottom of the Finnish Wedge. In doing so they had missed NATO re-arranging its air operations over to the West and understanding that if the Swedes could control their own airspace then they would. F-16s from the Royal Norwegian Air Force and a USAF Reserve squadron went into Swedish skies on air defence missions while flying forward and low went some A-10As and F-4Ds.

Again flown by USAF Reserve pilots, these aircraft moved in flights of two or four aircraft through Sweden and into Finland as snow fell all around them. All-weather flying was an art form, but the pilots were good. There were no Soviet AWACS aircraft known to be operating and Soviet Air Defence Force fighters – MiG-31 Foxhounds – which did have powerful radars that could in theory operate as an airborne radar platform were flying back over Soviet airspace. There was no fighter escort for these strike aircraft because that was thought to be something that would draw unnecessary attention to them and also because in such small numbers the Thunderbolts and Phantoms were thought to be able to look after themselves.

Sent towards where NATO planners believed that they would move ground forces coming from the east in a westwards direction, the American aircraft only had partial luck. A flight of A-10s ran into a Soviet column which promptly fired SAMs at them and one A-10 was shot down. The other three went into the fight with those ground forces and did manage to bomb up several battalions of infantry from the 71MRD moving in MT-LB armoured vehicles. The nose-mounted 30mm cannons and Maverick anti-armour missiles made short work of the vehicles and the American pilots only flew off when they had run out of missiles.

One of the F-4 flights tried to make an attack run upon another Soviet column, this one of towed artillery and engineering vehicles moving behind forward units, but again met SAMs being fired. These were avoided because the mobile radars couldn’t get a fix on the attacking F-4s in the terrible weather, but then a pair of the reconnaissance Foxbats arrived nearby. Missiles were fired from both sets of aircraft at each other though the Soviets quickly had the advantage of missile numbers as well as height. Three F-4s exploded in mid-air from missile hits after deciding to try to flee while another one crashed into the snowy ground. In an ironic twist of fate, one of those SAMs going skywards struck a Foxbat and brought that aircraft down too.


The Soviet advance through Finland had been expected by NATO forces though not the way that Sweden had been attacked in conjunction with its Nordic neighbour. Defensive plans for Norway were up in the air with Sweden – at best only temporarily, at worst for good – unable to defend its own sovereignty. The main NATO defensive line up at the base of the Lyngenfjorden was anchored on the Swedish border there and the Swedes had their army in the field before war had broken out. Armed neutrality from Sweden was meant to make sure that the Lyngenfjorden held… if not there were quickly fears that the mass of Soviet forces pouring into Finmark, Lapland and towards that border area where the frontier of Finland, Norway and Sweden met would be overrun. NATO forces would then struggle to hold onto the coastline of northern Norway.

Commander Northern Norway, a Norwegian three-star General, flew from Bodo towards Kolsas outside Oslo to meet with AFNORTH’s commander down there. That flight never made it to Kolsas though and General Howlett didn’t find out for many hours that his field commander in the north had had his VIP transport jet blasted out of the sky over southern Norway by Soviet fighters on their way to be based at the captured Flesland airport outside Stavanger.

Thankfully, the deceased Commander Northern Norway had two capable Air and Land Deputies – neither of whom had wanted their superior to fly to Kolsas right when everything was happening as it was – who acted quickly when contact was lost with that aircraft. The US 10th Light Infantry Division was given order to reposition itself ready to move against threats coming from the Swedish border area while NATO airborne radar aircraft moved to watch the south just as studiously as it was keeping an eye on the north and the east. There was a chance that soon the whole NATO position in Troms County and the neighbouring area might become a huge salient and preparations had to be made for that eventuality.





Seventy–Six

There was twelve hours of light available during the days in mid-March throughout Germany. March 14th was a wet and overcast day with a chill in the air. Those men who spent the day fighting for their lives all felt the coldness of the sunless day.

There was no let up from the war even for those not on the frontlines. No one could stop for breakfast, lunch or an early evening dinner because there was still a war to be fought and the futures of nations were at stake, which was much more important than the personal needs of men.


The British Second Army continued to battle the First Western Front as the day went on. There was movement of the frontlines as both sides fought to fight a battle of manoeuvre, though for different purposes. The commanders of the Soviet, East German and Polish formations trying to move forward wanted to break clear of the defensive belt that NATO forces had established running down the German countryside from the Elbe to the Harz Mountains. Their artillery had smashed away so much of the earthworks while combat engineers had blown paths through minefields and thrown bridges over anti-tank ditches, but these physical defences were just the one thing. British, Dutch and West German forces kept pulling away from a stand-up fight at every opportunity that they got and instead made countless tactical withdrawals into further positions where they would snipe at advancing tanks and infantry.

There was nowhere that the units assigned to the First Western Front could break away from the close-in ambushes of their advancing vanguards. When lead units were shot up or blown up, artillery support was called in to suppress defensive fire and troops would dismount from vehicles to try to clear hidden groups of men. Fierce hand-to-hand combat took place everywhere but with that, just like with armoured vehicles, NATO forces kept repeatedly falling back westwards away from their pursuers.

The eastern portions of Lower Saxony was where NATO had for years been practising the doctrine of mobile defensive warfare. There were no great fortified positions to be initially fought from behind, just rolling countryside whose advantages and disadvantages were known to its defenders. In fields, among trees in woodland and along drainage ditches well-aimed fire was directed against wary units moving west.

The First Western Front would unleash barrages of shells, rockets and mortars from their artillery formations as well as calling in air strikes by fighter-bombers and armed helicopters whenever this occurred. Destruction was caused on an epic scale but no regard was shown for this because everyone was fighting for their lives. In return, the artillery units of the British Second Army, which were outnumbered by their opponents, undertook counter-battery missions where they could though this was in the main an effort to keep covering the withdrawal of NATO units.

The body counts that mounted up were immense with thousands upon thousands of fighting men dying on each side at the front and in the rear all day long. The British Second Army maintained its strategy of conducting a fighting withdrawal and taking lumps out of the attacking Soviet-led forces without seeing major formations being trapped and pinned down, but terrible losses were still taken. As for General Korbutov’s First Western Front, there was no breakthrough made despite the demands that RED BEAR planners had made for that to happen rather early on the first day of their great offensive across the North German Plain.


Aircraft from the 2 ATAF were operating all above the North German Plain in direct support of the ground forces. Strategic air operations back over the Iron Curtain were to be undertaken much later, but for the time being tactical missions were what hundreds of NATO aircraft flew in. There were USAF A-10s and F-16s in the skies along with Luftwaffe Tornados and Alpha-Jets. The Belgian Air Force flew Alpha-Jets too as well as having F-16s engaged in combat operations; there were Dutch F-16s along with NF-5s airborne. French aircraft were quickly engaged in combat operations as well with Mirages and Jaguars flying alongside 2 ATAF aircraft. Fighter Groups from the Armee d’Aire were assigned under 2 ATAF command on a temporary basis with relative ease; French military forces may have for the past twenty years not been part of the integrated command structure, but they operated compatible aircraft, weapons and systems.

The RAF had the majority of it’s strength with the 2 ATAF and Harriers, Jaguars and Tornados flew in tactical missions all across the northern parts of West Germany. They flew with their NATO allies on some missions while others were RAF only affairs. There were losses taken, but RAF aircraft kept appearing again alongside other 2 ATAF air assets in air strikes to support the ground forces directly at the frontlines and to also smash Soviet-led forces moving into position to add their strength to the stalling offensive.

Aircraft from the Soviet Fourth & Twenty-Sixth Air Army’s flew on many strike missions of their own attacking tactical targets as well. They operated deeper behind the frontlines than 2 ATAF aircraft did, though many missions were again directed against the hunt for those mythical NATO invasion forces in staging areas that strangely turned out to be empty. Fighters from both sides engaged attacking aircraft coming towards them and SAM’s were lofted from the opposing forces on the ground too. Often times important strike missions were cancelled when bombs or ground attack missiles were discarded due to the pressing need for self-perseverance.


Further southwards, the situation on the ground and in the air was very similar… though not the same. General Otis had a different outlook on warfare to his fellow NATO commander in the north General Kenny and the American, unlike the Brit, believed that a lot more flexibility could come with the overall strategy of mobile defence.

Across Hessen, the West German III Corps and US V Corps broke up attempts at Soviet penetrations by small-scale coordinated counter-attacks at every available opportunity. Alpha-Jets and A-10s from the 4 ATAF operated over the frontlines giving close air support with the attendant losses that such activity would bring. Still, aircraft answered the call every time it came and ripped holes in the formations of the Soviet Twenty-Eighth & Eighth Guards Army's as those two powerful field armies made attempt after attempt to break through NATO lines. Soviet aircraft from the Sixteenth & the Twenty-Fourth Air Army’s managed to undertake strikes in support of the ground forces near the front but couldn’t get deeper into the NATO rear due to the number of USAF F-15s flying ready to intercept them. Several airbases housing these state-of-the-art fighters had been targeted by those cruise missiles launched as part of the very first West-TVD missile attack, but once the light damage to the runaways had been repaired those fighters got airborne and started raking up impressive numbers of kills.

Three complete wings of F-15s with over two hundred of these aircraft were with the 4 ATAF and there were a lot of pilots who became aces throughout the day.


East German operations into northern Bavaria had been nipped in the bud by their initial failures but when the main body of the Soviet Thirty-Eighth Army coming out of the north-western part of Czechoslovakia entered Bavaria in strength the US VII Corps had to re-deploy better to defend itself. As the day worn onwards, Soviet units were approaching the Nurnberg area; the East Germans had attacked again despite their earlier losses and distracted the Americans from being able to maintain their mobile defence against the Soviet Thirty-Eighth Army. Losses were heavy among the American forces, though not overly terrible that would cause a major worry that the formations assigned – principally the 1st Armored Division, the 1st & 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division’s and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment – were about to be destroyed.

Further along the West German-Czechoslovak frontier, all the way down to the Austrian border, the two Czechoslovak field armies were still stuck in the forests that lined the border. Luftwaffe Tornados and also Canadian F-18s helped out with the mobile defence warfare that the West German II Corps were conducting there, but those initial failures to use airmobile troops to secure routes through the region really hurt the Czechoslovaks. So much had been staked on vital routes being seized straight away that when they weren’t at once in-hand the ground units approaching them found themselves unable to move properly and facing ongoing ambushes by defending troops.


Neither side deployed their first or second waves of reserves during the first day. West-TVD was expecting tough NATO resistance – though nowhere near as strong as it was – and RED BEAR didn’t call for their use at once. On the NATO side, neither the British Second Army nor the US Seventh Army sent their strong reserves forward either. There had been no major Soviet-led penetration and they didn’t want to pile forward into areas where they wouldn’t yet be able to manoeuvre.

This situation was repeated in the air with NATO aircraft being held back for strategic air attacks once the skies got dark and the Warsaw Pact air forces also doing the same.


Up in the very northern reaches of West Germany and on Zealand, where the Baltic Front was fighting Allied Forces Baltic Approaches, everything was different. Mobile defence had failed very quickly for the NATO forces while the Soviet-led forces had thrown caution to the wind and were driving fast to secure their objectives earlier than planned.

The two East German tank divisions reached Neumunster and Wankendorf by the time the light was failing. They had battered aside all West German and Danish efforts to stop them while the shattered Americans lay behind them falling into captivity. The men were tired and many vehicles were breaking down from the stress of combat, but orders were for the pair of divisions were to try to reach the Kiel Canal and Kiel itself during the night.

Danish forces on Zealand found extremely hard to try and contain the bridgehead that the Soviet naval infantry had established, but they also had to fight off mobile penetrations deep into Zealand my light armoured units too. Soviet helicopters were sending more naval infantry out to seize key points and cause chaos when Danish reserve forces tried to move towards the bridgehead. There were airfield engineers from the Soviet Air Force soon to reach the airbase at Sigerslav that the Danes had fast abandoned so a fully-functioning Warsaw Pact base could be established there.

The multi-national ACE Brigade-Group went into action during the afternoon and very quickly suffered heavy casualties. The light infantry troops under command from Luxembourg and Spain – the latter being from the Spanish Legion – collapsed under the furious Soviet attacks against them as they tried to get into the fight while the American and West German paratroopers assigned did better. The brigade had been committed far too early and hit with armoured vehicles that the naval infantry fielded when they themselves were all on foot or in trucks.

From Koge there were two main roads leading directly up to Copenhagen that provided a direct route into the city. There were helicopters all over the countryside to the south and aircraft shooting up military vehicles carrying troops down that road. Soviet warships were spotted off the outskirts of Copenhagen and when engaged by land-based Harpoon missile batteries aircraft appeared to bomb them; Copenhagen was struck by collateral damage.

Unless something was done fast, Denmark was going to fall.

Seventy–Seven

The Royal Navy went into World War Three as best prepared as it could be. As many ships and submarines, along with Sea Harriers and helicopters, that could be sent to sea were while those that were undergoing long-haul maintenance and repair were being rushed to join those as fast as humanly possible. Manpower issues had been solved with reservists and worldwide commitments apart from those truly necessary curtailed.

Only three vessels were lost on that first day of the war. A miracle this was called by some while other deemed it near perfect preparation for combat.


Four RN submarines were operating east of the North Cape in Arctic waters which the Soviet Navy regarded as home territory. The Trafalgar-class HMS Turbulent was one of those, there were the Swiftsure-class submarines HMS Sovereign & HMS Spectre with the final one being the older Valiant-class HMS Warspite. All of these were nuclear-power hunter/killers: properly known as ‘fast attack submarines’. Torpedoes and anti-ship missiles were their armaments and they all had up-to-date electronic equipment aboard including secure communications, advanced sonars and capable radars. The crews were all well-trained with excellent comradeship aboard each. Should the need arise, they could stay at sea until the food ran out aboard due to their superb engineering and the nuclear reactors that they carried.

The fears of the Northern Fleet about sending heavily-laden amphibious ships around the North Cape as part of a first wave assault into the coasts off western Finmark were rather justified: Spectre and Turbulent were the two RN submarines waiting for such an opportunity to strike out against such a flotilla – and escorting major warships too – while there were also US Navy fast attack submarines and Norwegian coastal submarines on a similar mission too. Of course the NATO navies had fears over friendly fire incidents with such a positioning of underwater vessels which could only communicate with each other in dire emergencies, but the chance to strike in such a way wasn’t one that they could let go.

That amphibious fleet didn’t turn up though to provide targets for all of those NATO submarines.

Warspite was in the northern stretches of the Barents Sea. The submarine was operating in deeper waters that those pair to the west because its initial wartime role was to hunt for Soviet submarines moving between the Kola Peninsula and the Arctic Ocean. When news was broadcast to RN vessels at sea that warfare had begun, the trailing communications wire behind the Warspite picked up this VLF signal soon enough and thus went on the active hunt for enemy submarines to engage rather than just passively watching and waiting as it had been beforehand for the past week. Surprisingly for the crew and the RN, that first twenty-four hours would be a boring wait as the Warspite found the waters that it were in empty of Soviet submarines… or at least ones that they could detect.

It was a different story with the Sovereign. Like two US Navy submarines also in the central Barents Sea, this RN submarine had been shadowing the Northern Fleet battle group that had suddenly withdrawn back from the Norwegian Sea in an eastwards direction right on the eve of war. All of those warships made a hell of a lot of noise as they steamed in lazy circles around on the surface seemingly waiting for something to happen. The Soviet ships used their active sonars to search the waters below them and escorting helicopters did the same. Once war commenced there were the dropping of depth charges and the firing of torpedoes by many warships, though not at the Sovereign or any other NATO submarine.

Apparently, the Soviet Navy had declared war on marine life in the Barents Sea too.

The noise that the Northern Fleet battle group made as it attacked harmless opponents as well as undertook rapid manoeuvres to avoid marine live possibly opening fire upon them very quickly assisted the Sovereign and the American submarines nearby. These vessels all made approaches towards the Soviet ships up on the surface and then uncoordinated attacks were made.

The Sovereign opened its attack not long after one of the US Navy submarines had lofted a trio of Harpoon missiles into the sky and launched torpedoes as well. An Udaloy-class ASW-destroyer was repeatedly struck by both those missiles and torpedoes in a fierce attack that caused chaos in the Soviet formation. There had been a Krivak-class ASW-frigate that the Sovereign was about to open fire upon at that time to clear a path forwards towards bigger targets, but the Soviet warship’s attention was suddenly focused elsewhere. A gap in the outer defences of the battle group’s anti-submarine screen that the RN submarine went through had been presented and taken advantage of.

There were Harpoon missiles on the Sovereign too, but the submarine’s captain chose to go into battle with his Tigerfish torpedoes. A worthy target presented itself, one that was momentarily unmasked of its defences, and in the best traditions of the RN, daring was used to strike at that capital ship: the aircraft carrier Kiev.

Fired from close-in in their high-speed setting, the torpedoes raced at a speed of thirty-five knots and slammed into the Kiev along the length of the carrier’s starboard side. One of the warheads inexplicitly didn’t detonate, but the other trio on those Tigerfishs did.

BOOM.

BOOM.

BOOM.

The Kiev was struck by these three blasts deep below the waterline. Seawater poured in at once following the explosions – with all their initial devastating effects – and almost at once a list developed on the carrier to starboard. Men had been rushing about aboard at that time in a race to get to battle-stations and internals watertight doors were open as this occurred. There were heroic efforts to shut many of them but in other instances deaths of Soviet sailors had occurred near those open access-ways. In addition, the conscript sailors of the Northern Fleet, even on such a vessel as the Kiev, were poorly-trained in damage control and this only exasperated the situation aboard.

More water poured into the Kiev and up on the flight-deck several Yak-38M Forger B light attack-fighters started to slide towards the tilting side. The carrier was very quickly to be doomed and would roll over soon enough on her side before turning turtleback.

There was no time for confirmation of the ‘kill’ or celebration aboard the Sovereign because moments after the successful torpedo strike, a helicopter from the Kiev started dropping torpedoes of it’s own into the water. If the Sovereign’s captain had waited a few minutes longer before attacking that helicopter would have been in a landing pattern ready to go back to the carrier and not as ready to react as it had been, but that wasn’t to be. One of the Soviet torpedoes went active with its mounted sonar and detected the Sovereign as the hunter became the hunted.

BOOM!

Within three minutes of striking the Kiev, the Sovereign was itself struck in this lighting counterattack. Torpedo impact upon the submarine was right near the bow and then there came a second explosion too when the warhead of the fifth Tigerfish that had been in the torpedo tubes – which had been held ready to fight off a counterattack from surface or subsurface vessels – exploded.

One hundred and fifteen men aboard the RN submarine (the entire complement) were to very rapidly lose their lives; in return their efforts would end up killing more than seven hundred and fifty of the Kiev’s two thousand plus crew and the Northern Fleet losing one of it’s true capital ships.


In the North Sea, off the north-eastern coast of Scotland, the frigate HMS Sheffield spent much of war’s first day playing a cat-and-mouse game with a Soviet submarine that the RN vessel would eventually lose. This shiny new vessel, a dedicated ASW asset, had been working in conjunction with an RAF Nimrod MR2 maritime patrol aircraft to try to locate and attack a Kilo-class submarine that was known to be operating in those waters.

The quiet but deadly little Kilo had avoided all efforts to strike at it while trying itself to get into an attack position instead of evading as it could have done. The RN frigate was a worthy target and this was war not a peacetime avoidance mission of NATO maritime surveillance.

When the Kilo’s captain finally got into a perfect position, a pair of torpedoes were launched at the Sheffield with warheads exploding under the frigate’s keel after the aboard sonars had been homing-in on warship’s wake. The Sheffield had her back broken and began to tear itself apart despite the crash-stop of the frigate’s engines.

There were deaths aboard the Sheffield when struck but evacuation efforts were rapidly put into effect to get the crew off. RN sailors got up on deck and lifeboats were launched in the cold waters. The Nimrod, nearby and circling trying to hunt down the killer of the Sheffield, radioed for assistance to come to the aid of the men about to go into the water. Of the two hundred and fifty-one men aboard the frigate before her eventual sinking, forty-one lost their lives but the remainder managed to get into the lifeboats.

Like the warship after which she had been named – the destroyer Sheffield lost in the South Atlantic six years before to Argentinian action – there had been a great loss of life avoided by the RN as it managed to get most of its men away safe in the end.

The attacking Kilo escaped.


The third RN vessel lost on that first day was the helicopter support ship RFA Engadine.

This vessel of almost nine thousand tons displacement was a training ship for RN fleet helicopter operations though had a wartime role that it was functioning in when it was destroyed. The RN was waiting on a replacement for the Engadine, but the Argus wasn’t ready by the time World War Three came about and so the older vessel was out in the middle of the North Atlantic with helicopters flying from it hunting Soviet submarines on raiding missions.

These helicopters were little Wasp HAS1 models and five of them from training flights in Britain were aboard the Engadine assisting in RN and NATO anti-submarine efforts out in the open ocean. The ship was not a dedicated ASW platform with sonars and weapons of its own, but rather a mobile airbase for the helicopters where they could be refuelled, rearmed and maintained. The crews of the Wasps could rest between flight operations aboard and use of the ship was also available to other NATO helicopters flying from their own warships.

The Engadine was planned to operate across the North Atlantic area in support of ASW efforts where the threat was the greatest but always in conjunction with warships too to support the helicopters in combat operations. Despite being such a large vessel, the noise of the lone engine wasn’t that great and it was hoped that the defenceless ship could avoid detection with it not being directly sent into action engaging Soviet submarines.

No one had told the Northern Fleet that though.

The Engadine and the frigate HMS Argonaut were both attacked by a flight of supersonic anti-ship missiles launched by a Soviet Navy Charlie-class submarine when misidentified as an amphibious assault ship and escorting ASW escort by the crew of that submarine. Four of these P-120 Malakhit (SS-N-9 Siren) missiles from the submarine K-503 were launched towards the pair of RN ships. Two of those missiles failed to acquire a target due to the sudden launch of decoys into the air – the RN had a little bit of warning – but the other pair of missiles smashed into the Engadine.

Like the Sheffield, the bigger Engadine was gutted by fire and evacuation efforts commenced as those flames got out of control. Three of the Wasps were aboard at the time and one of them managed to get airborne though the other two would be lost with the ship. Of the crew aboard, there were many casualties mainly due to the rapid damage that was incurred because the Engadine was set alight from bow to stern really fast: seventy-two of the one hundred and sixty-four RN personnel were killed while the rest made it to the lifeboats and the later safety of the undamaged Argonaut.

The attacking submarine escaped from initial RN counterattack but that night the K-503 would come up against an American ASW-frigate of the Perry-class that would track, pin and sink the submarine before it could do anymore damage.


Many more RN personnel, three times the number lost aboard this trio of vessels and the Battleaxe too, were killed elsewhere on the war’s first day. There were casualties at Plymouth and Portsmouth when those cruise missiles struck the naval towns early in the day and then more when Faslane and Rosyth in Scotland came under attack by more missiles not long after the Engadine was struck. Those deaths at naval facilities in the UK would actually hurt the RN worse than those at sea too because so many were skilled shore establishment operatives who were needed to keep all the vessels out at sea.

There was still the next day of the war to be fought too… and the following days after that as well.





Seventy–Eight

By six in the evening of that first day the skies over the North Sea were starting to fill up with airborne tankers. Dozens of KC-135Es from Strategic Air Command (SAC) had arrived from their new bases in Britain and got airborne full of fuel ready to be offloaded in mid-air. Joining them was also much of the RAF tanker force too: TriStars, VC10s and Victors.

Under the command of 3 ATAF staff operating from their bunker beneath RAF Uxbridge, these tankers were all sent up over the water to wait upon the arrival of heavily-laden strike aircraft coming out of British bases too. There was cooperation with both the 2 ATAF and 4 ATAF staffs on the Continent to keep the tankers clear of danger from enemy fighters as the mid-air refuelling points were reached and then there was a wait for all of those other aircraft coming up to meet them and then head eastwards.

This wasn’t much of a wait.


Tornado GR1 strike-bombers from RAF Marham and RAF Honington had spent all day in their concrete HAS’ while the war waged across on the Continent. There were fifty of these aircraft which could have made a real difference to NATO air efforts during the day but instead they had been held waiting for darkness to again fall.

The situation was the same with the two hundred and sixty plus F-111s that were also sent up into the skies this evening carrying heavy bomb-loads. These aircraft were from the four USAF strike-bomber wings spread over multiple British bases left waiting too and out of the action just so that they could be ready for tonight. Another twenty near-identical aircraft accompanied the F-111s (A, D, E and F models) and these were EF-111A Ravens carrying electronic jamming equipment but no armament.

This huge force of tactical aircraft now assigned a strategic strike mission all refuelled from the airborne tankers over a period of almost an hour. Due to the large amount of ordnance that each was carrying, their lift-offs from untouched airbases had been hard on the airframes though with the lack of fuel originally held in their tanks possible. If the Tornados and F-111s had been carrying lighter bomb-loads then this refuelling operation wouldn’t have been necessary because they had the range to hit the targets that they set out for from Britain, yet the 3 ATAF planners wanted to put a whole lot of bombs on many distant targets.

Flying high and in squadron groupings from twelve to twenty-four aircraft, the strike-bombers crossed the Dutch coast and then overflew the Netherlands. Ahead of them 2 ATAF aircraft were engaged in combat like they had been all day with Warsaw Pact aircraft and battle controllers aboard airborne radar aircraft assigned to 2 ATAF had to redirect 3 ATAF aircraft around enemy fighters on occasion. There was a whole wing of USAF F-15A Eagles with the 3 ATAF back in Britain who were assigned the mission of supporting strategic airstrikes, but those fighters were going to be busy later and so the Tornados and F-111s flew unescorted. Several of the strike-bombers had a wide variety of problems during their flights eastwards and had to abort. They either put down in the Netherlands or in West Germany and that wasn’t always a good thing with tactical air operations going on as they were in addition to continued Soviet long-range rocket bombardment of 2 ATAF’s airbases. Even before the mission really got going, 3 ATAF took casualties among its strike-bomber force because modern combat aircraft were naturally complicated piece of equipment.

When reaching a point seventy miles west of the frontlines on the North German Plain, the Tornado’s and the F-111’s started to break formation into small groups from four to eight aircraft. At the same time wings were swept back and the strike-bombers started to lose altitude as they began their approaches to enemy airspace.

Forty-five targets had been plotted for the 3ATAF aircraft to attack not long after sunset in this mass attack designed to overwhelm enemy defences. During the weekend just gone, as NATO prepared for the inevitable attack, and during today when war broke out, the RAF and USAF staff officers with 3 ATAF had been planning what they were going to conduct this airstrike against. Other aircraft would be preforming tactical missions in a battlefield support role before and after this one big attack so the Tornado’s and F-111s wouldn’t be going after enemy tanks or troops: even though they were more than capable of such a task. Instead, the strike-bombers were assigned to hit targets that would matter and cause immense damage to enemy efforts to further their own military operations in Germany. Both the British Second Army and the US Seventh Army had been requesting since the first shots were fired this morning that many of these aircraft be released to reinforce 2 ATAF and 4 ATAF in tactical roles, but to no avail. As many of these strike aircraft were held back all ready to really make a dent in the enemy’s forces.

Approaching the frontlines and then crossing over them into Soviet-held territory, brought the Tornados and the F-111s to the attention of Warsaw Pact IADS. IADS was ‘Integrated Air Defence System’ and combined all air defence assets to central control to defend against enemy air attacks. NATO’s IADS had been attacked all day by Warsaw Pact aircraft while the interlocking arrangement of interceptors, radars and SAMs in the East had barely been touched… until now.

A mass of jamming was undertaken against enemy radars not only by the EF-111s that came with the strike-bombers in direct support but also by stand-off electronic warfare aircraft that remained back over West Germany and the Low Countries. The efforts of these aircraft and their electronics caused chaos in the IADS system being penetrated and then anti-radar missiles began to smash into ground radars. Two Soviet Air Force A-50 airborne radar aircraft both operating over East Germany found their radar screens a complicated mess and the interceptors that they contacted had the same problems.

Bombs started to fall all across East Germany. The Tornados and F-111s made high-speed, low-altitude bomb runs against targets from bridges to airfields to military logistics centres. Soviet and Warsaw Pact military power in the rear was being struck and it was hit hard and well too with the strike-bombers delivering airfield-cratering weapons and laser-guided bombs onto their targets. Only faulty intelligence or capable defences managed to stop the bombs falling where 3 ATAF wanted them too and such occurrences were rare. A significant number of the so-called ‘smart bomb’ stocks that the RAF and USAF had managed to stock in preparation was used up, but these were necessary strikes.

Not all the jamming was effective nor was every targeted air defence radar knocked out. There was luck to be had on the part of interceptor pilots flying as part of the defending IADS too where they managed to get into advantageous positions. 3 ATAF aircraft started to go down before, during or after their attacks. Sidewinder air-to-air missiles against fighters and HARM anti-radar missiles against SAM batteries were fired in retaliation to this, yet many Tornados and F-111s went down all over East Germany even during the escape westwards.

Damaged 3 ATAF aircraft put down in friendly airbases afterwards so not all those strike-bombers that survived enemy defensive fire managed to get back to their British bases ready to be sent out again in a similar mission before dawn. Thirty-seven aircraft were lost to enemy action: eight Tornados, twenty-one F-111s and eight of the precious EF-111s. This eleven per cent loss rate was devastating to the strategic striking power of the 3 ATAF but was regarded as something that was acceptable due to the circumstances. The enemy IADS had been overwhelmed by such a sudden and large attack and could be hit like that again. Information would flood into RAF Uxbridge all night long on the successes – and failures too – of the airstrikes while the Tornados and F-111s were re-armed and prepared to go out again.


However, before that repeat mission could be undertaken, other 3 ATAF assets were airborne and heading eastwards to hit the Soviet-led forces attacking NATO.

The FB-111As assigned to 3 ATAF flew out of their base at RAF Cottesmore all night long in two- or four-ship detachments. These aircraft had recently lost their nuclear role with SAC and their land-range cruise missiles had remained back in the United States, but a large stockpile of GBU-15 glide bombs had been set aside for their use. After the big attack made not long after dark, the smaller flights carried on hitting targets to the east until dawn. The FB-111 was a slightly bigger version of the standard F-111 and carried extra fuel. Nonetheless, airborne tankers would meet these strike-bombers over the North Sea on eastern Frances as they ranged deep into enemy territory.

The powerful 2000lb warheads on the bombs carried – two on each FB-111 during each mission – smashed into high-value targets. Whereas the F-111s had earlier hit bridges over the Elbe in Upper Saxony inside East Germany (west of Berlin), the FB-111s went after the road and rail bridges over that same river further upstream in Saxony proper and down in Czechoslovakia too. Those bridges were hit alongside ones that crossed the Oder on the East German-Polish border and inside Poland too. Underground fuel lines than ran from the Soviet Union into the Northern Tier countries were struck at by bombing their aboveground pumping stations and transfer points. Railway yards that were crammed with trains that were bringing military equipment forward from the rear were smashed to pieces when more bombs landed there. Military airfields from where Soviet transport aircraft were flying from across Mecklenburg were hit with those big aircraft being blown apart.

There were losses, but the FB-111s did their job all through the night.


From out of RAF Valley in Wales, the secretive ‘Bandits’ flew similar missions to those of the FB-111s. The F-117A Nighthawks ranged deep into enemy territory though did so in single-ship flights. In doing so they odd-shaped, radar-defeating bombers caused nightmares for NATO air defences before they even crossed the frontlines. 3 ATAF had issued orders concerning how certain portions of airspace were to be cleared for the passage through them of the F-117s but this was wartime with air battles going on all night over Western Europe. NATO fighters found their radars picking up strange returns and tried to engage those ghosts on several occasions before AWACS radar operators brought order to the skies.

The USAF had guarded the secret of their stealth aircraft just a little too well.

Laser-guided bombs were dropped by the F-117s against high-value targets just like other 3 ATAF aircraft had gone after, yet the focus with these aircraft was against massively defended enemy targets. Intelligence gathered over many years and also during the day’s warfare had pointed to places where destruction from the air would seem impossible to conventional aircraft but not to the F-117s.

SAMs lanced up from the ground again and again and Warsaw Pact interceptor pilots unwitting aped their NATO counterparts in chasing ghost returns all over the sky without ever getting a firm fix. The command post of the Second Western Front down in the forests of Thüringen was bombed not just the once but twice by aircraft that the Soviets couldn’t shoot back at. The Soviet Fourth Air Army’s field headquarters near Stendhal was struck and so too was an immense ammunition dump in Pilsen that the Soviet Thirty-Eighth Army was drawing much of its war stocks from.

Several of the F-117s were sent on what was later deemed ‘Kill Kulikov’ missions too. Years later, there would be several non-fiction books written about these attacks by Bandits to kill Marshal Kulikov, the Supreme Commander of all Warsaw Pact forces in Europe. The underground bunker at Legnica in Poland was hit and so too were command buildings at Karlshorst in Berlin; the suspected location of his field headquarters near Leipzig was a further target for the Kill Kulikov attacks. The man survived that first night’s attacks, but the F-117s would be back…


In the early hours of the morning, as World War Three moved into its second day, two of the F-15 squadrons from the 3 ATAF (the other had been detached for air defence of the British Isles) flew eastwards over the North Sea meeting tankers on the way before crossing the Netherlands and West Germany. Behind those fighters came the B-52G Stratofortress’ assigned to 3 ATAF for strategic strike missions.

Soviet fighters flying forward and interceptors back over East Germany were engaged at long-range so that the two squadrons of B-52s could conduct a pair of separate missions near the frontlines in Lower Saxony and in Hessen. There was no way that these big aircraft in sixteen-ship flights could be hidden from Warsaw Pact radar coverage even with plenty of aggressive radar jamming and they were not conducting stand-off missions: hence the fighter escorts. Of course no military operation ever went perfectly and the enemy fought back. MiG-25PD Foxbat E interceptors from an air regiment with the Soviet Sixteenth Air Army managed to evade F-15s using high-speed and shoot off air-to-air missiles, some of which struck B-52s despite all the electronic jamming that filled the skies. That was not enough to damage the Hessen mission enough while the one directed against a target in Lower Saxony was successfully defended.

To the north and east of Braunschweig, East German and Soviet troops from the Third Shock Army’s right-hand armoured fist were subjected to an attack by thirteen hundred bombs falling out of the sixteen aircraft above. Each of the B-52s had lifted off from RAF Fairford with eighty-four 500lb bombs aboard and these were all dropped over a carefully-defined rectangular area held by Warsaw Pact forces. Some bombs went astray and others didn’t function as meant to, but the vast majority of those bombs hit the area of ground where they were meant to.

Not only was there the blasts of the individual bombs, but the USAF had spent many years perfecting conventional bombing attacks with B-52s to get the greatest effect. The bombers each opened their bomb bays in a precise order when they were over the target area to that upon detonation far down below a shockwave would be created that would increase the damage wrought. Hell was unleashed upon those on the ground when the bombs started going off. Men were buried alive in foxholes and didn’t move through shock. Trucks exploded and main battle tanks flipped over like children’s toys. Artillery pieces had their barrels bent out of shape and sensitive radar antenna on command vehicles obliterated.

Death and destruction reigned and two divisions of East German and Soviet troops ready to make a breakthrough against West German forces in a vulnerable area wouldn’t be going anywhere after thousands of them were killed outright and the majority of the rest left in no fit state to fight.

The other B-52 attack had seen losses inflicted beforehand from those MiG-25s that had killed a trio of the big bombers as well as four of the escorting F-15’s; three Soviet Air Force interceptors had been shot down too. Nevertheless, the bombing attack against the 57GMRD went ahead because it was preparing itself for a major push at first light again against the US 8th Mechanized Infantry Division south of Fulda towards the Gelnhausen Corridor (part of the overall Fulda Gap). In this area which was a playground for tanks the local geography wasn’t as open as it was up north near Braunschweig so different bombing tactics were employed in the manner in which the bombs were dropped there. Just short of eleven hundred 500lb bombs were dropped over a much smaller area with effort being made to use hills and low ground to channel blast effects.

Nearby American troops watched in awe as close air support came to their aid, though some of them were killed by stray bombs in a nasty friendly-fire incident.

Afterwards, the B-52s with their F-15 escorts flew back towards Britain.


This night of air attacks by the 3 ATAF would end with the Tornados and F-111s going back again to East Germany right before first light for a second go at overwhelming the IADS defences to their east.

When those aircraft did so, in conjunction with 2 ATAF and 4 ATAF efforts, the skies would be filled too with a mass of Soviet aircraft on strategic strike missions of their own heading westwards too.

Eighty–One

Plans for retaliatory strikes by the United States against Cuba were put together in haste, yet at the same time that didn’t mean that when that military action commenced it was either uncoordinated or ineffective. Cuba lay just off the coast of Florida and within range of many American military assets uncommitted yet to fighting elsewhere. There was a political desire to hit back hard and fast against an unprovoked attack by the Cubans and therefore within less than twenty-four hours, United States forces begun attacking the little island… from multiple directions too.


From Florida – where Homestead and Key West were temporarily closed after Cuban air attacks – aircraft from the USAF, US Navy and both Florida and Georgia Air National Guards all made air attacks on Cuba throughout the night. Those from the USAF were B-52s carrying conventional high-explosive bombs that were dropped across much of Havana despite the air defences of that city as well as over the Lourdes strategic intelligence facility. Squadrons from the US Navy which were without a carrier to operate from went after military targets across the western half of Cuba from airbases to barracks complexes to weapons dumps. Florida ANG pilots in their F-16s got revenge on the central portion of Cuba with bombing attacks on further military targets which were covered by Georgia ANG F-15s flying top cover for them.

Cuban air defences had first been attacked nationwide by the US Navy firing Tomahawk cruise missiles from two of their submarines to support the land-based aircraft coming out of Florida and then their own aircraft coming from the USS Coral Sea that hit the eastern half of the island. Cuban troops around the occupied Guantanamo Bay were bombed along with warships hiding in coastal inlets. These strike aircraft from the Coral Sea flew from their carrier which was out in the Caribbean between Cuba and Haiti. During a lull in US Navy air attacks, the carrier supported the refuelling operations of Puerto Rico ANG aircraft that also struck at Cuba.

Though battered by cruise missiles and then bombs, the Cubans fought back. A couple of the MiG-29s managed to get airborne along with many more MiG-21s despite those airbases being attacked. Along with a lot of SAMs being expended, seemingly every anti-aircraft gun on the island was fired up into the sky all night long against real and imaginary targets.

Eight American aircraft were lost during the overnight air strikes with six of those going down over Cuba and two more into the sea. Some air crews were killed, though others fell into Cuban captivity – ready to join those Americans captured at Guantanamo Bay.


Cuban forces fought back not only trying to defend themselves but in offensive moves too.

Chinese-built C-201 CSS-C-3 Seersucker anti-ship missiles were fired from coastal batteries out into the Caribbean towards the general direction of where the Cubans believed that the US Navy was located. With no air or maritime reconnaissance assets able to get anywhere near the American carrier and her escorts, these were shots in the dark though and the big missiles hit nothing while only exposing their own firing positions for American counterattacks.

One of the Cuban Navy’s Foxtrot-class patrol submarines went hunting for the Coral Sea during the night but had no luck either. The radar on the little submarine had limited range and the B-509 didn’t get anywhere near the American warships that it was looking for. Instead, the radar only attracted the attentions of ASW efforts by the US Navy. Several S-3B Viking submarine-hunting aircraft from the Coral Sea went after the B-509 and managed to drop torpedoes and depth charges on the submarine resulting in a ‘kill’ for those aircraft.

All across Cuba, army units stood ready to repeal an invasion. Tanks and artillery were moved around in the dark with infantry following them too. Should everything go wrong with the Soviet-led plan to defeat the United States and roll back its worldwide influence so it no longer spread any further than its own shores, then Cuba would be ready to defend itself.


Fidel and Raul Castro spent the second night of their war deep underground in separate bunkers beneath the outer suburbs of Havana. The brothers had spent much of the day receiving intelligence reports explaining how successful their strikes had been against Florida the night before; those reports had stated that the threat to Cuba had been nullified for the time being by knocking out the two airbases that were closest to the island country over which they ruled.

None of the military intelligence nor DGI officers that they spoke to gave either brother any indication of the fury in the tiger to the north that had just been unleashed.

The Castros had been moved into these bunkers by their anxious security staff once the skies got dark and cruise missiles started striking SAM batteries and air defence radars all across the country. Soon enough, the ground under which those bunkers were buried below started to shake to their very foundations when massed barrages of bombs from B-52s fell upon Havana. At first harried junior men came to the ageing brothers bringing reports to them of what was being targeted in the city, though later no such reports came as the bombing got heavier.

By dawn, the Castros left their shelters and were able to get out and understand how wrong those initial intelligence reports had been. The Americans had been unaffected by Cuba’s air strikes and instead smashed Cuba to pieces. Across Havana, buildings which were later deemed by American intelligence to be ‘regime leadership targets’, were blasted to smithereens. Government ministries, military headquarters and DGI complexes were smoking ruins. The city’s power wasn’t working and there was some disorder among the public.

As time moved on, when further intelligence reports arrived in the hands of the Castros, the news got worse. Strictly military targets had been hit elsewhere throughout Cuba with immense death tolls inflicted upon the Cuban Armed Forces. There had apparently been a major focus by the Americans in bombing weapons dumps and fuel storage sites; when these had exploded under attack many military personnel had been killed.

San Antonio de los Banos airbase was a burning ruin with its aircraft in pieces and the weapons kept there destroyed. Military bases used by the Soviet brigade-group based in Cuba – in the main a training and intelligence formation – were devastated. American aircraft had lain waste to much of the country’s important military infrastructure.

Moreover, the attacking of Cuban weapons stores and the mass use of defensive weapons to combat the first air attacks at once depleted Cuba’s stock of military equipment. If Cuba faced several more nights of attacks, as at once seemed rather likely, then the country was going to have major trouble defending itself because no Soviet resupply effort would soon be coming.


Cuba had been attacked at home but also abroad too.

There were significant Cuban military forces operating down in Angola fighting South African backed UNITA forces against the communist Angola government. In addition, there had recently been direct Cuban-South African clashes too, ones not through proxies. Soviet and Warsaw Pact ships and aircraft kept Cuban forces operating in Angola through a complicated logistics line that ran all the way down the Atlantic. Like Cuba itself was, their forces in Africa relied upon Soviet shipments of arms and equipment as well as the movement of men that this supply line provided. Cuba produced very few military weapons of its own and the strategic transportation capabilities of the country were very small.

In the build-up to Cuba taking part in World War Three, the forces in Angola had been told to hold tight for a little while as the war with America and its allies was fought. This message came rather late though and couldn’t change the local situation on the ground in the war in which Cuba had long ago involved itself. South African forces had already been massing to strike in support in UNITA in south-eastern Angola and when Cuba entered World War Three on the Soviet side, the government down in Pretoria decided that they would rather be align themselves with the West at this crucial moment.

South Africa threw all that it could in an attack in south-eastern Angola while at the same time mobilising its military forces for a full-scale war. The Cuban forces there in Angola were at once left on their own for the West ruled the waves of the South Atlantic.

Cuba was in a bad situation at home and a terrible one down in Africa too.





Eighty–Two

To have not faced an attack on the war’s first day was a miracle. The RN Task Force hadn’t been touched by hostile Soviet action despite being right within reach of their long-range aircraft and also where the enemy would expect it to be. No one with the flotilla of light carriers, destroyers, frigates and support ships expected that to last though.

After the aerial victories that the Sea Harriers had achieved and then the missile attack upon Striking Fleet Atlantic, the decision was made late on March 14th to move the Task Force away from such an exposed position as it was in. The RN was operating in these waters about ninety miles west of Tromso so that it could take part in planned naval air offensives to stop a Soviet amphibious invasion that showed no sign yet of occurring. Intelligence from the US Navy on how many Backfires had taken part in the missile attack upon them worried the RN that they were in great danger and it would be safer to head southwards towards the Lofoten Islands and the land-based air cover offered nearby. With Striking Fleet Atlantic also moving closer to the Norwegian coast too, the Task Force might also find air support from the Americans.

Through the night this decision had seemingly been justified. Electronic warfare assets with the Task Force reported that a broadcast had occurred nearby from a submarine. What the broadcast said, who it was from and who was to receive it were all unknown factors. ASW helicopters from a pair of the warships with the Task Force tried searching for the submarine that could very well have been surveying the collection of RN vessels but to no avail. In addition, a Norwegian P-3 maritime patrol aircraft flying out of Andoya in the Lofoten Islands had a visual contact with a Soviet naval reconnaissance Bear in the area where the Task Force had been not long after the RN had departed. Both aircraft had been carrying plenty of weapons, though none which would conceivably have been used against each other. After that engagement where nothing more hostile than hand signals were used against the other, the P-3 was able to confirm RN worries over being far too close to enemy forces.

By the morning of the war’s second day, the Task Force was sailing about thirty miles north west of Moskenes Island. This mountainous island was part of the southern chain of the Lofoten Islands with the Vestfjorden over to the east. No more Soviet reconnaissance attempts of them had been undertaken and a decision was pending on what the Task Force was now to do due to the Soviets seemingly making all of their efforts on land rather than at sea. There was talk of entering the Vestfjorden and operating from that sheltered but wide body of water or even for the Task Force to head southwards all the way down to the approaches to the North Sea to interdict Soviet air activity out of Bergen and Stavanger.

Then the skies were filled with raketonosets once again.


A land-based NATO E-3 gave warning that Backfires were in the skies over the Norwegian Sea before only then picking up reconnaissance Bears. Thirty of the big bombers were detected (a full regiment) as being out over the water to the northwest of Tromso and heading southwards. Those aircraft were travelled at supersonic speed and at a low altitude: the latter reason why they were spotted so late. Land-based fighters from several airbases were sent airborne and the warning was also sent to Striking Fleet Atlantic with the hope that some of its Tomcats could react to this incoming air attack.

It was towards the Task Force that the raketonosets were heading though, guided either by the Bears or an undetected submarine. Sea Harriers at once started being launched from the decks of the carriers while the ships begun steaming southwards at full speed. Neither defensive measure was going to make a major difference though once those Backfires started releasing cruise missiles.

Sixty Kitchen missiles were fired at the Task Force from a distance of only eighty miles by aircraft that at once started climbing and turning away back northwards. Three of those missiles soon had failures, but the others powered onwards lancing towards their targets.

Unlike the Tomcats that had defended Striking Fleet Atlantic by firing Phoenix missiles at the inbounds on their ships the day before, the Sea Harriers were in no position to interfere with the progress of those missiles. They carried only Sidewinder air-to-air missiles and their gun pods and didn’t have the speed to compete. The Kitchens were only going to be opposed by the defences aboard the ships at which they flew towards.


It had taken an immense effort by the RN to get all three of their Invincible-class aircraft carriers to sea: something which many said couldn’t have been done. Each had a crew of nearly a thousand sailors including many reservists. There were other Sea Harriers aboard them along with Sea King helicopters providing ASW and airborne radar capabilities. Neither ship could afford to be lost to enemy action.

Six destroyers – all of the Type-42 class – provided escort for the carriers. Again the RN had stretched itself to the limit with manpower issues in getting these ships crewed and on station with all other wartime commitments, but they were there in the Norwegian Sea with their magazines full of weapons. As to frigates, there were four with the Task Force. These were Type-21 and -22 class models that were built for general patrol and ASW missions. Six support ships of various guises were with the Task Force went it was attached with those ships undertaking tanker and resupply roles.

Sea Dart SAMs from the carriers and the destroyers all started firing against the inbound missiles once they were in range. Guided by Type-1022 radars rather than the Type-965s that had hampered RN air defence operations in the South Atlantic six years before, the Sea Darts successfully engaged some of the inbound targets despite them coming in very low over the water. Nevertheless, trying to hit one missile with another was very difficult and the Sea Dart was an anti-aircraft system rather than an anti-missile one. There were missiles kills, but not enough. Sea Wolf and even Sea Cat missiles were fired into the sky at the very last minute too, just in case any of them got lucky and struck an inbound.

Nine Kitchens were destroyed by the Sea Darts (the other missiles failed to get a kill) and so the Task Force had to rely upon gun defences to save it from attack. The destroyers and the frigate HMS Avenger all fired their main guns using radar-guidance while the three Type-22 frigates only had twin-30mm anti-aircraft guns instead of a ‘traditional’ battery. None of these weapons hit any inbound missiles either.

The ‘Daleks’ and the Goalkeepers were the last effective line of anti-missile defence for the ships of the Task Force. The half dozen destroyers all had American-built Vulcan-Phalanx six-barrelled 20mm Gatling guns, referred to as ‘Daleks’ by the ranks of the RN, while the three carriers and the Type-22 frigates had Anglo-Dutch Goalkeeper seven-barrelled 30mm guns. These guns all filled the sky with bullets and tried to put up impenetrable barriers through which no inbound missile could cross.

Of course when so much firepower was unleashed as it was these anti-missile guns had a lot of success, but there were too many missiles in the sky which were coming in far too fast. Sixteen missiles did go down to these defences, but that still left another thirty-two.

Those missiles ignored the waves of chaff being fired into the air and the crazy manoeuvring of their targets trying vainly to break missile lock and instead started slamming home into them.

Of the carriers only the Invincible escaped a missile strike. Illustrious was hit three times and Ark Royal a stunning five times. One impact on either of the carriers displacing only twenty-two thousand tons would have been enough to badly damage them, but these multiple hits tore them apart. Immense explosions rocked the Illustrious and the Ark Royal after they were hit with there being no chance at all to save them for the destruction wrought.

HMS Cardiff, a Falklands veteran, was struck by two missiles and would rapidly be consumed by fire.

HMS Liverpool avoided being struck because her pair of Daleks had done a sterling job of protecting her.

HMS Nottingham took a missile hit to the stern before two more slammed into her amidships: the destroyer was destroyed.

HMS Manchester took two hits and was instantly engulfed in flames that her crew just wouldn’t be able to stop spreading from bow to stern.

HMS Gloucester was hit in the bow area by an inbound Kitchen whose warhead failed to explode. The rocket fuel ignited, but Gloucester’s crew would manage to get the fire under control and save their ship.

The sixth destroyer, HMS Edinburgh, was struck by one missile that dove deep inside the ship before its warhead detonated. The resulting explosion broke the ship in half and she soon begun to tear herself apart before sinking.

Of the frigates with the Task Force, only HMS London was hit by an inbound Kitchen with fatal results there for much of the crew; the ship was soon afterwards abandoned due to fire.

The big RFA Fort Austin was hit four times by inbound missiles and rather quickly blew up due to the replenishment ship carrying so many combustible stores. Her sister-ship RFA Fort Grange was hit by a lone missile but would survive the engagement. RFA Olmeda and RFA Olna – a pair of tankers – were hit by three and two missiles respectively. RFA Diligence, a forward repair ship, was gutted by fire after a pair of missiles struck this vessel while the same fate befell the tanker RFA Black Rover.

Only five of the nineteen ships present escaped damage once the final missile had made an impact with a target though two of those hit would survive. The other dozen vessels were lost.

Two of the carriers were among those ships that the Backfire-Kitchen deployment had so successfully worked against and the Illustrious and the Ark Royal had many of the precious Sea Harriers aboard them at the time of impact.


The RN would long remember March 15th 1988. The date would be as infamous as those two days in 1941: May 24th and December 10th.

The Task Force was shattered.

So many ships had been lost with so many men aboard them being killed either by fire or drowning. The remaining ships would be overwhelmed with rescuing men from the freezing waters and in no condition for the time being to take part in any further combat operations until those hundreds upon hundreds of rescued sailors would be dealt with.

In belated consolation, this time the Backfires didn’t get away clean. A flight of four Norwegian F-16s raced out of Andoya carrying air-to-air missiles and drop-tanks to give them extra range. Seven of those Backfire’s were downed with another one taking major damage and thus being very lucky to make it back to the Kola Peninsula.

If only those Backfires could have been stung in such a manner earlier.